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A LS 0 I3 y G E RS H O M SC H OLE M

The Correspondence of Walter Benjan1in and Gershom Schole1n,

1932-1940 (Ed.)

Fro In Berlin to Jerusalen1: Men1ories of My Youth

Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism

The Messianic Idea in Judaisin: And Other Essays on

Jewish Spirituality

On the Kabbalah and Its Sy1nbolisin

Zohar-The Book of Splendor: Basic Readings fro1n the

Kabbalah (Ed.)
 n ews

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•

Ill
S E L E C T E D E S S A Y S

Gershom Scholem
Edited by Wemer J. Dannhauser

SC H OC K E N B O O K S • Nl:W Y O R K
 Copyright© 1976 by Schocken Books Inc.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

Published in the United States by Schocken Books Inc., New York. Distributed by
Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Scholem, Gershom Gerhard 1897-

0n Jews and Judaism in crisis.

1. Jews in Germany-History-1800-1933-Addresses, essays,

lectures. 2. Benjamin, Walter, 1892-1940. 3· Germany-History-2oth century­
Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Title.
DS 135.G33 S297 943'.oo4'924 75-3 7010

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author wishes to acknowledge the following:

"With Gershom Scholem" first appeared in Shdemot and is reprinted by permis­

siOn.
"Walter Benjamin" was first published in the Yearbook of the Leo Baeck Institute,
Vol. X, London, 1965, and is reprinted by permission of the editor of the Yearbook of
the Leo Baeck Institute.
"S. Y. Agnon-The Last Hebrew Classic?" is reprinted from Commentary by
permission; Copyright© 1966 (67) by the American Jewish Committee.
"Reflections on Jewish Theology" is reprinted from The Center Magazine, a pub­
lication of The Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, Santa Barbara, Cali­
fornia, and is reprinted by permission.

Display typography by Stephanie Bart-Horvath

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Schocken Books Edition published in 1976

 Contents

Editor's Preface VB

With Gershom Scholem : An Interview I

Jewish Youth Movement 49

Farewell : An Open Letter to Dr. Siegfried Bernfeld 54

Against the Myth of the German-Jewish Dialogue 6I

Once More : The German-Jewish Dialogue 65

Jews and Germans 71

S. Y. Agnon-The Last Hebrew Classic? 93

Agnon in Germany : Recollections II 7

M artin Buber' s Conception of Judaism I26

Walter Benjamin I72

Walter Benjamin and His Angel I98

Two Letters to Walter Benjamin 237

Israel and the Diaspora 244

Reflections on Jewish Theology 26I

On Eichmann 298
Eichmann
Letter to Hannah Arendt
 Editor's Preface

Such is the stature of Gershom Scholem that he scarcely needs an

introduction. His incomparable labors in the field of Jewish
mysticism (if "field" is taken to mean "field of serious modern
study," he must be considered its founder) have not only resulted
in the knowledge that mysticism played a much greater role in
Jewish tradition than had previously been acknowledged; they
have paved the way for the revitalization of a Judaism assaulted
on many sides by the credos of modernity.
While the author needs no introduction, a selection of his
essays so various as the present one may, nevertheless, benefit
from a few prefatory remarks, it being clearly understood that
such comments are neither authorized nor authoritative.

II

The earliest of the selections included here appeared in 19 16.

Thus this volume is testimony to sixty years of the author's
continuous and amazing productivity; it is evidence of the great
fertility of his mind and thereby additional justification of his
stature. While the writings on mysticism can be said to be an
indication of the depth of Scholem 's mind and his capacity to
deal profoundly with minute details, this book can be considered
an indication of the breadth of Scholem's mind at work. He is
able to speak with authority about matters literary, culturat and
political; he is at home in the twentieth century as well as the
Vlll ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
time of Sabbetai Tzvi ; one does him less than justice by saying
that nothing Jewish is alien to him, though things Jewish do
indeed constitute the core of his concerns.
The diversity, then , of the essays herein included sheds
additional light on the author's work. M oreover, as if by a way of
an "added attraction , " they also provide fascinating information
about the author's life . Most of his work is austere in its
avoidance of reference to himself. Those who know Gershom
Scholem know him to be a great conversationalist and an
extraordinarily gifted raconteur, but he has tended to keep the
personal matrix of his writings out of sight. Some of the essays
included in this volume are, therefore, a kind of bonus. For
example, the interview he granted to a Hebrew periodical
provides us with intriguing information about his youth and even
affords one a glimpse of his gracious wife ; an essay on Agnon in
part is a very personal reminiscence about Scholem 's life in
Germany ; the major analysis of Buber's conception of Judaism is
also a document of Buber' s influence on, and divergence from,
Scholem 's own work; finally, the two essays on Walter Benjamin
are testimony to one of the century's most moving and enduring
friendships between men of mind.

III

Custom has it that whenever a collection of an author's essays

appears a preface such as this dwells heavily on their " essential
unity" or " single theme . " Since such statements almost invariably
force independent pieces into a mold distorting to them, and
since each of the selections was written to stand on its own, the
editor has deliberately talked about diversity before mentioning
unity. When all is said and done, however, there is little doubt
that the essays in this volume possess a certain unity in the sense
of having various features in common. Before discussing some of
these common features, the editor wishes to maintain that the
idea of unity within diversity is certainly not a strange one to
Gershom Scholem, whose writings abound with the use of the
words dialectics and dialectical.
To begin with , then, all of the essays in this volume are
 EDITOR'S PREFACE lX

written in the twentieth century about the twentieth century. As

such, they illuminate some of the many miseries and few
splendors of our time as seen not only from the perspective of a
Jew, but from a Jewish perspective.
Second, all the essays in this book are either about Jews or
about things Jewish, mostly about both at the same time . The
connection between this common element and the first is easy
enough to establish : no rational person can deny that Jews and
Judaism occupy an absolutely crucial place in the history of the
twentieth century. Suffice it to mention Hitler and the Holocaust,
two phenomena that hang like a dark cloud over much of the
material of this volume. In this respect one might consider
Scholem 's essay "Jews and Germans" to be the most representa­
tive piece in the volume.
Third, as follows inevitably from the previous considerations,
this is a book about the crisis of our time in its various, mostly
terrible, manifestations. Some of the pieces deal with the scope
and limits of Zionism as a response to that crisis-especially
"Jewish Youth Movement" and " Farewell, " in which a very
young Scholem appears as a Zionist taking Zionism to task for its
lack of radicalism, 1 its failure to go to the roots of the problem it
seeks to solve, its inability to effect a true conversion in most of
its adherents. Other essays are attempts to gain insights into the
most unfathomable event of the century, the Holocaust. They
assess some of the fictions connected with it, as is evident in
Scholem's protest against all prattle about a German-Jewish
dialogue ; they consider its effects on Israel and on Judaism , as
can be seen from "Israel and the Diaspora" and "Reflections on
Jewish Theology" ; they discuss its impact on eminent men like
Buber, Benjamin, and Agnon; they take a position on issues
arising in its aftermath, like the author's stand on the Eichmann
case and the reactions it produced. In all these instances,
Scholem can be seen to examine his own time with an eye
unclouded by either sentimentality or cynicism.

1. See Gershom Scholem, Walter Benjamin-die Geschichte einer Freundschaft

(Walter Benjamin-the History of a Friendship) (Frankfurt-am-Main: Suhrkamp Verlag,
1975), pp. 4 1 , 94· This volume, which is as yet available only in German, constitutes an
invaluable complement to the two essays on Benjamin included here. Moreover, since it is
also to a considerable extent about Jews and Judaism in the crisis of our time, it is to a
considerable extent a companion volume to the present one. Its early translation into
English would be most desirable.
X ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
Fourth, much of the writing in this volume is informed by a
polemical and iconoclastic spirit. To put it crudely, Scholem likes
to argue ; at least he shows no reluctance to use the pen as a
weapon in combating what he considers stupidity and wicked­
ness or any unsavory combination of these signs of human frailty.
Finally, almo. s t every selection in this volume (all but the
introductory interview and the comments on E ichmann's execu­
tion were originally in German) provides irrefutable evidence
that the author is a master of German prose. The editor, who is
also the translator of most of the essays in the volume, can
personally attest to the beauty of Scholem ' s prose . The prose can,
to begin with, be used to show that Scholem is what W. H .
Auden said of Henry James : a "master of nuance and scruple. "
As translator, what the editor has attempted to do here-unsuc­
cessfully-is to recapture the rhythms and richness of sentences
that are especially astounding when one considers the fact that
their content is of a kind that is usually considered incompatible
with graceful writing. Gershom Scholem has shown that the
demands of rigorous scholarship and strict reasoning are not
necessarily at variance with the demands of literary excellence.
This is not to say that Scholem' s style remains static . In sixty
years it undergoes noticeable changes (noticeable even in En­
glish, it is to be hoped) . The two early Zionist essays betray a
trace of Buber's influence-readers of the essay on Buber below
will gain ample insight into Buber' s style . Gradually but surely,
thereafter, Scholem develops a voice of his own in a German
unmistakably his own. No decline of passion whatsoever is in
evidence-consider the statements on the absence of genuine
dialogue between Jews and Germans-but the passion is all the
more effective because it is disciplined and harnessed to the
imperatives of strict argumentation . That the author has a keen
interest in beautiful writing is clear from the substance of many
remarks he makes; that he writes beautifully himself is evident
from the manner in which he phrases his remarks. One might add
that Scholem' s German probably owes its purity to at least two
identifiable factors apart from his genius. First, his style seems to
be free of any major Nietzschean influence. Nietzsche's German
was indeed remarkable, but its effect on those who came after
him tended to be remarkably deleterious. Second, Scholem left
 EDITOR' S PREFACE XI

Germany at the beginning of the 1920s and was thus spared any
contamination by the corrupted German of much of the twenti­
eth century. No doubt exists, for example, that the Nazis both
with and without clear intent left a horrible scar on their mother
tongue. One need not dwell on the irony of the fact that today' s
most classic German may well be written by a Jew living in
Israel.

IV

In 1973 the editor suggested to Gershom Scholem that his

writings on "Je-ws and Germans" should be made available to
English readers in book form, along with some other selected
essays of his. He met with the editor in October 1973, at which
time a tentative table of contents for his volume began to emerge.
The author, to be sure, expressed doubts in regard to two of
the longest essays included in this book. He feared that the essay
on Buber and the essay titled "Walter Benjam in and His Angel"
might resist translation. Having read these essays with particular
admiration, believing on some quasi-philosophical level that
anything in German prose could be translated into English prose,
and being brash, the editor thereupon declared that he could and
would translate these essays-if Scholem himself offered help.
The latter was willing.
The editor arrived in Jerusalem to teach for a semester at the
Hebrew University in the fall of 1974 ; during the next six months,
this book took shape. Gershom Scholem was extravagantly
generous with his time. He checked over all the essays in this
book translated for the first time for this volume, making
numerous greatly helpful suggestions and changes.
As far as the two essays on Benjamin and Buber were
concerned, he did more than check them over ; he became an
active collaborator, going over this editor's drafts page by page,
and indeed line by line. Editor and author spent a number of
afternoons poring over these translations, frequently sitting under
Klee's Angelus Novus. It is to be hoped that the outcome of these
labors not only proved Gershom Scholem right in assessing the
difficulty with which these essays would yield their sense in
Xll ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS

English, but also proved the editor right in presumi ng that the
essays were possible to translate.
To say they were possible to translate is not to say they were
easy to translate. Two examples of problems encountered 1nust
suffice ; both are connected with the essay titled " Martin Buber's
Conception of Judaism . "
First of all, the early Buber, whom Scholem quotes exten­
sively, wrote with a distinct and unmistakable style, partaking of
bombast and other excess. Scholem's essay takes note of the
excesses by quoting examples of them rather frequently. All
translators know that a deficiency of style, inextricably tied as it
is to the grammar, rhythm, and syntax of the original language, is
particularly difficult to capture in another language. The reader
himself must judge the success of the outcome.
Certain German words, secondly, tend to defy rendition into
English at all, and do defy rendition by one constant equivalent .
The word Gestalt is a good example. The sensible decision to
keep it untranslated in English texts has been adopted in the case
of another word abounding in Buber' s texts and in Scholem' s
essay on him : Erlebnis. The alternative , to use a footnote each
time it occurs, would be far too cumbersome. The problem is that
German has two words for the English term experience: Er­
fahrung and Erlebnis. An Erfahrung can be passive ; it can
frequently be translated as practical experience. An Erlebnis is
active; it can sometimes be rendered as a vital, vivid, or living
experience ; frequently it almost means adventure. A man who
has gained rich and maturing experience throughout a lifetime is
a man of Erfahrung; a man who has fully participated in a major
event has had an Erlebnis. At Scholem's suggestion, and with the
editor's full concurrence, a decision was reached to leave the
word in German and to explain its use in the passage the reader
has just read.
One must add that Gersh om Scholem' s labors were not
confined to technical matters of translation. A perfectionist, he
made use of the occasion to change a term here or there, as well
as to make minor additions or deletions where he saw fit. A single
example must suffice . The information that Buber gave a lecture
in Polish in Jerusalem as late as 1943 is not contained in the
original German version, nor is it the product of the editor's
 EDITOR'S PREFACE Xlll

fancy; it was added by the author hitnself. Since Ge rsho1n

Scholen1 has reviewed and revised the editor's translations, the
present versions are to that extent the 1nost authoritative to be
found. That is also to say that the editor is not responsible for
substantive deviations from the Gennan , though he is certainly to
be blamed for those passages in which justice has not been done
to Gershom Scholem's exemplary Gennan .

In working on this volume, the editor has incurred a nu1nber

of debts . The staff of New York's Leo Baeck Institute proved
most cooperative during two days of background research. The
executive editor of Schocken Books, Seymour Barofsky, patiently
put up with inevitable delays and was always helpful.
The editor is most obliged to Fania and Gershom Scholem.
Mrs. Scholem was ever a perfect hostess and displayed the magic
gift of producing coffee or Scotch at the exact moment they were
required. She also managed to protect the editor against her
husband's inability always to suffer fools and foolish questions
gladly. As for Gershom Scholem himself, he performed more than
the tasks mentioned previously. Offering more knowledge and
wisdom than the editor, alas, could absorb, he performed the
mitzvah of turning a bad Jew into a slightly better one.
WERNER J . DANNHAUSER
 With Gershom Scholem:
An Interview*

The Self-deception of Assimilation

Kurt Blumenfeld once defined German Zionism as

Muki Tsur:
post-assimilatory Judaism . To what extent does this reflect your
own biography?
Gersh om Scholem: Blumenfeld's definition holds for most, not
all, the German Zionists . Some were beyond the bounds of
assimilation. The Jews who came from Eastern Europe were not
all assimilationist or on the brink of assimilation. Their children
constituted a considerable part of the Zionist camp in Germany.
This definition does not hold for Jews who came from Orthodox
homes. After all, in Germany there was a considerable minority
of pious Jews who had not exactly been ravaged by assimilation­
ism, for obvious reasons ; although some of the forms of assimila­
tionism were to be found in such homes. These elements were an
organic part of the soil that produced the Zionist movement,
which I joined in 1911.
But the definition "post-assimilatory Jew" applies to me. I am
a member of a family that had lived in Germany-in Silesia-for
a long time, and came to Berlin at the beginning of the
nineteenth century. I myself was a fourth-generation Berliner .
The transition in our family from Orthodoxy at the beginning of
the nineteenth century to almost total assimilation at the
beginning of the twentieth was a matter of three generations­
from my grandfather, through my father, to my own generation ;

o From Shdemot: Literary Digest of the Kibbutz Movemen t, No. III (Spring, 1975), pp.
S-43· The interview was conducted by Shderrw t's managing editor, Muki Tsur, and the
fonner managing editor, Abraham Shapira. Translated from Hebrew by Moshe Kohn.
2 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
in the third generation, assimilation was complete-or so it
seemed.
The Jewish post-assimilatory renaissance meant a revolt
against the life-style of the parents' home or of the circle. of
families like it. This was a conscious breakaway, a volitional act, a
decision-albeit a childish one (I was fourteen at the time)
though I didn't consider myself a child . Spiritually, I matured
early. My decisions of that period were not clearly formulated,
but the fact is that there was a decision to make a post-assimila­
tory break. At the time, I did not have an abstract-conceptual
awareness of assimilationism . My awareness was an emotional
one . This I shared with my contemporaries who joined the
Zionist youth movements. If I had become a Zionist six or seven
years later, I would no doubt have possessed the refined
intellectual tools needed to understand what was happening. I
went through many stages after that original break before I was
able to formulate what was happening.
Muki: What did you break away from?
Scholem: The revolt, or the break-in instances like mine­
was against self-deceit . A person living in a liberal-Jewish,
German-assimilationist environment had the feeling that those
people were devoting their entire lives to self-delusion.
We did not come to Zionism in search of politics. It is
important to understand that for my contemporaries in Germany,
Zionism was only to a limited degree (it would be wrong to say
not at all) a political Zionism . Some of us, to be sure, went on to
become real political Zionists, but the Zionist choice was a moral
decision, an emotional one, an honesty-seeking response. The
honesty did not express itself in the desire for a state, but in a
revolt against the lie that Jewish existence was. Jewish reality
seemed alive, flourishing, but those who went over to Zionism
saw that reality as rotten . Zionism was a revolt against the
life-style of the run-of-the-mill bourgeoisie to which my family
belonged . This was the milieu in which hundreds of thousands of
young Jews grew up in Germany.
Muki.· Wasn't there the possibility of going over-out of the
same motives-to the Revolution?
 WITH GERSHOM SCHOLE M : AN INTERVIEW 3

Four Brothers, Four Ways

Scholem: Of course that possibility existed. In those years
only a minority of the youth joined the Zionist movement,
whereas the great majority was assimilationist and chose self­
deceit-that is: the total Germanization of the Jews. Another
small minority-which included my brother Werner-joined the
Revolutionary camp.
We were four brothers. Two of them took after my father.
One of them was even more German than my father, a right-wing
German nationalist, a Deutschnationaler. The other one merely
wanted everything to be all right; he had no special ideals. My
third brother, who was two years older than me, opted for the
Revolution . He was killed in Buchenwald by the Nazis, as a
former Communist Party Reichstag [German Parliament] deputy.
This brother of mine, who at first had thought that Zionism might
be the way, one day wrote a letter to that Zionist youth
organization saying that he had found something broader than
the narrow little thing called Jewish nationalism ; he had found:
Humanity. He became a left-wing radical socialist and took part
in all the splits of the Social Democratic Party in Germany,
finally landing with the Communists in 1921. Six years later they
expelled him as a Trotskyist, along with most of the Jews in the
Communist movement. (Actually, the overwhelming majority of
the leading Trotskyists were Jews-something that people today
like to gloss over, the way people always gloss over unpleasant
facts. )
That was before World War I . Why was one brother
attracted to German Social Democracy and the other to Zionism?
I don't know. This is the sort of personal decision that nobody
can explain.
My Social Democrat brother was the third son. He was the
only one of my brothers with whom I was close. I never had any
serious conversations with my oldest brothers. The eldest (he is
six years older than I) is living in Australia, and he is still what he
was. In 1971 he told me, "What, Hitler is going to tell me what I
am ?f"
..
I wasn 't drawn to the Revolution. I had stormy debates with
4 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM I N CRISIS

my brother. I told him, "You're deluding yourself the same way

Papa is deluding himself. You are deluding yourself by imagining
that you represent Germany's exploited industrial workers. That's
a lie. You don 't represent a thing . You're the son of a middle-class
bourgeois Jew . That makes you furious, so you go wandering off
into other fields; you don't want to be what you are. You say: The
Revolution (that was the general slogan of the time) will solve all
problems, especially the national problems . " At that time we did
;
not yet know-we weren t that wise yet, neither he nor I-that
the Revolution, as the historical reality we became familiar with,
had not solved a thing. (I am now speaking of the Revolution, not
as an abstract concept, but as a concrete idea we had seen in
reality.)

Jews Are Only Good for Going to Synagogue With

Muki: How do you explain your break with your home?

Scholem: Of course, I can't explain why a fi fteen-year-old boy
decides as he does. Something impels him, draws him, after a
situation of emptiness; after being surfeited with things that he
felt lacked vitality.
The members of the assimilatory generation angrily rejected
the charges of their children. Papa certainly didn't enjoy hearing
me tell him he was deceiving himself. This resulted in our total
estrangement from each other. When I came home and said, " I
think I want to b e a Jew, " Papa responded by quoting the m axim·
that was so popular among German Jewry : "Jews are only good
for going to synagogue with . "
When h e started talking to m e in that vein, I got angry and
said, "That's all a lie ! " This feeling continued to develop in me
during those prewar years and all through the war, during that
critical period for the world as a whole and for the Jews in
particular. In the end, there was nothing we had to say to each
other-nothing that interested me or interested him. I an­
nounced that I was going to study Hebrew: that was how my
decision to rebel expressed itself. I wasn 't sure yet whether I
wanted to be an observant Jew. But a Jew I wanted to be.
Muki: Was it a decision to be a Jew or to be a Zionist?
 WITH GERSHOM SCHOLEM : AN INTERVIEW 5

Scholem: For me there was no difference between the two.

When I woke up one fine morning . . . how did I wake up?
Before I arrived at this Jewish turn, I had been interested in
history. One day I happened on Graetz 's book, History of the
Jews. Although he would not admit it, he was a national Jew, on
the threshold of Zionism . This becomes clear when you read his
book, especially the German version. It is clear that Graetz did
not like Gentiles. They sensed this, and it did him considerable
harm.
On the other hand, I grew increasingly critical of my milieu.
According to the ideology on which we were reared-to the
extent that we were reared at all-we were Germans ; true-we
were told-we are Jews, and we brought the world monotheism,
but Christianity is only a watered-down version of Judaism, and
there isn't such a fundamental difference between the two.
I noticed that in all my years at home, till my father threw me
out on account of my Zionism, I had never seen a German
Christian in our home. Ours was an ordinary, middle-class
bourgeois home, neither rich nor poor. But no Christian ever set
foot in our home, even though Papa had a theory that everything
was all right.
As a young man, Papa had been active in a movement that
had wide popularity among the petite bourgeoisie : the gymnasts
-Tumerschaft, in German (a word, incidentally, that was coined
1 60 years ago) . Papa was active there before the rise of organized
anti-Semitism. It took several decades for anti-Semitism to
become organized. In Germany it began in the 188os-just at the
-
time P apa had started becoming active. Berlin was a very liberal
city at the time, under a liberal government. Anti-Semitism
began to make headway in those circles and started raising its
head. Most of the organizations that had Jewish members started
discreetly making them feel unwelcome . Papa sensed this and
stopped being active, but he did not resign. He remained a
member of that organization all through the years. Our family
was in the printing business; we owned two printshops, Grand­
pa's and Papa's. In Germany there were employers' associations
and joint organizations with the workers, such as group health
plans. Papa was also active in those.
As I said: except for a formal fiftieth-birthday visit, for
6 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN C RISIS
example, no Christian member of any of the organizations in
which Papa was active ever set foot in our home. And I sensed
it.
"Do you want to return to the ghetto?" they argued with me.
I replied, "You are the ones who are living in the ghetto. Only
you won't admit it. Where are the Gentiles? I've never seen a
single one of them come to your homes for a social call . "
My grandfathers had received a n Orthodox upbringing . They
had grown up Orthodox, and all of them made the transition to
German society without cutting themselves off completely. I was
a little boy when they died-four and nine years old-so I had no
close ties with them. My parents were already a product of that
transition of lower-class Jews of Silesia to the Berlin petite
bourgeoisie.
There was not an iota of Jewish observance in our family.
Friday night was observed as family night. The uncles-my
father, his brothers and their families-would get together the
way they used to do at my grandmother's, who had since died.
Afterward , they continued to get together, more or less, the way
assimilated families do. We didn't observe the Sabbath proper
but Sabbath Eve-just as we didn't observe Passover, Shavuot, or
Sukkot, but only sat together at an all-family Seder on Passover
Eve. Though one of the uncles, who knew how to read Hebrew
without knowing what he was reading, would recite the Haggada
in some kind of singsong, and everybody sang "Ehad mi yodea H

and "Had gadya. We made something of a mess of it. The

H

rnelodies were more popular and better remembered than the

words. But many families didn't even have these Sabbath Eve
get-togethers.
Papa worked on Yom Kippur, and didn' t go to synagogue.
That was an advanced degree of assimilation, because most of the
assimilating Jews went to synagogue on Yom Kippur. There are
numerous degrees and shades between observance and estrange­
ment.
I signed up at the Jewish community library in Berlin, and I
started reading J udaica. That was a big step for me. Very soon I
told myself, " I want to learn Hebrew. " In the lessons in Jewish
religion conducted in the school I went to, we didn't learn the
Hebrew alphabet. Papa and Mama objected to my Hebrew
 WITH GERSHOM SCHOLE M : AN INTERVIEW 7
studies. I looked for somebody to teach me. I wanted to learn
Hebrew because of my interest in Judaism . It seemed very
rational to me. Today I ask myself whether it was really all that
rational. What interested me then was to find a way to the Jewish
primary sources. I was not content with reading about things.
This has characterized my whole life.
Muki: Was your decision influenced by anti-Semitism?
Scholem: I can't say that I suffered from anti-Semitism as a
boy. I had virtually no encounters with anti-Semitism, and those I
did have did not leave a deep mark on me, although at that
time-thirty years after its beginning-the anti-Semitic move­
ment in Germany had already gathered real strength.

There's Nothing to Be Learned from the Zionists

Muki: How did you learn Hebrew?

Scholem: I taught myself. I went to my former teacher in
Jewish religion (in those classes at school, incidentally, we read
selected Biblical passages in German) , and I said to him, " Are
you prepared to teach me to read and write Hebrew?" Twice a
week I and one of my friends would stay after school for an hour,
and we learned. We learned quickly. I wanted to learn. It
interested me. I did it with a passion. I also taught myself
Hebrew grammar.
Muki: But you also rebelled against the Zionists.
Scholem: Correct. I got to know the Zionists in Germany. I
went to meetings-especially of Zionist youth groups. I was an
active member of one of those groups for several years. This
group-to a considerable extent under my influence-developed
into the most radical group in German Zionism. Some of its
members were later to found Kibbutz Bet Zera in the Jordan
Valley.
I wanted to learn. That is how the awakening of my Jewish
interest expressed itself. I wanted to know who the Jews were. I
didn't know exactly, but neither did the Zionists.
The German Zionists were generally ignoramuses. One of
Papa's brothers was a Zionist from the outset. After Grandpa
died, he took over the printshop. He was also one of the founders
8 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
of Bar-Kochba (today known as Maccabi), the sports organiza­
tion. Nordau spoke of a Judaism of muscles, of Jewish sports
education.
My uncle printed the World Zionist Organization's newspa­
per, Die Welt, and the organ of the German Zionist Organization,
the ]iidische Rundschau. He was a real Zionist, but he didn't
know much about Judaism. I saw immediately that there was
nothing to be learned from him, even though he was somehow a
Zionist, by feeling . He wanted to be a Zionist, but he drew no
conclusions from that. So-although I was twenty-five years
younger than he, I didn't care for his Zionism. In my family
circle, they laughed at my uncle's Zionism-" Zionist" was
something funny to them-but that didn 't bother me one bit. It
seemed perfectly all right to me that he said he wanted to be a
Jew, but that wasn 't enough for me-l wanted to learn, and those
Zionists had nothing to teach.
So I joined a Zionist youth club.
Muki: Which one?
Scholem: Jung Jucla [Young Judea] . They were high-school
juniors and seniors. The Zionist university students busied
themselves with propaganda activity and preparing cadres that
would carry on with Zionist activity on the campus after
matriculating. I started going there with my brother in 1912.
There I met observant Jews for the first time. Although my
maternal grandfather had founded a synagogue in West Berlin,
there was not a single observant Jew in my family circle .
During Passover 1913, one of them told me that Talmud
classes were being started in one of the Berlin Jewish communal
religious schools. I asked, "Do I know enough to participate?" He
said, "Try. We don't know anything either. " So I went. A small
group of pious Conservative rabbis had started a class for
sixteen-year-olds, who were no longer required by law to take
religious lessons. They wanted to teach Gemara, Mishnah, things
that weren't taught in the Jewish communal afternoon schools.
The Jewish Community Council was opposed to the project and
refused to pay the teachers' salaries. It is impossible to under­
stand today what the Jewish community councils were like at the
time they were run by the anti-Zionists.
Those teachers were real idealists. They worked without pay.
 WITH GERSHOM SCHOLEM: AN INTERVIEW g
About ten people from all Berlin attended that class. I was one of
them . We learned every Sunday from 7 A.M. to 1 P.M.-Mishnah,
Gemara, Torah with Rashi's comme ntary, Bible . It seems that the
year before that, in which I had learned by myself, had sufficed to
put me on a par with those who had had seven years of afternoon
religious school!
The teachers were Orthodox men, some of them pro-Zionist,
some anti-Zionist. One of them had a great educational influence
on me. He was a great-grandson of Rabbi Akiva Eiger: a very
observant man, a bachelor who had never married because the
girl he wanted had married some rich fellow instead of him, the
poor rabbi ; he . was a real idealist. lie was not a great scholar, but
he was a marvelous teacher, a tremendous pedagogue. He was
such a good person, a loner, so full of goodwill . He was happy
that we young people-eight out of the ten of us Zionists-came
to him . I owe these teachers of mine a great deal. I once wrote
about this teacher of mine, Dr. A. J. Bleichrode , of blessed
memory.
Mrs. Scholem: Many years later, we were participating in a
class in Jerusalem, and one of the people there was asking such
questions that if one of us had asked them, Scholem would have
made short shrift of us. But he answered this gentleman with
extraordinary patience . We had no idea who he was. When the
session was over, Scholem said-in the words of Rabbi Akiva to
his disciples when they unknowingly tried to keep his wife from
approaching him : "Whatever I possess and whatever you possess
-we owe to Him . " That was Rabbi Bleichrode . He got to sit and
study in Jerusalem a few years longer-study under Scholem .

Agudat Yisrael

Scholem: I not only studied under him, I even joined the

Agudat Yisrael [today the most extremely Orthodox of the parties
represented in Israel's Parliament] .
Muki: Agudat Yisrael?
Scholem: Agudat Yisrael was founded in 1911, the year I
became a Zionist, as a competitor to Zionism . Organizationally,
structurally, and in its slogans, Agudat Yisrael was a total
10 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
imitation of Zionism, except that it was Orthodox. It was not yet
anti-Zionist then the way it became at the end of World War I
and in the 1920s. It was very powerful in one activity: studying.
What is more, of course-and this must always be said to the
credit of the Orthodox-they never took a single penny of tuition
fee . I studied for ten years-from 1913 to 1923-in Germany and
Switzerland, with rabbis or Orthodox lay scholars, and not one of
them ever dreamt of taking as much as a half-pfennig from me.
We must give full credit to those circles for their great idealism .
Every student who taught spoken Hebrew had somehow to earn
money to pay for his studies at Berlin U niversity. So to learn to
speak Hebrew you paid money, but if you wanted to learn
"Torah "-Bible, commentaries, Talmud, medieval Hebrew liter­
ature-it never cost you a penny.
I left Agudat Yisrael because I didn't want to be Orthodox . I
hesitated about becoming observant. For some reason it didn't
appeal to me. Judaism interested me very much , but not the
practice of observances. In that respect, the only thing that
attracted me was the synagogue, and I went for some years-at
first every Friday evening, and then every Sabbath morning.
When I was a high-school student, I often went to a synagogue
that had an organ . Afterwards I went to an Orthodox synagogue
without an organ. I liked both of thein . To this day I don't quite
understand what people have against an organ. On the other
hand, I enjoyed the style of prayer in the old Orthodox synagogue
in Berlin . The Orthodox thought I would be a great baal teshuva
[penitent] like Ernst Simon-today Hebrew University Emeritus
Professor of Education-and they received me nicely. But
kashrut, for example-kitchen Judaism-held little attraction for
me. My first wife was from a very Orthodox family, though she
herself was not Orthodox . We married in Eretz Yisrael one
month after I arrived here (she had come half a year earlier) . We
discussed whether to keep a kosher home-that variety of
Judaism made no sense to me. My father had said to me, "Why
don't you become a rabbi? If you want Yiddishkeit so much, then
become a rabbi and you'll be able to keep busy with Yiddishkeit
all your life . " I told him, " I don't want to be a rabbi. " Papa didn 't
understand what I wanted : Yiddishkeit without anything? I
called it Zionism .
 WITH GERSHOM SCHOLEM : AN INTERVIEW 11

I studied Hebrew without a sense that one day I would really

know it. I thought it was extremely difficult, that I would never
master it. But after four or .five years of intensive study I found
that it was possible to master Hebrew.

The Zionist Youth Movement

Muki: How did the Zionist youth movement impress you?

Scholem: It's hard for me to say . I had few experiences there .
I belonged to Jung Juda as long as it existed . It was a small
group-only twenty or thirty people-and eventually developed
into a radical circle. It consisted of Jewish students, some of
whom belonged to other Zionist organizations that did not attract
me because they had taken over strong assimilationist influences.
They thought that because of their Jewish pride, and in order to
safeguard Jewish honor in the eyes of the Gentiles, we had to
organize ourselves the way the Gentiles did and carry the war
back to them in their style. That repelled me. I was not a member
of any students' association. I was an "asocial' ' anarchist. Perhaps
the real, secret reason was that I didn't like smoking. When they
all sat there smoking at the Jung Juda meetings, I would get a
headache. I hate smoke-filled rooms. It may be that I didn't go to
those students' associations not for any of the profound reasons I
mentioned, but for a physiological reason.
There were Zionist youth groups that imitated the rebellious
German youth by going on outings and hikes : back to nature .
One of the important organizations of this sort was the Biau­
Weiss [Blue-White] , an organization of young Jewish hikers in
ferment. Most of my friends joined, but I didn't. My attitude to
them was that of a very critical outsider.
Why? In 1917, when I was 19, I wrote a long and formidable
article in their group-leaders' journal, in which I argued that
people were deluding themselves if they thought that a person's
Jewishness was nurtured by sending him out to look at nature
instead of by study. I argued that it was necessary to learn the
Jewish primary sources, and that the Jewish youth movements
had to change their ways. I thought they were confused.
Confusion was my favorite word in my first years of Zionist
12 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
activity. I waged war against this confusion . It seemed to me that
the Zionists were creating assimilation within Zionism, imitating
alien frameworks, singing 400-year-old mercenaries' songs. This
excited all the others, but not me ; it didn't interest me one bit . In
the first years they said, " Of course, we agree ; that is what we all
wish, but we have no time for it. " I said, "This comes first. It is
forbidden to engage in propaganda so long as the propagandist is
not setting an example. " The whole discussion centered around
this matter of setting an example, on educating, on what one has
to do to be worthy of being an educator. To tell you the truth, I
wasn't interested in becoming an educator.

Youth Movements: From R omanticism to an Order

Muki: There were two phases to your revolt against the

Jewish youth movement. The first was against its romanticism ;
and the second-later on-was against the way it organized itself
as an "order. " Do you see any connection between these two
phases of the youth movement?
Scholem: There was a dialectical logic to this process . The
Blau-Weiss people started as romantics and ended up fascists. As
you know, it isn't popular to say that Zionism has fascists, too .
But I think it does, even in Israel.
The way from the romanticism of Blau-Weiss to Walter
Moses' fascist order was a typically dialectical one, with things
developing intensively and vigorously in a very short time. The
transition took five years, the way it happened in the opposite
direction with Hashomer Hatzair.
The transition in Hashomer Hatzair from romanticism to
Marxism took place from 1924 to 1929. By 1930 they were
already Marxists. With some, it started in Galicia, when a large
part of the Galician Hashomer Hatzair left Zionism ; we are not
told that very many of the Hashomer Hatzair people in Galicia
left Zionism and went over to Communism, but it's a fact. This
was an intensive development of things that were in a state of
high tension.
Muki: Did you openly express your criticism of the move­
ments' second generation?
 WITH GERSHOM SCHOLE M : AN INTERVIEW 13

Scholem: What I wrote against the romantic aspect was

crystalized in several articles that I wrote between 1916 and
1 9 1 8 . They evoked considerable comment . I criticized the
counterfeit romanticism, which was German romanticism in
Zionist guise rather than relating itself to Eretz Yisrael. Against
the second phase I wrote only one thing: the big pronunciamento
against Walter Moses' Blau-Weiss.
This is a long text that I wrote in 1922, when the fascistization
that caused an immediate crisis was already on the scene and
three years before the total decline of the Blau-Weiss. When
their first olim-some fifty or sixty boys-came to Eretz Yisrael,
there was an immediate collision with the Histadrut . That was in
1925. The following year the Blau-Weiss disbanded officially.
Walter Moses opened the Dubek cigarette factory in Tel Aviv.

Opposition to the War

Muki: What stand did you take on World War I?

Scholem: During the war years I was close to my brother. The
two of us were part of a small minority in Germany that opposed
the war, and we certainly were not partners to the general war
enthusiasm-my brother for Socialist reasons, and I for Zionist
reasons, though our common attitude brought us closer to each
other.
At the beginning of the war, I and several of my fri�nds wrote
a letter to the German Zionist newspaper protesting against a
patriotic article written by a certain Zionist who was then a
follower of Martin Buber' s and is still living with us in Jerusalem .
He concluded his article approximately thus : " And so we went to
war not despite our being Jews but because of our being
Zionists. " This sentence made me furious. I protested against the
publication of such a statement. There are people in the Zionist
movement-! argued-who think that this is not our war;
perhaps we ought to do our duty and enlist-but I doubt even
that. Be that as it may, in this war of Germany's, Russia's, or
England's, the question with respect to Jewish interests is
whether or not they coincide with Germany's. In our letter, we
questioned whether they did . We protested against the publica-
14 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN C RISIS

tion of that pro-German letter simply because censorship made

the editors afraid to express any other point of view. We
considered the Zionist movement's endorsement of Germany's
war against Britain as scandalous. That was at the beginning of
1915.
Muki: Was Buber a German patriot?
Scholem: In a way, yes. This is a very complicated matter, a
strange chapter in Buber' s life. One of the things that preoccu­
pied me in my Zionist youth was Buber. All through 19 14, after I
left Agudat Yisrael, I was greatly influenced by Buber. But after a
year I left him-not him personally, but his way of looking at
things. I read all his writings. He was very popular then among
the Zionist youth, because they thought that Buber was Zionism .
But I was very disappointed by his stand on the war. The things
he was publishing then got me very angry; I was especially
angered by the writings of the Buberites. I knew some of them.
My rebellion against Buber's way of looking at things
developed because I was convinced that a person who writes as
bellicosely as he was writing could not be a true teacher. Buber
was a tremendous force in Germany then; he had a profound
influence on the youth. But after the war he was also a
disappointment-not only to me, but also the romantic youth,
who at a certain point were prepared to swallow whatever he felt
like feeding them . Buber said very big things, things that looked
very extreme, very radical, but it seemed to me that he drew no
conclusions from them. When the time came to plan and act, he
joined forces with the religious socialists in Germany instead of
with the people of Degania. This surprised me, for I thought that
after the war Buber would go-as all of us should have
gone-but he did not go-as others did not-to Eretz Yisrael.
During the war ( 1 9 1 5-16) I brought out an underground
newspaper called Blue- White Spectacles, whose aim was to see
and show things through Zionist spectacles. It contained antiwar
poems and articles, etc . It was a Zionist newspaper for activist
youth, preaching radical Zionism . I published an antiwar poem of
my own. The newspaper was printed by lithograph, in Papa's
printshop. I still have the three issues that appeared .
That letter to the editor that I mentioned fell into the wrong
hands, and in 19 15 I was expelled from school. I was then
 WITH GERSHO M SCHOLEM: AN INTERVIEW 15

seventeen. As a result I gained a year, starting university at

seventeen.
Muki: You were expelled from school and accepted at the
university?
Scholem: In Prussia there was a special law for the benefit of
the Junkers. In the landed nobility, the eldest son would be an
army officer, the second son studied law and became a senior
bureaucrat, and the third son inherited the estate . He did not
study and did not have to be smart, but still, for social reasons,
they wanted him to be a somebody. So they issued a regulation
whereby anybody who had reached age sixteen and completed
ten years of school could enroll at a university faculty of letters or
agriculture as a regular student for four semesters but could not
sit for examinations. This was intended to give the youngest sons
some "polish . " If this law had been widely publicized, all the
gifted young Jews would have gone right to university. This was
expressly stated in the university regulations-but who reads
regulations? Between 1915 and 1919 I studied mathematics at
university. I was good in math, but I realized that that was not
my forte. Why did I study math when I already knew that after
the war I would leave for Eretz Yisrael? I thought of being a
teacher and prepared myself for that. Later, when I knew
Hebrew, I bought myself math books that had been published by
the Hebrew Gymnasia in Jaffa. I committed them to memory, so
that I would be able to be a high-school teacher in Eretz Yisrael.

