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Gershom Gerhard Scholem
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From Berlin to Jerusalem: Memories of My Youth Paperback – March 13, 2012

by Gershom Scholem (Author), Harry Zohn (Translator)
4.6 out of 5 stars 18 ratings
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"A serene, lucid and stylish essay in intellectual autobiography that at the same time commemorates a vanished world."—Times Literary Supplement

"An extraordinary life—one that itself takes on symbolic, if not mystical, significance." —Robert Coles

From Berlin to Jerusalem portrays the dual dramas of the author's total break from his middle-class German Jewish family and his ever-increasing dedication to the study of Jewish thought. Played out during the momentous years just before, during, and after World War I, these experiences eventually led Scholem to immigrate to Palestine in 1923.

"Gershom Scholem is historian who has remade the world…He is coming to be seen as one of the greatest shapers of contemporary thought, possibly the boldest mind-adventurer of our generation."—Cynthia Ozick, New York Times Book Review

"A remarkable book."—Harold Bloom

"[Scholem] vividly describes the spiritual and intellectual odyssey that drew him…to a rigorous immersion in the texts of Jewish tradition."—Library Journal

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 On Jews and Judaism in Crisis: Selected Essays (also now available from Paul Dry Books).



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  1. Print length
    178 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Paul Dry Books
  4. Publication date
    March 13, 2012
  5. Dimensions
    5.4 x 0.6 x 8.4 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1589880730
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1589880733
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Praise for Gershom Scholem and From Berlin to Jerusalem

"A serene, lucid and stylish essay in intellectual autobiography that at the same time commemorates a vanished world."—Times Literary Supplement

"An extraordinary life—one that itself takes on symbolic, if not mystical, significance."—Robert Coles

"Gershom Scholem is historian who has remade the world…He is coming to be seen as one of the greatest shapers of contemporary thought, possibly the boldest mind-adventurer of our generation."—Cynthia Ozick, New York Times Book Review

"A remarkable book."—Harold Bloom

"[Scholem] vividly describes the spiritual and intellectual odyssey that drew him…to a rigorous immersion in the texts of Jewish tradition."—Library Journal

About the Author

Gershom Scholem: Gershom Scholem (1897-1982) was born in Berlin, educated at the universities of Jena and Bern, and emigrated to Palestine in 1923, where he devoted himself to the study of the Jewish mystical tradition and the Kabbalah. One of the greatest scholars of the twentieth century, admired both for his philological prowess and his philosophical insight, 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 On Jews and Judaism in Crisis, a collection of autobiographical writings and essays on Zionism.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Paul Dry Books (March 13, 2012)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 178 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1589880730
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1589880733
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.4 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.4 x 0.6 x 8.4 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 out of 5 stars 18 ratings

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Gershom Gerhard Scholem

Gershom Gerhard Scholem

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4.6 out of 5 stars
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Top reviews from the United States

  • Agnes Kelemen
    5.0 out of 5 stars Gershom Scholem's memoir is a goldmine for everyone who is ...
    Reviewed in the United States on November 29, 2014
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    Gershom Scholem's memoir is a goldmine for everyone who is interested in the Jewish intellectual and social history of the early- and mid-20th century.
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  • Laura Wharton
    5.0 out of 5 stars Great Inspiration
    Reviewed in the United States on February 6, 2011
    This is a great book about a great man -- and a real inspiration. Thrown out of school, he became a brilliant and learned teacher at the Hebrew Universiy in Jerusalem; brought up in an assimilated German household, he learned about Herzl when he got a picture of him as a Christmas present, subsequently moving to Israel. A great read.
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  • RWordplay
    4.0 out of 5 stars In the best sense of the word
    Reviewed in the United States on December 10, 2016
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    Here an older man, one possessing a prodigious memory—for names, faces, arguments, publishers of books, and even addresses—looks back at his younger self and describes how he came to be a renowned man, living in a place that was conceptually as far from home as can be traced on a map. It was a place, appropriately enough, that was as much an idea as a fact of geography. Such a place would be the ideal home for a philosopher.

    Gershom Scholem's mode of transportation was repudiation. The young man rejected the expectations of his family and caste. Not yet in his 20s, he reinvented himself a philosopher and a scholar and a Zionist. In the best sense of the word, his repudiation of Deutschjudentum—the practice of subordinating one's ancestral faith and adopting a German identity—became an act of personal liberation. (One can read his defiance in Oedipal terms or, as I prefer, as an act of self-preservation. Scholem anticipated that the endgame of Deutschjudentum would be the annihilation of Jewish identity, which, in practical terms, could have accomplished what Shoah could not.)

