On Jews and Judaism in Crisis

Essays, letters, and articles written by the distinguished Jewish scholar over a fifty-year period. Includes three essays on Walter Benjamin.

Gershom Scholem (1897-1982) was born in Berlin and educated at the Universities of Berlin, Jena, Bern, and Munich. In 1923, he immigrated to Palestine, where he devoted the rest of his life to the study of the Jewish mystical tradition and the Kabbala. In Jerusalem, he was appointed the first professor of Jewish mysticism at Hebrew University and served as president of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Scholem was the author of many books, including Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah, and From Berlin to Jerusalem (also now available from Paul Dry Books).