Cast Out of the House-and Playing a Part

Meanwhile, I underwent all kinds of crises. Early in 1917 my

brother was arrested for participating in an antiwar demonstra­
tion. And Papa threw me out of the house . He said, " It's all the
same-socialism, Zionism-it's all antipatriotic . " He sent me a
registered letter ordering me to leave his household by March 1,
1917. He made me a one-time gift of 100 marks and said, "Go
fend for yourself. I am under no obligation to support you. Do
what you wish, or do nothing. "
I went to live with Zalman Shazar, who was eight years older
than me. He didn't own a thing, and neither did I, but we lived
16 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
marvelously. We lived in a kosher boardinghouse in which none
of the boarders were kosher. The others were all Russian Jews; I
was the only Yekke [German Jew] . I stayed there till they tried to
draft me into the army [that summer] . For two years I had
evaded conscription.
Muki: How?
Scholem: When I was called up, I decided I wasn't going to
serve . I wanted to learn to shoot-I was no pacifist-but I didn't
want to fight for Germany. Three months later I was sent home
as an incurable schizophrenic: that is what the official documents
said.
Muki: You put on an act?
Scholem: I put onan act without knowing what I was acting .
I played myself, only more so. The game I was playing required a
tremendous effort of concentration and keeping up the tension,
and a tremendous will to succeed. I spent six weeks in a lunatic
asylum where I had been sent for observation and checkups.
There they ruled me totally insane. Those were the six most
intense weeks of my life because I was healthier than the doctors.
The problem was to keep them bluffed. My behavior was guided
by materialistic calculations: how not to be found out by them
when, for example, they would look me in the eyes and say to me,
"What are you doing? What kind of act are you putting on
here?" I had never read a book on mental ailments, and I was
guided solely by intuition . And it worked .
Papa had to take m e back because the doctors made him. But
I didn't want to go on living in his house, so I went to Jena to
study math. At J ena I had to sign my discharge papers, which
included a chit saying I was insane, an incurable schizophrenic.
(They were not supposed to show this to met) At that time this
was called " adolescent insanity." At Jena I taught Hebrew to a
few girls, Zionist students, and I "converted" Toni Halle (who
was later the principal of the Tichon Hadash High School in Tel
Aviv) to Zionism . One of my pupils was a girl medical student-a
Zionist-from Erfurt. One day I asked her, " What is dementia
praecox?" She stared at me and said, "Do you have it?" "Yes," I
said. " Have you come across it in your studies?" she said. " No," I
said, " I just want to know how you eat it. " She gave me some
books to read and took me to a psychiatric clinic . There I saw a
 WITH GERSHOM SCHOLEM: AN INTERVIEW 17
real case of what I had been playacting. Then I saw what a
powerful intuition had guided me.
When I was summoned for a reexamination, I got a blanket
exemption from military service and then a passport to Switzer­
land. I spent a year and a half there, with my friend Walter
Benjamin.

Into the World of the Kabbalah

Muki: How did you come to study kabbalah?

Scholem: Simple, in one respect. In another respect-impossi­
ble to explain. In what way simple? I started reading Judaica
intensively. I was impressed, and I started getting interested in
details. I happened to have an excellent memory-for numbers,
dates, all sorts of silly things. I read, and I started getting
interested in kabbalah already in 1915. I still have the first notes
on the subject, and the books I bought that year-Hebrew and
German. I still use the copy of the Zohar I bought that year. I
didn't understand it. I wanted to know, and I couldn't find a
person who could teach Zohar. My rabbi couldn't. My childhood
friend, Aaron (Harry) Heller-later one of Israel's leading
physicians-and I asked him to teach us kabbalah. He suggested
that a small group of us read the musar [ethics] book Reshit
Hokhmah together. We learned till he stopped. He said, "Chil­
dren, I can't explain the quotations from the Zohar. I don't
understand them . " He was an extremely straightforward man.
I also read Graetz's chapters on the kabbalah. I liked Graetz
very much as a historian, but I was extremely critical of his
attitude to the kabbalah. It was clear to me that the kabbalists
could not possibly have been the kind of scoundrels, swindlers, or
idiots he described .
In the nineteenth century not a single sensible thing was
written on kabbalah. Certainly not by the Jewish Maskillim
[modernists of the Enlightenment] . There were just one or two
philosophers of the German Idealistic school who had dealt with
the subject. There was, for example, a devout Catholic of a
special, weird sort of liberal bent, who had written four volumes
in German on the kabbalah. I felt that he had a closer affinity to
 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
the subject than the Maskillim. I quickly realized that the subject
of kabbalah disturbed the Jewish historiography of the nine­
teenth cen.tury-all the schools in Italy, Germany, Galicia,
Hungary, and Moravia that had produced the great Judaica
scholars of the time.
Then it was still something latent : I read all around the
subject, but it hadn't quite gripped me. I started teaching myself
to read the Zohar. Strange, but it was impossible to find a
teacher. I was able to read the Talmud, I knew Aramaic ; it's
possible to learn Aramaic-there 's nothing superhuman about it .
True, I was busy with other things; reading Judaica and Hebrew.
But my interest in kabbalah gradually intensified. Even though I
didn't identify with it, I wanted to know what there is to this
kabbalah.
When I was in Switzerland in 1919, I made notes on
kabbalah. Even before I knew anything, I jotted down things on
what interested me in kabbalah philosophically, on what I
thought it should be. And indeed, most of my jottings proved to
be wrong, but they influenced my approach. I considered
whether it was worthwhile devoting a few years of intensive
study to kabbalah. In any case, Judaism as a living phenomenon
attracted me . I wanted to enter the world of kabbalah out of my
belief in Zionism as a living thing-as the restoration of a people
that had degenerated quite a bit. I was a great admirer of Y. H.
Brenner [the Hebrew fiction writer and thinker who was killed in
the Arab riots of 1921 at age forty] . I was certainly one of only
about ten persons in all Germany to have read Brenner in
Hebrew. Brenner's Hebrew was rather difficult: one also had to
know Talmud well, for he used Aramaic . Altogether, I don't
understand how a young person today can read his novel Shekhol
Vekishalon (Breakdown and Bereavement) without knowing the
Jewish primary sources.
I debated with myself whether it was worthwhile investing a
concentrated effort in studying kabbalah, studying the Hebrew
and Aramaic primary sources, and doing Ph. D . work on it,
instead of continuing with mathematics.
I didn' t know whether to go to Gottingen, the mathemati­
cians' Mecca, or to Munich, the only place with a large collection
 WITH GERSHOM SCHOLE M : AN INTERVIEW 19
of kabbalistic manuscripts (the collection is still there) . Finally, I
decided to go to Munich and do a Ph . D . in kabbalah. I had an
excellent topic, a philosophical one.
Muki: What theme did you want to treat?
Schole1n: I wanted to write on the linguistic theory of the
kabbalists. An excellent idea. When I got down to work, I saw
that I didn't understand enough and I stopped writing. I wrote
that particular essay a few years ago-exactly fifty years after
having given up. At that time I didn't know I would be dealing
with kabbalah the rest of my life . I had thought of writing of
other things. I wanted to write on the Book of Lamentations and
the kinnot [Tishah Be-av dirges] as a literary genre. I had a
metaphysical theory on the essence of the kinnot. At that time I
wrote a number of things which· I have never published : a
commentary on the Book of Jonah, another one on Job-or
rather, a basis for a commentary on Jonah and Job-metaphysical
reflections of mine that were suppressed .
In the months before going to Switzerland, in 1917-18, it
became clear to me that I was interested in those kabbalistic
matters. I was interested in the question : Does halakhic Judaism
have enough potency to survive? Is halakhah really possible
without a mystical foundation? Does it have enough vitality of its
own to survive for two thousand years without degenerating? I
appreciated halakhah without identifying with its imperatives.
This question was tied up with my dreams about the kabbalah,
through the notion that it might be kabbalah that explains the
survival of the consolidated force of halakhic Judaism . That was
certainly one of my obvious motives.
I didn't know the answers to those questions, but I had all
kinds of notions and assumptions .
Gradually I taught myself to read the Zohar-never mind
understanding ; the important thing was to break through. It took
a long time to master the text. I felt a certain sympathy, but I was
also repulsed by many features of kabbalah. I did not, God
forbid, think that that was truth, that was philosophy. But I
thought it was worthwhile examining it all also from the
philosophical aspect. There were two levels I was interested in
for the sake of arriving at an understanding of Judaism :
20 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM I N CRISIS
"historiosophy"-the dialectic manifesting itself in spiritual proc­
esses-and the philosophical-metaphysical sphere. I tried to
arrive at an understanding of what kept Judaism alive.
I suppose I have some sort of predilection for mysticism . I
never sneered at the mystics, and I do not share the views of
those who do. They had a certain something that we lack.
Muki: Did those first thoughts ever come back to you-espe­
,cially with regard to the philosophical aspect?
Scholem: Yes. Very much so. I have referred to it a number of
times in my writings-sometimes in hints, sometimes very
explicitly. I have written quite a bit on this in my analyses of the
thoughts of kabbalists or of kabbalistic systems.
I worked on several presuppositions. In the course of the
work, the premises proved wrong or changed. But whenever I
approached a subject, I did so with a curiosity that had
something uniquely mine in it. Perhaps it was that I wanted to
get to know a Judaism of which I was ignorant and there was
nobody to explain it.
I was prepared to assume that, philosophically speaking, there
are certain things which perhaps the mystics knew and other
people don't know. I thought that in a few years I would go on to
another field of Jewish thought.

Franz Rosenzweig's Judaism

Muki: What did you think of Franz Rosenzweig's attempt to

answer these questions?
Scholem: I was very critical. What impressed me was the
force of his thinking. But two aspects of his thinking got me
angry. One was the ecclesiastical aspect he gave Judaism in his
book; the way he saw Judaism as a kind of pietistic Protestant
church. The second was the Jewish-German synthesis he wanted
to create. I have never been able to tolerate that. The German­
Jew that Rosenzweig set up as an ideal was intolerable to me.
Very soon I found myself in a very acute personal crisis in my
relations with Rosenzweig.
Muki: Did you know him personally?
Scholent: Of course. When Rosenzweig started getting inter-
 WITH GERSHOM SCHOLE M : AN INTERVIEW 21
ested i n Judaism, h e heard about me . I was some sort o f freak
phenomenon . People told him : There is this young Scholem
fellow who has gone out of his mind, a Jew from a nonobservant
family, who doesn't want to put on tefillin [phylacteries] and all
that, but who is sitting and studying Hebrew and busying himself
with Judaism, and wants to know what it's all about, and is a
passionate Zionist.
Rosenzweig had been in an army · hospital together with a
man who had been influenced by me when I was battling the
Blau-Weiss. This man had told him about me. He sent me his first
writings: translations of prayers from Hebrew into German . They
are very interesting, and in some respects very strange. As a
translator he was a unique phenomenon . We met several times.
Once we had a terrible scene. I attacked him-and not
gently-for his Jewish-German harmony, which I utterly re­
jected. He wasn't a Zionist. He was much more fanatical and
radical than me. Very authoritarian: he couldn't tolerate anyone
rebutting opinions that were important to him . He thought he
wouldn't be able to go on living if he should have to choose
between Germanness and J ewishness. He was ten years older
than me and nine years younger than B uber. After that scene
between us in 1922, he became very ill. If I had known he was
sick, I wouldn't have started that discussion about Germanness '

and Jewishness. It was an obsession with both of us-for me a

negative one, and for him a positive one . In 1927, \vhen I was in
Frankfurt, Ernst Simon told me that Rosenzweig would be very
glad if I paid him a visit. I went.
Muki: And you talked?
Scholem: He was mute by then . I spoke and he answered in
short sentences-by signals that his wife wrote down .
Muki: Did you have the impression that he was happy about
your visit?
Scholem: Certainly.

Between Conservatism and Change

Muki: Besides the two reservations that you mentioned, was

there anything in Rosenzweig's thought that gripped you?
22 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
Scholem: The Star of Redemption is a profound and very
important book, despite the difficulty in imagining that we will
accept it as the Jewish theological system . I think that Judaism is
in for changes of form. Certain historical forms aren't destined to
survive forever, and I strongly doubt whether the traditional
Jewish forms are going to survive in their present form, although
it certainly is desirable that something should-and reasonable to
assume that something will-remain. Whether a little or a lot, I
don't know. My views, in any case, were and are very far from
the church conception of Judaism . If you ask me today whether
-in light of all that has happened in the last fifty years-I
believe that the Jewish future lies in the traditional Orthodox
framework, my answer is no . Rosenzweig 's view was a conserva­
tive one . He lived in a fixed traditional liturgical year. I think
there will be a crisis of birth or a crisis of passage into oblivion ;
time will tell. But Rosenzweig's direction�£ crystalizing tradi­
tion in what I call church form-is very far from what is
happening in Israel in the area of Jewish renewal.
I don't know what form will crystalize here, whether there
will be some synthesis of the conservative forces and the forces of
change. The situation may be much more dangerous than we
think, but I don't believe a new church will come into being . I
see something today that I didn't see fifty years ago : the threat of
death, of oblivion, in the processes unfolding here . As for the
Diaspora-I don't see productive forces that will manifest
anything Jewish that will endure, anything of enduring value .
But whether we will show that potential here-that depends
on a whole complex of matters that do not hinge on us alone .
When you look at the secularization process, at the barbarization
of the so-called new culture, you can p � rceive grave processes in
which it is difficult to discern any seed of future , any fructifying
seed . But who knows? Maybe there is no other way of
undergoing crises . Degeneration for the purpose of regeneration.

The Way to Israel: Between R omanticism and Realism

Muki: What motivated you to come and settle in Eretz

Yisrael?
 WITH GERSHOM SCHOLE M : AN INTERVIEW 23
Scholem: I really thought that a Jew has to go to Eretz Yisrael,
even if we were going to be a small sect there. We didn't know
there would be millions. Who knew? The problem was a
personal, not a national, one. I don't know what my problem
would have been if I had come from among the impoverished
Jews of Poland. But for a German Jew like me, it was a personal
problem : is this the way?
I believed that if there was any prospect of a substantive
regeneration of Judaism , of Judaism revealing its latent potential
-this could happen only here, through the Jewish person's
reencounter with himself, with his people, with his roots.
Muki: In Germany before coming to Eretz Yisrael, did you
meet any people who had been here?
Scholem: Quite a few . During World War I there were
several dozen Eretz Yisrael Jews-"Palestinians"-in Germany.
Muki: What did they say about the country?
Scholem: They had all come to Germany before the outbreak
of the war and had got stuck there. Among thetn were
talkers-speechmakers-at Zionist youth meetings. They spoke
about Eretz Yisrael as romantics. If they didn't speak as
romantics, they talked foulmouthed talk. That is how I learned to
curse in Hebrew-something the primary sources didn't give
you. Sometimes they spoke of the difficulties, the unpleasant­
nesses, but generally speaking, they were patriots. I didn't see
any others. Those who had no intention of returning to Eretz
Yisrael certainly didn't bother to . meet with the Jewish youth.
The vast majority of them returned .
There were also some German Zionists who had gone to
Eretz Yisrael before the war and returned to Germany.
Muki: For example?
Scholem: The engineer Josef Loewy. He had spent several
years in Eretz Yisrael before the war and had received his call-up
orders from the German army. Loewy had lived in Haifa and Tel
Aviv for several years. He spoke realistically, not romantically,
about the country. He was embittered and told awful things
about the leaders of the yishuv [the Jewish community in Eretz
Yisrael] . He had complaints about both the workers and the
bourgeoisie. He said that all or most of the bourgeoisie engaged
24 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN C RISIS
in forcing up real-estate prices. He said that real-estate specula­
tion was the evil that would ruin Eretz Y israel.
Once Harry Heller and I sat up all night with Josef Loewy.
We told him that we wanted to go to Eretz Yisrael after
completing our studies . He tried to convince us that we had
better realize what we were heading for. There was corruption.
There were people-he mentioned names : I still remember
them-he said, "What are they doing? They're speculators. They
live on speculation-Zionist speculation and real-estate specula­
tion. " The lands problem was the most concrete, the main
problem preoccupying the Zionists in those years-to the extent
that they at all related realistically and seriously to Eretz Yisrael
matters. Books appeared in Germany that people of the different
Zionist camps had written on this subject. There were debates
whether the Jewish National Fund ought to be the only
instrument of the Jewish people returning home; whether
real-estate speculation should be banned by Zionist legislation
and discipline .
Those who were against leasing lands and against the ban on
private ownership of land remained silent. They were on the
defensive, for the Zionist mood was against them . They didn ' t
speak; they just bought land. The role that real-estate speculation
played in the country's development is still a subject of bitter
debate. When I came, there were stormy debates on the matter.
The bourgeoisie favored speculation (naturally, they gave it other
names) . As we know, there was a sector of the population that
got rich from it-and called it developm ent. Some say this was
one of our biggest catastrophes. And some said the opposite ; that
if not for this, nothing would have developed here, because the
means and capacity of the Jewish National Fund then could not
have achieved what private means did. I guess both sides were
right.
Muki:Between the romantic and the realistic versions, which
attracted you most then? What was your own approach to the
reality in Eretz Yisrael-the romantic or the realistic one?
Scholem: My sympathies lay with the Left, even though I
didn't believe then that the Socialist question was cardinal to the
success or failure of the Jewish national renaissance. Among my
notes I have found many jottings attesting that I came here with
 WITH GERSHOM SCHOLEM : AN INTERVIEW 25

the idea that the situation here was very critical and all the rest of
it was of no consequence . That was certainly my stand-neither
romantic nor realistic.
I was among the supporters of land nationalization. This is
what made me one of the fools who doesn't own any land,
because I refused to buy land, even though I could have done
that instead of buying books. But for reasons of conscience I
didn't do so. Now I ' m in the ridiculous position of being perhaps
the only old-timer in Eretz Yisrael who doesn't have a piece of
land he can call his own.
My inclinations then were toward the halutzim [agricultural
laboring pioneers] , and the innovators, and those striving for
regeneration . As far as I can recall, I didn 't care for the bourgeois
concerns.
What drew me to Hehalutz [the Zionist pioneering youth] ,
despite its being a very weak movement, was its seriousness,
sense of responsibility, and will and readiness to cope with
something concrete. People came and said, "We shall do. "
Coping with the concrete removed them from romanticism and
gave the whole thing a dimension of depth that the dream did not
possess.
Muki: What remained of that experiment?
Scholem: It is impossible to say how many people vanished
from the scene and then suddenly turned up in Paris and ·

London, New York, Los Angeles, and Toronto. The centrifugal

attraction continued-it was like a migration of dunes-and not
much remained of it. But historically speaking, what was done in
Eretz Yisrael is the only existential thing created by that
generation, and not what was drawn off to the Diaspora.

Secular Messianism

Muki: Do secular movements contain a religious element? In

your eulogy for Rosenzweig ["Franz Rosenzweig and His Book
The Star of Redemption, " delivered at the Hebrew University in
1930] , you referred to socialism and psychoanalysis .
Scholen1: Yes. I said dialectical materialism has occupied the
seat of the Quality of Justice, psychoanalysis has occupied the
26 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
seat of the Quality of Mercy, and God Almigh ty has been
banished from them ·both . He contracted Himself till nothing of
Him remained revealed .
Muki: C an you point to any social movements that you think
have assumed a messianist posture? Do you see Communism as a
messianic movement?
Scholem: Socialism has messianic pretensions of that sort .
According to some of its observers, devotees, and critics, it has in
it a great deal of secular messianism. It is a moot question
whether that is correct . Th ere is an element of truth to it, but
how much is a very big question .
Many young people took Communism as a substitute for
messianism . There have been times, places, and circumstances in
which many people-not only Jewish youth , to whom this
certainly applies-saw a messianic dimension in Communism .
The zeal with which they threw themselves into it had some of
the enthusiasm of the messianists to it. And this is where the
whole thing collapsed. Messianism is really a very big and
complex matter, not at all simple.
I 've written about this twice in my books. I 've defined what I
thought was the price the Jewish people has paid for messianism .
A very high price. Some people have wrongly taken this to mean
that I am an antimessianist . I have a strong inclination toward it.
I have not given up on it. But it may be that my writings have
spurred people to say that I am a Jew who rejects the messianic
idea because the price was too high .
I think that the failure to distinguish between messianism and
secular movements is apt to trip up movements of this sort. Such
a mix-up becomes a destructive element. Th e misapplication of
messianic phraseology injected a false note into the minds and
self-image of the devotees of those secular movements.

Walter Benjamin

Muki: Could you speak of your connection with Walter

Benjamin? Did he represent an aspect of the same problem? Was
the closeness and the tension between you and Walter Benjamin
 WITH GERSHOM SCHOLE M : AN INTERVIEW 27
a kind of reenactment of your relations with your brother and
with the secular messianic movement?
Scholern: On a sublimer plane it is possible to answer yes. But
only to a degree. Benjamin, at least in his later years, had a strong
element of inclination toward secular messianism, whose con­
cepts were taken from the world of Jewish messianism.
At the same time, I don't know to what extent a man like
Benjamin was careful not to confuse religious and political
con�epts. I submit that to a certain extent even he confused the
two, for toward the end of his life he did, in fact, too much
identify the two spheres with each other. This is evident in some
of his last writings. There were times when he knew the
distinction very well and was careful about it, and was not
prepared to discuss matters of history in terms of redemption.
On the other hand, the debate with a thinker like Benjamin
was conducted on an altogether different plane from the one on
which I argued with my brother. My brother was much less
profound and dialectical than Benjamin. My brother did not at all
believe in the possibility of an utter rout. He didn't take it
seriously. A man like Benjamin took this possibility seriously.
Toward the end of his life he fell into total despair-as is evident
in his published last letters.
But this is a very delicate matter. It's hard for me to judge. I
wasn't with Benjamin in those years. I was here and he was there.
He went, in his way, to historical materialism, and I did not,
being certain that it held no promise whatever, and that he gave
himself to something th,� t was incapable of producing anything
good or useful. I still th i nk so.
Muki: What was his attitude to you and your preoccupation?
Scholem: I don't know, I can't tell you. After 1923 I saw
Benjamin only twice. After I came to Eretz Yisrael, Benjamin still
sometimes toyed with the idea of coming. There are many
documents attesting that. I was not surprised that he didn't
come, though I wanted him to. I have no clear idea what he
thought of me. As I said, in those years I saw him only twice.
Once for several weeks in Paris in 1 927, and once for a few days
in Paris in 1938. That's all .
If I did speak about myself, then it was about the findings of
28 0 :\T JEWS AND JUDAISM I N CRISIS
rny researches that I spoke. lie was the first person I told-in
1927-that I had discovered a new world in Sabbatianism. I had
just returned frorn Oxford, and I 1net him in Paris, and I told him.
It 1nade a tremendous i1npression on him . That is what I spoke
about-my work. I did not speak much about myself. I reminisce
at length about that rnan of genius in a special book. [ Walter
Benfamin-die Geschichte einer Freundschaft (Frankfurt-am­
Main : Suhrkamp, 1975) . ]

The Relationship to Ps y choanalysis

Muki: In your Rosenzweig eulogy in 1930, you spoke of the

power of grace embodied in the modern world in psychoanalysis,
and of the power of justice embodied in historical materialism .
Did you see any connection between psychoanalytical ideas and
any psychological ideas in the kabbalistic view of the soul?
Scholem: I've never undergone analysis, so my approach to it
isn't a direct one but that of an outsider. As for the abstract
aspect of psychoanalysis-the trouble is that I knew Freud's first
writings. As a young man, I had read some of them.
Muki: When?
Scholem: Between the ages of twenty and twenty-five. In
those years I was not one bit interested in the assumptions of
psychoanalysis. As to its therapeutic value, I had no personal
experience of it, so I was unable to judge. When I told people
that I had not been convinced by the tqeses in Freud's book on
the interpretation of dreams-which I had read carefully-they
told me, " Oh, you can't judge that in the abstract; if you haven't
undergone analysis you are unable to judge." I reject that
contention. It is like the Hasidim arguing that a non-Hasid can't
write a history of Hasidim ; that a nonbeliever can't judge " from
the outside. " Whoever says that is, in my opinion, an irresponsi­
ble driveler or an apologist.
There are some people-like Theodor W. Adorno and
others-who did not undergo analysis and still were drawn to the
ideas of psychoanalysis. Walter Benjamin never underwent
analysis, but later in life he apparently started being influenced
by psychoanalysis. When I was going through the papers he left, I
 WITH GERSHOM SCHOLEM : AN INTERVIEW 29
found a number of sociological-philosophical notes. He was
interested in social psychology as a means of understanding
historical and social processes, and even used concepts drawn
from the later Freud-concepts that, to tell the truth, seem to me
to be fundamentally metaphysical.
I have read almost nothing of the later Freud. This may be a
shortcoming in me, 'but what I have read is simply awful. The
Future of an Illusion is an absolutely terrible book. If not for the
fact that Freud's name is signed on the book, everybody would
reject it as a feeble production, without any solid foundation.
In treating the history and world of the kabbalah, using the
conceptual terminology of psychoanalysis-either the Freudian
or the Jungian version-did not seem fruitful to me. Even though
I should have had a strong affinity to Jung's concepts, which were
close to religious concepts, I refrained from using them. For
twenty-five years I lectured at the Eranos meetings, and in that
circle there was a considerable Jungian influence. But in those
lectures I deliberately shied away from all psychoanalytical and
Jungian psychopathological concepts. I was not convinced that
those categ\)ries were useful. I particularly avoided using the
theory of archetypes, of which I remain highly sceptical.
Psychoanalysts of all schools "'Nhom I have met in my travels
and in Jerusalem have said, "What you're saying is pure
psychoanalysis. " For example, the chapter on Abulafia in my
book; what I have written about transmigration of the soul. What
I was saying seemed to them to corroborate what they were
saying. I hope that I gained by not resorting to their lexicons to
explain the concepts or symbols of the kabbalists.
Max Brod' s friend in Prague, Jiri Langer, a Hasid of the
Belzer Rebbe who later converted to Freudianism, wrote a book
on analysis and kabbalah called The Erotics of Kabbalah. He
made a mishmash out of the two things in terms of Freudian
concepts. The book appeared in Prague when I started my
serious research in 1923, and I was deeply disappointed by it.
Precisely in those matters where he tried to use Freudian
concepts I found no substance . Most of it was utter nonsense,
despite the fact that the book wasn't written by a boor but by a
learned man who also understood mystical literature.
Avraham Shapira: How do you feel about Erich Neumann?
30 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
Scholem: I greatly esteemed Erich Neumann the man, but I
often didn't understand what he was saying. He was a man of
powerful intellect and deep feeling, but I found no possibility of
using the analytic concepts and the categories he constructed on
the basis of Jungian thought. I have tried to plumb his magnum
opus, The History of the Development of Human Consciousness,
but I can't say I have understood it.
The psychoanalysts of the different schools have always
thought I was saying exactly what they required, and I was
delighted that someone was finding my writings useful. But they
were written in clear awareness of the principles of historical
criticism . I have said that many times. I think that if we
understood history better, we would need fewer psychological
hypotheses to explain historical phenomena. The use of psycho­
logical concepts in history is somewhat of an emergency exit.
Muki: Aren't the two related?
Scholem: There is a reciprocal relationship between them.
There are always psychological explanations of events. In my
book on Sabbetai Tzvi you'll find quite a bit of that . Of course ,
the two are not completely separated . But historical analysis and
knowledge of processes promise more than very hypothetical
psychological premises. I have read many writings of leftists
attempting to unite Marxism and psychoanalysis. In those books
or essays, which were written by extremely clever people, I have
found precious little truth . The attempt to match up psychoanal­
ysis with Marxism is an attempt to express the Quality of Mercy
and the Quality of Justice in a psychological world instead of in
the theological world of tradition. I am very skeptical about that .
Muki: If you had to write the history of the period from
World War I till today, to examine the group that went with you
and parted from you, how much of a role would you assign to the
psychological factor in the decisions whether to come to Eretz
Yisrael and remain here , whether or not to remain a Jew?
Scholem: I don't know. I can't answer that question . The
decisions about which I may be able to judge by understanding
events or the people I lived with were, in my opinion, moral
decisions, not psychological ones. Of course, you might say that a
moral decision is psychologically based . I'm not sure of that. I
have strong reservations about psychological categories in this
 WITH GERSHOM SCHOLEM : AN INTERVIEW 31
respect . At times I can understand them as biographical de­
cisions, but it is very hard to say whether the biographical
element is also a psychological element. Take the erotic in­
fluence , for example . That is not a psychological influence . Often
people arrive at decisions because of a woman's charm-this has
always existed and still exists-but I am somewhat doubtful
whether psychology exhausts the abundance and the depth that
there are in Eros.
It is a moot question whether a person's distaste for a
particular society or milieu is a moral or a psychological reaction.
The Zionist response of Jewish youth in Germany had a powerful
moral element, notwithstanding the possibility of describing it as
a psychological reaction. I think there is no moral nuance to the
various psychological urges at play in man. M oral considerations
are essentially nonpsychological.
Muki: Sometimes the moral calculations are also critical
calculations, like the distaste you mentioned. Is this the kind of
criticism you have in mind when, in writing of Walter Benjamin,
you say that there is purity in destruction? Are you referring to
the moral side of criticism? Is the urge to destroy the basis for
rejecting an immoral reality?

Reason as a Destructive Instrument

Scholem: Yes. I think that people generally use the instru­

ments of Reason to criticize a tradition or a milieu. This is a very
legitimate use, because the instrument of Reason developed in
man largely on the critical, destructive side. -when Reason is
isolated from the other possibilities in the complex of human
urges, in the whole human psychological network, it transpires
that its task is to criticize. In history it has done so quite
successfully. In the area of construction, Reason has had
relatively few successes. Other forces have had far more out­
standing and decisive successes in construction than Reason .
Reason is a dialectical tool that serves both construction and
destruction, but has had more notable successes in destruction.
The devotees of Reason have tried to build networks of positive
thought-but these networks are far less enduring than criticism ;
 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
that is, creative destruction . I know that this is a very painful
point, and many admirers of Reason (of whom I am one) do not
like to hear this . But I am inclined to think-in summing up my
researches in history, religious history, philosophy, and ethics­
that Reason is a great instrument of destruction. For construc­
tion, something beyond it is required.
Muki: What is that?
Scholem: I don't know. Something that has-something
moral. I don't believe there is an enduring rational morality ; I
don't believe it is possible to build a morality that will be an
immanent network for Reason. I confess that in this respect I am
what would be called a reactionary, for I believe that morality as
a constructive force is impossible without religion, without some
Power beyond Pure Reason. Secular morality is a morality built
on Reason alone. I do not believe in this possibility. This is an
utter illusion of philosophers, not to speak of sociologists.
Shapira: Was this the view of Walter Benjamin? We got onto
this subject via Walter Benjamin.
Scholem: I am not Walter Benjamin. I am Gershom Scholem.
The great mission of Reason is to be critical, in both the natural
and the social sciences, history, and psychology. Walter Benjamin
was a very complex person. He had an ingenious intuition ; he had
blatantly religious ideas that were camouflaged behind a network
of Marxism till the end of his life . I don't know whether his
religious views were liquidated in a network of social, psychologi­
cal, and analytic concepts, or whether they simply hid them­
selves, as though the generation was not worthy of having them
revealed to it. It isn't a simple matter.
The "conversion" of the Hashomer Hatzair people-the
process of their adhesion to the Marxist world-is, in my opinion,
an example of a decision that was moral in essence. I don 't say
that the decision was a correct one ; on the contrary, it was a
tragic error when those comrades accepted something that was
forbidden for them to accept. They did not see things right, and
they did so for moral rather than political reasons.
Anarchism held many attractions for me, especially its
positive utopianism . But it, too, always filled me with terror. I
knew that it stood no chance of realization, given the data of the
human race, in history. This is a kind of messianic vision to which
 WITH GERSHOM SCHOLEM : AN INTERVIEW 33

the transition is not possible with the forces functioning in

history.
To this day I would say that the only social theory that makes
sense-religious sense, too-is anarchism , but it is also-practi­
cally speaking-the least possible theory. It doesn't stand a
chance because it doesn 't take the human being into considera­
tion : it is based on an extremely optimistic assessment of the
human spirit ; it has a messianic dimension, a transhistorical one .
Shapira: In your essay "Redemption through Sin , " you seem
to regard pseudomessianism as a positive phenomenon, though
without identifying with it . And in your book on Sabbetai Tzvi,
you write that the Sabbatian messianic type "leads directly to
nihilistic conceptions of religious values . " Isn't this a contradic­
tion of your view of the positive aspect of destructivism?
Scholem: I don't know if it is or not. I maintain that the
spectacle of a pseudo-Messiah cannot be tolerated by Jewish
tradition as a positive phenomenon, but I do not say that it is not
a possible and legitimate aspect of Jewish tradition. I was able
and ready to write what I have written in both essays. In the
Sabbetai Tzvi book I also showed how strong was the element of
hope for something positive even in the words of the Sabbatians.
In the closing chapters of the book I tried to show, through
precise examples, the extent to which the Sabbatians saw the
positive element in negative things. It is clear that as far as
traditional values are concerned, this was negative . But I have
never stopped believing that the element of destruction, with all
the potential nihilism in it, has always been also the basis of
positive Utopian hope. Of course, from the standpoint of the
values of official traditional Judaism, this conception is negative .

Zionism: A Calculated Risk

1-\fuki: You have spent your entire life among secularists.

What has been your attitude toward secularism?
Scholem: I have always considered the transition through
secularism necessary, unavoidable . But I don 't think that Zion­
ism 's secular vision is the ultimate vision , the last word . Without
the secular awakening we should not have got as far as we did . A
34 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM I N CRISIS
direct non dialectical return to traditional Judaism is impossible,
historically speaking, and even I myself have not accomplished it .
I have always considered secular Zionism a legitimate way
but rejected the foolish declaration about the Jews becoming "a
nation like all the nations. " If this should materialize, it will be
the end of the Jewish people. I share the traditional view that
even if we wish to be a nation like all the nations, we will not
succeed. And if we succeed-that will be the end of us .
I cannot free myself from the dialectical lesson of history ,
according to which secularism is part of the process of our entry
into history; entry into history means assimilating into it. Since I
do not believe in "like all the nations, " I do not see ultimate
secularism as a possibility for us and it will not come to pass. I do
not believe that we are going to liquidate ourselves. There is no
reason for the Jews to exist like the Serbs. The Serbs have a
reason to exist without theology, without an ahistorical dimen­
sion . If the Jews try to explain themselves only in a historical
dimension, they will of necessity find themselves thinking about
self-liquidation and total destruction. If the things Uri Avneri
[editor of Ha-olam Hazeh] , Yonatan Ratosh [poet and "Canaan­
ite " ideologist] , and the Matzpen people say materialize, the
Jewish people will find itself without any impulse to continue
existing.
Muki: Will secularism lead to a religious return?
Scholem: Like all destruction, secularism is both liberation
and risk. But Zionism was a calculated risk in that it brought
about the destruction of the reality of Exile. The foes of Zionism
certainly saw the risk more clearly than we Zionists.
Muki: In opposing "like all the nations, " you accept Ahad
Ha-am 's view?
Scholem: Correct . In this respect I am an Ahad Ha-amist and
religious, but more religious than Ahad Ha-am . I don 't believe in
a world of total secularism in which the religious factor will not
manifest itself with redoubled strength.
Muki: In our conversations, you have spoken of various stages
of cutting yourself off: from your father's house, from a particular
version of Zionism, from Buber, from psychoanalysis and Marx­
ism, from a certain way of life in Eretz Yisrael. Cutting oneself off
is an act of saying farewell-farewell as an act of criticism .
 WITH GERSHOM SCHOLEM: AN INTERVIEW 35
Reason as a capacity for criticism exposed you and confronted
you with the need to make decisions: your curiosity about your
Jewishness, your Zionism-that entire moral dimension about
whose sources it is impossible to speak.
Scholem: All those cutoffs you mention are correct, but I have
never cut myself off from God. I don 't understand atheists; I
never did. I think atheism is understandable only if you accept
the rule of unbridled passions, a life without values.
I am convinced that there is no morality that has any inner
meaning unless it has a religious basis. I don't believe there is
such a thing as the absolute autonomy of man, whereby man
makes himself and the world creates itself.
Muki: Then you accept Dostoyevsky' s view that " if there is
no God, everything is allowed "?
Scholem: Yes. I have heard people say that this statement of
Dostoyevsky' s is vicious and scandalous. I do think that here
Dostoyevsky can teach us something, but we don't need him to
understand this. Without God there is no such thing as values or
morality that carry any real, binding force . Faith in God-even if
it doesn 't have a positive expression in every generation-will
reveal itself as a force, even by means of not manifesting itself. I
do not believe in moral relativism . The day may come when it
will be forbidden to speak of God. But then the faith in Him will
grow. A secular regime opens up more possibilities for the
manifestation of those positive forces in man that are linked to
something with a spark in it. I believe that God will then
manifest Himself all the more strongly, though I'm not sure that
that will be a world of the Shulhan Arukh-though that is not out
of the question.
Muki: Were the maj or decisions in your life-to be a Jew, to
come to Eretz Yisrael, to deal with kabbalah-linked to the
religious dimension?
Scholem: Yes.
Muki: Did you turn to Jewish history rather than theology
because of its dialectical facet?
Scholem: That is an exaggeration. I wasn't, as a young man, as
wise as you think. I was much more naive. I was riding high on a
moral-religious awakening. I was far from nihilism . My sympathy
for anarchism, too, was a moral one . I believed in anarchism as
 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
Utopia. I wasn't an atheistic anarchist . I thought that the
organization of society under absolute liberty is a divine man­
date . I was not the only one of that Zionist generation of the
Third Aliyah to believe that. In my youthful jottings you will not
find a single clue to a dialectical understanding of processes. I
came to see the force of dialectics only gradually, in the course of
careful study, especially after I came to Eretz Yisrael and saw the
contradictions in the constructive processes here : the inner
contradictions of the revival of the secular language and the
silence overpowering the language . I did not learn dialectics from
Hegel or the Marxists, but from my own experiences and from
pondering the labyrinths of Zionism as I was trying to implement
it .
I was one of those who took the Biblical passage "And you
shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation"
[Exodus 1 g : 6] as the definition of Zionism. In 1918 already I
mentioned it in one of my articles. If I was capable of putting
down a thought like that without a second thought, then clearly I
was naive and not dialectical. The concept of "holy nation" is
what interested me . .Although I have since learned a great deal, I
·

cannot say that there is nothing to this passage .

