488) Gershom Scholem’s messianic claim

 

Introduction

This article – based extensively on the research by Professor Boaz Huss[1] and Professor Michael Brenner[2] − explores aspects of the life story and personal thought of Gershom (Gerhard) Scholem (1897-1982), the first researcher and professor of Jewish mysticism. 

Meeting with the kabbalists of Jerusalem

In 1915, while still in Berlin, a young Scholem had already met and become friends with Walter Benjamin. Benjamin was later to kill himself by an overdose of morphine tablets in 1940 rather than surrender to the Nazis. Scholem dedicated his famous work, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, to his friend Walter Benjamin. 

432) How three Jewish scholars may have been motivated by personal bias.

 

Gershom Scholem studying the Zohar in his Sukka in 1925

Introduction

This article, based extensively on the research by Professor Michael Brenner,[1] shows how three Jewish scholars, Heinrich Graetz (1817-1891), Moriz Friedländer (1844-1919) and Gershom Scholem (1897-1982) developed three different approaches to the emergence of Gnosticism (an early form of mysticism). Brenner shows, however, that each may have been motivated to some degree by personal bias. 

307) SEFER HATZOREF AND THE STORY OF THE ‘LOST’ STOLIN GENIZA:

 

                      The library stamp of R.Yisrael Perlow of Stolin 

INTRODUCTION:

Some years ago, Professor Yitzhak Y. Melamed discovered what looked like a stamp from the famous lost Karlin-Stolin Geniza or Archive.

He made the discovery quite by accident as he was perusing through a two-volume list of Jewish library markings and stamps that the Allies had found and then catalogued after the Second World War. This catalogue is now held at the University of Chicago’s Regensburg Library. The Allies created this catalogue to document the Jewish books that had evaded destruction by the Nazis.

After the war, it was thought that the once-great Stolin Geniza had been irretrievably lost. However, from time to time rare Kabbalistic manuscripts had surfaced in, as Melamed puts it, “the murky world of Hebraica dealers”. One such manuscript was bought back by the Stoliner Chassidim themselves and another was purchased by the Jewish National Library of the Hebrew University. These, together with his accidental find, gave Melamed hope that the great Stolin Geniza and library had not been completely lost or destroyed. This article is based extensively on Professor Melamed’s intriguing investigation into the Stolin Geniza and his account thereof.^[1]