Posted on May 06, 2025 at 23:46.
4 min. reading
A diary is a strange territory where we enter without knowing very well where our steps will wear us. With the Youth journal From the great scientist of Jewish mysticism that was Gershom Scholem (1897-1982), the reader will not be disappointed: he holds both an exceptional document and a big book. As is often the case, this newspaper held between 15 and 25 years old tells of crossing a crisis. Gerhard Scholem (he judaïes his first name at the age of 15) rebelled as of adolescence against his original environment, that of the Jewish bourgeoisie of Berlin in the process of assimilation. Unlike one of his brothers, Werner, who will become a communist deputy to the Reichstag, his revolt takes the form of a return to the roots of Judaism.
But what Judaism exactly? The question haunts Scholem: neither the Judeo-German synthesis which he vigorously rejects, neither religious orthodoxy, nor even militant Zionism satisfy his thirst for absolute and radicality. So much so that he has only one way: to reinvent Judaism. This reinvention, far from being the fruit of its fantasy, will take the form of a rediscovery, that of the very rich Jewish mystical tradition, and in particular Kabbalah, an invisible but always alive heritage to which Scholem will devote all his adult life, with the international echo that we know. “It is the misfortune and the misery of Jewish history: the traditions killed were lost when one disappeared the silence, not that they began to speak, on the contrary, they were lost in this abyss of the oblivion in which they await us, await that we take them out” (July 31, 1918).
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