Shapira: Muki asked you how the dialectical element in your
conception was created or crystalized, and you answered that it
wasn't there at the outset but that it did not come through study
of historical processes. Isn't this a conclusion that results from the
consideration of historical studies?
Scholem: It came to me chiefly through what you have
defined as existential experience of life in Eretz Yisrael. I
considered myself a person who had come here to do something
about implementing Zionisn1 as I innocently understood it . But I
saw that it was all really a very complex matter.
Shapira: Is it also possible to say that the dialectical
conception of history and of the process of social and individual
existence suit your "soul-root"-to use the kabbalistic term?
Scholem: I am not prepared to answer that . You can answer
it; maybe one could put it that way. Otherwise I would not have
invested forty or fifty years of intensive labor and thought in the
way I did more or less. I assume that if I have done what I have
done, it may be deduced that it isn't alien to me, to my
 WITH GERSHO M SCHOLEM : AN INTERVIEW 37
"soul-root. " I wrote in my Hebrew essay, "The Science of
Judaism , " that the petit bourgeois side of Judaisin consisted in its
ignoring the paradoxes contained in the living realities of
Judaism, of the Jews in the world, of the Jewish reality in history,
of the ideas themselves, and in reducing it all to an abstraction. I
never did care for traditional national Jewish theology.

An Encounter with Kabbalists in Eretz Yisrael

Muki: When you came to Eretz Yisrael, did you find

kabbalists here?
Scholem: Yes. When I arrived I visited the kabbalistic Bet-El
Yeshivah, which was still intact in Jerusalem's Old City .
. Muki: Did they know that you were dealing with kabbalah?
Scholem: One of them knew. I was in personal contact with
him : Gershon Vilner.
Muki: Was that a real community?
Scholem: By my time, it no longer was really a community, as
it had been some 100-150 years earlier. Bet-El has a history. A
number of interesting things have been written about it. They
owned no material possessions and didn't need any. Ascetics
don't need much to live. What they desired was a share in the
World-to-Come-the possession that really matters. Documents
have remained, including "contracts" in which they undertake to
share with each other their spiritual possessions-the Splendor
and the Glory of the World-to-Come, not the dollars. They were
banded together in a kind of mystical community in which they
lived in absolute and total spiritual partnership. Their leader and
great light was Rabbi Shalom Sharabi, a Yemenite, an Oriental
mystic, who-in the view of the Sephardic Jews-was the
greatest kabbalist after the Ari [Rabbi Yitzhak Luria] . He was
known throughout the Orient. When I visited Bet-El it was
impossible to determine whether their undertaking was really
continuing. It was difficult to get inside their world . Perhaps if I
had conducted myself as an Orthodox Jew, I would have learned
more about them.
There were several Ashkenazim in Bet-El. Outside this group,
I remember at least three Ashkenazim in Jerusalem who were
 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM I N CRISIS
famous kabbalists, but by no means Hasidim . They were mainly
from Lithuania-from the Vilna and Bialystok areas.
The most famous was Rabbi Shlomo Eliashov, the outstanding
kabbalist of the generation before mine. He died here at age
eighty, around the time I arrived. Ashkenazi kabbalah was very,
very remote from the Sephardi conception. Ashkenazim who
joined Bet-El had to change their way completely and switch
over into a kind of Oriental gear.
Muki: How did that group impress you?
Scholem: It's difficult to say. Sometimes I would go to their
prayer services, which were very impressive. I have a pamphlet
from the year s66s [1904-1905] which contained a detailed
report of the exorcizing of a dybbuk by Rabbi Benzion Hazan, a
kabbalist from Baghdad, himself a product of Bet-El, one of the
heads of the Jewish Quarter when the Old City of Jerusalem
surrendered to Jordan's Arab Legion in 1948. It was he who
conducted the negotiations with the Legion. He died in the
1950s.
What remained of Bet-El was something like Yoga. I had the
feeling that I was dealing with a group of Eretz Yisrael
Je\vish-style Yoga practitioners.
Muki: Who was that man you met?
Scholem: He was called Gershon Vilner. That wasn't his real
name, of course, but Gershon Cohen or something of the sort.
But as he was from Vilna, everybody called him Vilner.
Muki: What was his attitude toward you?
Scholem: I can't say, really. When I met him I was twenty-six
and he was about seventy. I told him I wanted to learn kabbalah.
He looked a long time and checked-looked at my forehead
lines-and only then spoke to me. He said, " I am prepared to
teach you, but only on condition that you do not ask questions. "
That made a tremendous impression on me (I wrote about it in
my Eranos lecture, "Kabbalah and Myth," my first lecture there,
where I refer to "a friend of -, " meaning myself). I told him, " I
should like to think about it . " Then I said, " I can't." He was a
remarkable Jew, a shining personality.
Muki: How long did you study under him?
Scholem: I didn't study. We only held conversations .
 WITH GERSHOM SCHOLE M : AN INTERVIEW 39

Assimilation-Then and Today

Muki: You mentioned Jewish Yoga and Oriental influence.

For you or the Jews of your generation, being an assirnilationist
meant joining European culture. During the year I spent as an
emissary in the United States in 1971-72, I met young Jews who
were trying to assimilate to a culture that was a mixture of East
and West. A bit of Buddhism, a touch of Yoga, some Christianity
-a strange concoction. Young Jews who are assimilating not into
American culture but into a culture that is rejecting Western
culture.
Scholem: But that is out of disappointment with American
materialisro ; that is a reaction to vulgarity. I had a pupil who
became a Conservative rabbi. He was here in the late 1940s or
early 1950s. He knew his Judaism and had a warm Jewish heart.
One day I got a letter from him saying he had seen the light in
the teachings of Ramakrishna.
Muki: A large percentage of the followers of Ramakrishna are
Jews.
Scholem: Ramakrishna didn't know how to read or write. He
died in 1886, aged about fifty, in Bengal. He is considered one of
the great figures. Romain Rolland wrote a famous book about
him . I have a translation from the Bengali of his conversations-a
verbatim record written down by his disciples in the last five
years of his life. The publication of the book was subsidized by a
German Jew who had made his money from real-estate invest­
ments in S\\'itzerland, then moved to California and got very rich,
and continued to live by his belief. The book is an authentic docu­
ment-one of the most interesting religious documents I know.
My student wrote me that he was able to go on conducting
himself as a Jew without doing violence to his religious inclina­
tions. He also wrote poems in Hebrew. I don't know where he is
now-in C alifornia or in the East. (He has since shown up in
Jerusalem, where he got married early in 1975 . )
One day the whole thing blew up. As I said, my student was a
rabbi. I don't know whether he was active as a rabbi, but he was
in search of spiritual life. One day his guru told him to stop
putting on tefillin. And as you know, once you accept a guru, you
 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
have to do his bidding, the same as with a Hassidic reb be. My
student told his guru, " But you explicitly told me that there is no
contradiction between observing Jewish ritual-observing all the
Commandments-and the path to the goal." The master replied,
"Yes, I said that. But meanwhile you have reached a different
plane . What I said was correct when I said it. Now it is no longer
correct. Now you have to stop. "
It i s quite a widespread vogue among young people. It is
generally superficial, though in some cases it goes deep. Spirit­
ually, it is hard to tell them anything, for they are looking for
something that is out of this world. What we are doing here in
Eretz Yisrael doesn 't interest them, is remote from them .
The poet Allen Ginsberg once visited me. A likable fellow.
Genuine. Strange, mad, but genuine . I took a strong liking to him .
My wife and I had a very interesting conversation with him , and
in her inimitable way she asked him, " Why don 't you come to
live here?" (I never ask anyone this question. People know
whether and when it is time for them to come : that's basic . If
people want to come, then it is possible to talk to them about it.
But I don't have it in me to tell anyone that he must come to
Eretz Yisrael. But my wife is different.) He looked at us and re­
plied, " Me? Your great ideal is to build a new Bronx here. All my
life I 've been running away from the Bronx, and here I come to
the Jewish State and find that the whole big ideal of the Zionists
is to build a giant Bronx here . If I have to go back to the Bronx,
I may as well stay in the original one . " We said to him, " What
if you' re mistaken?" But there is something to what he said.
He said: "I'm going to India for ten years"-and three
months later he was out of India. In a person of that sort there is
a kind of reaction to the real state of neglect of American Jews.
But there are people of that sort right here in Israel, too .

The Pendulum Swings between Imitation and Creation

Muki: In our literature we have always spoken of assimilation

as a reaction to external pressure of a minority culture confront­
ing a majority culture. Here in Israel the Jews are the majority
culture, yet there is assimilation here, too-rejection of Judaism,
 WITH GERSHOM SCHOLEM : AN INTERVIEW 41
or indifference to it. Judaism is seen as a function of our minority
status-something we don't need here, being the majority. There
is no desire to turn Moslem or Christian, but to be a world-stan­
dard engineer, computer scientist, cineaste, or poet. Doesn't this
rather mess up the whole Zionist theory?
Scholem: This is only a natural conclusion. We are paying the
price of our slogans. We wanted to change something in the
Jewish people, and this desire has been a primary factor in our
success. But we also wanted something else : to preserve continu­
ity along with the change, continuity that doesn't express itself by
changing forms. This we did not achieve. This continuity today
expresses itself only in dogmatic conservatism, on the one hand,
or in indifference to the Jewish cultural heritage, on the other.
Whether there is something in between, whether anything
will be created out of this-some new synthesis-is not yet clear.
There is no telling yet whether the dream won't just smash itself
up on technology.
I have just been reading Shlomo Zemah' s book, Dape Pinkas.
It is a very bitter book, but it contains some thought-provoking
things, and it has made an impression on me . He writes that in
1905-eighteen years before I came here-there were in Eretz
Yisrael only five families that actually spoke Hebrew in their daily
life. All the rest is a lie, a kind of Zionist myth . When I arrived in
1923, the atmosphere had changed . I came into a beginning that
had different perspectives-not of degeneration, but of some­
thing new. We called it renaissance.
Now things have changed again. There are the beginnings of
what you call technological assimilation, universalist assimilation.
Look at the style and the content of the writing in our literary
supplements. Thirty years ago no one would have printed such
stuff. They would have laughed and said, "Go to Paris. " I laugh at
it, but also cry a little. This is a necessary part of the dialectic we
are in now. The problem is that the pendulum has to swing the
other way, too. Imitation is cheap. A year in Paris is enough .
Firmness like the late Shlomo Grodzensky'so is not to be had at a
bargain.
o A literary critic and editor (1904-1972) of the Yiddisher Kemfer in New York and of
several Israeli publications after his settling in Israel in 195 1 .-Ed.
 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
It is possible that we are condemning too hastily, because we
don't see the seeds beneath the surface . We only see the swing of
the pendulum that is turning our life here into a grotesquerie . I
think that this passage through secularism to some new flores­
cence is unavoidable. It is in the very soul of what we are doing
here . If I had to see assimilation as the end of the process, as the
final outcome of the process called "Jewish national renaissance , "
then I have n o other word for it but grotesquerie . But I don't
accept this as the last word. Fads have a way of suddenly passing.
In my fifty years of living in Eretz Yisrael, I have identified
fully with both the land's secularism and its religiosity. There is
nothing Jewish that is alien to me . I accept the secularistic
processes, just as I hope for opposite processes.
I don't think we are able to give conceptual form, expression,
to the chaos, because we wanted to shape something out of it.
We saw secularism as raw material, a state out of which
something new and endurable would be created. We didn't know
whether we would succeed . The upshot is perhaps not what we
had overoptimistically anticipated. But historical processes gen­
erally lead to outcomes altogether different from those they seem
headed for at the outset.
For example : Christianity as a historical phenomenon bears
virtually no resemblance to original Christianity as a religious
phenomenon . I suppose that is true of all the historical religions.
Very rarely will you find something that is an exact reflection of
its roots. The Judaism of today, too, is not the Judaism of Moses. I
don't believe that better thinkers than me are able to describe
fully what is happening in this generation. What is developing
and happening here is not expressible in the form of an endurable
method or thought. I think that our lack of vocabulary and
paucity of concepts are objective matters, not subjective . This is
not because of any weakness on the part of philosophers ; it is
inherent in what is happening. We are unable to explain to
ourselves what sparks functioned and sustained whatever re­
mained alive in all these processes . It is altogether a riddle how
Judaism and the Jewish people have held out. A large part of the
Jewish people has almost always fallen away. So it is important to
find out what has sustained us.
Muki: Zionisn1 is not a messianic movement . What is the
 WITH GERSHOM SCHOLE M : AN INTERVIEW 43
element that Zionism has contributed to these processes? What is
the "spark" in Zionism?
Scholem: That is a delicate question : whether Zionism has
anything in it that will lead to something new. I believed in that
hidden core in Zionism. Whether I was right or not, I don't know.
I was a member of the Brit Shalom [a movement for
Jewish-Arab reconciliation started in the 1920s] from its incep­
tion till its decline . But that was for "external" purposes.
"Domestically, " I was something else . The Brit Shalom people
were Zionist humanists who thought that the survival of Zionism
in Eretz Yisrael was in danger. Perhaps Brit Shalom was wrong; I
don't know. I have no desire to judge. There are many facets to
the history of Brit Shalom . The Arab question was a controversial
one, and our approach to it caused us to be suspected of liqui­
dating Zionism-a charge that I think is unjustified. The debate
will not be easily settled. And today people are certainly prepared
to judge the whole thing more coolly. But this matter has never
been crucial for me. For me it was a symbol of conduct.
I once thought that perhaps there is a hidden facet to the
historical process taking place here that may have a religio­
metaphysical aspect.
Muki: Yet you have also written that the Zionist movement is
not a messianic movement.
Scholem: The central point of my " esoteric" view of Zionism,
that found its expression in what I said in public, too, was indeed
what you say. Ever since becoming an adult and starting to think
systematically about Zionism, I have thought that the crucial
thing is that Zionism is a process-a most legitimate process. Zion­
ism is not a messianic movement. And that is its secret. Because
as a messianic movement it is doomed in advance to failure.
I never wished to believe and I did not believe that it had to
fail. Though neither did I believe that it would necessarily
succeed . M aybe it will, and maybe we are commanded to do
everything possible to make it so, but there is no guarantee of it.
Of one thing I was certain-and I repeated this in all the notes I
jotted down for myself up to 1935-and that is that the process
unfolding here before our eyes was legitimate, because it was
based on an assessment that was outside the messianic plane.
I should like to read you what I wrote in 1929 in Davar [the
44 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
daily newspaper of the Histadrut-the Eretz Yisrael General
Labor Confederation] when the Brit Shalom was under heavy
attack. I was replying to an article by Yehuda Bourla [the
novelist, who died in 1970] . I wrote :

He argues that we are turning our backs on the Jewish

people's political redemption (that was the general argument
against us). The truth of the matter is that that is a very foggy
argument, in need of clarification. What sort of political redemp­
tion is meant? Does Bourla mean the messianic idea in a political
form, as he hints in his opening words? If that is the case, then I
submit that that is not a problem of Brit Shalom but of the entire
Zionist movement. I, a member of Brit Shalom, am opposed, like
thousands of other Zionists who are not associated with Brit
Shalom and who are far removed from its views, to mixing up
religious and political concepts. I categorically deny that Zionism
is a messianic movement and that it is entitled to use religious
terminology to advance its political aims.
The redemption of the Jewish people, which as a Zionist I
desire, is in no way identical with the religious redemption I hope
for for the future. I am not prepared as a Zionist to satisfy political
demands or yearnings that exist in a strictly nonpolitical, religious
sphere, in the sphere of End-of-Days apocalyptics. The Zionist
ideal is one thing and the messianic ideal is another, and the two
do not touch except in pompous phraseology of mass rallies, which
often infuse into our youth a spirit of new Sabbatianism that must
inevitably fail. The Zionist movement is congenitally alien to the
Sabbatian movement, and the attempts to infuse Sabbatian spirit
into it has already caused it a great deal of harm .

This was written in 1929. I certainly am not turning my back

on the Sabbatian movement. Since then, I have devoted forty years
to its study. But I think it would be catastrophic if the Zionists
or the Zionist movement erased or blurred the borders between
the religious-messianic plane and political-historical reality.
I think that the Jewish people's entry into the plane of history
means the acceptance of responsibility for itself, its achievements
and its failures . Action on the political plane of secular history is
something different from action on the spiritual-religious plane. It
would be disastrous to confuse the two .
The mystical side of Zionism concerns something that is
 WITH GERSHOM SCHOLEM : AN INTERVIEW 45
growing without being messianic : it comprises elements that do
not cross the border into the eschatological but stay in the realm
of the realizable, which are sure to have symbols of its own in
history, in the everyday external world , in the world of action,
etc . , something that can \vork, such as in the revival of the
language as a language that is suited for people to speak, live, and
think in it.
Perhaps I \Vas mistaken ; I may now be mistaken-but who
knows whether there is such a hidden core in Zionism? I don't.
When Buber, near the end of his life, wrote extremely bitter
things about the State of Israel, in a little book, Addresses on
Judaism-writing that he saw no religious aspect whatever to the
State-he wrote this out of an attitude of negation. I wrote a
reply saying it was difficult to understand how a man like Buber
knows the borders between the sacred and the profane ; saying
that I did not know them . His reluctance to look historical reality
squarely in the eye had driven him to exaggerate, I said , adding
that I was surprised at him, for this went against the inner logic
of his own thought, his own system .
I am not sure whether I was being consistent when I argued
that. But I haven't changed my mind . The greatness of the
Zionist movement has been that it was a movement that accepted
historical responsibility, that undertook tasks and accepted
responsibility for our actions, without any messianic pretensions.
Muki: On the other hand, if I have understood you correctly,
you maintain that the religious, the mystical side of Zionism exists
but does not manifest itself on the political plane.
Scholem: It hasn't manifested itself. But one bright day it will
do so. Perhaps we will be privileged to see it manifest itself. But
meanwhile-well, that is why I have never dealt with this matter.

((I Don :>t Call Myself a Secular ]ew :>:>

Muki: When we were studying kabbalah with you at the

Hebrew University, the class consisted of both religious people
and secularists.
Scholem: I was addressing myself to all of them . I spoke in a
manner that no one knew just where I stood .
Muki: But the reactions were different. To put it in extreme
 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM I N CRISIS
terms, the secularists took the philosophical-religious side of the
kabbalah more seriously than the religious people, who took the
kabbalah as no more than a chapter in the history of religion that
had no significance for their own faith . The secularists sought
some living spark in kabbalah. Of course, this is a generalization.
How do you explain this?
Scholem: I explain it the same way I explain the fact that I
devoted fifty years to research in kabbalah. I don't consider
myself a secularist. My secularism fails right at the core, owing to
the fact that I am a religious person, because I am sure of my
belief in God. My secularism is not secular. But the fact th_at I
addressed myself to kabbalah not merely as a chapter of history
but from a dialectical distance-from identification and distance
together-certainly stems from the fact that I had the feeling
that kabbalah had a living center ; it expressed itself according to
the time, and that in another form it could, perhaps, have said
something else in another generation . Something unknown of this
sort must have motivated me beyond all the philological games
and masquerades at which I excel. I can understand that
something of this sort inspired my secularist listeners the way it
inspired me.
To the religious traditionalists, the whole thing was quite
suspect. To me it isn't suspect at all, because to me the question
was whether the halakhah as a closed system had the power to
sustain itself without a special mystical vitality that prevented it
from becoming totally fossilized ; and we have already spoken of
this.
This question of the halakhah has often been in the
background of my thoughts on kabbalah. I have refrained from
writing much on the halakhah, actually, because I do not wish to
pose as an expert on a matter of which I have only a general
understanding but which I have not mastered . Though from a
historical standpoint, it is clear to me what halakhah is and how
one does or does not "swallow" it. Here I can understand the
different reactions you're hinting at. I did not feel them so much .
Among my best students there were unequivocally religious
people. My approach was that of a person trying to think and to
formulate concepts that would express symbolic thinking.
Muki: It was precisely because of and by means of the
 WITH GERSHOM SCHOLE M : AN INTERVIEW 47

historical-rational garb in which you presented kabbalah that I

was able to create a bridge to the kabbalah's nonrational world.
Scholem: The garb in which I presented the matter was
historical, not rational. In my university lectures, I dealt with
historical analysis.
Muki: We are confused, lost, searching. Strange images that I
encountered in the kabbalah were not as strange as the history
around me, as this twentieth century of ours. Did the kabbalah
feed your inner world-you have lived through such stormy years
in such a strange world?
Scholem: I can't say. Maybe it fed me more than I 'm willing
to admit. I suppose that I considered kabbalah as one of the
possibilities for Jewish survival in history, that gave a dimension
of depth to those who decided to remain Jews. I saw that there
was something to kabbalah, but I did not see it as the he-all and
end-all. I was not out to be a promoter of kabbalah but to state
what I understood and did not understand. Historical processes
generally lead to quite different results than they seem headed
toward at the outset.
I cannot say that if I had to decide today on matters of
principle, I would decide according to the instructions of the
kabbalists. I would decide as a person trying to decide on the
basis of a positive attitude to morality, public morality. We are
not, after all, at liberty not to bother ourselves, not to bother our
moral, political, and personal thinking power in order to arrive at
historic decisions concerning our future in this country. I don't
think the Talmud will help us much, even though I am far from
denigrating the Talmud ; on the contrary, I am a great admirer of
the Talmud, and I find it extremely interesting. But I don't think
that the Talmud or the kabbalah will provide us with the answers
to the fateful questions which Zionism has posed and which we
have to struggle to find the answers to.

There 's Mystery in the World

Muki: I was not referring to the political-messianic dimension

but to a different aesthetic aspect-to the linguistic style of our
 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
strange era. The kabbalists were struggling with ineffable things
-the sense of chads all. around-and precisely this speaks to us,
even though it was written in a different conceptual world than
ours .
Scholem: If you ask me, I say that the kabbalists had a
fundamental feeling that there is mystery-a secret-in the
world. The world is also-but not only-what is apparent to us.
The kabbalists were symbolists. What attracts you here to the
kabbalists-in any case, what attracts· me-is that a rather small
group of people were able to create symbols that expressed their
personal situation as a world situation. I t was clear to them that
what we would call technology could not be the last word ; that if
technology wishes to survive , it must reveal a symbolic dimen­
sion. What makes the kabbalah interesting is its power to
transmute things into symbols. And the symbols are not subjec­
tive . They are an objective projection of the inner side of a
miserable, grotesque, and weird Jewish externality.
This is what I would affirm in kabbalah and reject in
technology. Technology thinks it can banish the symbolic dimen­
sion from reality.
Modern man lives in a private world of his own, enclosed
within himself, and modern symbolism is not objective : it is
private; it does not obligate. The symbols of the kabbalists, on the
other hand, did not speak only to the private individual-they
displayed a symbolic dimension to the whole world.
The question is whether in the reality in which today' s secular
person lives, this dimension will be revealed again .
I was strongly criticized when I dared to say that Walt
Whitman's writings contain something like this. Walt Whitman
revealed in an utterly naturalistic world what kabbalists and
other mystics re �ealed in their world.
Today we are living in an altogether different time. Technol­
ogy is proceeding-leaping-forward with giant strides, but the
problem remains.
If humanity should ever lose the feeling that there is
mystery-a secret-in the world, then it's all over with us. But I
don't believe we'll ever come to that.
 Jewish Youth Movement *

In recent years and up to this very hour, we have not had among
us a Jewish youth movement : no movement which would be felt
and sustained by young people as Jews . We have this and that
organization, and we often and at length hear talk of them and
their programs as the embodiments and standards of the Jewish
youth movement; but what one looks for in them in vain is often
not only Judaism and youth, but rather, again and again,
movement. Without exception these organizations, the great and
small ones, lack the characteristics of a movement: wholeness,
spirit, and greatness . They may be necessary in many respects
and their persistence justifies itself because of this, but in one
respect decisive here, they are not necessary : they are not
continually reborn out of the flow of movement .
It is true that there was a Jewish youth movement during the
first years of the Zionist movement, so long as Herzl' s idea had
life and form, but the content was bound to dwindle when the
spiritual situation changed, and to this day no new and generally
recognized idea has been born ; thereby, however, the seed was
sown among the new generations that has now sprouted all too
splendidly : the confusion which , along with its overcoming, must
be discussed here . The youth of yesterday and today have been
incapable of creating a change in this respect; on the contrary,
youth has become ever poorer in strength and substance ; all it
says, thinks, and does is shadowy ; all is merely skeletal, the object
of lectures and discussions, program , and guiding principle, but

o "Ji.i.dische Jugendbewegung," Der jude, Vol. I, No. 12 (March, 1917), pp. 822-25.
Translated by 'VI emer J. Dannhauser.
so ON JEWS AND JUDAISM I N CRISIS
in truth nothing effective and living. So little was a youth
movement present, ahd so little had it won power over the will of
minds, that in the decisive moment our youth succumbed to the
war. That has been the final and greatest triumph of confusion
and the deepest fall we have experienced. It proves something.
The new youth has been hastened in its coming-to-be
( Werden) by the war. A new generation faces the task : to become
a movement.

One thing has always been present-and this should not be

forgotten-and is once more present today : yearning. But it
cannot be emphasized too strongly: one builds no houses from
yearning, a movement cannot base itself on the fact that one
speaks again and again of yearning, that the latter is the content,
form, and expression of the movement. If life is not generated
from it and it does not bear fruit, so that · from a truly Jewish
yearning a true devotion will come forth, an entry and descent
into Judaism, it falls into the hands of eternal death. It may
happen that on one great day our yearnings will come together
and breed enthusiasm, so that -we will depart and imagine a
movement among us; but if we have not received the impulse to
build it, it will truly have been a cold fire and will perish quickly.
This, however, has hitherto not yet been realized: that yearning
helped to create content. Those few among us in whom their
yearning has in truth awakened life, for whom Judaism became
not only a banner but an order to march, have had a path
prepared for movement; for movement is within them, and thus
it may also arise among them.
It is not as if the demand were that everyone who later enters
the movement must already come to it in a state of completion ;
no, for the movement will secure him substance because he will
coalesce with it and identify with it, so that it will most certainly
be nonsense to speak of the movement and its bearers as two
different things. But today that is not the problem . We are
speaking not of those who stand without or of those to come but,
rather, of those who stand within; of those and to those who
today sit proudly and arrogantly on their " movement" and are of
the opinion that one only has to do a little (or much) more work
and shaping, confusers and confused ones ; and of us, who know
 JEWISH YOUTH MOVEMENT 51
that we still have no movement and who ask how shall we create
one . Or, if that does not depend on us, how shall we participate
in it? For it may be that the final spark that leaps between the
moved individuals and gives the movement its divine seal and
perfection is not in our hands . But just as the exact sciences
distinguish between the necessary and sufficient conditions of a
phenomenon, so here too : the realization of our demand is the
necessary presupposition and is within our power, not, however,
that which makes it into a sufficient one . But we do not doubt
that when we have done what is ours to do, God will do what is
His.
Certainly, if God does not build the house, the builders labor
in vain; however, if the builders do not labor and do that which is
their task and is possible, but stand aside swaggering and are of
the opinion that they are done, then surely God will not build.

The demand can essentially be expressed in, and developed

from, one word: wholeness . Youth is not whole, it is confused .
And first and foremost we demand that the persons who come to
us shall indeed have to learn anew, for there is no other way
whatever than this one out of the confusion of the present, and
whoever wishes to bring that confusion into our circle proves that
he has remained outside . If our position is not completely
different from that of the confused, then we have no right to
proclaim any "decision . " The youth today confronting the task of
becoming a movement is also faced with the task, as precondi­
tion, of becoming different in the final and innermost sense :
unconfused .
To track down these things i s not impossible today, as Hugo
Bergman o seemed to think in the first number of this journal, but
rather more possible than ever before . For since some, from
circles one often calls radical, by way of a welding together of the
most curious things, have from the outside drive n the confusion
to a dizzying height of paradox with their "consistent" Zionism,

o Samuel Hugo Bergman was born in Prague in 1883 and by J 903 was already
publishing articles on Zionism. He emigrated to Palestine in 1920 where he became
professor of philosophy and eventually the first rector of the Hebrew University. His
scholarly reputation rests primarily on his work in epistemology, but he has also widely
written on Jewish themes.-Ed.
52 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
the separation is clearly presented and demanded for anyone who
cares to see. The infinite paradoxes that have awakened our rage
and indignation have taught us to think of our way. Our way, that
is to say: to move ourselves toward Zion as wholeness and in
wholeness.
Today youth is still most intimately entangled in tactics : the
demands that are raised are only piecemeal and timid, and none
has the courage and strength of wholeness ; the standpoints we
assume are attempts to cast furtive glances in all directions, and
the courage to occupy the one and only standpoint is stifled by
internal and external reasons. By internal ones, for one is
comfortable and the ideologies of comfortableness are many. It is
uncomfortable to make whole demands on oneself when from the
very start one only wants to fulfill half; one does not demand
Zion when one means Berlin. By external ones, for it is untactical .
The sacrifices we demand are disjointed and superficial, for to
demand whole sacrifices fills our youth, which has propaganda at
heart, with dread .
Everyvvhere we have heard the objection: one must not
frighten away those who stand on the outside . A diabolical
argument ! But that is how it is with us: everything turns around
those who stand on the outside, for them everything is cut to
order, every breath of consideration taken by the " movement"
and every labor. That Zionism does not end but rather begins
with the Basel program, that is a recognition now and then
defended but the consequences of which youth has hitherto not
been prepared in fact to draw. The commitment to Hebrew has
not been connected, insofar as it has found any echo at all in
Germany, with the insight that a youth movement not fundamen­
tally Hebraized is no longer thinkable today; Hebrew is held to
be a more or less important avocation. It would be a sad task for a
statistician to determine how long one · takes among us from the
avowal of a youth movement to the actual taking up of Hebrew,
even as a sideline . It is certain that among such youth no
wholeness of Judaism and no fullness of content can be born if
the road on which this result has been reached-tactics and
prudence-is not abandoned.
The wholeness of dedication is not present, for the people
who are with us are divided. One is not in the movement but in
 JEWISH YOUTH MOVEMENT 53

clubs, and the whole of a member is more than he reveals to the

"movement" in the club ; he does not have Zion as a goal, but
rather Zion and something or other, from land reform to the
theory of numbers, and this not as something subordinate but as
something with equal rights, something extra that is also present.
That, however, must not be : one goal must we set above
ourselves, to which everything-but absolutely everything, even
if it be the theory of numbers itself-is subordinated. The
wholeness of which we think must not consist of many constitu­
ent parts, but only of one piece. And this means that we must
find the courage for restrictions, for one-sidedness. If our youth
were not so completely bent on preserving its many-sidedness-it
suffices to point to the relevant problem of " German Jewishness"
(Deutschjudentum)-we would be farther along; if syntheses
were not always sought but dogmas erected, if there were not
always reconciliation but battle, if in the hour of danger alliances
were not always formed with the others-the others in and
around us-then a great strength would rise as the tide, and the
rising tide might be followed by the breakthrough of the
movement. The rippling away of our creeks in all directions will
never turn into a roaring waterfall.
If the will to clarity and greatness, to the final consequence,
to seeing through the blue-white glasses . ( "blau-weisse Brille ) is
'

not found, the confusion will not be overcome. And this long will
youth lack the right to a true propaganda: until it itself has
become what it propagates. Today we cry much and loudly, on
all streets and into all ears, but these are the cries of the confused
and divided, cries from the surface, and they drown without
support in the whirlpool of our time and are not heard . The youth
for which we hope , however, will be able to go forth and cry
differently-and we are far from seeing this as at all superfluous
-for its cry will come from the depth and be clear. One is not
permitted to call if one wants to stand both here and there, in
Berlin and in Zion. We, however, will know where we have to
stand if our cry is to be heard .
 Farewell *

An Open Letter to Dr. Siegfried Bemfeld

and against the Readers of This ]oumar�

M y dear Dr. Bernfeld :

Lying before me are the first two issues of the journal
]erubbaal, of which you were good enough to invite me to
become a collaborator. According to the pictu re that the Jewish
youth movement presents to everyone who can see-a dismal
picture which was brought into sharper relief rather than
concealed by the activity that for a time developed around
it-according to this picture I could not indulge in any illusions
about how a journal would be constituted that speaks from out of
this youth , to this youth , and not against it . For indeed that
against which passion is summoned up here is not worth the
trouble : the one suitable object of combat, however, this writing
youth, glorifies its absoluteness to itself in hym ns of praise.
The picture that was to be expected has unfurled in the most
fearful way and annihilated all hopes. It is no longer harmless
stupidity, mindless, narrow-minded pedantry (so amusing to
combat) that acknowledges itself and the honesty of which
precludes all damage ; no, this you th has kept in step with all the
other movements of our time : it has ideas. It cannot be refuted ,
for there is nothing great it does not declaim, no objection or
demand to which it cannot reply: but we also say and want that .
Why should Zion be missed in it, when it proclaims Zion as the

o "Abschied," ]erubbaal, Eine Zeitschrift der jiidischen ]ugend, I (191�19), 125-30.