    Teenagers rebel. It is a necessary and often admirable act to reject an identity imposed by others. What is remarkable about Scholem's break was that it was complete. (Yes, he still wrote home for money, and, one could say, he remained something of a Mama's Boy, but the fact is, he never returned home.) It is also worth noting that the circumstances that drove young Scholem from his comfortable home was not unique to his particular experience, or to that of German Jews in general. The depth of his intellectual competitiveness and his unusual academic pursuits aside, what drove Scholem out of his house continues to animate rebellious teenagers today—a desire for the authentic. Scholem slammed the door behind him in order to discover an authentic Jewish identity, which he found in his study of Hebrew, which led to the Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism.

    Had Scholem been born a Catholic and subjected by his family to the same pressures, he might have become an atheist. Had his parents been observant Jews, he might have become a Marxist or a Freudian. Had he been Huckleberry Finn, he would have "light out for the territory."

    Scholem's rejection of an elastic or compliant Judaism led not only to a life of scholarship but also, inevitably, to Zionism. The book reveals a young man who embraced a philosophical and not a political Zionism. As such and approaching the question from the soul, rather than a political stance, its ultimate rightness could not be questioned—remove its necessity and the entire equation comes undone.

    Whether or not Zionism was an unqualified good or merely the lesser of many evils was a moot point. Scholem's Zionism was as necessary as a blood transfusion, if for no other reason than he required a home more substantial than his substantial library, big brain and hungry soul could house. Eretz Yisrael was that thing: not just home, but the "Holy Land," in both the figurative and literal sense.
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  • SaguaroGeorge
    3.0 out of 5 stars Left guessing
    Reviewed in the United States on October 13, 2013
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    p. 71: "Heller virtually radiated integrity and was very intelligent; for some years his integrity seemed exemplary to me. Many years later he became one of the leading physicians of Israel but the bond between us had given way to an uncanny and unresolvable estrangement." What was the nature of that estrangement? How was it uncanny, an unusual modifier of the state of estrangement. We are left guessing.

    p. 72: "I had been very irritated by his [Buber's] attitude in wartime, particularly by an essay entitled `Kinesis' ... " What was Buber's attitude set forth in that essay? We are left guessing.

    p. 152: "The Jewish hiking club Blau-Weiss, against which I had polemicized five or six years previously, had in those days been strongly influenced by parallel developments in the German youth movement and had shifted to a position which can even today only be described as semi-fascist." As Scholem evidently did not approve of this club in the earlier period, one would think he would welcome some shift in its position, but apparently its position became even worse. But what was that position? How was it semi-fascist? Did they sing patriotic songs as they hiked through the woods? So did I in the Jewish summer camps in the Poconos I attended as a child. What is he talking about? We are left guessing.

    Perhaps if one is fully familiar with every aspect of Scholem's life, and of the milieux in which it was lived (Germany just before and after WWI, Switzerland, Jerusalem), one could understand what he is talking about in these and many other similar excerpts. In fact, I have read several of his books (though no autobiographies before this one), I have lived in Germany and Israel, I have published a book on the Paris Peace Conference which ended World War I (Harcourt Brace in the US, Sir Isaac Pitman in the UK), and have taught twentieth century history at the university level, but I am not familiar with the activities of the Blau-Weiss Club and have not come across Buber's Kinesis essay. By the way, Buber's essay is not easy to find and if you look up the Blau-Weiss Club on the internet, here is what you will find: "Der Tennisclub Blau-Weiss Berlin ist ein traditionsreicher Tennis- und Hockeyverein, dessen Anlage sich seit 1926 in Berlin-Grunewald an der Waldmeisterstraße befindet. Der Club wurde 1899 gegründet ... " Clearly, Scholem is not referring to a tennis and hockey club, though the dates are in order. What, then, is he talking about? We are left guessing.

    In many other places in this book, Scholem refers to events and personal relationships with scarcely any introduction and no explanation. We are constantly left guessing, a state I don't enjoy.
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Top reviews from other countries

  • Guo YI
    5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
    Reviewed in Canada on October 3, 2015
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    It a good book! Very helpful for Kabbalah research!
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