Volume 24, Number 6 · April 14, 1977
Gershom Scholem and the Fate of the Jews
By Leon Wieseltier
On Jews and Judaism in Crisis: Selected Essays
by Gershom Scholem, edited by Werner J. Dannhauser
Schocken Books, 306 pp., $16.50
The attempt to reclaim traditions of Jewish spirituality, which I discussed in the first part of this review (NYR, March 31), was not the only response to the sclerosis of Jewish life in Germany at the turn of the century. Other forms of rebellion, more widespread and combative, were possible: socialism and Zionism. Gershom Scholem's elder brother became a Communist deputy in the Reichstag and died for that in Buchenwald. Scholem himself became an ardent and articulate Zionist. In 1917 he was banished from his father's house for his 'antipatriotic' convictions.[1] In 1923, while fellow Zionists across Europe hotly debated plans and principles, Scholem left for Palestine.
Review, 4382 words
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