Translated by Werner J. Dannhauser.
 FAREWELL 55
standard of its life? This youth is, morally viewed, a globe : one
must put oneself in its center in order to recogn ize its mendacity,
for from the outside it is unassailable and every other position
within it distorts one's perspective. No cut or thrust against it is
of any use any longer except for one thing: to see through it. It
cannot be refuted; it can only be overcome. The only way of this
overcoming that cannot be perverted is silence . Thus what I can
say here is nothing positive, which, rather, can come to view only
as the basis of my negation . Labor is oral teaching, and nothing of
it can be committed to writing except the method, and it is
exclusively the method of my silence that I wish to, and must,
express here, not in order to convert-in this surrounding an
itnpossibility for every word that does not possess prophetic
purity-but rather to bear witness to a youth that receives,
unfolds, and transmits Zion and the Torah silently, a youth that
after this one necessary word of separation in ]erubbaal will be­
come visible in the one and only manner worthy of it : in silence.
The great demand of Zionism , which is eternally one, to be a
holy people, has a presupposition the misunderstanding of which
is in a real sense the chim erical basis for that objective mendacity
against which witness is to be given here . Community demands
solitude: not the possibility of together desiring the same, but
only that of common solitude establishes community. Zion, the
source of our nationhood, is the common, indeed in an uncanny
sense, the identical solitude of all Jews, and the religious assertion
of Zionism is nothing other than this : the midst of solitude
happens at the same time to be where all gather together, and
there can be no other place for such a gathering together. As long
as this center is not restored to radiant brightness, the order of
our soul, which honesty bids us to acknowledge, must be
anarchic. In galut there can be no Jewish community valid before
God. And if community among human beings is indeed the
highest that can be demanded , what would be the sense of
Zionism if it could be realized in galut? Therefore, if the demand
of Zionism is to be met, this cannot happen by way of
community. And this is the petitio principii that portends the
curse of Zionism : the pseudo-Zionist lie of community referring
itself to an affirmative will . It is the characteristic content of the
youth movement, the inner absurdity of which betrays itself in
 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
the absolute shapelessness that is its necessary consequence . This
anticipation of community has its origin in the metaphysical
horror people have of the strict demands of Zionism, the
demands of which are no longer courageously negated in the old
manner. One suspects that Zionism , unfolded in its purity, is the
most fearful judgment of that disorder to which this youth, which
basically does not know solitude at all and if it knows it cannot
bear it, has condemned itself. 1
Something else is connected with this : just as youth cannot be
solitary, it cannot be silent. The silence in which word and deed
unite is alien to it, for it has never beheld the pure word and the
pure deed . Human beings, however, who are unable to observe
silence are also in the last analysis unable to speak with each
other. They do not understand each other for their language has
neither form nor foundation: it is chimerical. Thus arises that
fearful perversion that is the sphere of the Jewish youth wishing
to be a 1novement : chatter. In it all things mingle in an
indiscriminate manner and are perverted : Zion to the state of the
future, Judaism to spirit (or whatever the hundred names for it
may be), vision to living experience (Erlebnis), and so one could
draw up the endless-and yet steadily remaining at the nadir­
dictionary of the terminology of chatter.
The most fearful of these perversions announces itself in our
days : it is that of labor. The legitimate concept of labor is
nameless. Chatter is able to name labor and is preparing to
substantiate it. Labor has no ideology, but the pure deed is an
idea. The weakness of Zionist labor, about which committees and
commissions lament, is based on the substantiation, so extremely
illuminating to Zionists, of labor through chatter. For this, after
all, is its principle : anything can be exchanged for anything and
nothing will be changed. Why, then, should not labor be
exchanged for demagogy or any other concept of this sphere? So,
too, Hebrew has been robbed of its meaning,2 for the Hebrew of

1. The documents of this disorder follow each other-at least since the book Vom
]udentum (Of Judaism), which has become a veritable triumphal arch of confusion-in
unlimited succession and geometric progression of their nullity, and not a word would
need to be wasted on them if the devastating effects which, for example, much of the
Blau-Weiss literature exercises, did not awaken sorrow and lament.
2. When at the last meeting of the German Zionists a speaker expressed this simple
and serious truth, he was treated to a very stormy scene by one of the attending
"Hebraists."
 FAREWELL 57
the chatterers could never become the revelation of a community
that proves its reality by the possibility of being silent in Hebrew.
Youth has no language. That is the reason for its uncertainty
and unhappiness. It has no language, which is to say its life is
imaginary and its knowledge without substance. Its existence is
dissolved past all recognition into a complex flatness. It has lost
the criteria of its own reality when it lied to God by chattering
and made intoxication the speechless measure of its sham
existence . To restore language to youth : that is the task. It
demands another way than that of language, which can no longer
lead to youth, since in chatter it has perverted the highest
principle of language, on which all understanding rests: that of
revelation itself. No going along with it can help; only our radical
renunciation of the youth movement itself in the name of our task
can save us from going under. For we are on a sinking ship, and
no jubilation and no satisfaction about the "general direction"
can deceive us about the fact that we are not traveling to Zion
but are going under in Berlin : "They cry shalom, shalom,-but
there is no peace. "
There is only one place from which Zion can be reached and
youth restituted : solitude. And there is only one medium, brought
to radiance by labor, that will be the source of renewal: the
existence that must be the argument against a youth that has
desecrated words . .That is the true help : that each averts the
intoxication of living experiences (Erlebnisse), the pitiful abun­
dance of the chatter and upbringing of others, for which he has
no calling, and in seclusion seeks to bring order into his life. To
such youth Hebrew is the superlative of their stillness and Zion
no longer a symbolic metaphor.
This youth will discard the "Jewish Erlebnis. " For since youth
could not keep silent or speak, could not see or do, it had living
experiences (Erlebnisse) . In these pages even the Torah has been
turned into an Erlebnis. The vague mysticism to which Judaism is
offered up on the altar of Erlebnis, that is the t rue crown of the
youth movement. There is nothing great, from landscape to God
and Torah, that in Erlebnis has not been connected to chatter.
And they even had a living experience of the war when that was
still fashionable. For that is the uncanny thing: even if there
existed Erlebnisse, who today could dare to speak of them ? But
youth does not know silence . But in truth the Erlebnis is, after all,
sB ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS

the chimerical, the absolute turned into chatter. It is necessary to

recognize that only the false relationship to the community is the
ground of this Erlebnis. It is the infinite m ishmash that is
supposed to be the substitute for those orders of the Jewish
community that have been crumbled in it. The youth that, pure
and chaste in its existence, sets up these orders again is not in
need af it. The youth movement, certain of its metaphysical
nullity, needed a concept of redemption as a necessary correlate
by which it could deceive the movement about its religious
meaning: so it proclaimed Erlebnis. Pure youth, however,
redeems itself in lamentation.
On the basis of these reasons, it is an easy but unpleasant
enterprise, whose execution you will spare me, to deduce the
whole life of this youth movement down to its particulars. There
is no sphere in it that has not been surrendered to those
immanent perversions, no disorder that today is not commended
to us as order. Look wherever you will ! Is there anything more
hopeless than this youth since it has become conscious of its
importance and significance, of which one has again and again
assured it? It saw itself called to a deed in the face of which its
standards failed. It was the future of Zionism, about which one
prudently concealed that it knows only an eternal present. It was
to be history and escaped into development. For the task of
restoring Zion threatened its spurious existence, of which strict
and ultimately grounded reality was demanded, which it did not,
after all, possess. The belief in its existence, that was indeed , the
axiom in which it sought solace and greatness. And now this
axiom was endangered ; proof of this existence was demanded, a
proof it had no hope of being able to produce. So it perverted its
conversion, which was its last and greatest possibility, into flight.
A boundless embarrassment in the face of its own phrases : that is
the ever-recurring impression received by anyone who wishes to
work with it. From this embarrassment all that vocabulary is
meant to rescue it by which everyone who expects someth ing
serious from it is emphatically refuted .
For in its need the youth movement makes a virtue of its
inadequacy in regard to the categories of history. It demands
postponement so that it can "develop" itself, continuity so that
 FAREWELL 59
no one will be lost, and when it is no longer able to help itself at
all, it sets upon the "elite," the sectarians who overlook that
"we" are a people's movement. The youth that becomes
intoxicated in the movement-"drunken ones, and not from
wine"-hypostatizes the torments of its unnaturalness to a value.
In this world, which truly is not one of ideas, it succeeds in
confounding its flight with progress (in line with the truth that
what is opposite in chatter is the identically chimerical), and so
the perversion of the highest ideas generates that of all others in
an uncanny succession . For development is not a historical
category to which youth alone is subjected and the only
continuity that gains any sense in it is the metaphysical continu­
ity of decision .
Where is the development of youth really headed? The
answer is as fearful as the question deserves ; indeed, we all know
it : from Berlin to Prague . Zion occurs here only metaphorically
and is in the best case an outer limit. The orders, however, in
which historical existence like that of youth takes place are
different. A youth that in its solitude has not reached the point at
which it finds its connection to the highest ordet of Jewish
history, and thus embraces history, is excluded from the insight
that the true continuity of a peoplehood is generated only in
solitude, that the turning away from chatter is not destruction
but rather a turning toward our task : that of a peoplehood whose
fertility and greatness must unfold in me before I may raise the
claim of being a teacher. The education that unfolds immediate
religious orders by instruction and tradition requires a vocation
and cannot be gained by screaming. That the organization of the
wanderers and the students who in the youth movemen t are the
screamers announce this claim : to educate-no matter with what
stipulations it occurs-is evidence against them in the court of
judgment.
So much is this youth without a vision of history that does not
come to pass within the chimerical, that the death of Hermann
Cohen found it incapable of lamentation, just as his existence did
not arouse its reverence. The coincidence of youth and age in the
Torah, in Judaism the metaphysical location of its movement, is
when it presents itself in great personalities, the radiant origin of
6o ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
our reverence. Judaism lamented at the grave of Hermann
Cohen, but the Jewish youth movement knew only that he was
'' ''

an enemy.
If, then, everything about the you th movement arouses
despair, without there being even the least hope of a conversion
within its circle, the thing to do is to take another way. The old
way does not lead to Zion but loses itself in innumerable
branches of chatter. There can be no doubt as to where this other
way leads ; which neither is nor needs to be a new one, but an
untrodden o n e. It will not be turned into the object of chatter,
and if it has a connection with this youth , it has to be proven by
separation. Silence, labor, and knowledge , purity, strictness, and
renunciation, and whatever the orders may be that are to unfold
themselves in the existence of the Zionists-they all perfect
themselves in one thing: responsibility. Responsibility is the
relationship of life to death . Our striving must be to be
responsible in the face of our task. If we die in the face of history,
then our death will be a Jewish one for it will be the teaching we
hand down . A life, however, that is related to these basic prin­
ciples can rightly be called youthful. Zion is the object of this life .
You propose to Jewish youth that it organize itself. I cannot
concur with your proposal. The youth that is worthy of a union is
not yet here, and if it is here, how can you believe that it will
organize itself into anything other than a secret union that
presents the one and only possibility of solitary community,
which will be realized in concealment? For the power of Jewish
youth consists not of its debut and its demands, but rather of the
seclusion in which it takes up its task, and of the greatness of the
renunciation in which its fullness assumes form .
Shall we then close down our organizations? Yes indeed .
Should one no longer write essays about or for us? No . In your
circle, rob youth of the possibility of further degrading language,
which should be the highest thing to a Jew, into a public vessel
for its Erlebnisse. Direct the passion of battle against your
readers, who threaten your journal with invasion . But I engage in
fantasy. For the readers and this, your journal, are, after all,
identical: they are the youth movement against which I have here
borne witness . The rest is silence .
 Against the Myth of the
German-Jewish Dialogue *

M y dear M r . S chl osser: * *

Your invi tation to contribute to a vol ume for M argarete S us­
man * * * honors me to the same extent as it p uts me into a position of
the most acute e m barrass ment. I see no other way than to explain
the nature of this embarras sment to you , and thereby perhaps to
the readers of the Festschrift planne d by you. For in the an­
nouncement of this vol ume, which you were kind enough to send
me, it say s the Festschrift " is to be understood not only as ho mage
but also as a te sti mony to a Ge rman-Jewish dialogue , the core of
which is indestructibl e . " N o one could be more di smayed by such
an announce ment than I . For as ready as I find myself to pay
homage to the ve nerable pheno menon that is Margarete S us man ,
with whom I have deeper tie s than opinions on which we may agree
or differ, as decisively must I decline an invitation to provide
nourishment to that ill usion , unintelligible to m e , of "a German­
Jewish di.alogue , the core of \Vhich is inde structible, " which this
vol ume, accordi ng to your definition , i s intended to se rve . Pennit
me to explain myself about this in some detail .
I deny that the re has e ve r been s uch a Ger man-Jewish
dialogue in any gen uine sense whatsoe ve r, i . e . , as a historical
phenomenon. It takes two to have a dialogue , \vho li sten to each
o
"Wider den Mythos vom deutsch-judischen 'Gesprach,' " in Gershom Scholem,
]udaica 2 (Frankfurt-am-Main: Bibliothek Suhrkamp, 1970), pp. 7-1 1. Translated by
Werner J. Dannhauser. Originally published in Manfred Schlosser, editor, Auf ge­
spaltenem Pfad: Festschrift fiir Margarete Susman (Darmstadt, 1964).
o o
A young German writer and anthologist.-Ed.
o o o
A German-Jewish poet and essayist (1874-1966) who wrote on many subjects,
both general and Jewish. The Festschrift in which Scholem's piece appeared contains a
bibliography of her writings. It was published in 1964, Susman's ninetieth year, which also
saw the publication of her autobiography, lch habe viele Leben gelebt.-Ed.
62 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
other, who are prepared to perceive the other as what he is and
represents, and to respond to him . Nothing can be more
misleading than to apply such a concept to the discussions
between Germans and Jews during the last zoo years. This
dialogue died at its very start and never took place. It died when
the successors of Moses Mendelssohn-who still argued from the
perspective of some kind of Jewish totality, even though the
latter was determined by the concepts of the Enlightenment­
acquiesced in abandoning this wholeness in order to salvage an
existence for pitiful pieces of it, whose recently popular designa­
tion as German-Jewish symbiosis reveals its whole ambiguity. To
be sure, the Jews attem pted a dialogue with the Germans,
starting from all possible points of view and situations, demand­
ingly, imploringly, and entreatingly, servile and defiant, with a
dignity employing all manner of tones and a godforsaken lack of
dignity, and today, when the symphony is over, the time may be
r_ipe for studying their motifs and for attempting a critique of
their tones. No one, n9t even one who always grasped the
hopelessness of this cry into the void, will belittle the latter's
passionate intensity and the tones of hope and grief that were in
resonance with it.
The attempt of the J e\vs to explain themselves to the
Germans and to put their own creativity at their disposal, even to
the point of complete self-abnegation, is a significant phenome­
non, the analysis of which in adequate categories is yet to be
accomplished and will perhaps become possible only now that it
is at an end. In all this I am unable to perceive anything of a
dialogue. Never did anything respond to that cry, and it was this
simple and, alas, so far-reaching realization that affected so many
of us in our youth and destined us to desist from the illusion of a
" German-Judaism. " Where Germans ventured on a discussion
with Jews in a humane spirit, such a discussion, from Wilhelm
von Humboldt to Stefan George, was always based on the
expressed or unexpressed self-denial of the Jews, on the progres­
sive atomization of the Jews as a community in a state of
dissolution, from which in the best case only the individuals
could be received, be it as bearers of pure humanity, or be it even
as bearers of a heritage that had in the meantime become
historical. It is that famous slogan from the battles of the
 AGAINST MYTH OF GERMAN-JEWISH DIALOGUE 63
Emancipation-" For the Jews as indiviG�uals, everything; for the
Jews as a people (that is to say : as Jews) nothing"-which
prevented a German-Jewish dialogue from getting started . The
one and only partnership of dialogue which took the Jews as such
seriously was that of the anti-Semites who, it is true, said
something to the Jews in reply, but nothing beneficial . To the
infinite intoxication of Jewish enthusiasm there never corre­
sponded a tone that bore any kind of relation to a creative answer
to the Jews ; that is to say, one that would have addressed them
with regard to what they had to give as Jews, and not what they
had to give up as Jews.
To whom , then, did the Jews speak in that much-talked-about
German-Jewish dialogue? They spoke to themselves, not to say
that they outshouted themselves. Some felt uneasy, perhaps even
dismal about it, but many acted as if everything were on the best
way to being settled, as if the echo of their own voice would be
unexpectedly transmogrified into that voice of the others they so
eagerly hoped to hear. The Jews have always been listeners of
great intensity, a noble legacy they brought with them from
Mount Sinai. They listened to many kinds of voices, and one
cannot say that this always served them well. When they thought
they were speaking to the Germans, they were speaking to
themselves. No one except Jews themselves, for example, was
"spoken to" by the Jewish creativity of a thinker like Georg
Simmel. And Simmel was indeed a truly symbolic phenomenon
for all that of which I speak here, because he was that
phenomenon of a man in whom the substance of Judaism still
shows most visibly when the latter had arrived at the pure nadir
of complete alienation. I will forgo the treatment of that deeply
moving chapter that is designated by the great name of Hermann
Cohen and the way in which this unhappy lover, who did not
shun the step from the sublime to the rid iculous, was answered .
The allegedly indestructible community of the German
essence with the Jewish essence consisted, so long as these two
essences really lived with each other, only of a chorus of Jewish
voices and was, on the level of historical reality, never anything
else than a fiction, a fiction of which you will permit me to say
that too high a price was paid for it. The Germans were mostly
angered by this fiction and at best moved . Shortly before I went
 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
to Palestine, there appeared Jakob Wassermann's book, Mein
Weg als Deutscher und jude (My Way as German and Jew),
certainly one of the most gripping documents of that fiction , a
true cry into the void that knew itself to be such . The reply to
him was in part embarrassment, in part sneer. One will look in
vain for an answer on the level of the speaker, one that would
thus have been a dialogue. And if once, directly before the onset
of the catastrophe, it did indeed come to a dialogue in the form of
a discussion, then it looked like that dialogue between the ex­
members of the Wandervogel, Hans Joachim Schoeps and Hans
Bhiher, o the reading of which even today causes the reader's hair
to stand on end . But why heap up examples when, after all, the
whole of that ghostlike German-Jewish dialogue ran its course in
such an empty realm of the fictitious? I could speak of it
endlessly, and I would nevertheless always be sticking to the
same point.
It is true : the fact that Jewish creativity poured forth here is
perceived by the Germans, now that all is over. I would be the
last to deny that there is something genuine about that-at once
gripping and depressing. But it no longer changes anything about
the fact that no dialogue is possible with the dead, and to speak
of an " indestructibility of this dialogue" strikes me as blasphemy.
Yours,
GERSHOM ScHOLEM
Jerusalem, December 18, 1962

• Schoeps (b. 1909) is a professor of religious history who has written on the early
years of Christianity. Before World War II he articulated a Jewish theology that brought
Judaism as close as possible to Christianity. He was also a strong Gennan nationalist who
was convinced, even in 1933, that Gennan Jews could get along with the Nazis (though he
regretted his failure to recognize the nature of Nazism in his autobiography of 1956).
Bliiher ( 1888-1955) was known for his writings on the Wandervogel and other
Gennan youth movements. He published an anti-Semitic tract in 1922 and collaborated
with Schoeps in 1933 on a book Streit urn Israel (Controversy over Israe�.-Ed.
 Once More : The German ­
] ewish Dialogue *

Rudolf Kallner 0 o has raised objections to my statement, "Against

the Myth of the German-Jewish Dialogue. " By objections, one
commonly is in the habit of understanding that the theses which
have been advanced are attacked . My thesis, that the talk of the
German-Jewish dialogue is a myth, obviously presupposed that I
clearly define the meaning of the word dialogue as in fact I went
on to do. Given the sense of this definition, one can agree with or
object to my statement . That, for example, is what I would then
call a dialogue between Kallner and me. Instead of this, we have
here a model example of a dialogue without an object, in which
the participants are talking about different things. And not only
that, for Kallner expressly declares that a dialogue in the sense
that I "seem to" connect with this concept is surely not that
which is meant by this concept in modern German linguistic
usage. Thus, after having divested the concept of its well-defined
meaning in favor of a washed-out and insubstantial journalistic
usage, as is common in newspapers, he proceeds to deal with the
subject of dialogue in this meaningless sense and therewith to
"refute" my statements.
The dialogue in Kallner' s sense consists of the completely
undeniable fact that there were relations and discussions be­
tween Jews and Germans. That historical relations of a passionate
and vehement kind existed between the Germans and the Jews,

o "Noch einmal: das deutsch-jiidische Gesprach, " Bulletin des Leo Baeck lnstituts,
No. 30 (Tel Aviv, 1965), pp. 167-72. Translated by Werner J. Dannhauser.
o o
An Israeli attorney, born in Germany .-Ed.
66 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM I N CRISIS
even though in a wholly different manner from both sides, no
one, of course, would think of disputing. And whoever will reread
my letter to M r. Schlosser will find out at once that I clearly and
distinctly differentiated between a dialogue and discussions of
this general kind. The introduction of sublime and solemn-sound­
ing terms like dialogue in order to designate wholly trivial states
of affairs like the one of historically determined relations and
discussions between two groups yields little blessing. I employed
the word in that heightened and tolerably precise sense, also used
by the addressee of my letter, in which the philosophers of the
"dialogue" introduced it for certain spiritual-intellectual (gei­
stige) discussions. It was just the pathetic note, the existential
factor of the dialogue, and the claim in a certain sense of its
"indestructibility, " that occasioned my passionate protest. To
contradict me by talking of something completely different is as
easy as it is unfruitful for a discussion. We are talking past each
other. Of a sentence like this: "The dialogue was conducted by
the German people in its totality and as well by the totality of the
Jewish sector within the territory of the German Reich , " I can
make no sense whatsoever. And so it goes with all the conse­
quences flowing from such a "definition" of the dialogue, which
probably reaph their peak in the contention that the historical
fact of the legal emancipation of the Jews and their equality of
rights is supposedly de facto a "decided proof" that "the dialogue
actually took place and that the disavowal of this dialogue is a
mistake . " Since one can presuppose, I take it, that during the
composition of my letter I was familiar with these facts and they
were present in my mind, these and many other corresponding
factual pieces of instruction in Kallner' s objection seem to me
meaningless.
The salient point of my letter to Mr. Schlosser was that the
Germans, where they engaged in a dialogue (in more than a
washed-out sense) with the Jews at all, did so under the
presupposition that the Jews were prepared to give themselves
up as Jewish to an ever more progressive extent. One of the most
important of the phenomena in the relations between the Jews
and the Germans is the fact that the Jews themselves were in
large part ready to do this. Nevertheless, not even this readiness,
of which all those of us who grew up in Germany received the
 ONCE MORE : THE GERMAN-JEWISH DIALOGUE 67

most overwhelming and shocking proof, led to a true dialogue

between the parties. There is nothing in my argument to deny
that there were indeed infinite shades and variations in this
readiness, and that a really complete analysis and description of
the circumstances under which the Jews attempted their-alas so
hopeless-dialogue with the Germans would represent the
accomplishment of a very great task that has never yet been
seriously undertaken, because the standards for it were lacking.
Kallner also speaks of the situation after the catastrophe and
the rise of the State of Israel, as it now presents itself, for the
continuation of such relations between Germans and Jews or for
the resumption of such relations as he calls a dialogue. I am not
among those who altogether refuse and oppose the resumption of
such relations. In order to render such a resumption fruitful in a
serious sense, one requires, however, not only a knowledge of
what is, but also of what was. In order to reach that point, a
considerable "toil of conceptual reflection" is required . In this
generation, in the face of the dead and the murdered, it is very
difficult to advance to a level on which not only a critique of the
conduct of the Germans but also of that of the Jews would be
possible and capable of formulation. We will be unable to
circumvent this historical critique in the true sense of the word, if
the atmosphere between the Germans and us is indeed to be
purified, and I am under no illusions about the difficulties of such
an undertaking and about the emotions at stake in it. In recent
years a tendency has become visible, which has been seized by
many Germans all too enthusiastically, according to which the
seizure of power by the Nazis was, in a higher sense, a kind of
historical accident without which everything between Germans
and Jews would really have been making tolerably good progress;
an opinion the echo of which is also still to be found in the letter
by Mr. Schlosser. Corresponding to this is now an unlimited and
uncritical posthumous enthusiasm for the epoch of Jewish
assimilation in Germany, the documents of which often enough
cause one's words to fail.
I do not know whether there can once again be a productive
dialogue between Germans and Jews, beyond wholly or half­
honestly intended " relations" and efforts. I would see in that a
significant event, an important new beginning. That, however,
68 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM I N CRISIS

presupposes, if it is not to bear in itself the germ of destruction

from the start, the will on both sides to the full truth about what
has happened and therewith also the will to a fearless critique of
prevalent myths about this past. Kallner' s warning not to
endanger this new beginning through pronouncements of what is
and what was seems to me misplaced. If the "dialogue " is
possibJe only under such conditions, it will continue to fail to
materialize.

II

With the above I have also, as I would hope, made clear what
separates me from Mr. Schlosser, to whom my letter was
addressed, beyond all the ties he emphasizes. Before I append
some remarks to his letter to me, I would like to clear up some
misunderstandings. In contrast to !\t1r. Kallner, Mr. Schlosser and
I are at one about the meaning of the talk of a German-Jewish
dialogue. Only I did not deny what would indeed be foolish, that
in the last century and a half such dialogues took place between
individual partners-as Schlosser himself writes restrictively­
eye to eye, or letter to letter, more or less passionately. I am
familiar with some memorable examples of such a dialogue. What
I denied, and deny, was the presence of such a dialogue "as
historical phenomenon" ; that means, however, no longer as on a
purely personal level, no longer as an isolated biographical
datum, but rather as a phenomenon of transpersonal significance
that could yield a legitimate motto for the whole of the
German-Jewish discussions, concerning whose character I had
explained myself in my letter to him .
And more than that: I left no doubt, right at the beginning of
my letter, of my conviction that the liquidation of the Jewish
substance by the Jews themselves must in large part be held
responsible for the fact that this dialogue did not come to take
place as a historical phenomenon . This liquidation certainly has
deep and far-reaching reasons, only a part of which have h itherto
been expressed, but the dialectical connection between this
liquidation and the fate of the Jews in Germany, for good and for
evil, seems evident to me. It is precisely this readiness for
 ONCE MORE : THE GERMAN-JEWISH DIALOGUE 6g
self-denial which goes a long way in codetermining the unreal
and ghostly element in this "dialogue. " They are no longer even
Jews, in the full sense of an unbroken historical consciousness,
who speak here, but rather Jews in flight from themselves. It is a
feeling of panic which these fleeing ones, and often precisely the
most significant figures among them, call forth in their partners,
which permeates with such destructive dialectic the statements
from the German side stemming from goodwill, humane reflec­
tions, and liberal dispositions. We will least serve the cause
concerning us here by the idealization of both partners. I am a
Jew and have a very sharp ear for that "godforsaken lack of
dignity" in so many Jewish expressions that Mr. Schlosser finds so
offensive in my formulation, and that Schlosser, in a way wholly
incomprehensible to me, finds refuted by the passing of the
Emancipation laws.
Naturally, my protest against Schlosser's formulation of the
" German-Jewish dialogue, the core of which is indestructible"
neither could nor should take the place of a still-missing work,
which would have to illuminate the situation not only histori­
cally-factually but also historically-philosophically. I wholeheart­
edly agree with Mr. Schlosser that this must be one of the most
important tasks of future research. I do not turn against the
erection of a future-pointing symbol if it would express a genuine
reality. I am against the erection of signposts pointing in the
wrong direction . Mr. Schlosser is of the opinion that he has
innumerable proofs that the maintenance of an illusion eventu­
ally led to a reality and with this device he bestows high praise on
those Jews who did not relinquish their illusion. Well, it would be
quite difficult to think of a more ironic formulation in this
connection, and I must refuse to discuss the unironic and horrible
falsity of this sentence when applied to the example of the
German Jews that is under discussion here . It then also corre­
sponds to Mr. Schlosser's fascination with the achievements and
accomplishments of the Jewish assimilation in Germany-the
problematic aspect of which, after all, is precisely what so
agitates us Jews-that he ventures the opinion that in spite of all
it accomplished for the Jews, Zionism also gave anti-Semitism
material for development. What a grandiose perversion of the
facts ! One might really think that anti-Semitism needed material
 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM I N CRISIS

in order to develop, and it just so happened that it was provided

by the utopian retreat of the Jews to Zion from their historical
connection with Germany. Here the idyllic view , taken of
German-Jewish relations leads to a reductio ad absurdum.
I did not understand Mr. Schlosser 's thesis, according to
which, from the invitation of Spinoza to the University of
Heidelberg to the appointment of Rathenau as foreign minister,
attempts were undertaken at a genuine integration, which for
him is "much more" than emancipation and assimilation. Is that
not pure fantasy?
The hopes that Mr. Schlosser expresses at the end of his letter
are in good faith-but they have nothing to do with what is in
dispute between us except, let us be clear, that in this case hopes
pregnant with the future can arise only on the basis of a
knowledge of the past. Without such knowledge , which is at once
commemoration and recollection, this hope will not take wing.
 Jews and Germans*

To speak of Jews and Germans and their relations during the last
two centuries is, in the year 1966, a melancholy enterprise. So
great, even now, is the burden of emotions, that a dispassionate
consideration or analysis of the matter seems almost impossible;
we have all been molded too strongly by the experience of our
generation to permit any such expectations of detachment. Today
there are many Jews who regard the German people as a
"hopeless case, " or at best as a people with whom, after what has
happened, they want nothing to do, for good or for evil. I do not
count myself among them, for I do not believe that there ought to
be such a thing as a permanent state of war among peoples. I also
deem it right-what is more, I deem it important-that Jews,
precisely as Jews, speak to Germans in full consciousness of what
has happened and of what separates them . Upon many of us the
German language, our mother tongue, has bestowed the gift of
unforgettable experiences ; it defined and gave expression to the
landscape of our youth . Now there is a kind of appeal from the
German side-both from the reaches of history and from a
younger generation that is coming to the fore-and precisely
because this appeal is so uncertain and irresolute, indeed,
embarrassed, something inheres in it that many of us do not wish
to shun.

o ''Juden und Deutsche," a lecture delivered at plenary session, World Jewish

Congress, Brussels, August 2, 1966. Published in Gershom Scholem, ]udaica 2 (Frankfurt­
am-Main: Bibliothek Suhrkamp, 1970), pp . zo-46. An adaptation, in English translation
by Werner J. Dannhauser, appeared in Commen tary (November 1966). The present
translation, by Werner J . Dannhauser, is from the original lecture.
 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM I N CRISIS
To be sure, the difficulties of generalizing, as when we say
" the Germans" and "the Jews," intimidate the observer. In times
of conflict, however, such all-embracing terms prove easy to
manipulate; and the fact that these general categories are
vulnerable to questioning has never prevented people from using
them vociferously. Many distinctions would be in order here . For
not all " Germans" are Germans and not all "Jews" are Jews­
with, of course, one appalling exception : when power was in the
hands of those Germans who really meant all Jews when they
referred to the Jews, they used that power to the best of their
ability to rnurder all Jews . Since then, those who survived this
murder, or were not exposed to it because of the accidents of
history, find it somewhat difficult themselves to make the proper
distinctions . The dangerous pitfalls that accompany any generali­
zation are well known : arbitrariness , self-contradiction, and
incoherence. The relationships I am discussing are too various
and unique to be covered by any blanket assertion that could not
be countered by a different and almost equally defensible one.
And yet, fully aware as I am of these difficulties, I wish to make
clear what it is that moves me about this theme-certainly one of
the themes that have most agitated the Jewish world in the past
one hundred fifty years and more.
In 1948 Alfred Doeblin, a Jewish writer who had converted to
Catholicism in his old age, wrote to another Jew that he should
take care, when addressing a German audience, to avoid using
the word Jew, for in Germany it was still a term of abuse ; only
anti-Semites would be pleased by its use. According to Doeblin,
anti-Semitism was deep-seated among the Germans and more
malicious-in the year 1948!-than prior to 1933 · Indeed, I
myself can testify that even in 1966 many Germans who would
like to dissociate themselves from the Nazis (occasionally rather
as an afterthought), to a certain extent still confirm the validity of
Doeblin' s remarks by their evident aversion to calling any Jew a
Jew unless he absolutely insists on it. After having been murdered
as Jews, the Jews have now been nominated to the status of
Germans, in a kind of posthumous triumph ; to emphasize their
Jewishness would be a concession to anti-Semitism. \Vhat a
perversion in the name of progress, to do everything possible to
avoid facing the realities of the Jewish-German relationship !
 JEvVS AND GERMANS 73
But it is precisely the facing of these realities that I consider
to be our task, and when we speak of the fate of the Jews among
the Germans we cannot speak emphatically enough of J e\vs q ua
Jews. The atmosphere between Jews and Germans can be
cleansed only if we seek to get to the bottom of their relationship,
and only if we employ the unrestrained criticism that the case
dem ands. And that is hard : for the Germans, because the mass
murder of the Jews has become the greatest nightmare of their
moral existence as a people ; for the Jews, because such clarifica­
tion demands a critical distance from crucial phenomena of their
own history. Love, insofar as it once existed, has been drowned in
blood ; its place must now be taken by historical knowledge and
conceptual clarity-the preconditions for a discussion that might
perhaps bear fruit in the future. If it is to be serious and
undemagogic, such a discussion must be approached on a level
beyond that of the political and economic factors and interests
that have been, or are, under negotiation between the State of
Israel and the German Federal Republic . I am lacking in any
competence in this area, and at no time will I refer to it. I am not
even certain that it can help us at all in posing the right questions
or in attempting to answer them . We have all heard a great deal
about this matter and, precisely as Jews, we are not always at
ease when a false connection is created.

II

Until the latter half of the eighteenth century, and to some

extent even beyond that time, the Jews in Germany led
essentially the same existence as did Jews everywhere . They were
clearly recognizable as a nation ; they possessed an unmistakable
identity and a millennia! history of their own, however they
themselves or the peoples around them may have assessed that
history. They had a finely honed awareness of themselves and
participated in a religious order that forced its way with extreme
intensity through their very pores and into their life and culture .
To the degree that the influence of the German environment­
and such influence was never entirely absent-penetrated into
the ]udengasse, it did so not because the Jews deliberately turned
74 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
to it and embraced it, but in large part through a barely conscious
process of osmosis. To be sure, German cultural values were
frequently enough transformed into Jewish values (and, linguisti­
cally, into Yiddish). The conscious relations between the two
societies were of a delicate nature, however, and especially so
during the two centuries preceding the era of emancipation. The
religious culture of the dominant strata of Jews was self-con­
tained and remained wholly alien to the German world.
But the economically strongest element-as it was repre­
sented in the phenomenon of the Hofjudentum-Jewish manage­
ment of court finances-and the group at the bottom of the social
ladder that was in communication with the German underworld,
maintained a kind of contact with the Germans that was in both
cases perilous. They moved among the Germans in a special
manner, and in so doing they were at the mercy of the slightest
change in political or social conditions. Nothing would be more
foolish than to speak of an intimate attachment between German
Jews and Germany during that age, during which not a single
precondition existed for it. Everyone knew that the Jews were in
exile, and howe,v er one might view the meaning of that exile,
there was no doubt as to its enduring significance for the social
condition of the Jews.
The overwhelming majority of the Jews, which did not belong
to these marginal groups and was relatively less affected by their
vicissitudes, at that time lived completely within the mold of
tradition; a mold cast by their material and spiritual history
during the long ages of exile. At the same time there is no
rnistaking the fact that in the latter half of the eighteenth century
a grave weakness at the core of their Jewishness became visible.
It was as if they had arrived at the nadir of one phase of their
historical existence and were no longer certain where the road
would lead. This weakness had already become evident at the
time Moses Mendelssohn set out upon his career as a kind of
conservative reformer of German Jewry. With him, and above all
with the school he inspired, there began among Jews a conscious
process of turning toward the Germans ; a process subsequently
graced and furthered by mighty historical forces. There began a
propaganda campaign for the Jews' resolute absorption by
German culture and, shortly thereafter, for their absorption by
 JEWS AND GERMANS 75
the German people itself. There also began the struggle of Jews
for civil rights, a struggle which extended over three or four
generations, and which was finally . won because-let us not
deceive ourselves-it was conducted on their behalf by a decisive
and victorious stratum among the non-Jews.
With these struggles, which were furthered no less by the
French Revolution than _by the German Enlightenrnent, a
momentous change commenced in German Jewry. At first the
change was hesitant and most uncertain, just as the Judaism of
those undergoing it was often uncertain and embarrassed. They
still had a strong sense of their people hood as Jews, though
frequently not of the meaning of this peoplehood, which had
been or was in the process of becoming lost to them. But, to put
the case explicitly, they also began casting those infinitely
yearning and furtive glances at the realm of German history-as
a possible replacement for the Jewish realm-which became so
characteristic of them in their relations to the Germans for the
next hundred years and more . Those elements of German Jewry
that viewed this process with the greatest reservations-espe­
cially the once preponderant and still very strong circles of the
traditionally pious-were marked off from their more enthusias­
tic fellows by nothing more distinct than an oppressed silence,
broken only rarely among them by direct voices of warning; it is
as if they were recoiling from their own suffe ring. In any event,
up to about 1820, when the Jews of Germany are mentioned, it is
almost exclusively as the members of the Jewish nation in
Germany. In the next two generations, however, linguistic usage
alters completely; terms such as Mosaic persuasion, and similar
phrases favored by Jews and Germans alike, now begin their
career.
The furtive glances cast by the Jews toward the Germans
were from the very outset attended by considerable changes and
dislocations, which at a later stage of the process were to lead to
bitter problems. As a price of Jewish emancipation, the Germans
demanded a resolute disavowal of Jewish nationality-a price the
leading writers and spokesmen of the Jewish avant-garde were
only too happy to pay. What had begun as furtive glances turned
into a passionate involvement with the realm of German history;
and the objects of enlightened toleration not infrequently
 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM I N C RISIS
became ardent prophets, prepared to speak in the name of the
Germans themselves.
The attentive reader of German reactions to this process and
its acrobatics soon perceives the note of astonishment and a
partly amiable, partly malicious irony that recurs again and again
in these expressions. With the renunciation of a crucial part of
Jewish existence in Germany, the ground was prepared for what
appears to many of us to have been a completely false start in the
history of modern relations between Jews and Germans-even
though, given the conditions of 1 8oo, it possessed a certain
immanent logic of its own. When the Western people emanci­
pated the people of Israel, they did not, to quote Buber ( 1932),
"accept it as Israel, but rather as a multitude of individuals . "
Among the non-Jews, the most stalwart fighters for the cause of
the Jews were precisely those who most consciously and articu­
lately counted on the disappearance of the Jews qua Jews-who
indeed, like Wilhelm von Humboldt, considered the disappear­
ance of the Jews as an ethnic group a condition for taking up
their cause . The liberals hoped for a decisively progressive Jewish
self-dissolution. The conservatives, however, with their sense of
history, had reservations about this new phenomenon. They
began to chalk up against the Jews an all-too-great facility for
renouncing their ethnic consciousness. The self-abnegation of the
Jews, although welcomed and indeed demanded, was often seen
as evidence of their lack of moral substance . We have clear
documentation to show that the disdain in which so many
Germans held the Jews fed on the ease with which the upper
cultural stratum of the Jews disavowed its own tradition. For
what could a heritage be worth if the elite of its chosen heirs
were in such a rush to disavow it?
Thus a sinister and dangerous dialectic arose . Broad circles of
the German elite demanded of the Jews that they give up their
heritage, and went so far as to set a premium on defection ; at the
same time, however, many despised the Jews for just their
excessive willingness to oblige. As for the socialists, Karl Marx's
grotesque and disgusting invective in On the Jewish Question
may be taken as a sign of their total frivolity and ignorance ; they
were completely at a loss before the issues involved in this new
 JEWS AND GERMANS 77
turn of events, and could do no more than press for the
dissolution of the Jewish people and its historical consciousness, a
dissolution to be completed by the advent and victory of the
Revolution. They could see no sense whatever in considering the
Jews as active participants in any n1eaningful encounter. For
them, as the slogan had it, the Jews were merely " oil for the
wheels of the Revolution . "
Such, then, was the dangerous dialectic of the whole process.
The Jews struggled for emancipation-and this is the tragedy
that moves us so much today-not for the sake of their rights as a
people, but for the sake of assimilating themselves to the peoples
among whom they lived. By their readiness to give up their
peoplehood, by their act of disavowal, they did not put an end to
their misery ; they merely opened up a new source of agony.
Assimilation did not, as its advocates had hoped, dispose of the
Jewish question in Germany; rather it shifted the locus of the
question and rendered it all the more acute. As the area of
contact between the two groups widened, the possibilities of
friction widened as well. The " adventure" of assimilation, into
which the Jews threw themselves so passionately (it is easy to see
why) necessarily increased the dangers that grew out of the
heightened tension. Added to this was the fact that there was, if I
may use Arnold Zweig's expression, something "disordered "
about the Jews who were exposed to this new encounter with the
Germans-and in a double sense : they were "disordered" by
their existence under the undignified conditions they wer:e forced
to live in as well as its social and personal consequences; and they
were "disordered" by the deep insecurity that began to hound
them the moment they left the ghetto in order, as the formula
had it, "to become Germans. " This double disorder of the Jews
was one of the factors that retarded, disturbed, and eventually
brought to a gruesome end the process-or trial-that now began
in such earnest. The refusal of so many German Jews to
recognize the operation of such factors, and the dialectic to
which they bear witness, is among the saddest discoveries made
by today' s reader of the discussions of those times. The emotional
confusion of the German Jews between 1820 and 1920 is of
considerable importance if one wishes to understand them as a
 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM I N CRISIS
group, a group characterized by that " German-Jewishness"
( " Deutschjudentum") many of us encountered in our own youth
and which stimulated us to resistance.
At the same time, h owever, and in the very midst of this
insecurity, something else happened : the long-buried creativity of
the Jews was liberated . It is true that by entering so eagerly into a
new world, the Jews relinquished the security their ancient
tradition had once bestowed upon them, and would frequently
continue to bestow in an impressive 'Nay upon those who held
fast to it. But in recompense those Jews who threw themselves
into this exciting "living experience" (Erlebnis) of assimilation
found that it awakened something in them that under the old
order had long been dormant or forgotten . These factors are
deeply connected. Here it is fitting that we briefly examine and
clarify those positive aspects of this process that became so
meaningful precisely to the Jews, even those living far beyond
the borders of Germany.
The intimate passion that the relation to things German
assumed for the Jews is connected with the specific historical
hour in which it was born. At the moment i.n time when Jews
turned from their medieval state toward the new era of
enlightenment and resolution, the overwhelming majority of
them-80 percent-lived in Germany, Austria-Hungary, and
Eastern Europe. Due to prevailing geographic, political, and
linguistic conditions, therefore, it was German culture the Jews
first encountered on their road to the West. Moreover-and this
is decisive-the encounter occurred precisely at the moment
when that culture had reached one of its most fruitful turning
points. It was the zenith of Germany's bourgeois era. One can say
that it was a happy hour when the newly awakened creativity of
the Jews, which was to assume such impressive forms after 1 780,
impinged precisely on the zenith of a great creative period of the
German people, a period producing an image of things German
that, up to 1940, and among very broad classes of people, was to
remain unshaken, even by many bitter and later most bitter
experiences. For the Jews this amalgamation of a great historical
hour was defined and symbolized by the names of Lessing and
Schiller, and in its intensity and scope it has no parallel in the
 JEWS AND GERMANS 79
encounters of the Jews with other European peoples. Due to this
encounter, the first on the Jews' way to the West, because of this
new image, a high luster fell on all things German. Even today,
after so much blood and so many tears, we cannot say that it was
only a deceptive luster. It was more : it contained elements of
great fruitfulness and the stimulus to significant developments.
The significance of Friedrich Schiller for the formation of
Jewish attitudes toward Germany is almost incalculable and has
seldom been appreciated by the Germans themselves. For to
generations of Jews within Germany, and almost to a greater
extent to Jews outside Germany, Schiller, spokesman for pure
humanity, lofty poet . of the highest ideals of mankind, repre­
sented everything they thought of, or wished to think of, as being
German-even when, in the Germany of the last third of the
nineteenth century, his language had already begun to sound
hollow. For many Jews the encounter with Friedrich Schiller was
more real than their encounter with actual Germans. Here they
found what they were most fervently seeking. German romanti­
cism meant something to many Jews, but Schiller meant some­
thing to all of them . He was a factor in the Jewish belief in
mankind. Schiller provided the most visible, most impressive, and
most resounding occasion for the idealistic self-deceptions engen­
dered by the relations of the Jews to the Germans. For the Jew
who had lost his self-confidence, Schiller's program seemed to
promise everything he sought ; the Jew heard no false tones in it,
for this was music that spoke to his depths. To Schiller, who
never addressed them directly, the Jews did indeed respond, and
the collapse of this dialogue perhaps contains one of the secrets
of the general collapse of relations between Jews and Germans.
After all, Schiller, to whom their love clung so passionately, was
not just anybody; he was the national poet of Germany, regarded
as such by the Germans themselves frorn 18oo to 1900. In this
case, then, the Jews did not, as has happened often enough,
"have the wrong address . "
I n this case a bridge had really been built between the Jews
and the Germans, built out of the same boundless passion that
induced a number of Russian Jews, who were seeking the road to
humanity among the Jewish people itself, literally to adopt the
Bo ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
name of Schiller as their own; one of the noblest figures of the
Zionist movement, Solomon Schiller, o is a notable example of this
practice. Unfortunately, however, the task of building bridges
was pursued by the Jews alone . To Germans of a later day,
Jewish enthusiasm for Schiller seemed merely comic or touching.
Only rarely were other Germans stirred by the feeling .that here,
for once, there could have been much common ground.

