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Gershom Scholem, philosopher, writer, historian, and poet, was born in Berlin in 1897 and settled in Jerusalem in 1923. For years he was Professor of Jewish Mysticism at the Hebrew University. His many books include Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, Sabbatai Sevi- The Mystical Messiah, and Walter Benjamin- The Story of a Friendship. He died in 1982. Richard Sieburth is a Professor of English, French, and Comparative Literature at New York University. His translations include H lderlin's Hymns and Fragments and Benjamin's Moscow Diary-and for Archipelago, B chner's Lenz, The Salt Smugglers by Gerard de Nerval, Maurice Sc ve's Delie, and Stroke by Stroke by Henri Michaux. His English edition of Nerval's Selected Writings won the 2000 PEN Book-of-the-Month-Club Translation Prize. Steven M. Wasserstrom is the Moe and Izetta Tonkon Professor of Judaic Studies and the Humanities at Reed College. He is the author of Between Muslim and Jew- The Problem of Symbiosis under Early Islam, which received the Award for Excellence in Historical Studies from the American Academy of Religion, and Religion after Religion- Gershom Scholem, Mircea Eliade, and Henry Corbin at Eranos.
Gershom Scholem's scholarship was of [the] rare, life-giving kind. Not only have his studies of the Kabbalah altered . . . the image of Judaism--but his explorations, translations, and presentations of Kabbalistic writings exercise a formidable influence on literary theory at large, on the ways in which non-Jewish and wholly agnostic critics and scholars read poetry. -- George Steiner, New Yorker Gershom Scholem's achievement has already put a generation of readers in his debt. He has intrepidly, singlehandedly, almost monomaniacally pursued the task of saving the literature of Jewish mysticism . . . restoring it to an estate of respect, honor, and importance. -- Arthur A. Cohen, New York Times Book Review Abrupt, magisterial, quizzical, sometimes acidulous, and at moments poignantly wistful.... Scholem's verses return to an authentic Hasidic tradition of indicting God. -- Harold Bloom An excellent bilingual selection. Richard Sieburth's versions are lucid, sensitive, forceful, and always attentive to the originals. Steven Wasserstrom's incisive commentary provides the ideal context.... Given the complexities that it resolves-historical, biographical, theological, literary-this edition is a model of its kind. -- Jeremy Adler, The Times Literary Supplement Scholem has rare gifts for synthesis and generalization, as several of his more recent essays on Jewish messianism and tradition demonstrate, but his mind is equally remarkable for the way it adheres to the smallest particles of particular historical experience - Robert Alter
