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Gershom Scholem (born December 5 1897 in Berlin, died February 21, 1982 in Jerusalem) was a German-born, Jewish philosopher and historian. Scholem studied the roots of the Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism, founding a professorship for the study of the Kabbalah in Jerusalem. He wrote a famous biography of Sabbatai Zevi.

Born Gerhard Scholem, Scholem studied mathematics, philosophy and oriental languages. He wrote his doctor's thesis on the subject of the most ancient known kabbalistic text, Sefer ha-Bahir. Drawn to Zionism and influenced by Martin Buber, he emigrated in 1923 to Palestine; here he devoted his time to studying Jewish mysticism and became a librarian, and later a lecturer, at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He taught the Kabbalah and mysticism from a scientific point of view, and became the first professor for Jewish mysticism at the university in 1933, working in this post until his retirement in 1965.

Scholem's brother Werner was a member of the ultra-left "Fischer-Maslow Group"; he was also a member of the Reichstag, the German parliament, representing the Communist Party (KPD), but was banned from the party and later murdered during the Third Reich.

Scholem died in Jerusalem in 1982, leaving a widow, Fania Scholem.

Works

• Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism 1941
• Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism, and the Talmudic Tradition 1960
• The Messianic Idea in Judaism translated 1971
• Sabbatai Zevi, the Mystical Messiah 1973
• Kabbalah 1974
• On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead : Basic Concepts in the Kabbalah 1997

External links

• an analysis of Scholem's lifework from Commentary
• Biography at the Jewish Virtual Library