III

The first half of the nineteenth century was a period in which

Jews and Germans drew remarkably close . During this time an
extraordinary amount of help came from the German side, with
many individual Jews receiving cooperation in their stormy
struggle for culture . There was certainly no lack of goodwill then;
reading the biographies of the Jewish elite of the period, one
again and again finds evidence of the understanding they
encountered, even in decidedly Christian circles like the Moravi­
ans. But in keeping with the inner dynamics of the process we
have been examining, things did not remain at the level of a mere
struggle for culture . The Jews were at a point of radical transition
from the traditional way of life, which still held sway among a
majority of them, to Germanism. In the effecting of this
transition, according to one contemporary source, " the German
national education of the Jews and their participation in the
general interests of human beings and citizens appears as the
most_ essential task, to which everyone who expects anything of
himself must be dedicated. " The formulation is by Moritz
Lazarus, a follower of the philosopher Johann Friedrich Herbart,
and a most pristine representative of the very tendency he
advocated ; he himself completed the transition from pure
talmudic Judaism to the new German-Jewish way of life in a
mere five years ! The unending Jewish demand for a home was
soon transformed into the ecstatic illusion of being at home.

•
Solomon Schiller ( 1879--1925) changed his name from Blankenstein. Born in Poland,
he was a member of the First Zionist Congress in 18g7 and emigrated to Palestine in 1910.
He was a teacher and, later, principal at Jerusalem's prestigious Rehavia Gymnasium.­
Ed.
 JEWS AND GERMANS 81
I t i s well known and easy to understand that the speed o f this
transfonnation, which even today amazes the observer, the haste
of this breakup of the Jews, was not paralleled by an equally
quick reciprocal act on the part of the Germans . For the
Germans did not know they were dealing with such deep
processes of decay in the Jewish tradition and in Jewish
self-consciousness, and they recoiled from the whole procedure .
As much as they would have approved of the eventual result of
the process-which accorded at least with the prevailing liberal
ideology and to a considerable extent with the prevailing
conservative one-they were altogether unprepared for this
tempo, which struck them as overheated and whose aggressive­
ness set them on the defensive. Sooner or later this defensiveness
was to combine with those currents of opinion that from the very
beginning had reacted to the whole process with antipathy and
that, since the whole post-Mendelssohn generation, had never
lacked for eloquent spokesmen.
It made good sense to speak of a "host people" whose guests
the Jews were. Even in the best of circumstances, it was a matter
of a guest being accepted into the family, but subject to dismissal
if he did not live up to the requirements. This became especially
clear where the liberals were concerned. The talk one occasion­
ally hears today of a fusion that would have made excellent
progress had not the advent of Nazism come between the great
majority of Jews and the "citizens of a different faith " (the phrase
was used in print by a Jew in the Germany of 1965! )-such talk is
nothing but a retroactive wish fulfillment. Without doubt, the
complete submission to the German people of so many people
who in their autobiographies (which are available in abundance)
characterized themselves as being "of Jewish descent "-because
they no longer had any other inner ties to the Jewish tradition, let
alone to the Jewish people-constitutes one of the most shocking
phenomena of this whole process of estrangement . The list of
Jewish losses to the Germans is infinitely long, a list of great and
frequently astonishing Jewish talents and accomplishments that
were offered up to the Germans . Who can read without emotion
the history of those, like that of Otto Lippmann o from Hamburg,

o A high official of the Senate of Hamburg who wrote an autobiography.-Ed.

Bz ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN C RISIS
who to the point of suicide maintained the claim that they were
better Germans than those who were driving them to their
deaths?
Today, when all is over, it is no wonder that there are many
who wish to recognize this claim as just. These people made their
choice, and we should not contest the Germans' right to them.
And yet it makes us uneasy, for our feeling points to the inner
discord of even these careers. Even in their complete estrange­
ment of their awareness from everything "Jewish , " something is
evident in many of them that was felt to be substantially Jewish
by Jews as well as Germans-by everyone except themselves!­
and that is true of a whole galaxy of illustrious minds from Karl
Marx and Lassalle to Karl Kraus, Gustav Mahler, and Georg
Simmel.
No one has more profoundly characterized this breaking
away of the Jews from themselves than Charles Peguy, who had
an insight into the Jewish condition rarely attained, let alone A

surpassed, by non-Jews . To him we owe the sentence : Etre

ailleurs, le grand vice de cette race, la grande vertue secrete, la
grande vocation de ce peuple. This "being elsewhere" combined
o

with the desperate wish to "be at home" in a manner at once

intense, fruitful, and destructive. It is the clue to the relationship
of the Jews to the Germans. It is at once what makes their
symbolic position so alluring and so gripping to today's observer,
and what at the time caused them to appear disgusting, to be
working under false pretenses, and to be deliberately provocative
of opposition. No benefit redounded to the Jews of Germany
from what today, under very different circumstances, invests
them with positive significance for an important part of the world
and brings them special consideration : I am thinking of the
widespread current appreciation of Jews as classic representa­
tives of the phenomenon of man's estrangement or alienation
from society. The German Jew was held to blame for his own
estrangement or alienation from the Jewish ground that had
nourished him, from his own history and tradition, and was
blamed even more for his alienation from the bourgeois society

o Being elsewhere, the great vice of this race, the great secret virtue, the great
vocation of this people.-Ed.
 JEWS AND GERMANS
that was then in the process of consolidating itself. The fact that
he was not really at home, however much and emphatically he
might proclaim himself to be-the "homelessness" that today is
sometimes accounted to his glory, in that it is taken as an image of
the condition humaine-constituted, at a time when alienation
was still a term of abuse, a powerful accusation. And it is in
keeping with so distorted a state of affairs that the great majority
of the Jews, and especially those who had the highest degree of
awareness, concurred in this judgment of their situation; this is
why, in the very teeth of the skepticism that was a part of their
German environment, they aspired to or claimed a deep attach­
ment to things German and a sense of being at home .
Thus the relations between Jews and Germans from the start
contained an accumulation of seeds of discontent that was
dangerous enough. The Jew's entry into German society was a
most multifaceted process . It is, for instance, an important fact
that during the generations of entry the Jews to a great extent
lost their own elite through baptism and mixed marriages. Yet
this fact also points to marked variations in the process, because
not all Jews were by any means prepared to go so far. It is true
that very broad segments of German Jewry were ready to
liquidate their peoplehood, but they also wished-in differing
degrees, to be sure-to preserve their Jewishness as a kind of
heritage, as a creed, as an element unknowable and indefinable,
yet clearly present in their consciousness. Although this is now
often forgotten, they were not ready for that total assimilation
that the majority of their elite was seeking to purchase at the
price of disappearance. Their feelings may have been uncertain
and confused, but the flight of their own avant-garde was more
than they were willing to accept. These continuous bloodlettings,
through which the Jews lost their most advanced elements to the
Germans, constitute a crucial-and from a Jewish perspective,
most melancholy-aspect of the so-called German-Jewish symbi­
osis, which is now being discussed with such pleasure and profuse
carelessness. It was the petite bourgeoisie, the most ordinary
citizens, who made up the main body of the German-Jewish
community during the nineteenth century and from whom a
wholly new class of leaders had to be brought forth in every
generation . Rarely does one find any descendants among twenti-
 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM I N CRISIS
eth-century Jews of those families that, after 1 8oo, led the
"breakup" in favor of things German . On the other hand, the
lower classes were almost entirely retained within the boundaries
of Judaism, albeit a Judaism now watered down-or rather dried
up and emptied-a Judaism composed of a curious mixture of the
"religion of reason " with strong, frequently disavowed, strains of
feeling. The attitude of these Jews toward the deserters fluct­
uated greatly, as is indicated by their response to the singular
phenomenon of Heinrich Heine . It ranged from sensitive rejec­
tion to almost equable indifference . Heine, to be sure, was a
borderline case. He could say of himself that he never returned to
Judaism because he had never left it.
In all this, we must not fail to consider the inner tensions of
Jewish society, which exercised no little influence on the
rel a tionship of Jews to the German environment. Germany, after
all, was the scene of especially bitter arguments between the
pious of the old school : the Landjuden and their leaders on the
one hand, and the "neologians" or Reformers on the other, with
the latter quickly gaining preponderance, if not numerically, then
socially and politically. The term assimilation was first used by its
defenders in the positive sense of an ideal; later the Zionists
threw the word back at them in derision and as a form of abuse.
They were doubly indignant at being called " assimilation­
ists . " The tendency toward assimilation, which manifested itself
in many forms, was certainly significant. Yet one cannot unequiv­
ocally say just how far the advocates of assimilation were
prepared to go at the time, and not all instances of assimilation
can be judged alike . In any case, however, there existed on the
Jewish side a strongly critical stance toward Jews and traditional
Judaism, and it is well known how often in individual cases this
stance was heightened to those extreme forms we have come to
recognize as Jewish anti-Semitism . It is, after all, to a German
Jew who had left Judaism-though, as he wrote, he of course
knew that this was impossible-that we owe what a critic once
called " the most naked exposures" of the Berlin Jewish bourgeoi­
sie that exist anywhere and will endure as a sinister document of
the German-J evvish reality; I am referring to the monologues of
Herr Wendriner, written by Kurt Tucholsky. The anti-Semites
took pains to n1ake the Jews look as bad as possible, but their
 FAREWELL 55
standard of its life? This youth is, morally viewed, a globe : one
must put oneself in its center in order to recogn ize its mendacity,
for from the outside it is unassailable and every other position
within it distorts one's perspective. No cut or thrust against it is
of any use any longer except for one thing: to see through it. It
cannot be refuted ; it can only be overcome. The only way of this
overcoming that can not be perverted is silence . Thus what I can
say here is nothing positive, which, rather, can come to view only
as the basis of my negation . Labor is oral teaching, and nothing of
it can be committed to writing except the method, and it is
exclusively the method of my silence that I wish to, and must,
express here, not in order to convert-in this surrounding an
iinpossibility for every word that does not possess prophetic
purity-but rather to bear witness to a youth that receives,
un folds, and transmits Zion and the Torah silently, a youth that
after this one necessary word of separation in ]erubbaal will be­
come visible in the one and only manner worthy of it : in silence .
The great demand of Zionism , which is eternally one, to be a
holy people, has a presupposition the misunderstanding of which
is in a real sense the chimerical basis for that objective mendacity
against which witness is to be given here . Community demands
solitude : not the possibility of together desiring the same, but
only that of common solitude establishes community. Zion , the
source of our nationhood, is the common , indeed in an uncanny
sense, the identical solitude of all Jews, and the religious assertion
of Zionism is nothing other than this : the midst of solitude
happens at the same time to be where all gather together, and
there can be no other place for such a gathering together. As long
as this center is not restored to radiant brightness, the order of
our soul, which honesty bids us to acknowledge, must be
anarchic . In galut there can be no Jewish community valid before
God. And if community among human beings is indeed the
highest that can be demanded, what would be the sense of
Zionism if it could be realized in galut? Therefore, if the demand
of Zionism is to be met, this cannot happen by way of
community. And this is the petitio principii that portends the
curse of Zionism: the pseudo-Zionist lie of community referring
itself to an affirmative will . It is the characteristic content of the
youth movement, the inner absurdity of which betrays itself in
86 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM I N CRISIS
modern Europe. It was precisely this "preeminence " that was to
spell the doom of the Jews in Germany. In their economic role,
the Jews had served as a progressive force in the development of
nineteenth-century Germany, but long after there had ceased to
be a need for that, they continued to exercise--especially in the
twentieth century-a cultural function that from the very
beginning had a wakened unrest and resistance and that never did
them any good. That the Germans did in fact need the Jews in
their spiritual world is now, when they are no longer present,
noticed by many, and there is mourning over the loss. But when
the Jews were there, they were a source of irritation, whether
they wanted to be or not, and their "preeminence " turned into
disaster for them. The great majority of Germans displayed great
reserve in the face of the increasing prominence of Jewish
intelligence and indeed the general phenomenon of the entry of
the Jews i nto German society. They were not prepared, as I have
already said, for the turbulent tempo of this process, which struck
them as uncanny.
By the middle of the nineteenth century they had at last
become reconciled to the political emancipation of the Jews, but
there was no corresponding readiness to accept the unrestrained
movement of the Jews into the ranks of the culturally active . The
Jews, of course, with their long intellectual tradition, considered
themselves made to order for such an active role when they now
sought to join the German people . But this is precisely what
stimulated a resistance that was to become increasingly vigorous
and virulent, and was finally to prevent the process of their
acceptance from having any chance of fulfillment. By and large,
then, the love affair of the Jews and the Germans remained
one-sided and unreciprocated; at best it awakened something like
compassion (as it did with Theodore Fontane, to name only one
famous, but hardly unambiguous, example) or gratitude . The
Jews did meet with gratitude not infrequently, but almost never
did they find the love they were seeking.
There were misunderstood geniuses among the Jews, proph­
ets without honor, men of mind who stood up for justice, and
who also stood up-to an astonishing degree-for the great
spirits among the Germans them selves. Thus, almost all the most
important critical interpretations of Goethe were written by
 JEWS AND GERMANS
Jews ! But among the Germans, there was never anyone who
stood up for the m isunderstood geniuses who were Jews. Nothing
in German literature corresponds to those unforgettable pages in
which Charles Peguy, the French Catholic, portrayed the Jewish
anarchist Bernard Lazare as a true prophet of Israel, and this at a
time when the French Jews themselves-out of embarrassment
or malice, out of rancor or stupidity-knew no better than to
treat one of their greatest men with deadly silence . Here a
Frenchman saw a Jew in a way the Jews themselves were unable
to see him . Nothing corresponds to this in the much-discussed
German-Jewish dialogue-a dialogue that in fact never took
place. At a time when no one cared a whit about them, no
German stood forth to recognize the genius of Kafka, Simmel,
Freud, or Walter Benjamin-to say nothing of recognizing them
as Jews. The present belated concern with these great figures
does nothing to change this fact.
Only very few Germans-some of their noblest spirits, to be
sure-possessed that pristine open-mindedness that allowed
them to see and accept the Jew as a Jew. One of them was
Johann Peter Hebel, who valued the Jew for what he had to give,
rather than for what he had to give up. But it was precisely
among liberals that unmistakable reservations about Jews were
frequently voiced. When Fritz Reuter, a typical member of the
North-German liberal intelligentsia, made a speech in 1870 to
celebrate the unification of Germany, he could think of nothing
better than to level charges against the ' ' miserable Jewish rascals
like Heinrich Heine" who were supposedly lacking in patriotism.
The feeling was widespread that the liberalism of the Jews was of
a radical nature and foreshadowed subversive tendencies. And,
indeed, during a century of prominence in journalism the Jews
did play a highly visible role in the criticism of public affairs. The
situation is completely different from their participation in the
opposite direction, which was represented almost exclusively­
most impressively to be sure-by converts like Julius Stahl and
Rudolf Borchardt. Their main role was deeply grounded in their
history as well as their social position and function.
In reaction to this role, the phenomenon of anti-Semitism­
to which the Jews responded with peculiar blindness-began to
send forth its malignant tendrils. Anti-Semitism now began to
88 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN C RISIS
assume a sterilizing and destructive significance in the increas­
ingly critical relations between the Jews and the Germans . It is
unnecessary here to emphasize the specific social and political
conditions under which the most radical forms of anti-Semitism
eventually came to rule over Germany. But nothing is more
foolish than the opinion that National Socialism came, so to
speHk, from out of the blue, or that it was exclusively the product
of the aftermath of World War I. It belongs to the debit side of
Jewish research on this aftermath that the very comfortable
theory, according to which National Socialism is a historical
accident, was invented by Jews-by Je,vs, to be sure, who have
learned nothing and forgotten much . Anti-Sem itism could not
have become as virulent as it did, or have released all its
murderous consequences , without a long prehistory. Not a few of
the nineteenth-century tracts against the Jews read today like
wholly undisguised documents of twentieth-century Nazism, and
perhaps none is more sinister than Bruno Bauer's Das Judentum
in der Fremde (Judaism Abroad) of 186g. Here one comes upon
everything that was later preach ed in the Thousand-Year Reich,
and in formulations no less radical. And this document came from
the pen of one of the leaders of the former Hegelian Left . There
was, moreover, no lack of the more · "sublime" varieties of
anti-Semitism-the kind that, shortly after World War I, found
expression in works like Hans Bliiher' s Secessio Judaica. Such
works, fluctuating between admiration and hatred, and em­
bodying a degenerate. metaphysics in the form of genteel
anti-Semitism , provided a cue for the more murderous metaphys­
ics to come. Perhaps nothing depresses us more today than the
uncertain wavering of many Germans, including some of their
finest minds, in the face of this dark swell.
Max Brad has spoken of the ideal of " distant love" as that
which should have governed relations between Germans and
Jews . The concept is a dialectical one : distance is meant to
prevent an all-too-coarse intimacy, but at the same time a desire
to bridge the gap. This could certainly have been a solution for
the period under discussion, if only both parties would have
agreed to it. Yet Brad himself admits that where there is love the
feeling of distance disappears-this was true of the Jews ; and
where there is distance no love can arise-this was true of the
 JEWS AND GERMANS Bg
main body of Germans. To the love of the Jews for Germany
there corresponded the emphatic distance with which the
Germans encountered them . We may grant that with "distant
love" the two partners could have managed more kindness,
open-mindedness, and mutual understanding. But historical sub­
junctives are always illegitimate. If it is true, as we now perceive,
that "distant love" was the right Zionist answer to the mounting
crisis in the relations between Jews and Germans, it is also true
that the Zionist avant-garde hit upon it too late. For during the
generations preceding the catastrophe, the German Jews-whose
critical sense was as famous among Germans as it was irritating to
them-distinguished themselves by an astounding lack of critical
insight into their own situation. An "edifying" and apologetic
attitude, a lack of critical candor, taints almost everything they
wrote about the position of the Jews in the German world of
ideas, literature, politics, and economics.
The readiness of many Jews to invent a theory that would
justify the sacrifice of their Jewish existence is a shocking
phenomenon, and there are countless variations on it. But
nothing, it seems to me, surpasses in sheer self-contradiction, and
a credulous demand for self-surrender that could be demanded of
no one except just us Jews, the formulation produced as late as
1935 by Margarete Susman, in full awareness of the fact that the
time had come of "the most fearful fate ever to strike the Jews. "
She wrote : "The vocation of Israel as a people i s not self-realiza­
tion, but self-surrender for the sake of a higher, transhistorical
goal. " In this case the delusion goes so far that we are asked to
believe-in the name of the prophets, who indeed did not wish
Israel to be a people like all other peoples-that the "original
meaning of the Jewish idea is the absorption of this people by
other peoples. "
What i s so terrible about this statement i s not that it has been
so devastatingly refuted by history, but that it never signified
anything except a perversion whereby Christian ideas-rejected
by Jews unto their dying breath-now presented themselves as
the demand of the greatest Jewish minds. Such solutions have
been offered to Jews again and again, and from various sources.
They bespeak a great inner demoralization, an enthusiasm for
self-sacrifice which has necessarily remained wholly without
go ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
meaning for the Jewish community itself, and which no one ever
took seriously except the anti-Semites, who found in them an
especially nefarious trick of the Jews, an especially conspiratorial
note. For it was precisely this desire on the part of the Jews to be
absorbed by the Germans that hatred understood as a destructive
maneuver against the life of the German people-a thesis
repeated indefatigably by the metaphysicians of anti-Semitism
between 1830 and 1930. Here the Jews are considered, to quote
one of these philosophers, as "the dark power of negation which
kills what it touches. Whoever yields to it falls into the hands of
death . "
This, in brief, is an analysis o f what from the very beginning
was a "false start" in the relations between Jews and Germans,
one which brought the elements of crisis inherent in the process
itself to an ever riper development.

IV

Where do we stand now, after the unspeakable horror of

those twelve years from 1933 to 1945? Jews and Germans took
very different roads after the war. The most vital segment of the
Jews attempted to build up its own society in its own land. No
one can say whether the attempt will succeed, but everyone
knows that the cause of Israel is a matter of life and death to the
Jews. The dialectic of their undertaking is obvious. They live on a
volcano. The great impetus they received from the experience of
the Holocaust-let us face it: the experience of the German
murder of the Jews, and of the apathy and the hardheartedness of
the world--has also been followed by a profound exhaustion
whose signs are unmistakable. And yet the incentive, generated
by their original insight into their true situation is still operating
effectively. The Germans have paid for their catastrophe with the
division of their country, but, on the other hand, they have
experienced a material upsurge that has placed the past years in
shadow. Between these two mountains, produced by a volcanic
eruption, can there now be a bridge, however shaky?
The abyss that events have flung open between the two can
be neither measured nor fathomed. Unlike many in Israel, I do
 JEWS AND GERMANS 91
not believe that the only possible means of overcoming the
distance is to admit the abyss into our consciousness in all its
dimensions and ramifications. There is little comfort in such a
prognosis: it is mere rhetoric. For in truth there is no possibility
of comprehending what has happened-incomprehensibility is of
its essence-no possibility of understanding it perfectly and thus
of incorporating it into our consciousness. This demand by its
very nature cannot be fulfilled. Whether or not we can meet in
this abyss, I do not know. And whether the abyss, flung open by
unspeakable, unthinkable events, can ever be bridged-who
would have the presumption to say?
Abysses are flung open by events; bridges are built by
goodwill. Bridges are needed to pass over abysses; they are
constructed; they are the product of conscious thinking and
willing. Moral bridges, I repeat, are the product of goodwill. If
they are to endure, they must be firmly anchored on both sides.
The people of Israel have suffered fearfully at the hands of almost
all the peoples of Europe. The bridges on which we meet peoples
other than Germans are shaky enough, even when they are not
burdened with the memory of Auschwitz. But-is this memory
not an opportunity as well? Is there not a light that burns in this
darkness, the light of repentance? To put it differently: fruitful
relations between Jews and Germans, relations in which a past
that is both meaningful and at the same time so horrible as to
cripple communication may be preserved and worked through­
such relations must be prepared away from the limelight. But it is
only through an effort to bring them about that we can guarantee
that official contacts between the two peoples will not be
poisoned by counterfeit formulas and demands. Already the
worm of hypocrisy is gnawing at the delicate roots! Where love is
no longer possible, a new understanding requires other ingredi­
ents; distance, respect, openness, and open-mindedness, and,
above all, goodwill.
A young German recently wrote to me expressing the hope
that Jews, when thinking of Germany, might keep in mind the
words of Isaiah : "Remember ye not the former things, neither
consider the things of old." I do not know \:vhether the messianic
age will bestow forgetfulness upon the Jews. It is a delicate point
of theology. But for us, who must live without illusions in an age
92 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM I N CRISIS
without a Messiah, such a hope demands the impossible.
However sublime it might be to forget, we cannot. Only by
remembering a past that we will never completely master can we
generate hope in the resumption of communication between
Germans and Jews, and in the reconciliation of those who have
been separated.
 S . Y. Agnon The Last
Hebrew Classic?*

In order to understand the greatness or genius of a contemporary

Hebrew writer such as S . Y . Agnon, it is necessary to consider the
state of Hebrew and Hebrew literature before Hebrew once
again became a language absorbed by infants at their mothers'
knees, children playing in the street-before its use again as a
natural means of communication and education. Before the
present generation, Hebrew enjoyed none of these advantages. It
was nourished from another source. Hebrew was the language of
a great religious tradition, and almost everything written in it was

valuable and significant in the context of that tradition. Even

after Hebrew (or, for that matter, Aramaic, so closely related to
Hebrew that to the Jewish mind it was something like a younger
sibling) was no longer in use as a spoken language by Jewish
communities, it could still hold its own as a written language
because for generation after generation it occupied a central
place in education, in the study of the Bible and the Talmud and
all writings connected with them .
Nor did Hebrew remain significant only for a numerically
small elite, as was the case with Latin, but for a very considerable
part of the community. Everyone was expected to have a
working knowledge of Hebrew, and the study of the Bible and
o A lecture in English delivered at University College, London, May 30, 1967.
Published as "S. Y; Agnon--der letzte hebriiische Klassiker?," in Gershom Scholem,
]udaica 2 (Frankfurt-am-Main : Bibliothek Suhrkamp, 1970), pp. 87-121. An English
adaptation appeared in Commentary (December 1967). The present is a revision of the
article in Commen tary based on the text in ]udaica 2. Translated by Werner J.
Dannhauser.
94 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM I N C RISIS
the Taln1ud was by no means limited to those who intended to
become rabbis or judges. In countries where Jewish intellectual
and religious life was particularly vigorous-such as Poland,
Italy, or Turkey-Hebrew represented the principal means of
expressing the spiritual life of an important segment of the male
community.
I t is true that the spark of vitality which comes to language
from women was lacking, and this lack was indeed very much in
evidence. What remained, however, was of overwhelming rich­
ness. Hebrew became the language of literary tradition insofar as
the latter claimed higher significance. Books for womenfolk were
composed in the vernacular, but almost everything else-not
only scholarly literature, but also chronicles, poetry, and even
parodies-was written in Hebrew. Biblical and talmudic associa­
tions were employed up to the hilt; the works contained a
never-ending stream of witty and surprising uses of old phrases or
of playful variations upon them. Quite often, the measure of a
Jew's education was not only his command of Bible and Talmud,
but his ability to use these sources ingeniously for secular
purposes as well.
When modern Hebrew literature began to develop, especially
in the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth, it
was built on a paradox from the start: it fed on a language of
predominantly religious tradition but strove for secular goals.
Writers of considerable talent and some, indeed, of genius did
their best to achieve this rnetamorphosis of Hebrew into a
language of secular literature. In its earlier stages this new
literature was directed mainly against the petrified state of Jewish
tradition and came to criticize the many shortcomings and basic
defects of East European Jewish society.
Later, however, with the emergence of the Zionist move­
ment, the renascence of Hebrew gravitated toward a more
positive purpose. A new life was springing up in the old land of
Israel, and Hebrew literature undertook to serve as the connect­
ing link between the disintegrating life of the Diaspora, with all
its contradictions, and the new society being erected in Palestine.
Still, even this renascence and such outstanding representatives
of it as Bialik, Tchernichowsky, and Shneur were as yet limited in
the means of expression at their disposal. Hebrew remained a
 S . Y. AGNON-THE LAST HEBREW CLASSIC? 95
language of literary tradition, and though the great writers I have
just mentioned spent their later years in Israel, the spoken
Hebrew of the new generation had no formative influence on
their language.
Agnon occupies a position at the crossroads of Hebrew. That
is a position enabling a writer of genius to attain the rank of a
classic. He can be heir to the totality of Jewish tradition and have
the chance to give the highest artistic form to the life of the
Jewish people under the reign of tradition and under the impact
of the historic forces that make for its disintegration. If he is a
great artist, he will remain incomparable. He can become a
classical master-but he will be the last of his line.
Agnon, who has spent most of his creative years in Israel, has
witnessed the development of Hebrew as a "natural" language,
as a language spoken at first in consequence of a moral decision
made by a small number of Utopians, and later by an ever­
increasing number of youngsters who have grown up in Israel
and know no other language. He was fully aware of this process,
and he knew that this metamorphosis of Hebrew involved a
decisive loss of form. When a language is no longer forged by the
study of ancient texts and conscious reflection, but rather by
unconscious processes in which the power of tradition is a minor
factor, that language is bound to become chaotic. This chaotic
quality of present-day Hebrew, which was already becoming
apparent about forty years ago, when Agnon settled permanently
in Israel, may one day become the vehicle of expression for a new
genius, but by then that language will be essentially different in
its . means and potentialities.
Agnon, with his highly developed sense of form, was obvi­
ously alarmed by this prospect of a Hebrew language liberated
from the fetters of tradition . He, too, strove for the renascence of
Hebrew, but he worked for it in the quarries of tradition and
through the potential of great forms contained in it. Being a
writer of supreme gifts, he achieved the form for which he
labored. But, to repeat, he may well be the last great author in
this medium. It is, after all, the most obvious result of the
regeneration of Hebrew as a natural language, that the words
have sloughed off the heavy ballast of historical tones and
overtones accumulated through 3,000 years of sacred literature.
g6 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
They have acquired a new · virginity; they are now ready to be
molded into new contexts from which the . old and sometimes
oppressive odor of sanctity has evaporated .
Of course, this is precisely what the writers of the last two
generations have tried to accomplish, but in the last analysis the
burdens of history were in their bones and asserted themselves
even in their revolt. In this respect, the new "innocents, " for
whom the Bible is no longer a holy book but a national saga, and
for whom rabbinical and medieval literature is a book with seven
seals, are in a happier situation than Agnon and his contempo­
raries. They are free to wrestle with the words in a completely
new emotional setting, and on a level of freedom unheard of
hitherto. They are confronted, it is true, with dangers of rebirth
which are in no way less than those of birth. Nobody can foretell
what will come of this sweep and whirl in terms of literature. For
the time being, nothing is audible but stammering. Much of
Agnon' s work is contemporary with these first stammerings, and
one can speak of a secret and mutual fascination between the
two: the occupant of the most advanced outpost of the Hebrew
language in its old sense, and the pioneers of the unbroken land
that stretches beyond. The anarchic vitality, the lawlessness and
roughness of the new language has alarmed Agnon and appears
as an object of scorn and irony in quite a few of his stories. But
the reader of Agnon cannot escape the feeling that more and
more of the master's work was produced as a kind of desperate
incantation, an appeal to those who would come after him. It is as
though he were saying, "Since you no longer accept the
continuity of tradition and its language in their true context, at
least take them in the transformation they have undergone in my
work; take them from so1neone who stands at the crossroads and
can see in both directions. "

II

I have tried to explain the condition of Hebrew and Hebrew

literature insofar as it is relevant to the task of placing Agnon' s
work in our time. But to understand the work we must also take a
look at its author. Both, to say the least, are somewhat enigmatic.
 S. Y. AGNON-THE LAST HEBREW CLASSIC? 97

It is small \Vander that over the last forty years a considerable

literature of interpretation on the meaning of Agnon' s writings
has sprung up in which widely differing and even contradictory
points of view have been argued. A number of the commentators
have indulged in much overinterpretation and have read much
into Agnon that is their own point of view.
To be sure, the manifest contradictions in his writings amount
to an open invitation to such excesses. These interpretations
concentrate upon one point: Agnon' s position on the historical,
indeed the religious tradition of Judaism. Is he to be considered a
spokesman for this tradition, a messenger delivering its message
in a highly artistic and articulate form, or should we regard him
rather as an accomplished artist who uses tradition to express all
the intricacies of the life of a Jew in our time, but who proffers no
easy answer to the old question of where we are going? Is he a
great defender of the faith, as the Orthodox have acclaimed him?
Or is he some kind of existentialist genius, showing the emptiness
of all fullness and the fullness of emptiness? Is he, perhaps, like
the king of the Moors who filled his palace with portraits of white
men, setting up an ideal which he is fully conscious can never be
attained in our times?
Agnon himself, for all his great gifts as a conversationalist, has
been very reticent when it comes to these questions. He is not a
man to commit himself. He has delivered his work and left his
readers the task of coming to terms with it, his commentators the
task of fighting it out among themselves; and, I should say, he
rather enjoys the spectacle. As a matter of fact, having known
Agnon for fifty years, I can testify to great changes in Agnon' s
own outlook over the years, and I doubt whether a harmonizing
view would do him justice. He was anything but what one could
call an observant Jew when I first knew him, but even then he
gave the impression of being a bearer of spiritual tradition. And
now, in his later years, when he has become an observant Jew, he
still gives the impression of being a man of complete intellectual
freedom and of utterly unorthodox mind.
This is confirmed by the story of his life. He began writing as
a youth, more than sixty years ago. He grew up in Buczacz in
Eastern Galicia (now Western Ukraine), an old and settled
community of no more than 8,ooo Jews and a center of Rabbinic
g8 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
scholarship. He came from a family of scholars, some of whom
strictly opposed Hasidism and all it represented, but some of
whom embraced it. The experience of his childhood reflected
both these worlds, which combined to determine the physiog­
nomy of Jewish piety in nineteenth-century Galicia. He had
hardly any schooling outside traditional talmudic education ; his
father was his main teacher in the study of the Talmud.
He spent the years of adolescence in the local bet hamidrash
(house of study), which boasted a tremendous Hebrew library;
there he became an ardent and omnivorous reader. He was a
bookworm at a very early age, but the old books fired his
imagination. He wrote notes and glosses to the old talmudic
tomes, but at the same time he started producing stories and
poems in the style of the writers of the Haskalah, the rationalist
movement that was attempting to introduce enlightenment and
European culture into Hebrew. Galicia was then one of the
centers of neo-Hebrew literature, and its writers enjoyed a great
reputation as masters of Hebrew style. Still a lad, Agnon joined
the ranks of the Zionists.
In local Hebrew and Yiddish journals that have long since
disappeared, Agnon began his literary career in 1904. An older
friend, Eliezer Meir Lipschitz, to whom he remained intimately
attached to the end, used to say to him, "Make up your mind
what you propose to be, a writer of talmudic notes, hiddushim
and pilpulim, or a writer of stories and a poet. " Agnon made his
choice early. But Yiddish soon lost its hold on him, and after
going to Palestine in 1907 (not in 1909, as is often erroneously
stated) he never again resorted to it as a vehicle of literary
expression.
.

His lifelong struggle with Hebrew as both the matter and the
form of his inspiration took shape in those first supreme efforts of
his literary genius as a storyteller, which were published in
Palestine in the years preceding World War I . Their impact was
instantaneous.
The first story by him to be published in Palestine, a most
lyrical and melancholy tale called Agunot ("Deserted Souls"),
remains a classical piece of imaginative Hebrew writing to this
day. Those with an ear for Hebrew prose-and there were quite
a few of them in Palestine in those days-realized at once that
 S. Y. AGNON-THE LAST HEBREW C LASSIC? 99

they were faced with a novel phenomenon. In 1913 the Hebrew

critic Shalom Streit said of Agunot: "An electric current ran
through our community at its reading." No Hebrew writer before
had dared to begin a short story with a long quotation from one
of the old and forgotten books, presumably a kabbalistic one, or
to use that citation as a leitmotif.
And what greater paradox could there be than the fact that
the weekly of the socialist group Hapoel Hatzair, a group
strongly influenced by Tolstoyan and narodniki ideas, published
in a long series of installments Agnon 's first book, Vehayah
he-akov le-mishor (And the Crooked Shall Be Made Straight)?
The story develops an Enoch Arden theme in a strictly traditional
Hasidic framework; it is written not so much in the style of the
old devotional books as in the style their authors would have used
had they been great artists. Joseph Haim Brenner, a convinced
atheist who was the first to recognize Agnon' s literary genius,
scraped together his last shillings to publish the story in book
form (1912) ; incidentally, the man who set it in print was a
convinced follower of Rabbi Nahman of Bratzlav, one of the
great saints of Hasidism. It is on record that both these men took
the greatest delight in the book, thereby anticipating, so to speak,
all the later contradictory attitudes of Agnon' s admirers. For
Brenner, it represented the first work of secular Hebrew
literature in which tradition had become the medium of pure art,
untouched by extraneous factors such as criticism of, or apologet­
ics for, Jewish society. For the typesetter, whom I have known
for many years, it was a true embodiment of Hasidic lore and
spirit.
In those formative years of his first stay in Palestine, Agnon
indeed felt at home in both camps. He lived with ease among the
first pioneers of the Second Aliyah, who wished to revitalize the
Jewish people through the Tolstoyan religion of work and a
humanistic renewal of hearts, rather than through social revolu­
tion. He accepted their vision of Zionism as the only hope for a
Jewish future, even if that Zionism always appears with a
peculiar paleness in his writings.
At the same time, however, he could establish close relations
with the representatives of traditional piety. There was, no
doubt, a difference of nuance in his attitude toward the two
100 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
camps. He had consciously left the world of tradition as he had
known it in his youth, but he was saturated with, and fascinated
by, that world. From the vantage point of a great movement
which attempted to transform this life, tradition and its repre­
sentatives seemed to clamor for artistic shaping. The charmed
world of the old yishuv, the pre-Zionist settlers, in those years
certainly held no message for the young Agnon, so far as his own
vision of the renascence of the Jewish people was concerned; but
it provided him with a great store of strange figures and with the
excitement this atmosphere was capable of evoking. The life of
centuries seemed to have been arrested here in a curious mixture
of immortality and decay. And this encounter challenged the
young artist who here, too, recognized a submerged part of
himself.
In those years before the war, Agnon had absorbed the life of
Jewish Palestine, and he longed to dissociate himself from both
the centers, Galicia and Palestine, which had determined his life
so far. He sought a place for further development and for the
crystalization of his artistic experiences. Thus he went to
Germany in 1912, intending to stay only a few years, but the war
overtook him and it was not until 1924 that he returned to settle
permanently in Jerusalem.
Agnon' s years in Germany were of the greatest importance to
his work. There he met a new kind of Jew who left him forever
baffled. Curious as he was about them, he was not involved with
them in any deeper sense, as he was with Galicia. Nothing
prevented him from truly feeling in exile, and at the same time
savoring the exhilaration of a man who knows where he belongs.
He was still an inveterate reader, and when I first saw him, it was
in the excellent library of the Jewish community in Berlin, where,
as he told me, he was looking for books he had not yet read.
At this time, too, he made his main contact with European
literature; he was, in particular, an avid reader of Hamsun. Even
at that time his natural inclination to perfectionism was quite
pronounced ; he wrote and rewrote his stories six or seven times, a
trait which was to become the bane of his publishers, since he
would indefatigably rewrite even during proofreading. He pub­
lished very little during those years, but he worked persistently
both at revising his older stories and at writing new ones. He also
 S. Y. AGNON-THE LAST HEBREW CLASSIC? 101

wrote a great amount of poetry at that time and a long

autobiographical novel in which he took critical stock of his
earlier years and the movements which had shaped them. The
only chapter which has been preserved and published paints one
of the most bitter and devastating pictures we have of Galician
Zionism during Agnon' s youth.
I have referred to the "only chapter, " for in June 1924 all his
manuscripts and other papers, together with his invaluable
Hebrew library, were completely destroyed by a fire that broke
out in his house in Homburg (near Frankfurt) . This catastrophe
constituted a turning point in Agnon' s life. He was never again
the same and, indeed, who can fathom the impact of such a blow
on the personality of a great artist? Agnon had to start once more
from scratch. He gave up writing poetry and never tried to
reconstruct his lost novel. He surrendered what was lost and
started again from what he had, prepared a semifinal version of
his published writings, and turned to new beginnings out of the
depths of his creative imagination.
A fe\v months after the fire, Agnon returned to Jerusalem . He
developed an ever deeper and more indissoluble bond to the city
and he adopted a conservative way of life within the framework
of the Jewish tradition. In the ensuing quarter century he
returned to the Diaspora only once, and then only after another
shock, after his house in a suburb of Jerusalem had been pillaged
by Arabs during the riots of 1929. This time he went for a short
visit to his home town, and for a longer stay of nearly a year in
Germany to see through the press the first four volumes of his
collected works, which had taken five years to prepare.
This trip was his last encounter with Europe and European
Jews, an encounter leaving an imprint on his mind and constitut­
ing a ferment for some of his most significant later writings. In
fact there was no further need for him to seek out the
Diaspora-the Diaspora �;as coming to Palestine, in ever larger
waves of aliyah. In these years his work took on ever wider
dimens!ons .
It is relevant in this connection to mention Agnon's peculiar
gifts as an anthologist. This activity represented much more than
a mere sideline in his creative work as a writer. To be sure,
Agnon was never a scholar in the sense of a person dedicated to
102 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
historical and critical analysis and to the study of phenomena
within a conceptual framework. Nevertheless, he had a penchant
for scholarship, enamored as he was of the study of primary
sources. He had a genuine feel for the significant and the curious
in the vast realm of Hebrew literature, and a talent for synthesis.
Already during his first years in Germany, he had edited, in
German, two anthologies, The Book of the Polish Jew and The
Book of Hanukkah. In Jerusalem, he devoted a considerable
amount of work and time to three anthologies into which he
inserted a great deal of himself. They represent a perfect
intermingling of his propensities for scholarship and connoisseur­
ship with his ambitions as a writer and master of form. In their
way, they, too, are outstanding examples of creative work. The
first of them is Days of Awe, A Treasury of Traditions, Legends
and Leanled Commentaries Concerning Rosh Ha-Shanah, Yom
Kippur, and the Days Between, culled from 300 volumes, ancient
and new; an abridged edition of this work exists in English.
Agnon well knew the value of this book and it was clear to him
that he would be widely plagiarized, as indeed he was. With his
caustic sense of humor he included a number of highly imagina­
tive (and imaginary) passages, culled from his own vineyard, a
nonexistent book, Kol Dodi ("The Voice of My Beloved"),
.innocently mentioned in the bibliography as a "manuscript in
possession of the author. "
The second anthology is comprised of stories and anecdotes
about books and their authors and reflects Agnon' s unquenchable
thirst for the anecdotal side of Jewish bibliography. It is a
wonderful book that for some unfathomable reason has never
been published except in a private edition. The last of these
anthologies is a great collection of sayings about the Ten
Commandments.
Agnon has given years of his life to the preparation of these
works, and they must have meant a great deal to him. In them he
turned himself into an instrument through which the pure voice
of tradition could be heard to speak with a voice of laconic
refinement, and frequently his own voice is mingled indistin­
guishably with that of the primary sources. Many years ago
Agnon had also planned a thesaurus of Hasidic stories on which
he had agreed to cooperate with Martin Buber. He had
 S. Y. AGNON-THE LAST HEBREW CLASSIC? 103

commenced the work, but the first batches of the manuscript fell
victim to the flames in Homburg, and he never returned to it.
These scholarly propensities of Agnon show his genius in the
service of craftsmanship. It is unobtrusive but nevertheless
effective. It is noteworthy that the only great Hebrew writer with
\Vhom Agnon felt perfectly at ease was the poet Haim Nahman
Bialik, who in this respect had the same inclination for creative
anthologizing.
As a matter of fact, Agnon never felt as comfortable in the
company of writers as he did in that of scholars, who surprisingly
enough appear in some of his strangest stories set against a
contemporary background. The calling of the writer or artist as
such seems to have held no mysteries for him, in contradistinc­
tion to that of the scholar, whose utter and largely hopeless
concentration on his subject matter excited a sinister fascination
in him-as, for example, it comes to the fore in Edo and Enam, an
enigmatic story about the greatness and failure of scholarship.

