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Messianic Scholars: On Early Israeli Scholarship, Politics and Messianism

The present discussion of messianism in the thought of certain contemporary scholars in Jerusalem, especially Gershom G. Scholem, is certainly not the first of its kind, neither is it my first treatment of the subject. In fact, there are several discussions on the topic and it is not my intention here to summarize or even argue with them. Some of them were written referring to Scholem’s European background but without the authors being acquainted with the original messianic texts that Scholem so carefully analyzed; others are simply rephrased assessments of what Scholem had thought on this important topic. I have chosen to return to this topic because previously unknown and, in my opinion, fascinating material on the place of messianism in Scholem’s lifetime in the land of Israel, emerged only recently. This new material can be found especially in Hebrew studies written by Shmuel Werses, Shalom Ratzabi, Yonah Hadari, Jonathan Garb, and, especially important for our discussions below, in David Ohana’s recent book, as well as in Scholem’s disparate material put together in the last twenty five years in the three collections of his articles edited by Abraham Shapira. The accumulation of this new material and related analyses broadens the perspectives concerning Scholem’s views and gives us a better understanding of his intellectual background in the State of Israel, as well as of his European background. Even in the most recent analyses, however, a number of issues, which I will engage in detail below, are not dealt with at all. But just as it would not be wise to separate Scholem’s thought from his European background, it would be equally wrong to ignore the more pressing reality of his daily life in the land of Israel, and to neglect the intellectual processes that he witnessed and was influenced by over the years. The discussions below should be seen as an exercise that seeks to prove that extracting Scholem from