III

Agnon' s work over the last sixty years ranges from short
stories, some of extraordinarily small compass, to great chronicles
and novels reflecting Jewish life during many generations,
particularly the last four or five. Many critics have rightly
observed the obvious tension between the artist and the tradi­
tionalist in Agnon. It is of his essence. He started from tradition,
but only in the sense that he used it as his material. From there
he set off on a double track: on the one hand, he penetrated ever
deeper into this tradition, its grandeur and its intricacies; on the
other hand, he exposed its ambiguities and, as it were, left it in
limbo, starting instead from the insecurity, the Verlorenheit
(forlornness) and alienation of the modern Jew who must-or
fails to-come to terms with himself without the guiding lights of
a tradition that has ceased to be meaningful.
The ellipse of Agnon' s work moves between two poles
essentially, the world of Buczacz and Polish Jewry as a whole,
and the world of the new life in the old center, the land of Israel.
Both of these worlds are portrayed on the two levels mentioned
104 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
above, a circumstance that has proved confusing to many of his
readers.
The world of established Jewish values and the world of utter
confusion often seem to be separated by two or three genera­
tions, but this first impression is somewhat misleading. For there
are great tensions even within the world of tradition, notwith­
standing its seeming simplicity; and the duality of harmony and
disintegration is visible as well in the struggles of the writer's own
times. Now confusion seems to be predominant, but a delicately
balanced equilibrium exists even now. A forlorn corner like the
little town of Buczacz could still contain the entire world of
human passions and ambitions, of infinite richness and abysmal
tragedy, just as the struggle for a new life in the old land would
have comprised the infinite ambiguities and inner problems of
Zionism, had Agnon carried out his intention and given us the
promised continuation of his novel on the Second Aliyah, called
Tmol Shilshom (Not Long Ago) .
Agnon began by writing short stories and in this mode he
almost at once achieved a perfection leaving the reader breath­
less. More than twenty years of intense productivity passed
before he published his first long book, a chronicle of Jewish life
in Hasidic Galicia nearly 150 years ago which in many ways
stands on the borderline between a story and a novel, being itself
full of what the author calls "stories within a story. "
Many of these first stories, which gained Agnon a wide
reputation and which must be considered classics of their kind,
are legends of the Jewish past. The secret of their perfection lies
in the fact that they succeeded in expressing an infinite wealth of
content in infinitesimal space. Unsurpassed in this respect are his
masterpieces in the third volume of his collected writings, many
of which are suffused by a spirit of immense sadness and at the
same time hold out a great promise of consolation.
This intermingling of consolation and sadness is a profoundly
Jewish feature of Agnon's creativity. There is, for example, the
story of Azriel Moshe the Porter, an ignoramus who grows
enamored of the books in the great library of the bet hamidrash
and teaches himself the titles of all the books whose contents he
will never be able to grasp; he becomes the keeper of the library,
dying a martyr's death while shielding the books with his body
 S. Y . AGNON-THE LAST HEBREW CLASSIC? 105

during the hour of persecution. Then there is the story of the

messenger from the Holy Land who, while delivering a talmudic
discourse before the congregation, is put to shame by its learned
members who confuse him with their objections until he leaves
the town in tears; the synagogue building, witness to his shame,
sets out after him.
A num her of these legends are inspired by some colorful
talmudic saying. Another story concerns an impoverished vinegar
maker, all alone in this world, who saves up penny after penny in
order to make his way to the Holy Land; uncertain as to where
he should hide his money for safekeeping, he places it in an
almsbox under a crucifix at the crossroads. Upon finally coming to
fetch his money, he is arrested for robbing sacred funds.
However, "that man," as Jesus is called in Hebrew, comes to his
prison cell and takes him to Jerusalem, where he is found dead by
his compatriots. Agnon, who was attacked by fools (of which
there is no lack even in Israel) for having glorified Christ in this
case, later maintained that this story was a bitter allegory about
the failure of political Zionism, which clung to the coattails of
empty English promises, by which one at best arrives in the Holy
Land but thereby loses one's life by crashing into the hard
ground of reality. I do not believe this cunning interpretation.
Through the years Agnon has produced a great number of
these stories of very short or medium length. Some relate a single
episode, while in others an entire drama is condensed into a
dense narrative. I have mentioned some examples of the former.
Among the more dramatic stories, it is difficult to say which of
their great number deserves the greatest praise. I will mention
only three, which in my opinion are of the highest possible merit.
They are "The Tale of the Scribe, " "The Doctor's Divorce, " and
"Two Scholars Who Lived in Our Town. "
The first story tells of a Torah scribe whose wife craves a
child and asks her husband, a man of irreproachable piety, to
intercede with Heaven on her behalf. But she dies young, before
her wish is granted. The scribe, whose craft is described with
much Hasidic and kabbalistic detail, writes a Torah scroll in her
memory and, having finished it, dies on the night of Simhat Torah
in an ecstatic-erotic vision of his wife. The story is told without
any psychological instrumentation, but with a full account of the
106 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS

dramatic tension in the life of Raphael the Scribe. It is one of

Agnon' s few stories written in a highly solemn style and one
would almost expect to read it on a scroll in the ceremonial
letters used by scribes. I vividly recall the evening of the Hebrew
Club of Berlin, in the spring of 1 9 1 7, when Agnon read this story
in manuscript. It made a tremendous impression, and I can still
hear the mournful and monotonous intonation of his voice,
reminiscent of that used in the synagogue by the reader who
recites the haftarah.
The other two stories are quite different; in each, one act
determines the course of a whole life. A Viennese doctor marries
a nurse who has told him that before meeting him she has had an
affair with another man. But this knowledge destroys the
marriage from the start. He cannot live with such knowledge and
thus a deep and genuine love is wrecked from within.
In contradistinction to the utter laconism of these pages
is-in "Two Scholars Who Lived in Our Town"-the full
description of the lives of two friends that develop under an
ever-darkening shadow, caused by a slight, unkind remark made
quite inadvertently by one of them in the course of a casual
conve �sation. One of the friends, Rabbi Shlomo, goes on, as it
seems, fron-l one success to another, and tries in vain to placate
the silent but inexorable enmity of his friend Rabbi Moshe
Pinhas, whose heart has been hurt beyond repair, and whose
bitterness grows with every new step taken by his friend toward
reconciliation. Both are first-rank talmudists, but they cannot live
together in the same world. The story is told with uncanny logic
and magnificent psychological insight. The light of the Torah is
not enough to warm a frozen heart. This bitter truth, however, is
brought home not with the polemical passion that any earlier
Hebrew writer would have employed, but with a depth of
understanding and a superior serenity and objectivity that makes
it one of the greatest stories of all Hebrew literature.
I have referred to the human passions which have their
natural place in Agnon' s work. Yet, with some rare and
remarkable exceptions, Agnon' s writing is distinguished by a
singular stillness, by an absence of pathos and exultation. He
hardly ever raises his voice, and his writings are free from even a
 S. Y. AGNON-THE LAST HEBREW CLASSIC? 10 7

trace of expressionistic hysteria. Not infrequently he describes

situations which could do with a bit of the latter, but he never
despairs of conveying them in a still, small voice.
Without doubt, he was greatly helped in this respect by the
extraordinary sobriety of rabbinic prose, of the style of the
Midrash and Mishnah, which have had such a profound influence
on his manner of writing. This prose dislikes exuberance and
emotionalism and makes its restraining force felt even when
Agnon deals with situations of high emotional tension.
That is particularly true of his Hasidic stories, a genre in
which the depiction of the impact of mysticism on Jewish life has
led almost every other Hebrew writer who attetnpted to portray
it into sentimentality. Agnon, however, deeply steeped in the
unemotional prose of kabbalistic literature, found a different way
to respond to the challenge of such situations. A long road leads
from the highstrung sentimentality characterizing the famous
Hasidic stories of I . L. Peretz to Agnon' s descriptions of the
world of Hasidism. Even in this, part of his work is dominated by
a kind of perfect bonhomie and urbanity. The miraculous is
closely interwoven with stark reality; indeed, the former is part
of the latter. Moreover, it is not the saints and their ecstatic
raptures who are the authentic objects of his interest-they
appear mostly in quotations or in what other people tell of
them-but the little man, the faithful member of the 1-lasidic
community for whom all aspects of life are at the same time rea�
and full of unfathomable mystery. It is he who is the true "hero"
of these tales.
Withal, the ground on which even the pious Jew treads is thin
enough. Dark powers lurk everywhere, and the magic of the Law
barely suffices to keep them at bay. It takes very little for the
ground of belief to crack, leaving man, be he within the domain
of the Law or without it, prey to the demons that may or may not
be mere extensions of his own uncertainties and confusions.
Agnon, who has given great attention to this side of human
experience, takes no stand as to the true character of the arena in
which these strange happenings occur. His stories about such
uncanny experiences, told with utmost lucidity and realistic
simplicity, are collected in his Book of Deeds or Book of
108 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
Happenings, which has aroused much controversy because of the
obviously Kafkaesque nature of the experiences described. o

Some see these stories as a direct counterpart to Agnon' s

other writings, which stray far from the world of tradition, the
ambiguities of which he so often puts into sharp relief. Others
regard them, rather, as merely a complement to his earlier
oeuvre, and many simply prefer to look the other way and to take
no notice at all of the existence of this disturbing book. But that it
is meant to express something of the greatest relevance to
Agnon' s purpose is clear. The paradox inhering in every step a
man undertakes is already expressed in the utter incongruity of
the title-the Hebrew word maasim means at one and the same
time "deeds, " "stories, " and "happenings"-for what this book
stresses is precisely the impossibility of performing even the
smallest deed without becoming enmeshed in an inexorable
jumble and confusion from which there is no escape, except
through some kind of deus ex machina, or by waking up as from
an oppressive dream .
In fact, some of these stories seem to me to be simply that:
descriptions of dreams. But this dreamlike quality also applies to
the simplest happening in life. The storyteller wants, say, to mail
a letter or to go and meet a friend, but these prove to be hopeless
undertakings. What determines this hopelessness cannot be
unequivocally determined. It may be the simplest obstacles and
obstructions which stand in the hero's way, or something like
what Friedrich Theodor Vischer calls " the malignity of the
objects" ; but it can just as well be a nightmare of surrealistic
proportions. In any case, it always becomes perfectly clear that
there is not the slightest security in even the smallest step of real
life, let alone the sphere of transcendence .
That all this should be said by a writer who is in full
command of the heritage of that tradition, the absence or
inaccessibility of which has frequently been noted as the
determining characteristic of Kafka's universe, should certainly
o I wish only to refer to one of the many characteristic traits that Kafka and Agnon
have in common. Max Brod says of Kafka, " It was almost impossible to talk to Kafka
about abstractions. He thought in images and spoke in images. He tried to express what he
felt simply and in the most direct manner possible, but nevertheless the result was usually
very complicated and led to endless speculation without any real decision." This is
precisely true of Agnon as well, as I have seen over and over again.
 S. Y. AGNON-THE LAST HEBREW CLASSIC? 109

set us thinking. Agnon, to be sure, was in no way the first to

recognize or to be shocked by, the permeability, the loosened
state of tradition. He could, and possibly did, learn much about
this state of things from the teachings and famous tales of Rabbi
Nahman of Bratzlav, which have that same intrinsic quality. If
the "Story of the Seven Beggars" had not already been told by
Rabbi Nahman, it could have become an Agnon story and would
have taken on a perfectly Kafkaesque aura.

IV

After his return to Jerusalem Agnon produced a number of

full-length novels, the most outstanding of which might perhaps
more aptly be described as chronicles. As chronicles of Jewish life
in the century between 1830 and 1930, three of them in a way
constitute a trilogy which, for all the diversity of its parts, is
bound together by the unity of historical dynamics. I refer to his
three novels The Bridal Canopy ( 193 1), A Guest for the Night
( 1 940), and Not Long Ago ( 1946) . In terms of historical continu­
ity, the third novel should be considered the second, if incom­
plete, part of the trilogy. It is a pity that as of now only the first is
available in English translation .
The Bridal Canopy depicts the wanderings and adventures in
Eastern Galicia of Rabbi Judel Hasid, who has set out to collect a
dowry for his daughters. Without earthly goods, he has under­
taken the journey with a letter of recommendation of the rabbi of
Apta, one of the great figures of Hasidism . Rabbi Judel is a
perfect embodiment of Hasidism in its prime, when, around
1830, it had conquered a very large segment of Galician Jewry.
He is at home in the Holy Books and in the sayings and tales of
the great tzaddikim; these constitute for him the true face of
reality which whatever happens to him on his travels can serve
only to confirm . His is a serenity of mind that can never be
perturbed because everything fits into the sacred scheme ex­
plained in the Holy Books. The most incredible things befall him
and his coachman, his down-to-earth Sancho Panza, and the
prospects of his success seem less than dim . But all this fails to
touch him . The assurance of the holy Rabbi of A pta, who has sent
1 10 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
him on his way, means much more to him than all the vicissitudes
and adversities of life.
I noted before that Agnon' s stories, especially those of his
early years, are suffused with an atmosphere of great sadness. In
The Bridal Canopy, however, Agnon' s delicate humor comes to
the fore. He never offers the slightest criticism of his hero's
conduct, which involves him in such an unending chain of
absurdities. In telling the story, he plays it straight and lets
dialogue and situation speak for themselves. The first stories of
Agnon's Book of Deeds were composed at about the same tim� as
The Bridal Canopy. They are, as it were, two sides of the same
coin, but if Rabbi Judel had been the central figure of Kafka's
trial, he would have waited patiently for the repeal of the verdict.
Much of the naked absurdity of The Book of Deeds is already
present in The Bridal Canopy, but it is resolved by humor and,
finally, by a miracle at which Kafka himself would have been the
last to be surprised.
Moreover, the canvas of Jewish life, before it was affe cted by
the impact of modern times, is painted in precise and colorful
detail. Agnon belongs to the category of craftsmen who take
details seriously. Rabbi Judel will never take a step that is not
vouchsafed by the Holy Books, and each and every ceremony or
superstitious hocus-pocus is in strict conformity to the literary
sources. The great rabbis who are quoted are flesh and blood and
have lived and their books exist. (This precision characterizes the
whole of Agnon' s work, and even the most minute details
concerning Berlin streetcars are accurate. )
Eighty years later, however, the scene-and much more than
the scene-has changed. Yitzhak Kummer, the hero of Not Long
Ago, is the grandson of Rabbi Judel. Hasidism and, for that
matter, Jewish tradition have broken up. The magnificent
impulse has been exhausted and a new ideal, the rebirth of the
Jewish people in its old homeland, now arouses the enthusiasm of
the young. It is a revolutionary beginning although it purports to
be, at the same time, a continuation of the past, albeit in a
transformed shape. It is never made completely clear what the
place of religious tradition in all this is or will be. Tradition, too,
has been worn out and is manifestly in a state of crisis. Where it
still lingers on-and it certainly does in no small measure-it
 S. Y. AGNON-THE LAST HEBREW CLASSIC? 111

keeps within closed boundaries and its attraction as a living force

for the outsider is negligible. After all, Hasidism was the last great
social reality in which, under the guidance of a great idea,
Judaism as a living form was powered from within. At the
beginning of the twentieth century, Zionism was to be the new
driving force, born out of the crisis of Jewish life in the Diaspora
and calling for a new metamorphosis. I say it called for such a
metamorphosis, but it had obviously not yet produced it, and the
birth pangs of the new Jewish society were to be cruel and
perilous indeed.
This is the atmosphere that is brought to life in Agnon' s
masterpiece. Like Agnon himself, Kummer goes as a very young
man to Palestine, where everything is in transition. He cannot
find his place, even though he is prepared to take upon himself
any chore required of him in the life of the new yishuv. Thus he
moves between two societies, the old one in Jerusalem and the
new one in recently founded Tel Aviv and in the agricultural
settlements. The positive side of the new life, even in its most
problematic aspects, is visible more or less only as background; it
is barely sketched.
Agnon planned to make the life of these young pioneers who
clung to labor in the new settlements and the kibbutzim just then
arising the center of another novel, as promised at the end of Not
Long Ago. But it has not appeared to this day. Thus we are left
.only with the tribulations of a lost soul, described in loving detail
with a mixture of melancholy and humor.
Agnon possesses a keen sense of the melancholy emptiness
that shows through the busy bustle of the new life. His hero is
forever seeking some fulfillment whose substance he is unable to
define. In time he comes to Jerusalem and is strangely attracted
by its haunting atmosphere. His adventures there-adventures of
a restless seeker after redemption in a stagnant life-constitute
the core of the book. He strives to reestablish a genuine relation
to the world of tradition, which increasingly seems to hold out to
him some great promise that he can find himself at home. But it is
all in vain. Something is wrong from the beginning. This
"something" is made symbolically clear in the surrealistic
goings-on between Kummer and a stray dog. It all begins with an
incidental j oke and it ends as tragedy. Kummer is utterly
1 12 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN C RISIS
unaware of what he has done to the dog on whose back he
(working as a painter at the time) jokingly wrote, with the
remaining paint in his brush, the words kelev meshugah ("mad
dog"). In a piece of perfect art, using the modern technique of
stream of consciousness, the author relates how this inscription,
unknown to the dog, becomes the instrument by which the hero's
life, as well as that of the dog, is destroyed. The researches of this
dog, if I may be permitted to refer to his musings in that way, are
a counterpart to the experiences and quest of Kummer, which
also come to no good end.
Zionism, to be sure, has proclaimed a new life, but it would
be too much to say that anywhere in Agnon' s work has it been
seen to be attained. It would be much better to say that in
Agnon'·s writing Zionism appears basically as a noble failure,
while everything else is even worse, namely a sham. As for the
old life, notwithstanding all its past glory, there is, in our time, no
way back. To the extent that Agnon' s stories and novels take
place in our time, they move between these two impossibilities.
Nostalgia is no solution. To be conscious of the greatness of our
past is still to be far from having a key to our own problems. A
key may exist somewhere, but it is not ready for use, and the
locksmith who could forge a proper fit has yet to be found.
Nowhere is this forlornness between past and future depicted
with greater precision than in the last novel of Agnon's trilogy,
the novel A Guest for the Night, the excellent translation of
which into German undoubtedly played a great part in the
decision of the Nobel Prize Committee. Whereas Not Long Ago is
placed in the years before World War I, this book chronicles a
visit which the narrator, after an absence of twenty years, pays to
his home town.
Among the melancholy works abounding in Agnon's oeuvre,
this book is by far the most melancholy. The Hebrew original
appeared in 1939, two years before the German murder of the
Jews, which physically destroyed the community portrayed in
this book. But what we see here is the death of a Jewish town
before it was drowned in actual blood. The narrator comes for a
visit from the land of Israel. That he had followed the message of
the new life and left his home town was in its time itself a sign of
Jewish life in its positive aspects, for the struggle and polemics of
 S . Y. AGNON-THE LAST HEBREW CLASSIC? 1 13

that time had an object and a meaning. Now, however, life in

Szybuscz-a thin disguise for Buczacz-becomes empty, idle,
and miserable ; it is perishing in resignation and resentment and
even the promises of Zionism have become doubtful and
questionable.
It is the year 1930, and the narrator himself has suffered
during the Arab riots of 1929. There is no ultimate purpose to his
visit, and his coming is but that of a wayfarer stopped for the
night. Clearly the image of his home town has never left him, and
during a break in his life in the new land he wishes to see again
the city in which so much of himself is rooted. But he no longer
finds what he came to seek. He encounters instead the horror of
decline and decay, a horror no less sinister for its ignorance of the
murder yet to come. The narrator arrives full of the vivid images
of his town as it was in his youth.
It is the utter incongruity of the old and the new experience
of life in its fullness and life in its full decline that is at the center
of the novel. At every step, remembrance of things past
intertwines with the present experience of the visitor. The sad
reality of the town confronts him, but he tries to establish a
continuity with a past that has vanished forever. If, as I have said,
Kummer's efforts in Jerusalem failed, all the more so is the
narrator's attempt in Szybuscz bound to fail. There he begins a
life whose perfectly illusionary character becomes ironically
visible in the course of the narrative.
Irony permeates the book from beginning to end. His
nostalgia focuses upon the old house of study, whose key is
delivered to him with a disdainful shrug by its last keepers when
they set out to emigrate into the wide world, presumably to
America. The only people he can attract to fill it again are those
who are too poor to heat their own homes during the long winter
and who come to warm themselves in the old place where the
heating is paid for by the narrator. The key to the old house of
study gets-not wholly unsymbolically-lost, and the narrator
must have a new one made; upon his departure it finally passes to
a Communist who had gone to Palestine ten years before as an
ardent Zionist but after enduring much suffering and disappoint­
ment had returned to his old town . The debit side of Zionism
finds its spokesman in him.
1 14 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS

What, then, is this debit side, according to Agnon? It is the

reign of empty phrases and bombastic oratory not followed by
action; it is held up to scorn in very many of Agnon' s writings
about the Jews of our time. The new key to the old house of
study that Agnon has left with the disappointed-Zionist-turned­
Communist is in itself an ironical symbol; and it is small \\'onder
that the old key, deemed lost, turns up rather surprisingly, but
perhaps not all that surprisingly, in the narrator's bag upon his
return to Jerusalem. In contradistinction to Not Long Ago, there
is a key in this novel, but it fits nowhere in the new land. But
there is a secret hint, however slight, of messianic restoration and
integration, as is indicated in the old talmudic saying: "Even the
houses of study and the synagogues in exile are destined to be
transplanted to the land of Israel. ; '
As I have noted, the efforts o f the narrator to establish a
genuine and living relationship to his town, especially those he
has known in his youth or their relatives, are in the main
unsuccessful. The reason may be that there is no longer any true
reality in Sczybucz and that life there has a somewhat ghostlike
quality. But another factor may also be involved: most surpris­
ingly, the narrator's mind is set on the restoration of the past. He
comes as a visitor from the sphere of the new life, but he brings
no message along that would make him efficacious. It is not only
the people he encounters who are slow and inflexible; he himself
succumbs to this atmosphere. Although he befriends a group of
halutzim who are preparing themselves for their aliyah to
Palestine, his visit to them remains a romantic interlude. The
silence and inability to respond of most of the other people he
meets exerts a much greater attraction for him, and his heart goes
out to them. Thus there unfolds a picture of Polish Jewry in a
little town on the eve of the Holocaust, written with great love
but at the same time with perfect sincerity. Somewhere in his tale
the narrator says, "When I was young I could s·e e in my mind all I
wished to see; nowadays I do not see either what I wished to see
or what I am shown." What then does he see? That is what the
book is about.
 S. Y. AGNON-THE LAST HEBREW C LASSIC? 1 15

These are some highlights of Agnon' s work before he fully

realized the impact and significance of the destruction of
European Jewry. The main body of his later work has not yet
been collected, but is scattered through various journals and daily
newspapers. Moreover, much of what he has written is appar­
ently still unpublished.
Here I should like only to stress two tendencies that stand out
in many of these later writings.
There is first of all the predominant wish to emphasize the
ritual aspects of Jewish life. Formerly, Agnon took them largely
for granted. Now, however, there is an almost morbid effort on
his part to stress each and every detail of ritual in his narrative,
an effort that scarcely favors the progress of the particular story
being told. For all their breathtaking perfection of language,
much in these writings seems to be of greater relevance to
students of folklore and Hebrew style than to readers of
literature. We observe a frenzied endeavor to save for posterity
the forms of a life doomed to extinction. It is a somewhat sad
spectacle, for one notices the intention and becomes annoyed.
The second tendency now coming to the fore has to do with a
curious widening of Agnon' s retrospection. He no longer tells the
story of the last four or five generations, but goes back much
farther. Thus he may pretend to be editing the family papers of
his ancestors and thereby covering important episodes in Jewish
history over the last 400 years; or he may even undertake to tell
the story of his own soul in its transmigrations since the days of
Creation, a most peculiar autobiography. He sees himself as
being present at all stages of Biblical and post-Biblical history
and provides, as it were, eyewitness accounts of the most
arresting events over thousands of years, out of a deep_ sense of
identification with the Jewish people. This metahistorical autobi­
ography is contained in a book, Radom Ve-kisse (Stool and
Throne), of which large fragments have been published during
recent years. Whereas it may be said with regard to all his
preceding work that there was never a total identification of the
author with the narrator, this tension, arising from nonidentifica-
1 16 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
tion, is now gone. Gone, too, is the novelistic element and the
narrative is transformed into a plain chronicle of what has
.
happened to the author's own self. There is no longer the
unfolding of a story, but rather the undialectical juxtaposition of
events told in separate paragraphs, each under its own heading.
It seems to me a most peculiar work, but I would not venture
to judge it on its literary merits before it is published as a whole.
The author's dialectical attitude toward his own experience and
toward his tradition, which was so predominant in his other
writings, has been abandoned, and that, I would almost say, is a
great pity. For, if I were to reduce to one formula what I think is
the core of Agnon' s genius, I would say: it is the dialectics of
simplicity.
 Agnon in Germany:
Recollections*

I came to know Agnon in the days of our youth, during and after
World War I, and our friendly and close relations stem from this
time.
By that time a great reputation preceded Agnon in the circle
of Zionist youth, insofar as they sought to become intimate with
the Hebrew language and literature. To be sure, the hunger for
Hebrew and for knowledge of the sources of our literature was
limited to a fairly narrow group. Agnon, however, obliged these
rare birds with great affection. We first read about him in a small
literary collection, published by the Zionist Association of
Germany in 1916, and meant for those young Zionists who served
in the \Var. This book was called Loyalty (Treue) and contained
several stories by Agnon and a big section from the German
translation of his first book And the Crooked Shall Be Made
Straight ( Und das Krumme wird grade), together with introduc­
tory remarks about Agnon written by Martin Buber and in
Buber' s characteristic, slightly elevated style. It said there of
Agnon that he had "dedication to Jewish things. " Dedication
( Weihe) was, coming from Buber, a word of the highest
appreciation, though it was not completely clear to us what he
really meant by it. ,
Even before I came to know Agnon personally, I had often
seen him in the reading room of the library of the Jewish
o A speech in Hebrew delivered in the house of the President of Israel, November 16,
1 966, in celebration of Agnon's receiving the Nobel Prize. Expanded and published as
"Agnon in Deutschland: Errinerungen, " in Gershom Scholem, ]udaica 2 (Frankfurt-am­
Main: Bibliothek Suhrkamp, 1 9 70), pp. 122-32. Translated from the German by Werner J.
Dannhauser.
1 18 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
community in Berlin, where he indefatigably leafed through the
card index of the Hebrew catalog. I asked him later what he
sought so intently there . He answered with a guileless-ironic
wide-eyedness, "Books that I have not yet read. " For he came
from a city in Galicia in whose bet hamidrash (house of study)
many thousands of Hebrew volumes were to be found that he
had devoured in his youth, and he knew how to tell some story or
other about each book and its author. At that time, he was a very
slender, almost emaciated young man with sharp features. Only
somewhat later, about the time we came to know each other, did
his face and figure round out. I met him at his first translator's,
the lawyer Max Strauss (the brother of the poet Ludwig Strauss),
an unusually gifted, very sensitive, and magnificent-looking
young man. He was of the same age as Agnon but treated him
with great politeness and respect, like a rare example of the
species man. Strauss had a very fine feeling for language, but was
not wholly secure in his knowledge of Hebrew and consulted a
number of acquaintances, among them also me (who had written
a wild article against a translation from Yiddish that had just been
published) about questions of Hebrew style and Hebrew usage.
Agnon was surrounded by an aura of solitude and not a little
Weltschmerz, a delicate melancholy, as was becoming to sensitive
young persons . At that time he wrote many poems, over which
hovered a spirit of infinite isolation. When, some years later, after
the end of World War I, we \Vere living in Munich, he read a
number of them to me. They have all been burned. Only one of
them, which I transcribed into German verse, is still among my
papers in the original text and in translation.
On the other hand, one could often find Agnon in the
company of young men and girls. He attempted to step out of
himself. Not always did he succeed in this, and then he often sat
there silently, but when he did engage in a conversation, he
overflowed with old stories, anecdotes and words of the old sages,
and we, young Jews with a German upbringing, were enchanted
by him . Naturally, at the time we spoke German with him, even
though Agnon's German was quite peculiar, with its Galician
accent, half-Yiddish syntax, and with its cadence of Hasidic
anecdotes. Sometimes he spoke with the greatest shyness and
reticence, but sometimes also with a certain firmness. All this
 AGNON IN GERMANY: RECOLLECTIONS 1 19

very much raised him in our esteem . This, after all was the time
when a kind of veritable cult of the Eastern Jews (Ostjuden)
reigned in Germany, which represented a backlash against the
arrogance and presumption against them, which at the time were
accepted attitudes in the circle of assimilated Jews from which
we were descended. For us, by contrast, every Eastern Jew was a
carrier of all the mysteries of Jewish existence, but the young
Agnon appeared to us as one of its most perfect incarnations.
I recall an evening in May 1917 in Berlin's Hebrew Club,
which was frequented almost exclusively by Russian, Polish, and
Palestinian Jews. A born Berliner like myself stood out like a sore
thumb there. On this evening Agnon read one of his most perfect
stories, "The Tale of the Scribe, " which at the time was not yet in
print. Even now the deep impression made by Agnon' s story is
present in me, and I still hear the reverberation of Agnon' s
delicate and plaintive voice as he read his story in a kind of
inward-turned, monotonous singsong. It was like an illustration of
the word of the poetess about the "languages which are notched
like harps. "
At that time he set great value on sharply distinguishing
between Agnon the artist and Agnon the human being. It is
characteristic of this that he protested at once when I addressed
him by his Hebrew nom de plume, "Agnon . " " My name is
Czaczkes, " he used to correct me. When I asked him what he
had against being called Agnon, he explained to me that Agnon
was, no doubt, a very beautiful literary name, but how much
could there be to a name he had invented himself and which did
not occur in the Holy Books, while the name Czaczkes could be
found expressly among the mystical names of angels in the Book
of Raziel (an ancient Hebrew book about angelology) . Even at
that time I was unable to take this argument really seriously.
Indeed, eventually, when he returned to Palestine at the end of
1924 , he let-at my urging-his civil name be exchanged for his
literary one and came once and for all to be called Agnon . I was
at that time a librarian of the Jewish National Library in
Jerusalem and said that with us he would be listed by the name of
Agnon and that no remonstrations would be accepted.
As far as I know, during World War I he lived mainly from
his work as literary adviser of the "Jewish Publication House" of
120 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
Dr. Aron Eliasberg, who was particularly fond of Agnon even
though the former was a pronounced "Litvak, " which is to say, a
Lithuanian Jew, and Litvaks and Galicians in general could not
stand each other. (Today, when all have fallen under the hand of
the same murderer, these controversies are forgotten. ) Agnon
edited at least two books which at that time were published in
Gennan by the "Jewish Publication House," The Book of the
Polish Jew and The Book of Hanukkah (I already collaborated on
the last one as translator). I remember that my first familiarity
with one of the most famous works of kabbalistic literature, the
book Hemdat Yamim (The Adornment of Days), which describes
exactly how a Jew must comport himself if he wishes to lead his
life according to kabbalistic principles, stemmed from a discus­
sion with Agnon about the depiction of the Hanukkah festival in
that book.
At that time, Agnon spent every morning writing in his room .
Many of his later writings date back to this period, even though
what was written at that time, insofar as it was not already
published, perished in the great fire in his house in Homburg. At
first I could still quite well decipher the handwriting of his letters
and the stories he gave me to read and also to translate. But even
at that time he already showed a marked tendency to transform
his handwriting into a kind of secret writing that puts the eyes of
the reader at a loss. In the course of time things went so far that if
his wife Esther wished to do one a favor, she simultaneously
enclosed a transcription of his letters in order to facilitate the
work of deciphering his secret writing, which resembled fly-spots
rather than Hebrew letters. It also happened that Agnon wished
to honor his friends. Then he would send his things to them in a
form that was a joy to behold, and one could notice that his heart
was drawn to the calling of the Torah-scribe, the Jewish
calligrapher. I still see before me the complete copy of And the
Crooked Shall Be Made Straight, in one of its innumerable
versions, which Agnon had made for his friend and patron
Salman Schocken in Zwickau, later his publisher, and which he
showed me before he sent it. Whoever wants to see an example
of the author's beautiful handwriting can presumably still admire
it in the Schocken Library in Jerusalem, where it ought to be
lying among many other papers of Agnon's.
 AGNON IN GERMANY: RECOLLECTIONS 121
I said that in the morning Agnon remained alone with his
work. But during the afternoon and evening he already at that
time indulged his sense for conversations and going for walks.
Many hours have I spent walking with him through the streets of
Munich, Frankfurt, and Homburg and have listened to his torrent
of speech, and presumably also talked quite a bit myself. If I have
won his heart it ought to be owing to three things. I was about
ten years younger than he and his personality made a deep
impression on me, and I very much admired him, just as at the
time I was full of admiration for several Russian Jews with whom
I was living in the same boardinghouse in Berlin, when my father
threw me out of the house because of my Zionism. But these
Russian Jews-like the deceased Dr. Zvi Kitain and Zalman
Rubashoff-Shazar, the current President of the state of Israel who
is hopefully destined for a long life to come among us-were, in
accordance with their disposition and character, enlighteners and
"enlightened men. " Agnon, however, came, as it were, from very
far away; he was no intellectual but rather a man from the world
of creativity in which the fountains of imagination bubbled most
richly. His conversations had a thoroughly profane character and
content, but he spoke in the style of the heroes of his stories, and
there was something infinitely attractive about his manner of
speaking.
I gave expression to my admiration for him in two sonnets
which I wrote in German in praise of Menashe Chayim, the hero
of And the Crooked Shall Be Made Straight. One of them read:

MENASHE C HAYIM 0

Du, der das Leben sich vergessen macht

unsterblich ist es in Dir auferstanden.
Da Du in Not vergingst, in Schmach und Schanden,
bist Du zur hochsten Ordnung aufgewacht . .
Dein Dasein ward dem Schweigen dargebracht,
in das nur klagend unsre W orte fanden,
doch nicht wie unsre Klagen Deine branden,
denn des Siloah Wasser fliessen sacht.
o Menashe Chayim literally means "who makes life forget."
122 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
Dein Leben steht im Licht der letzten Zeit,
aus deiner Stille Offenbarung spricht.
U nendlich gross erstrahlt in Dir das Leid,
Du aber bist das Medium das es bricht.
Und heisst solch Armut Leid und Irrsal nicht
Unschuld vor dem verborgenen Gericht?

(You, who makes himself forget life,

immortally it has been resurrected in you.
Because you perished in need, in disgrace and shame,
You have awakened to the Highest Order.
Your existence was offered to silence
into which our words could only enter when lamenting,
but not like our laments did yours surge,
for the waters of Shiloam flow softly.
Your life stands in the light of the final days
Out of your stillness revelation speaks.
Infinitely greatly does grief radiate from you
But you are the medium that breaks it.
And is the name of such poverty, grief, and erring
Not innocence before the hidden Judgment?)

I sent them to Agnon and thereby earned a place in his

heart-evidently I was the first to write poems about his books.
But perhaps a contributing factor was the youthful enthusiasm
which caused me to return to the primary sources and ·which was
bound to awaken his sympathy. We agreed in our judgment of
many phenomen� of Jewish life in Germany and poured out our
hearts to each other in critical speeches about our surroundings,
about people, and about literary conditions. At that time Agnon
had formed a friendship with some Germans, men with heads on
their shoulders, and was accustomed to deliver speeches of praise
to me about them. To tell the truth, Agnon, who came from a
foreign place, had by virtue of his intuition a better and deeper
understanding for many a German than I did.

Toward the end of World War I and afterward, I lived in

Switzerland for one and a half years. After my return, I met
 AGNON IN GERMANY: RECOLLECTIONS 123

Agnon in Berlin and he took me to Moses Marx, the brother of

Esther Marx, who became Agnon' s wife. Moses Marx, who at the
time was a textile merchant in Berlin, had one of the most
wonderful Hebrew libraries existing in Berlin, and Agnon (as I
myself later on) was enthused by it. For already at that time he
began to collect Hebrew books to a great extent, which passion
enslaved him for several years. At that time Germany was
dominated by inflation, and everyone who had his income in
"hard currency" could be considered rich. At that time Agnon' s
star rose visibly in the sky of Hebrew literature, and the publisher
Abraham Josef Stiebel in Copenhagen, who made his name as a
patron of Hebrew literature, courted him very much and
acquired his stories for good money.
After his marriage Agnon settled first in Wiesbaden and later
in Homburg von der Hohe, a place to which he found himself
drawn not only because of its scenic beauty, but also, as he liked
to maintain, because of the old Hebrew prints that appeared
there 250 years earlier. To be sure, one of the main attractions of
these cities was their closeness to Frankfurt, a true metropolis of
Jewish life, though in Agnon' s eyes not so much because of the
Jews living there, but rather on account of the secondhand
Hebrew bookstores of which the Old City was full and the
excellent Hebrew collection of the City Library (which burned
down in World War II) . With the librarian, a figure who seemed
to have stepped directly out of the works of Anatole France,
Agnon got along famously.
During the summer of 1923, before I went to Palestine, I
taught at the "Free House of Study" in Frankfurt, which Franz
Rosenzweig had established, and there I read a number of
Agnon' s stories with a group of students who already knew
Hebrew to some extent. This gave great pleasure not only to my
pupils but to Agnon himself. At that time he was not yet used to
having his books read in schools.
During these years after World War I, I took a stab at a few
translations of Agnon stories into German, of which several
appeared at the time in Buber's Inonthly Der Jude ( The Jew).
That was an uncommonly difficult undertaking, and I acquired a
precise concept of the enormous difficulties encountering anyone
who undertakes to translate his great Hebrew prose, who not
124 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS

only wishes to reproduce the content of what has been narrated

but to give expression in a foreign language to something of the
particular tone and rhythm of the original. I would not like to
make the claim of having been successful in my undertaking, but
perhaps I can say of myself that since then I have been entitled to
a judgment of the work of other translators. If we now praise the
genius and greatness of .A.gnon, it also behooves us to praise the
powerful achievement of his most recent translators, above all
that of Karl Steinschneider and Tuvia Riibner, who have
contributed significantly to making Agnon' s oeuvre familiar in
German-speaking circles.
During the three years Agnon resided in Homburg, three
things were granted to him which, according to a saying by the
sages in the Talmud, enlarge the sense of a human being: a
beautiful residence, beautiful tools (that is to say, books, which
after all are the tools of the writer), and a beautiful wife, who in
all ways stood by his side. If I am not mistaken, she began already
at that time to copy his ever-increasingly unreadable manuscripts
in her calligraphic handwriting. In short, at that time he was
really well off. He was happy and engulfed by his work, and one
story followed on the heels of another. At that time he told me
much about his great novel In the Bond of Life, his autobiogra­
phy transformed into the medium of art, in which he looked back
on and came to terms \vith his youth. Never again have I seen
him so open of heart, so radiant and overflowing with genius, as
in those days.
Undoubtedly the special atmosphere of Homburg also con­
tributed to his well-being. For at that time many of the most
significant writers, poets, and thinkers of Israel congregated
there, as for example Haim N ahman Bialik, .Ahad Ha-am, and
Nathan Birnbaum, and around them a circle of excellent minds
from Russian Jewry such as Yehoshua Ravnitsky, Shoshanah
Persitz, and that legendary Semititzki, of whom the initiate
o

whispered that he was the only one of that generation who really
had a perfect command of Hebrew grammar down to its ultimate
subtleties, and whom all writers considered the court of last
o A proofreader for some of the most distinguished publishing houses, first in Russia
and later in Israel.-Ed.
 AGNON IN GERMANY: RECOLLECTIONS 125
resort in ticklish questions. Agnon found great pleasure in these
friendly relations, and became especially attracted to the great
poet Haim N ahman Bialik, the poet of the Jewish Renaissance in
Russia sixty to seventy years ago, and who, like Agnon himself,
was a conversationalist of genius. Their discussions were memor­
able and it paid to listen to them . Ofttimes Agnon took me along
on his walks with Bialik when I came to Homburg, and it is easy
to understand how much I, a young German Jew, was impressed
by these discussions. Naturally, at that time one already spoke in
Hebrew. Agnon used to say, "Scholem, don't forget to write in
your notebook what you heard. " Well, I had open ears, but no
notebook, and wrote down nothing.
This splendid period of Agnon' s life came to an end in a tragic
manner when the house in which he lived, together with his
books and manuscripts, went up in flames on a summer night of
the year 1924. Walter Benjamin, who esteemed Agnon most
highly, wrote to me at the time: "I am not even in the least able
in my imagination to reach the situation of a man who has to go
through that, not to say anything of one who has to overcome it. "
Indeed, when Agnon returned to Palestine in the autumn of that
year, he came as one whose world had grown dark and who had
to begin everything anew. Which one of us could have put
himself into his situation? So he returned from the depths of
misfortune. The Agnon of before 1924 was completely different
from the later Agnon. He kept on creating ever more splendidly
and deeply, but he was locked into himself, and the many
conversations he conducted were now but walls by which he
shielded his isolation. So he entered on the way that has led him
to the Nobel Prize, the way of a great artist who has mastered his
torments.
 Martin Buber's Concep tion
of Judaism*

At a conference the focus of which is the theme "Creation and

Formation, " I hardly know of a better way to introduce this
difficult problem, to orchestrate it, as it were, with a great
phenomenon of the spiritual world, than by reflection on the
figure and work of Martin Buber, who left us in 1965 as a very
old man and, throughout his whole life until his most advanced
age, was centrally concerned with the question posed here. What
is more, I will not deal with the abstract element of this question,
as, for example, it was expressed in Buber' s writings on philoso­
phy, sociology, and education, but with what · most persistently
moved the man himself, throughout almost seventy years : natnely
his conception of Judaism.
Another speaker could perhaps develop this conception
without entering into Buber's personality and intellectual biogra­
phy. I confess that I am unable to do so. Buber, who put such
emphasis on the unmistakably personal in the relationships of
spiritual life, can be considered without inclusion of this personal
element only at a very high cost, and one injurious to the subject
matter itself. His achievement and its problematic aspect are
inextricably linked with his life and the decisions of that life.
Here it behooves me, who for a period of fifty years, from my
student days to his death, was in alternately casual and intensive
contact with him, to extend my gratitude, albeit not uncritically,
o "Martin Bubers Auffassung des Judentums, " Eranos ]ahrbuch, XXV (Zurich, 1967),
9-55· Translated by Werner J . Dannhauser.
 MARTIN B UBER'S CONCEPTION OF J UDAISM 127

to Buber, who for my generation 1neant so 1nuch in terms of

challenge and reflection-even at those ti1nes when he became
thoroughly opaque, questionable, or unacceptable to us.
No one who knew Buber could avoid the strong radiance
emanating from hi1n and making an intellectual engagement with
him doubly passionate. To engage Buber intellectually meant to
be tossed hither and yon between admira tion and rejection,
between readiness to listen to his message and disappointment
with that message and the impossibility of realizing it. When I
came to know him, he stood at the zenith of his influence on
Jewish youth in German-speaking circles, during the years of
World War I and shortly thereafter, when his words reached and
moved a large audience. Buber sought this influence, even as he
once more attained it among another group of young people (The
League of "Comrades") in the years directly preceding Hitler
and the onset of National Socialism in Germany.
It was among Buber' s most bitter experiences that in both
cases this encounter with a Jewish youth that was ready to depart
and expected Buber to go along with it ended in deep
estrangement. To be sure, one could just as well say that it was
among the most bitter experiences of these youths that Buber did
not draw the consequences they expected from his own message.
Buber, a most multifaceted and complicated human being, had
summoned these youths to go to the land of Israel and out of a
creative impulse to undertake the formation of the new life that
was to grow there. They never forgave him for not coming along
when the chips were down. They did not understand that the
man, who for so many years and with such eloquence had
diagnosed and combated the "illness, distortion, and tyranny" of
a disfigured Judaism in exile, was not in their midst when what
mattered, during the turmoil following World War I, was to draw
vital consequences from his message. Buber, whose conversa­
tions, speeches, and summons were centered on the word
realization had refused to accept the latter-or so it seemed to
the disappointed. From Buber' s perspective, things looked dif­
ferent : he had come to a different personal decision, chosen a
different medium of realization.
Here I have touched on a delicate, not to say tragic, point of
Buber' s manifestation and influence, one which is intimately
128 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
connected with a fact which has struck all those who have
written about Buber in recent years, without their really being
able to explain it to themselves: the almost total lack of influence
of Buber in the Jewish world, which contrasts strangely with his
recognition among non-Jews. It is notable that Gustav Landauer,
one of the few intimate friends of Buber, already saw this point,
in a highly positive manner, to be sure, in 1913, when Buber was
thirty-five years old. From him derives the prophetic sentence
that it was already noticeable but would soon become much
more evident that Buber was "the apostle of Judaism to
humanity. " At the same time Landauer saw in him an "awakener
and advocate of that feminine thinking without which no renewal
and rejuvenation will come to our ruined and fallen culture. " 1
These assertions, with whose precision little bears comparison,
already express in a splendid and positive formulation the
dialectical tension and the factor of criticism that are inseparable
from a true insight into Buber' s achievement. For the apostle of
Israel spoke a language that was more comprehensible to
everybody else than to the Jews themselves, and his tragedy is
based on this apostleship, even, indeed, on its overwhelming
success in its time.
At the same time, another man of considerable intelligence,
Frederik van Eeden, said of Buber:
o

If circumstances had ordained it, then Buber could certainly have

developed into a teacher of his people, to one of the recipients of
the legacy of traditions frorn Moses and Elijah. Then his life would
have run its course quietly and obscurely in some house of prayer
or other, or in some Polish village or other. Now, instead, he felt a
calling for another task, for the one of spreading the knowledge of
the ecstatic spirit of his people among others. He had to wander
on the way of publicity and fame.
It remains a serious and legitimate question why Buber, one
of the most eloquent and mighty rhetoricians of Judaism, failed in
general to catch the ear of the Jews. The personal factor of which
I had occasion to speak before, and that has for the most part
been shrouded in silence in the literature about Buber consti- '

1 . Gustav Landauer in the "Buber issue" of Neue Bliitter (Hellerau, 1913), p. g6.
• A Dutch novelist and poet (186o-1932) of a strong mystical bent.-Ed.
 MARTIN BUBER'S CONCEPTION OF J UDAISM 129

tutes only one-an important one, to be sure-element of the

understanding of this situation. It is surpassed in significance by
another factual one with which I will have to deal thoroughly:
Buber sought the creative transforlJlation of Judaism ; he sought
those moments in the latter's history and present in which the
creative bursts forms asunder and seeks a new formation, and in
the course of his emphasis he abstracted extensively from the
given historical forms of Judaism . From the moment when as a
twenty-year-old he joined the newly arisen Zionist movement, to
the end of his days, he indefatigably sharpened, preserved, and
developed his sense for the creative transformation of the
phenomenon closest to his heart.
The provocative element in his conception of Judaism and its
history, with which we will have to deal here analytically and
interpretatively, was unmistakable, and Buber, who cannot be
denied either self-assurance or courage, was ready to pay the
price for this reinterpretation, this new view. From the start, he
placed himself emphatically among the heretics in Judaism, not
among the representatives of what in many of his early writings
he called "official Judaism" in opposition to the "underground. "
The paradox o f his appearance and renown in the great world,
shored up by a significant oeuvre, consists of the fact that the
world considered just this individual to be the great representa­
tive of Judaism in our time: this man who even denied having a
teaching that might be transmitted-indeed, in general whenever
he appeared for a considerable time in a teaching capacity,
success as a teacher was mostly denied him-this man who with
complete radicalism stood aloof from the institutions of Judaism
as a cult, and whom nobody ever saw in a synagogue during the
almost thirty years he lived in Israel. Seen from a distance, and
perhaps reinforced through the medium of his extraordinary
stylistic capacities, the features connecting him with the great
historical phenomenon of Judaism emerged more strongly than
they did to those who had to assume a position vis-a-vis Buber
from the perspective of a concrete closeness to Judaism and its
tradition.
In the sixty years up to 1963, when he terminated the
collection of his writings, Buber' s conception of Judaism changed
greatly in its formulations,. especially if one compares the work of
 130 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
his early period up to about 1923 with his later one; but it is to be
grasped by way of a central principle which he progressively
undertakes to interpret himself: by way of his search for what is
living and creative in this phenomenon and the wish to lend it
words. In this last point, to be sure, also lies the reason for the
great difficulty of analyzing Buber' s intuitive views, a difficulty
that has all along greatly impeded a coming to terms with him.
His language is infinitely colorful, poetic, rich in images, sugges­
tive, and at the same time of a singular vagueness and impenetra­
bility. The lack of specificity in many of his writings and his
inclination for the abstract, which as a philosopher of the
concrete he again and again denied passionately, stood-to use
Gustav Landauer's description-" in indissoluble connection with
his love for feelingful expression and his preference for the latter
over a precise, logically determined terminology. " The reader is
always aware that every translation into other words runs the
danger of being denounGed as a misunderstanding by Buber, and
this was, in fact, the ever-recurring note of his answer to critics
who wished to suggest concepts for his poetic metaphors. Yet
Buber' s capacity to grasp nuances of the inexpressible in words
was extraordinary, even though it makes his writings well-nigh
untranslatable, because in the case of translation the slippery and
indefinite had to yield to a decision for a definite content and
context of meaning.

II

Let us picture Buber' s origin and his starting point. Buber,

who was a Polish Jew and identified himself as such to the end of
his life, had received an upbringing in which strict Jewish
tradition and German enlightenment were intermingled. He
grew up multilingually with Hebrew, German, Yiddish, and
Polish (a whole string of his earliest pieces are written in Polish,
and I recall having heard him give a lecture in Polish as late as
1943) . Here Judaism encountered him as a historical form. For
most of his contemporaries it was a firmly circumscribed
phenomenon in which impulses and aspirations capable of
formulation had actualized themselves, a historical continuum in
 MARTIN BUBER'S CONCEPTION OF JUDAIS� 131

which the life of a people had been forged by certain decisive

ideas: by monotheism, by the Law and the prophetic exhortation
to justice, by a theology centered on the concepts of creation,
revelation, and redemption. As a youth, he broke with the
institutions of that tradition, to which he never again returned.
For years he imbibed the atmosphere of the European fin de
siecle. The air of Vienna and the ]ugendstil entered into a
competition, having the most important consequences, with the
heritage, so completely different, of his grandfather's house
where he grew up. In this confusion, his encounter with the
Zionist movement arising at the time became decisive, the latter
carrying away Buber as a twenty-year-old student and in
manifold metamorphoses determining his life and thought.
What did the watchword of Zionism mean for a modern
young Jew of those years? I would formulate that meaning in
three points that became important for Buber's attitude : ( 1 ) the
awareness of the deadly crisis of the Rabbinic tradition of
Judaism, of the senselessness and weightlessness of a religion that
has become petrified in social institutions; (2) the awareness of a
Jewish identity and loyalty, of a life unfolding beyond those
institutions, in which the Jew is at home and rooted and which
may make demands on him; (3) the Utopia of a living future and
a rebirth of this people in its land, to be accomplished in a
creative metamorphosis of the old form, but also, perhaps, in a
revolutionary new beginning.
The wavering between these two poles rendered the features
of the Zionist movement quite uncertain, and not only for Buber.
In any case one can say that the "yes" and the "no" of Zionism to
the present and the future of the Jews and their Judaism were
resolved in these three points. They forge Buber' s early reflec­
tions on the subject. His attitude, as articulate as it was from the
start, was not based on a theoretical conception he had thought
through, it was based on the raging feeling of a young romantic
and revolutionary who sought to further the rebirth of his people,
decayed and become unreal in exile, and therefore sought ways
to substantiate his yearnings for a "new Judaism" a "Jewish
modernity, " or a "Jewish Renaissance."
Buber belonged to the generation that around 1900 was
deeply influenced by Nietzsche and his slogans. Nietzsche's talk
132 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM I N CRISIS
of the "creators" pervades all his earliest writings. The creative,
as opposed to the unproductive and the idly persistent, is once
more to come to the fore in Judaism. In 190 1 Buber writes:
To create! The Zionist who feels the whole holiness of this word
and lives up to it seems to me [in contrast to other types of
Zionists, from whom he differentiates himself, G . S.] to be of the
highest rank. To create new works from out of the depth of one's
primeval unique individuality, out of that uniquely individual,
incomparable strength of one's blood that has been for so fearfully
long cast in the irons of unproductivity . . . that is an ideal for the
Jewish people. To create the monuments of one's essence ! To let
one's way burst forth into a new intuitive view of life! To set forth
a new form, a new configuration of possibilities before the eyes of
infinity! To let a new beauty glow, to let a new star ascend in the
enchanted night sky of eternities! First, however, to penetrate to
one's self, with bloody hands and undaunted heart to struggle
through to one's essence itself, from which all these wonders will
rise to the surface. To discover oneself! To find oneself! To gain
oneself by struggle ! 2
This breakthrough of the Jew to himself recurs as a slogan in
all of Buber's writings , albeit in less romantic formulations. He
writes in 1 9 1 9 :
In testing ourselves, we recognize that we Jews are altogether
apostates. Not because the life and soul of other peoples have
penetrated our landscape, language, culture; if our own land­
scape, our own language, our own culture were given us again, we
would not regain that innermost Judaism to which we have
become untrue. Nor is it because many of us have renounced the
norms of the Jewish tradition and the forms of life enjoined by it;
those who have preserved them inviolate in all their Yes and No
have no more preserved that innermost Judaism than the others.
All this so-called assimilation is superficial compared to that fatal
appropriation of which I am thinking: the appropriation of
Western dualism, which sanctions the split of human being into
two spheres, each existing by its own right and independent of the
other, the appropriation of the cast of mind that thinks in terms of
the compromise.3
2. Buber, Die fiidische Bewegung, 1916, p. 42.
3· Buber, Der Jude und sein Judentum (Cologne, 1963), p. 8g. (On Judaism, edited by
Nahum N. Glatzer [New York: Schocken Books, 1967], pp. 1 o8-- H>g .) (All translations
 MARTIN BUBER'S CONCEPTION OF JUDAISM 133

Here, then, · there is an "innermost Judaism" that is to be

resuscitated but which he finds expressed in the documents of
"classical Judaism. " What Buber understood by this, we still have
to investigate.
There is a "genuine Judaism" 4 that is opposed to the spurious
one. And from here too starts the talk of "primordial Judaism"
that pervades the Drei Reden iiber das ]udentum ( 19 1 1 ) ("Three
Addresses on Judaism"), so very influential in their time, a
primordial Judaism that surmounts all forms and norms that
count as Jewish. This talk about the primordially Jewish, the
definition of which concerned Buber, again recurs in his last
speeches about Judaism which appeared in 195 1 under the title
An der Wende (At the Turning) . The basic impulse in all this was
a critical one : the rejection of all the historical phenomena--ca­
pable of formulation-of Judaism in fixed formations. The slogan
of the young Buber was, and basically remained, " Not the forms
but the forces." 5 The demolition of the forms, the distrust of
every structure and formation that has become historical, is
turned into the index of something positive. It is the as yet
unformed forces that attract the revolutionary and the romantic
in Buber. It is the forces that in historical Judaism "never gained
dominion, which at all times have been oppressed by official
Judaism, which is to say by the impotence that has dominated at
all times" and without which "no renewal of Jewish peoplehood
can succeed. " The early Buber developed a deep aversion to the
Law, to halakhah in all its forms. Not only does he fail to accord
it a legitimate position in genuine or primordial Judaism , but in
his early and passionate years as a romantic he sees in it a power
that is hostile to life and which one must combat or in any case
desert.
The young Buber, in whom religious and aesthetic motives
are still at least equally strong, is indefatigable in his polemic
against the Law. He is of the opinion that before the era of the
Emancipation
throughout this article of Buber' s writings have been made directly from the original even
where English translations are available and are cited in parenthesis for the reader's
convenience.-Ed.)
4 · Ibid., p. 9 1 .
5· Ibid., p. 77· (On Judaism, p. 93· The "Three Addresses on Judaism" and A t the
Turning appear as part of the volume On ]udnism.-Ed.)
1 34 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
the strength of Judaism was not only held down from without, by
dread and torment, . . . but also from within, by the despotism of
the "Law, " which is to say by a mistaken, disfigured, distorted,
religious tradition, by the constraint of a harsh, unmoved system
of obligations which was alien to reality, but which accused of
heresy and annihilated all that was instinctively bright and joyous,
all that thirsted after beauty and was winged, which dislocated
feeling and cast thought in irons. And the Law attained a power
such as no law ever possessed among a people at any time. . . .
There was no personal action born of feeling: only action
according to the Law could exist. There was no independent,
creative thinking: only the brooding over the books of the Law
and the thousands of books interpreting those books of interpreta­
tion was allowed to express itself. There were, it is true, heretics
again and again ; but what could a heretic do against the Law? 6
The systematic rigor of the halakhah and rabbinical dialectics
enrage the romantic and artist in Buber, whose heart goes out to
all manifestations of a struggling of the life forces not determined
by the Law. When Buber speaks of the rebirth of Judaism, as he
does so often, it never means to him "a return to the old
traditions of feeling rooted in peoplehood and to their expression
in language, customs, thoughts. " 7 Rather such talk means to him
the liberation from an "unliberated spirituality and the compul­
sion of a tradition divested of its meaning. . . . Only by a struggle
against these powers can the Jewish people be reborn."
At that time, Buber' s attitude toward halakhah was con­
nected with a further point, namely his negation of exile, the
Diaspora, as a legitimate Jewish form of life and his identification,
to a great extent at least, of halakhah with everything he rejects
about exile-the "slavery of unproductive economy" and the
"hollow-eyed homelessness' '-as unproductive and barren. The
negation of that which was Judaism in exile and the actualization
of "latent energies" and characteristics which since Biblical times
"are grown dumb in the torments of the Diaspora" are close to
his heart. The old characteristics are to be "presented again to
our modern life in the latter's forms. Here, too, no return; a new
beginning out of age-old material. " B
6. Ibid., p. 272.
7. Die ]udische Bewegung, p. 1 1 .
8 . Ibid., pp. 1 1-13.
 MARTI N BOBER'S CONCEPTION OF JUDAISM 1 35
Here something surprising comes to the fore, which in this
form was given up by Buber thirty years later, without, however,
having lost its significance for his conception of Judaism . At that
time Buber, probably under the strong influence of the Hebrew
writer, Micha Joseph Berdyczewski, was among those who saw
salvation in the leap over the period of exile, in the denial of its
productivity, and among whom the demand for, or expectation
of, a reunion with Biblical times constituted the watchword.
Here, as -so often, revolutionary Utopianism expresses itself by
appealing back to something very archaic , to a creative primor­
dial time. This tendency, which from the beginning entered into
competition and conflict with the restorative strivings of the
conservative elements in the Zionist movement, belongs even
now, in the newly arisen life in Israel, to the most important
factors operating there.
For Buber, this interpretation of a great (and as it seems to
.
me extremely problematical and in reality impossible) le ap
looked like this : the undivided, unbroken feeling for life of the
Jews was to be enthroned again in a revolt against the "pure
spirituality" which alone had counted as the highest ideal in
exile. Buber recognizes this Jewish spirituality as "an enormous
fact, perhaps the most striking one in the whole great pathology
of the Jewish people," 9 whose transformation into the undis­
guised creative is the great challenge which for him coincides
with the slogan "renewal of Judaism. " This summons to the leap
refers, to be sure, to the liberation of the creative forces of the
Jewish people, not to the identification, always assessed positively
by Buber, of the Jew with his tragic history.
But whoever receives his Judaism into his life in order to live it,
broadens his own martyrdom by the martyrdom of a hundred
generations of his people, he links the history of his life to the
history of innumerable bodies who once had suffered. He becomes
the son of millennia and their master. He elevates the tone,
meaning, and value of his existence. He creates for himself new
possibilities and forms of life. Magic fountains open themselves up
to his creativity and the elements of the future are placed into his
hands. 10
g. Ibid., p. 84.
10. Ibid., p. 74·
 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS

The youthful pathos of these sentences later became alien to

the old Buber, but the intuitive view behind them remained the
same. Even the latest writings of Buber contain something of this
theory of the leap, even though he had in the meantime made
discoveries which necessarily led to a complete transformation of
the bleak, negative picture of Judaism in Exile. Even the
discovery of Hasidism is from the beginning effected by him as
that of a phenomenon which represents a relinking to the Biblical
era, "the classical time of Judaism, " a renewal, not, say, a mere
repetition of the primordially J ewish . 1 1 His late writings on the
Bible also contain many overtones of this kind, which resonate
silently, though, to be sure, they were often most strongly
stressed by Buber in private conversation.
The most penetrating formulation of these views of Buber, s in
his earlier period is to be found in a speech he gave impromptu in
1912 during a discussion and which he entitled "The Formative"
(Das Gestaltende) . Here he explains Judaism as a peculiar,
"peculiarly predetermined, special case of the eternal process"
that takes place in each individual human being but also in the
life of each historical community. Everywhere two principles are
at work: the formless and the formative, undifferentiated 1natter
which is subject to the creative act, and [as he says, using a
concept from the writings of Paracelsus, G .S.] the "Archeus" who
strives to shape the former into spiritual life and who yet is never
completely successful in this work. In the community of men that
which has been formed (das Geformte) never remains pure form
(Gestalt), and again and again the formless (Gestaltlose) breaks in
and breaks up the form (Form).
What once was created as a victory of the formative over the
formless, the structure of the community, norm, and order, the
institution, all the creation of the spirit, is at all times exposed to
the disfiguring influence of the formless and under it becomes
rigid and deaf and senseless, and yet does not want to die, but
rather persists in its rigidity and deafness and senselessness, for it
is preserved in life by the power of the opposing principle. Hence
formation is transformation and hence the battle of forming
[Jonnende KampfJ is a process that begins ever anew. He who
1 1 . Ibid., p. 100.
 MARTIN BUBER'S CONCEPTION OF JUDAISM 137

gives form (Der Gestaltende) 1 2 conducts his battle not against the
formless alone, but also against the latter's monstrous allies,
against the realm of the decomposing form. 13
Buber opposes attempts to find the "essence of Judaism" in a
purely qualitative definition. Rather, the process described here
only takes place in Judaism " more purely, strongly, clearly than
in any other group of human beings. . . . For as in the individual
Jew, so in Judaism there is more visible than elsewhere in the
world a struggle between the formative and the formless. " It is
this view that Judaism displays the polarity residing in each
human being, but in an especially concentrated and elucidated
manner, which completely determines the first of his "Addresses
on Judaism. " Here the Jews' innate striving for unity, which is
the striving for form, for the overcoming of that duality which
breaks forth in all things, was designated and glorified as the core
of the Jewish, as the primordially Jewish . Buber explained Jewish
monotheism and Jewish messianism from this perspective. The
God of the Bible himself
issued from the striving for unity, from a dark, passionate striving
for unity. . . . He was not disclosed by nature but by the
subjective self. Man had created him not out of reality but out of
yearning because he had not beheld him in heaven and earth but
built him up for himself as the unity above his own duality, as the
salvation above his own suffering. . . . The striving after unity is
what made the Jew creative. Striving for unity, for oneness from
out of the dualization of his ego, he created the idea of the One
God. Striving for unity out of the dualization of the human
community, he created the idea of universal justice. Striving for
unity from out of the duality of all that is living, he created the
idea of universal love. Striving for unity out of the duality of the
world, he created the messianic ideal, which a later time, again
with the leading collaboration of the Jew, has diminished and
been rendered finite and called socialism. 14
According to Buber, this was true of the human beings of
Jewish antiquity and was to become true again of the human
12. He who gives form, not a printer's error, as follows from the context.
1 3 . Der Jude und sein /udentum, p. 240. ("Addresses on Judaism" forms part of the
volume by Buber, On Judaism, op. cit.-Ed.)
1 4. Ibid., pp. 22-24. (On Judaism, p. 28.-Ed.)
 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
beings of the Jewish Renaissance, which he summoned forth in
his "Addresses on Judaism. " In between stood the world of galut,
of exile, which had brought on a deep social illness in Judaism.
For that contrast and conflict between the formative and the
formless, that was, no matter how fearfully it might sometimes
present itself, the health of Judaism/ Its sic�ness in the galut
consists of the impotence and the estrangement of those who can
give form. It happened that that eternal process of Judaism could
no longer achieve productivity . . . and the realm of the
formative spirit was expelled by the realm of the decomposing
form. . . . The destiny of Judaism can take no turn ere the conflict
in its old purity is resurrected, ere the fruitful battle between the
formative and the formless begins anew.l5

I am among those who in their youth, when these speeches

appeared, was deeply moved by them and who-even as
happened to the author himself-many years later can now read
these pages only with a feeling of deep estrangement. They no
longer contain anything convincing for our historical conscious­
ness; their psychology no longer convinces us, and the connection
between the psychology and the theology strikes us as merely
rhetorical. The distinction between an official Judaism, which
was disposed of as the realm of decomposing form, and an
underground one in which the true sources can be heard to
murmur, was naive and could not bear the scrutiny of historical
observation. Buber himself later disavowed this distinction. And
nevertheless, these words exuded a considerable magic in their
time. I would be unable to mention any other book about
Judaism of these years, which even came close to having such an
effect-not among the men of learning, who scarcely read these
speeches, but among a youth that here heard the summons to a
new departure that many of them took seriously enough to act on
.
it.
It is precisely the concepts that were especially influential in
these speeches that in the later writings of Buber do not recur, or
only in a changed form. Among these is, above all, his distinction,
based on a widespread linguistic usage of the time, between
religion and religiosity, through which Buber could give expres-
15. Ibid., p. 244.
 MARTIN BUBER'S CONCEPTION OF JUDAISM 1 39

sion to his aversion to the Law as the form of the Jewish religion,
and his advocacy of the truly formative forces. Renewal of
Judaism, always a revolutionary and not an evolutionary concept
for Buber, always meant to him "renewal of Jewish religiosity."
He explains this as follows:
Religiosity is the feeling of man-ever coming to be anew, ever
expressing and shaping [ausformen] itself anew, astonished and
worshiping-that there exists above his conditioned condition
[Bedingtheit] , and yet breaking forth from the midst of it,
something Unconditional ; it is his demand to institute a living
communion with the latter, his will to realize it by his action and
to install it in the human world. Religion is the sum of customs
and doctrines in which the religiosity of a given epoch of a
peoplehood has expressed and shaped itself. . . . Religion is true
as long as it is fruitful; that, however, is as long as religiosity, when
it takes up the yoke of commandments and articles of faith, is
nevertheless capable-often without knowing it-of impregnating
and transforming them most intimately with a new, glowing
meaning, so that they appear to every generation as though they
had been revealed to it personally on that very day to fill its own
needs, alien to the fathers. If, however, the rites and dogmas of a
religion have become so rigid that religiosity is incapable of
moving them, or no longer wishes to submit to them, then religion
becomes unfruitful and thereby untrue. Thus religiosity is the
creative and religion the organizing principle; religiosity begins
anew with every young person deeply moved by mystery; religion
wants to force him into its structure, stabilized once and for all.
Religiosity means activity-an elementary placing of the self into
relationship [ Sichinverhiiltnissetzen] with the absolute-religion
means passivity-the self's taking upon itself [Aufsichnehmen] the
traditional commands. Religiosity has only its own goal; religion
has purposes; due to religiosity the sons rise up against the fathers,
in order to find the God of their very own self; due to religion, the
fathers curse the sons for not permitting them to impose their God
on them . Religion signifies preservation; religiosity signifies re­
newal.16
It is not hard to see that in the first half of this quotation so
characteristic of his conception of Judaism, Buber-no matter
16. Ibid., pp. 66--67 ; the following pages should also be consulted. (On Judaism, pp.
Bo--8 1 . The whole speech, "Jewish Religiosity," appears on pp. 79-94.-Ed.)
 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS

what one may think of the terminology used here-puts his finger
on a state of affairs that is highly significant and fruitful for the
understanding of the history of religion. It is equally clear that in
the final sentences he slips into a pathetic rhetoric that sets up
dubious antitheses, which, to be sure, is one of the main
weaknesses of Buber' s writings in general.
Buber' s concern in this period was, as he said, "to extract and
salvage the special essence of Judaism from the refuse with which
the rabbinical and the rational have covered it. " Buber consid­
ered the essential ground of Jewish religiosity to be "the act of
decision as the realization of divine freedom and absoluteness on
earth" and in the conception of this realization he found three
strata in which "the coming to be of that underground Judaism
announces itself . . . in opposition to official pseudo-Judaism,
which ruies without appointment and represents without legiti­
macy. " 17 The earliest one deals with the realization of God by
imitation in the sense of the Biblical phrase of "the image of
God." It determines the basic demand of the Torah (Lev. 20: 26) :
"Become holy, for holy am 1 . " The second stratum deals with a
realization of God by the intensification of His reality. Buber is of
the opinion that the more God is realized by human beings in the
world, the more real He is. For this second stratum, and even
more for the third, in which the realization of God by man
becomes an influence of human action on God's destiny on earth,
Buber refers essentially to kabbalistic trains of thought. The basis
is always the conception that an infinity of things flow into a
human deed, but that also an infinity of things flow frol? it.
Here emerges Buber' s view that, when all is said and done, he
never abandoned, no matter how many variations he gave to it in
the course of fifty years. The truth about the relationship of
human beings to God

is not a What but a How. Not the content of the deed turns it into
truth, but whether it occurs in human conditionality or in divine
absoluteness. Not matter determines [its position and its value] ,
. . . but the power of the decision causing it to emerge, and the
dedication of the intention inhering in it. 18
17. Ibid., p. 6g. (On Juda ism, p. 83.-Ed.)
18. Ibid., pp. 71 -72. (On Judaism , p. 87.-Ed.)
 MARTIN BUBER'S CONCEPTION OF JUDAISM 14 1

The historical aspects in which the primal Jewish religiosity

becomes most clearly visible are, according to Buber, Prophecy
and many movements tendentiously distorted in our Bible, like
the one of the Rechabites depicted in the Book of Jeremiah, as
well as the Essenes and the primordially Jewish phenomenon of
Jesus, whose Sermon on the Mount Buber claims with great
emphasis as a "Jewish avowal in the most intimate possible
sense, " 19 and finally the kabbalah and Hasidism. These are also
the phenomena which determined the further development of
Buber's conception of Judaism and his attempts at further
clarifi cation.
Here Judaism is ever a battle between the priests and the
prophets, between the rabbis and the heretics who undermine
their authority, between the law of the halakhah and the popular
aggadah and the world of mysticism. With growing insight,
B uber disavowed the radicalism of these antitheses, in which he
reveled twenty years, and here and there he ventured on a more
just distribution of emphasis.
Notwithstanding all this, however, it remains crucial that
already at this time Buber considered Judaism not as something
static, standing before us in fixed form, but rather, as he often
says, as a "spiritual process" which in accordance with its
historical nature is unfinished, in which great ideas are at
work-he gives as examples those of unity, deed, and future20-
which, however, again and again demand a creative reformula­
tion from out of the spirit of the times. Buber never abandoned
this line and in this, I would say, he was right.

Ill

This is the place to speak of two elements which become of

surpassing significance for Buber' s conception, be it that he was
carried away by them and unreservedly sold his soul to them and
glorified them, or be it that he tried to differentiate himself from
them and in his relation to them stated more or less convincing
19. Ibid., p. 38. (On Judaism, pp. 45-4 6 .-Ed .)
w. Ibid., pp. 33-43. (On Judaism , pp . 35-55.-Ed.)
 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM I N CRISIS

reservations about them . I mean the role of mysticism and myth

in Buber, and thus the two elements which in the nineteenth
century were most lacking in the emancipated Jew's conscious­
ness of his Judaism or, to put it more exactly, which were
excluded and repudiated by this very consciousness. No one
deserves more credit for first causing these features of Judaism to
corr1e to view again than Buber, who did not approach them with
the methods of science and historical research, sociology, and
psychology, but with all the passion of a heart overwhelmed by a
new discovery.
There was something fascinating about the imperturbable
and self-assured subjectivity and sovereignty with which he
proceeded in t� is case . He followed a hidden inner compass
which led him to places where, in the treasure house of time,
there could be found unrecognized jewels, seeming dull and
counterfeit to eyes not prepared for them. Or, in order to put it
more clearly perhaps: Buber was a listener of great intensity.
Many voices came through to him, and among them soft ones
which had become completely unclear and incomprehensible to
the generations before him, and whose call moved him deeply. In
his quest for a living Judaism which, as we saw, Zionism had
awakened in him, he penetrated to the sources by resuming the
Hebraic studies of his boyhood. He read the aggadic texts edited
by his grandfather, Solomon Buber, the Midrash scholar, 2 1 "at
first repelled again and again by obstinate, stiff, unformed matter,
gradually overcoming the strangeness, discovering one's own,
intuiting the self with growing devotion. " 22 The first fruits of his
reading that he reaped on his way to the sources can be found in
the old volumes of the weekly edited at one time by Buber and
published by Theodor Herzl, Die Welt, the central organ of
Zionism. From this point he turned one day, in 1902 or 1903, to
Hasidic literature .
To be sure, Buber brought along his inclination toward
mysticism to this reading. It arose in him as a student, and years

21 . The author's copies of Solomon Buber's Midrash editions, which he preserved

from the latter's literary remains, stood behind Buber's desk to the very end.
22. Buber, Mein Weg zum Chassidismus (Vienna, 19 18), p. 18. (" My Way to
Hasidism," in Buber's Hasidism and Modem Man, edited and translated by Maurice
Friedman [New York: Harper Torchbooks, 195 8), pp. sB-sg.-Ed. )
 MARTIN BUBER'S CONCEPTION OF JUDAISM 1 43
before he ever picked up Hasidic or kabbalistic writings he had
already, in 18gg, given lectures on Jacob Boehme.23 German
mysticism had attracted him even before he sought and came to
know Jewish mysticism. As is readily apparent from his writings,
Buber himself was no stranger to mystical experiences. In fact
they occupy the center of his first philosophical b�ok, which
appeared in 1913 under the title of Daniel, Gespriiche von der
Verwirklichung (Danien, and amounts to a philosophical inter­
pretation of such experiences. So his intense listening to the
voices which came through to him from Hasidic literature
stemmed from a kindred spirit in which these voices now
awakened an enormous echo. To put it another way, Buber
sought out the mysticism in Judaism, and that is why he was in a
position to find it, to perceive it, when he hit upon it. What
moved him about the Hasidic world for many years was its
mysticism, and when he later attempted to reinterpret, or
interpret away, this mysticism in line with his own later
development, it always remained-even under the cover of a
new terminology-nothing other than mysticism.
,
The deep impression made by Buber's first writings about
Hasidism, which appeared sixty years ago, was evidently due to
the fact that here a man of great culture and sensitivity
undertook to point out a living dimension of Judaism, of which
up to that time there had scarcely been any talk an1ong the
scholars, indeed, whose existence was denied point-blank in favor
of a widespread prejudice. When at that time Buber and his
friend Berthold Feiwel established the ]udischer Verlag in Berlin
as the organ of the "Jewish Renaissance, " it was no accident that
its first publication of a nonliterary or artistic character was a
booklet by Professor Solomon Schechter, Die Chassidim, eine
Studie uber fudische Mystik ("The Hasidim, A Study of Jewish
Mysticism) ( 1904), in which a scholar coming from a Hasidic
milieu-who had, to be sure, moved far away from it-undertook
to sketch the first picture of this movement that was not distorted
by polemics. Buber's own efforts, however, went far beyond this.
He wrote not as an observer but as one deeply affected. For all
that, his first pronouncement on Hasidism that we possess in
23. Hans Kohn, Martin Buber, sein Werk und seine Zeit (Cologne, 1961), p. 23.
1 44 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
print (from the year 1903) is still characterized by unpathetic
objectivity, and can lay claim to validity even today:

The Hasidic view of life dispenses with all sentimentality; it is a

mysticism as forceful as it is full of profound feeling, which brings
the beyond completely into this world and lets the latter be
formed by the former as the body is formed by the soul: a
completely original, popular, and warm-blooded renewal of
neo-Platonism, at the same time a highly God-filled and highly
realistic guide to ecstasy. It is the doctrine of active feeling as the
bond between man and God. Creativity endures eternally; the
Creation continues today and forever and ever, and man takes
part in Creation in power and love. All that comes from a pure
heart is worship. The goal of the law is that man become his own
law. Thereby despotism's hold is broken. But the founders of
Hasidism were not negators. They did not negate the old forms;
they put a new meaning into them, and thereby liberated them.
Hasidism, or rather the deep outpouring of the soul that generated
and bore it aloft, created the emotionally regenerated Jew.24

To the extent, however, to which Buber became engrossed in

Hasidic doctrine and legends during the following years, he
became, as he wrote, "aware of the vocation to preach them to
the world. " 25 His own meaning and his concept of adequate
literary communication intermingle with the meaning and style
of the old books and pamphlets. The reporter and transmitter
turns into the interpreter and herald. There begins in him the
process, never again discontinued, of projecting his own system
into the interpretation of historical phenomena.26

In Hasidism underground Judaism was victorious for a while over

the official kind-over the notorious, clearly arranged Judaism
whose history one narrates and whose essence one grasps in easily
understood formulas. Only for a while. In our time there are still
hundreds of thousands of Hasidim ; Hasidism has rotted. But the
Hasidic writings have delivered its doctrine and its legends to us.
The Hasidic doctrine is the strangest and most characteristic thing
the Diaspora has created. It is the proclamation of rebirth. No

24. Der Jude und sein ]udentum, p. 273.

25. Schriften, III, p. g68. (Hasidism and Modem Man, op. cit., p. 59.-Ed.)
26. Hans Kohn already formulated it this way, op. cit., p. 304.
 MARTIN BOBER'S CONCEPTION OF JUDAISM 1 45
renewal of Judaism will be possible that will not contain its
elements. 27

Buber was the first Jewish thinker who saw in mysticism a

basic feature and continuously operating tendency of Judaism .
He goes very far in the formulation of this thesis, but the stimulus
he provided by it is effective to this day, albeit in other
perspectives.
The mystical predisposition is characteristic of Jews since primal
time, and its expression is not, as is frequently the case, to be
conceived of as a temporarily appearing conscious reaction to the
domination of intellect. It is a significant characteristic of the Jew,
which seems hardly to have changed in millennia, that the
extremes in him quickly and powerfully ignite each other. So it
happens that in the midst of an unspeakably narrow existence,
indeed, precisely out of its narrowness, the boundless breaks forth
with primordial suddenness and now rules the soul surrendering
to it. . . . If, accordingly, the strength of Jewish mysticism comes
from an original characteristic of the people, which has generated
it, then it has also gone on to put its stamp on the destiny of this
people. The wandering and the martyrdom of the Jews have again
and again transported their souls into those waves of despair from
which now and then the lightning of ecstasy awakens. At the same
time that wandering and martyrdom have prevented them from
completing the pure expression of ecstasy and have misled them
into throwing together necessary, deeply experienced things with
superfluous, randomly gathered ones, and-feeling unable to say
one's own because of pain-into chattering about alien things.
Thus arose writings like the Zohar, the Book of Splendor, which
are a delight and an abomination.28

Along with the contact with mysticism as a creative element

of Judaism, a no less passionate interest in the mythical element
of Judaism had its way with Buber, one which, connected with
the positive revaluation of myth by hirr1 as by so many of his
27. "Intmduction" to Legende des Baalschem (Frankfurt, 1 907), p. 6. This introduc­
tion has been omitted in Buber's Schriften zum Chassidismus (Vol. III of Schriften) along
with many other of his early pronouncements. (The Legend of the Baal-Shem [New York:
Schocken Books, 1g6g], pp. 1 1-13.-Ed.)
28. Die Geschichten des Rabbi Nachman (Frankfurt, 1go6), pp. 6, 8. The reprint of
these pages in Schriften, III, pp. u-12 is greatly changed. (Tales of Rabbi Nachman,
translated by Maurice Friedman [New York: Horizon, 1968], pp. 32-34.-Ed.)
 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
contemporaries-the writings of Arthur Bonus, forgotten today,
played a great role at the time-flows from the influence of
Nietzsche.
The Jews are perhaps the only people that has never ceased to
generate myth. At the beginning of their great document stands
the purest of all mythical symbols, the plural-singular Elohim. In
that primordial time there springs up the stream of myth-bearing
strength that-provisionally-flows into Hasidism: from which
the religion of Israel at all times felt itself to be endangered, from
which, however, in truth Jewish religiosity . . . received its inner
life. . . . The personal religiosity of the individual soul has its
birth in myth, its death in religion. As long as the soul is rooted in
the rich ground of myth, religion has no power over it. Therefore
religion sees in myth its sworn enemy and . . . combats it where it
is . . . incapable of absorbing it. The history of the Jewish religion
is the history of its struggle against myth.29
Buber dedicated one of his "Addresses on Judaism" to this
" Myth of the Jews. " 30 There he attempted to recognize the
essence of monotheistic myth in the sense of the Platonic
definition of myth as a report of divine doings as a sensual reality.
For Buber, "every living monotheism [is] full of the mythical
element, and only as long as it is, is it living. " The great mystics of
Judaism have "renewed the personality of the people from the
roots of its myth. " Buber sees two basic forms of Jewish myth
which traverse the Biblical and post-Biblical literature of the
Jews: the saga of the deeds of God and the legend of the life of
the "central" man. For him, the first represents eternal continu­
ity, the second eternal renewal. Buber never tired of pointing to
the mythical element in living Judaism, even when he later began
to deny his own ties to mysticism.
Buber' s work on the Hasidic tradition moves between these
two poles of mysticism and myth, whose relation to each other
never became wholly clear in Buber (which is connected with his
radical widening of the historical sphere of mysticism's impact) .
That work appears at first in extremely pathetic, indeed precious
language, in which metaphors chase each other and language
zg. "Introduction" to Legende des Baalschem, pp. iii-iv. (An English translation of a
revised version appears in The Legend of the Baal-Shem, op. cit., p. 1 1 .-Ed.)
30. Der Jude und sein ]udentum, pp. 7�. (Translated under the title of "Myth in
Judaism" in On judaism, op. cit., pp. 95-107.-Ed.)
 MARTIN BUBER'S CONCEPTION OF JUDAISM 147

walks on stilts; later in a much simpler and therefore also much

more impressive language of the terse anecdote in which a
dictum of the Hasidic tzaddikim, presented in the shortest form
and even the smallest compass, with a renunciation of all the
trimmings, presents a whole. In the beginning, the Hasidic
sources seemed to Buber too awkward and clumsy, and he helped
their intention along by rhetorical embellishment, indeed by
complete re-creation; which he himself later found so alarming
that he no longer included them in the final collection of his
Schriften zum Chassidismus ( Writings on Hasidism) .
A peculiar contrast exists between the precisely translated
quotations from Hasidic writings in his introductions and pref­
aces, and the overly elevated language of the stories and legends
following them . The interpretation he gives to the Hasidic
phenomenon most emphatically stresses its mystical aspects and
the life of the Hasidim is still understood from the perspective of
their thoroughly mystical doctrine. Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav,
the great-grandson of the Baal-Shem who died in 1810, and to
whom Buber dedicated his first book, is to him "perhaps the last
Jewish mystic. " He was the first in a long series of tzaddikim, a
veritable galaxy of saints, whose figures Buber sought to compre­
hend in a progressive effort at clarification, and in whom he
glimpsed the representatives of the most authentic Judaism. His
conception of the significance of these men, however, changed
profoundly. It is the meaning of this change, which at the same
time characterizes the change of his conception of Judaism, that
we will have to discuss, among other things, in what follows.

IV

There are two periods in Buber' s preoccupation with Judaism

that correspond to his efforts as a thinker in general. In both,
creation and formation constitute a pivot on which Buber' s
thinking turns. He sought out the creative moments in which the
great forms are born and he made himself the advocate of the
living force breaking through in these moments, over against
the gradually decaying forms and figures which, as relics of great
hours, lay claim to our awe or veneration. Basically this always
 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
remained Buber' s attitude; but the way he broached the subject
changed considerably, and from Buber's perspective even deci­
sively. Throughout, however, the key word in which his thinking
is summed up remains "realization" ( Verwirklichung), though the
\vay to the latter is now substantiated in another manner.
"Realization" was the slogan of his "Three Addresses on
Judaism" ; "realization" was the theme of his philosophical book
Daniel in 1 913, which constituted a philosophical justification of
a cult of living experience, Erlebnis, completely under the sway
of mysticism . It was this unrestrained cult of Erlebnis that
already at that time evoked opposition to Buber, and it was the
emphatic disavowal of this cult of Erlebnis that characterized
Buber' s later period, and certainly its philosophical formulations.
He turned vehemently (not exactly convincingly, to be sure)
against interpretations of his thought that found even in the
latter's new form only a metamorphosis of the old cult.
In Daniel he speaks of a twofold stance by a person toward
his Erlebnis: that of orienting or adjusting and that of actualizing
or realizing. Orientation manipulates the world by yoking it in
coordinates according to its forms and laws. It classifies things
and practical experiences and seeks chains of connections. By it
man finds his way about reality, a reality to which Buber denies
that title. Actualization, however, represents submersion in pure
Erlebnis, not in one manufactured, connected with what comes
before and after, absorbed by cause and effect. Only actualiza­
tion, which is nothing other than the practical experience of the
unity above all polarities and tensions, creates reality out of
Erlebnis. 31 The attitude of actualization is that of the directness
of Erlebnis, while orientation " adjusts it to the ancestrally
accustomed connection of indirectness. " The realizing person is
whole and united and none other than what we call the creative
person. In the creative person, the hours of actualization link
themselves "into a series of summits of the eternal which shines
out of the transitory sequences of ups and downs of his human
life," and which also fills the mass of hours of mere orientation
\Vith a reflection of meaning. 32
3 1 . Schriften, I, pp. 22-23. (Daniel [New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1g64],
pp. 64-65.-Ed .)
32. I bid. , p. 27. (Daniel, pp. 7o-7L-Ed .)
 MARTIN BOBER'S CONCEPTION OF JUDAISM 1 49
Both attitudes are necessary and make up human life. It
matters only which one of them the choosing person grants
power over himself. In orientation he has a security radically
denied him by actualization, which rather demands of him that
he descend into the abyss of Erlebnis, to surrender to the abyss
and thereby to close it. Orientation incorporates all events into
useful connections which, however, remain fruitless beyond their
range; actualization, by contrast, "relates each occurrence to
nothing but its own content and precisely thereby fashions it into
a signum of the eternal . " 33 The world is manifold, torn by infinite
dualities, and only in the act of realization does it become a unity.
The act of realization is the establishment of a true and
immediate relation to things or to that which the realizing person
takes from things and inserts into the relation .34 The Erlebnis of
which there is such rapturous and metaphor-rich talk here is
basically nothing other than the one of mysticism, a mysticism, to
be sure, which can appear without any theological foundation,
and even as atheistic mysticism . No wonder that Fritz Mauthner,
the great skeptic and critic of language, who saw in atheistic
mysticism the only answer to the questions formulated by
philosophy, wrote to a lady friend of his after he had met the
young Buber : "Exceptionally valuable person . Polish Jew . Friend
of [Gustav] Landauer. Atheistic Zionist . " 35
In Buber' s later years, this mystical philosophy of Erlebnis
turned into the one of " the life of dialogue, " the key words of
which are developed in I and Thou, which appeared ten years
after Daniel. The categories of orientation and actualizati9n have
in no way ceased to carry weight with Buber, but they have been
transformed and now have other names. Actualization, at least,
has assumed a slightly different function, without, however, being
able to deny its descent from its older form. Now Buber' s talk is
of the two "basic words," that is to say basic relationships of man
to things : I-Thou and l-It. The I-Thou is the world of living and
direct relations ; the l-It is the world of reified things in which the
-

one I sense to be a person who addresses me and is addressed by

me as "Thou," decays into an impersonal "It . "
33 · Ibid., p . 42. (Daniel, p. 94.-Ed.)
34· I bid., p. 74· (Daniel, pp. 14 1-42.-Ed.)
35· Yearbook of the Leo Baeck Institute, VIII (London, 1963), 147.
1 50 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
According to Buber all real life is an encounter between "I"
and "Thou. " "Bet\veen them stands no abstraction, no fore­
knowledge, and no fantasy. " Between them there exists pure
relation, for Buber a basic category beyond which one cannot go.
"I" and "Thou" become "I" and "Thou" only through their
relation to each other, and Buber betrays-notwithstanding all
protests-the mystical origin of these new categories in many
passages, but never more clearly than when he says "the 'Thou'
encounters me through grace-it is not found by seeking. But
that I speak the basic word to him is a deed of my essential
being." 36 Exactly as was the case with actualization in Daniel,
the new basic word " 1-Thou" can also "only be spoken with one's
whole essential being. The ingathering and coalescence to the
whole essential being can never happen through me, can never
happen without me." What had previously been said of orienta­
tion and actualization is now carried over to the "It world" and
the "Thou world. "
The It-world is the one of cohesion in space and time, in
which man knows his way, in which it is possible to live. The
Thou-world has no cohesion in space and time; it shakes up all
security, is dangerous, uncanny, and indispensable to the true life
of man. Where things enter into a living relation, the It can
become a Thou. But his Thou, too, must, after the expiration of
the relation, which is an isolated occurrence without dimension,
become an It.37
The breakthrough to religion, or to religiosity, to God, to
whom Buber will now testify constantly and emphatically,
becomes clear: Every individual Thou is a glimpse of the "eternal
Thou. " The inborn Thou of a human being cannot realize or
perfect itself in any single individual relation between I and
Thou. This perfection-and according to Buber that is obviously
the religious act-is achieved "only in the direct relation to the
Thou that according to its essence cannot become an It." 38
Buber's philosophy of culture and religion turns on these
philosophical-anthropological definitions, which he brought to
fruition in many applications.
36. Schriften, I, p. 85. (I and Thou, translation, prologue, notes by Walter Kaufmann
(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1970], p. 62.-Ed.)
37· Ibid., pp. 10o-- 1 01. (I and Thou, pp. 84-85.-Ed.)
38. Ibid., p. 128. (I and Thou, p. 123.-Ed.)
 MARTIN BUBER'S CONCEPTION OF JUDAISM 15 1

The re is no mistaking that the definitions the mselves-which

render the so called "lived reality" and the "concrete" pro minent
for the sake of a victorious opposition to the abstractions of a con­
ceptualization that tears asunder direct relations-admit of more
than a few doubts . The immediate evidence for, and validity of,
words like "direct relation, " " eternal Thou, " the "interhuman" (Ztvis­
ch e nme nschlic h e ) and their like, on which Buber builds, are in no
way clear. They continue to terminate in a hypostatization of the
old concept of Erlebnis unto the ontological realm. Corresponding
to this is the ambiguity and indete rminateness of very many, ofte n
highly poe tic passages of Buber' s , concerning which fairly arid
discussions between him and his critics have been conducted. 39
For the understanding of Buber' s world of ideas, precisely in
connection with what concerns us here, we must, however, start
from these basic concepts, which dominate all the writings of his
whole later period. In this, Buber' s pronounced turning away
from mysticism-emphatically proclaimed by him-plays a great
role. While realization in Daniel is admittedly of a mystical
nature-not for nothing is the motto of the first edition of the
book taken from Scotus Erigena' s De Divisione Naturae, a highly
mystical statement, and not by accident has it been omitted from
the reprint in the Schriften-the realization that emanates from
the 1-Thou relation as its fulfillment is, according to Buber, no
longer of a mystical nature.40 As to the objection that the 1-Thou
relationship, established by him and in principle capable of
infinite extension, involves ( in the form of a suppressed petitio
principii) a mystical relationship of man with the world or with
God-Buber persistently dismissed it indignantly, without
thereby being able to convince his critics. His "empirical"
descriptions of his own concrete I-Thou experiences, such as his
contemplation of a tree or his gazing into the eyes of his pet cat,
are, it seems to me, to be understood as nothing other than
descriptions of mystical experiences.41
It is, however, indisputable that Buber, who now speaks of
3 9 · That i s true above all of t h e extensive vol u m e , The Philosophy of Martin Buber,
e dited b y Paul A rt h u r S ch lipp a n d Ma urice Friedman (La Salle , I l l . : Open Court , 1 967) ,
the p h i losop h i cal pieces of w h ich leave at leas t th is reader p artic ularly perplexed.
40. Schriften, I , p . 1 66 . (I and Thou , pp. 1 77-79 . -E d . )
4 1 . Cf. , for exam ple , ibid. , I , p . 1 44 . (I and Thou , p . 1 4 5 . -E d . )
 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN C RISIS
God as, one might say, a "Biblical Jew" (as he often referred to
himself) has definitely repudiated the talk of " the God who
comes to be" that seems to lie behind many of his earlier
pronouncements. 42 So, too, he has now devalued the Erlebnis,
previously raised so high by him, in favor of the "encounter. " But
this devaluation, and the critique connected with it, is purely
verbal, and exactly that is now transferred to the moment of
encounter which had previously made it an actualized Erlebnis,
but which is now to be absent from the Erlebnis in the devalued
sense of the word.
The moment of encounter is not an Erlebnis that stirs in the
receptive soul and blissfully rounds itself out : in an encounter
something happens to a person. It is at times like an affiation, at
times like a wrestling match; no matter: it happens. The person
who steps forth from the essential act that is pure relation has in
his essence something More, something grown into him, of which
he did not know before and to the origin of which he is incapable
of doing justice by description. However the scientific world­
orientation, in its legitimate striving for unbroken causality, may
classify the descent of the New. For us, who are concerned with
the real consideration of the real, no subconsciousness and no
other apparatus of the soul can be worth anything.43

In other words, Buber's terminology, from the misuse of which he

often dissociated himself, did, to be sure, change at a decisive
point-but the matter on which it was based did not. It is only
that Erlebnis is no longer that of polar unity, but that of the I and
Thou in a state of relation, that of the finite and infinite person.
The l-and-Thou relationship is the basis of everything that is
creative; it gives birth to the word that is speech and reply, th e
dialogical relation in which life is no longer a mere biological fact
but is pervaded by spirit. In this relation there also originates, in a
"timeless moment," the form [Gestalt] which only becomes a
realized form when it seeks to prevail among the process of
formation in the world of the It-a world out of which it is
chiseled-and in which therefore, as Buber says, there is always a
"mixture of Thou and It. "
4 2. Der Jude und sein Judentum, pp. 7-8. (See On Judaism, op. cit., pp. 4-10.-Ed.)
43· Schriften, I, p. 1 52. (I and Thou , pp. 1 57-58.-Ed.)
 MARTIN BUBER'S CONCEPTION OF J UDAISM 1 53
This holds as true of art44 as it does of religion.
Thus in the course of history, in the changes of the human
element, ever new regions of the world and the spirit are elevated
into form, called to divine form. . . . The spirit answers [to
revelation J also by a viewing, a constituting viewing. Though we
earthly ones never view God without the world, only the world in
God, in this act of viewing we eternally constitute God's form.
Form is a mixture also of Thou and It. In faith and cult it can
harden into an object : but out of the essence of relation that
survives in it, it again and again becomes the present. God is close
to his forms as long as human beings do not remove them from
Him. . . . When, however, the expanding movement of religion
suppresses the contracting movement and form displaces God,
then the countenance of the form is darkened, its lips are dead, its
hands hang limp, it no longer knows God, and the world-house
that is built around its altar, the cosmos grasped by spirit,
crumbles, . . . [and] man, in the destruction of his truth, no longer
sees what has happened there.45
Buber' s talk of the cosmos grasped by spirit is to be
understood as follows:
Every great culture, embracing a whole people, is based on an
original event of encounter, on an answer to the Thou that once
ensued at the point of its origin, on an essential act of the spirit.
The latter, strengthened by forces directed to the same end in the
following generations, creates a unique comprehension of the
cosmos by the spirit-only through it does the cosmos of man
become possible again and again ; only now can man, with
comforted soul, build houses for God's worship and human
habitations out of a unique comprehension of space, only now can
he fill the whirling time with new hymns and songs and fashion
into form the community of man itself. But just so long as in his
own life of action and passion he possesses that essential act [that
is to say, the dialogue of I and Thou] ; so long as he enters into this
relation : that long he is free and thereby creative . If a culture no
longer centers on a living, unceasingly renewed process of relation
it hardens into an It-world, which is broken through eruptively
only from time to time by the glowing deeds of isolated spirits.46
44· Ibid., pp. 104- 105. (I and Thou, pp. 8g--g z .-Ed.)
45· Ibid., pp. 158-59. (I and Thou, pp. 166--U 7 .-Ed .)
46. Ibid., p . 1 14. (I and Thou, p. 103.-Ed.)
1 54 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
The rapidly growing It-world, continually spreading itself out
in the course of history, therewith also turns into the tyranny of
rules and laws, against which the breakthrough of a new relation,
a new dialogue, is directed in protest and in revolution. Again
and again must the· Thou-world be opened up in order to renew
the decomposing form of the It-world. Here it becomes clear how
intimately and firmly even the thoughts of the later Buber are
linked to those of his earlier period. Buber still seeks to
understand the creative, the process of the generation of
configurations and forms [Fonnen und Gestalten] and has now, he
is convinced, found in the doctrine of I and Thou and of the life
of d�alogue, the "Open Sesame" that grants him a new under­
standing of the phenomenon of the life of the spirit, and above ail
precisely of Judaism and its position in the world. After all, three
of the four very comprehensive volumes, in which at the end of
his life he collected his writings, are dedicated to his conception
of Judaism : Volume Two of his Works, called the Writings on the
Bible and Volume Three, \Vritings on Hasidism, and the volume
The Jew and His Judaism, in which he put his fundamental
insight to the test of a great example.

According to Buber, it must be said, the life of dialogue is the

great discovery of Israel. "Israel understood-or, rather, lived­
life as being-spoken-to and answering, speaking-to and receiving
answers. " 47 From the perspective of this basic insight, it is also
possible to understand his conception of Jewish monotheism . He
turns against the saying of Lagarde, o n e of the most profoundly
learned and embittered anti-Semites, that the monotheism of the
Jews stands "at the same level as that of the report of an NCO
commanded to appear before the Commissariat, who reports the
existence of only one item of some object or other. " 48 According
to Buber, monotheism bases itself on the fact
that the relationship of belief in accordance with its essence
wishes to hold good for a whole lifetime and be effective during it.
47· Ibid., III, p. 742.
48. Paul de Lagarde, Mitteilungen, II (1887), p . 330.
 MARTI N BUBER'S CONCEPTION OF JUDAISM 1 55
The uniqueness of monotheism . . . is that of the Thou and
the I-Thou relation, as long as the totality of the lived life does not
repudiate it. "Polytheism " turns every divine appearance-that is
to say every mystery of the world and of existence with which it
has to deal-into a divine being; the "Monotheist" recognizes in
everything once more the God he experienced by way of
confrontation.49

In other words:
Israel's Thou-experience of direct relation , the perfectly singular
experience, is so forceful that the idea of a multiplicity of
principles can no longer arise . . . the basic stance of the Jew can
be designated by the concept yihud (the unifying act), which is
frequently misunderstood . It concerns the incessantly renewed
confirmation of divine unity in the multiplicity of appearances,
and grasped quite practically at that : through human perception
and confirmation it happens again and again-in the face of the
enormous contradictoriness of life and especially in the face of
that primordial contradiction which announces itself in such
manifold fashion and which we call the duality of good and evil;
not with spite toward this contradictoriness but with love and
reconciliation-the unifying act [ Einung] happens, which is to
say, the cognition, the recognition, the recognizing again of divine
unity. Not only in a credo but in the fulfillment of knowledge.
Therefore, not at all in pantheistic theorems, but in the actuality
of the impossible, in the realization of the image, in the imitatio
Dei. The mystery of this reality completes itself in martyrdom, in
dying with the call of unity " Hear 0 Israel" on one's lips, which
here serves as witness in the most living sense.50
For Buber, the Bible is the classic document of the situation
of dialogue and the life of dialogue. While before 1925 his
concern with the Bible had obviously not yet assumed any
productive forms, it stands at the center of his work for forty
years thereafter. From the perspective of his new vision, as he
presented it in I and Thou, he began in 1924-supported and
stimulated by Franz Rosenzweig's collaboration for five years­
to translate the Bible anew.51 At the same time he undertook-in
49· Schriften, I, p. 629. (Good and Evil: Two Interpretations [New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1953], pp. 103-104.-Ed.)
50. Der Jude und sein ]udentum, pp. 188--Bg .
5 1 . See my speech on Buber's translation of the Bible, in The Messianic Idea in
 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
a never-ending stream of lectures, pieces, and larger works on the
central clusters of the Biblical world of belief and ideas-to give
an interpretative account of what he read ; or, to say it better, of
what came to him from the ancient words.
I have already said that Buber was a listener of great
intensity. His attitude to the Bible was that to a docun1ent of
revelation, but in saying that we must be clear as to the meaning
of revelation in his usage. Buber does, to be sure-above all
under the lasting influence of Rosenzweig's Star of Redemption­
use the terminology of the theologians, when they speak of
creation, revelation, and redemption as fundamental categories
of Judaism . But as with so many religious thinkers, in his case the
meaning of the old concepts shifts, and never more clearly than
when he speaks of revelation, or, what amounts to the same thing
with him, the word of God. Nor does he make a distinction, as,
for example, recent Catholic theologians are wont to propose,
between inspiration-in which human authors, even without
being clearly conscious of it, are stimulated in their expression by
God-and revelation, in which God Himself can be perceived to
speak. For him the two spheres merge.
For Buber, revelation is an "affair of the Here and Now"-we
must add: potentially in each and every Here and Now-"a
present primordial phenomenon," namely that of the creative
encounter between the I and the eternal Thou in calling and
responding. And, in fact, the person receives in it not something
like a "content," but a "presence as power. " He does not receive
a fullness of meaning but rather the guarantee that there is
meaning, " the inexpressible confirmation of meaning." This
meaning is not that of a different life, as for example, the life of
God, but that of this, our life, "not that of an 'over there' but of
this, our world." Thus revelation is the pure encounter in which
nothing can be expressed, nothing formulated and defined. The
meaning rooted in it can, according to Buber, find expression
only in the deeds of man. The meaning cannot be transferred ,
cannot be distinctly expressed or impressed as generally valid
knowledge ; it cannot even
become a valid imperative, is not inscribed on any tablets which
might be set up above all human minds. Each man is able to
Judaism and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality (New York: Schocken Books, 1971), pp.
314-19.
 MARTIN BOBER'S CONCEPTION OF JUDAISM 1 57
confirm only the received meaning with the uniqueness of his
being and with the uniqueness of his life. Just as there is no
precept that can lead us to the encounter, there is also none
coming out of it.

This definition by Buber is, as must be stated candidly, a

purely mystical definition of revelation. It is among Buber' s most
astonishing illusions that he believed to have left the sphere of
mysticism with such words, indeed to have rejected it. Some
years ago52 I attempted to define in detail the kabbalistic concept
of revelation and the word of God. In the decisive respect,
Buber' s statements belong to this sphere, with, however, the big
difference that for the mystics historical revelation implies
mystical revelation, in that the former is articulated and devel­
oped by the latter. There is, to be sure, no longer any talk of that
in Buber. He knows only one revelation, and that is the mystical
one, though he denies it this designation. At the end of the
passage excerpted here, one reads :

That is the eternal revelation, the one present in the Here and
Now. I know of none that in its basic phenomenon would not be
the same; I believe in none. I do not believe in a revelation
understood as God's naming Himself in a self-determination of
God vis-a-vis man. . . . That which exists is and nothing more.
The eternal wellspring of strength flows, the eternal contact
tarries, the eternal voice resounds, and nothing more.53

In Buber' s writings on the Bible, this concept is more or less

loosely connected by way of interpretation with the historical
phenomena, above all with the Sinaitic revelation as presented by
the Bible, and with prophetic revelation, which is always held by
Buber to be at once a mission and a summons to decision.
Inadvertently his talk of the true dialogue between the I and the
Thou turns into talk of true revelation. This becomes especially
clear in the very remarkable exposition he dedicates to the
revelation on Mount Sinai, or the "covenant at Sinai," between
God and Israel in his book, Konigtum Gottes (Kingship of God)
( 1932), which in general sticks fairly closely to the Biblical text.
52. See The Messianic Idea, pp. 292--98.
53 ·See Schriften, I, pp. 152-54. (I and Thou, pp. 157-6o.-Ed.) On the eternal
sounding of the voice that goes forth from Sinai, see the quotation from the kabbalist Meir
ben Gabbai in The Messianic Idea, pp. 299-303.
 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
In the reports of the Torah, which he considers unhistorical, he
seeks the "core , of an original event, namely that "encounter, in
the highest sense, and he finds the latter by the application of a
purely pneumatic exegesis, the subjectivity of which bewilders
the reader. In place of analysis, as it is often applied most
fruitfully in his writings on the Bible, there appears, precisely in
the most decisive pages of the book-dedicated to the religious
origin of the· Israelite theocracy in the covenant at Sinai-a
pneumatic construction according to which the league of half­
nomadic tribes who had wandered out of Egypt did not elevate
its human leader to the position of king, but rather "erected
theocracy on the anarchic ground of the soul. '' 54
Buber' s general mystical concept of revelation, as set forth
here, is projected on what the religious tradition asserts to be
specific and historical occurrences of revelation. Thereby Buber
attains not only an extraordinary loosening of the texts which are
the basis of historical Judaism as a religious society, but also the
identification, defended by him, of revelations accepted by
religious tradition and considered authoritative by it, with those
revelations which at any time and place can fall to the lot of the
intense listener.
The mighty revelations by which religions take their bearings are
in essence the same as the silent one which proceeds everywhere
54 · Schriften, II, pp. 686 and 721 (Kingship of God, translated by Richard Scheimann
[New York: Harper & Row, 1967] , pp. 138, 161.-Ed.), as also in an only slightly more
subdued tone in the exposition presented in the chapter "Holy Event" of his book Der
Glaube der Propheten in Schriften, II, pp. 281--97. (Prophetic Faith [New York: Harper
Torchbooks, 1960], pp. 43-59.-Ed.) By contrast the fonnulation is even sharper in
Schriften, II, p. 856 (On the Bible: Eighteen Studies, edited by Nahum N . Glatzer [New
York: Schocken Books, 1968], p. g.-Ed.), where one reads about the Sinai revelation that
it was

the trace remaining in words of a natural event-which is to say an event that

happened in the common world of the senses of human beings and adapted into it
and its context-which the group experiencing it expressed as God's revelation to
it and thus preserved as an enthusiastic, fonnative memory of generations that was
free of caprice; this way of experiencing, however, is not a self-deception of the
group, but its vision and its perceiving reason, for natural events are the bearers of
revelation and revelation has occurred where the witness of the event, steadfast in
the face of the latter, experienced the content as revelation, and where one could
thus state what in such an event the voice speaking in it wished to say to the
witness regarding his condition, his life, his duty.

Such a quotation shows clearly how Buber pneumatically loosens up the historical
assertions of the Bible he can no longer accept, and inserts a thoroughly mystical concept
of revelation-albeit in modem fonnulation-into the historical one.
 MARTIN BOBER'S CONCEPTION OF JUDAISM 1 59
and always. The mighty revelations which stand at the beginning
of great communities, at the turning points of human time, are
nothing other than the eternal revelation. But, after all, revelation
does not pour into the world by using its recipient like a funnel [it
is, to be sure, precisely this that historical revelations do! G . S . ] ; it
lays its hands on him, it seizes his whole element of current being
and fuses with it. Even the person who is the "mouth," is just that,
and not a megaphone-not an instrument, but an organ, relating
what has been heard in accordance with its own inner necessity;
and to relate (lauten) means to translate (umlauten).55
Buber is a long way from asserting that the experience and
grasp of the dialogical situation is a peculiarity of Judaism. He is,
however, quite sure " that no other group of human beings has
sacrificed as much energy and fervor to this experience as the
Jews . " 56 He could find the classical, and in the history of religion,
unsurpassed exposition of this situation at its most convincing in
the phenomenon of Biblical prophecy, and in his book, Prophetic
Faith he seems to me to have reached the high point of his efforts
to understand the Bible as a great dialogue. The prophet is the
one who hearkens and to whom at the same time God's decrees
and demands are clarified in symbols. He is, however, just as
much the one who, in the certainty of his instructions and
mission, summons up his people-in concrete historical situa­
tions-to a decision for the demands of God and their realization.
He demands a conversion ( Umkehr) of Israel, which in Hebrew is
identical with the word for answer or response, as Buber often
pointed out.
With great energy Buber depicted the significance of the call
to conversion that succeeded in finding its expression in proph­
ecy-a call not to the individual but to the community-for the
latter's constitution as the religious society of Judaism. He
depicted the failure of the call, the unfinished state of the
never-completed dialogue as a constitutive element of Judaism.
For the dialogical is in no way secure from a convulsive shift into
the violent and destructive. Buber coul� have pointed out-1
often wonder why he never did-that the first dialogue arnong
human beings mentioned in the Bible, the one between Cain and
Abel, also leads to the first murder.
55· Schriften, I, p. 158. (I and Thou, pp. 165--00 . -Ed.)
s6. Der Jude und sein ]udentum, p. I go.
!60 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
Next to the conception of dialogue in a mightily expanded
sense, Buber was most concerned with the problem of messia­
nism and redemption. Again and again he emphasized its central
character for the understanding of Judaism in all its phases, down
to its metamorphosis into the purely secular. In his writings on
the Bible, he traced its origins; in his other writings, its effects
and transformation in Judaism. In it he finds the strongest
expression of Israel's tie to history as the arena of the decisive
dialogical relationship and its realization. According to Buber,
the eschatological hope of a future in which the deepest
expectations between the I and the Thou would be actualized
always contains a historical hope, which only becomes "eschatol­
ogy" proper-a projection unto the end of days-through the
growing disappointment in history. This disappointment has ever
been, throughout almost 3,000 years, Israel's most bitter experi­
ence, precisely because of its ties to the historical. For faith, the
rnessianic future becomes a radical historical turning point,
indeed a radical overcoming of history. Later a new mythologiza­
tion of this expectation breaks forth in messianic Utopianism. For
faith mythologizes its object, and even if myth is not its
substance, it is nevertheless "the language of expecting faith as
well as remembering faith. " 57
In some notable pages about the Book of Isaiah, Buber
attempts to show that originally the messianic expectation existed
"in the full concreteness of the lived hour and its potential" and
becomes strongly eschatological only when one reaches the great
speeches of Deutero-Isaiah, a tranformation which for Buber
coincides with a transformation of God that is decisive for the
entire history of Judaism, from the Lord of history to the God of
the suffering and the oppressed. Justice and love-in-action-the
Hebrew word hesed can hardly be translated briefly in a different
way-are as much the demand of the hour that supports the
sufferer as they are the hope of the future in which they will be
actualized on earth.
For Buber, however, the messianic idea is not a revolutionary
idea, and that is certainly peculiar. The Messiah is, according to
him, the one who fulfills " the person who finally fulfills the
57· Schriften, II, p. 490. (Kingship of God, op. cit., p. 14.-Ed.)
 MARTIN B UBER'S CONCEPTION OF JUDAISM 161
magnificent mandate, who in a human community with human
forces and human responsibility sets up the divine order, which is
to say the order of justice and love demanded by God., 58 For
Buber in his later years, the call to that which is coming and to
the new no longer represents a call to revolution-in strict
contrast to his earlier years.59 What is new is only the unfolding
of the human into God's image, the human being who does not,
say, "come over to the side of God but remains standing before
his countenance in irrevocable dialogue. " 60 Therefore Buber sees
in the imitatio Dei the core of the Jewish ethic, which draws its
life from the messianic tension, from the certitude of the eventual
dominion of the good.
The messianic idea conjointly brings together creation and
redemption, primordial beginning and end of time, as Buber
sought to show, particularly in the cases of Deutero-Isaiah and
Hasidism. God's creating is something that happens again and
again, indeed something historical. "In the historical hour, for
which the prophet speaks, He creates something new, for the
sake of the work of redemption He creates a change of nature,
which, however, is at the same time a symbol of spiritual change .
. . . For the Deutero-Isaiah no theological demarcation exists
between creation and history. , 6 1
Buber once more finds exactly this conception in the
teachings of Hasidism. The foundation of Jewish messianism can
be summarized, according to Buber, in the following sentence :
"God wants to make use of man for the work of completing his
creation. " 62 Or, to formulate it in greater detail : "The lived
moment of man stands in truth between creation and redemp­
tion, linked to creation in its being effected and to redemption in
its power to effect; rather it does not stand between both but in
both at once. For just as creation does not exist just for once at
the beginning but constantly in the whole of time, so too
redemption exists not just for once at the end but constantly in
the whole of time. , Just as God, according to the words of the
58 . Ibid., pp. 349, 395 · (Prophetic Faith, op. cit., p. 150, pp. 107-108.-Ed.)
59· Ibid.,p. 468. (Prophetic Faith, p. 220.-Ed.)
6o. Ibid.,p. 399· (Prophetic Faith, p. 153.-Ed.)
61. Ibid.,II, p. 461 . (Prophetic Faith, p. 213.-Ed.)
62. Schriften, III, p. 752.
162 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS

ancient Jewish prayer, renews the work of creation each day, so,
according to Buber, does God permit and demand that in the
sphere of redemption also, "his efficacy is joined incomprehensi­
bly by the efficacy of the human person. The redemptive moment
is real, not only for the sake of completion and perfection but also
in itself." 63
That these statements about creation and redemption in their
Biblical as well as Hasidic aspects are most problematic and can
be disputed with good reason need not be shown in detail. here,
where our task is to understand Buber. Suffice it to say that his
points of emphasis and association betray an immense subjectiv­
ity, because for the texts to which Buber refers creation and
redemption are, to be sure, complementary but not really
parallel. Moreover, as true as it is that the constant renewal of
creation corresponds to later Jewish doctrine, as little does the
latter know of the redemptive moment of which Buber likes to
speak so much and so completely in the spirit of religious
existentialism . But for Buber this is a crucial point. " Only out of
the redemption of complete everydayness can come the complete
day of redemption. " He considers it an error to see messianic
Judaism as exhausted "by the belief in a unique event at the end
of time and in a unique human figure as mediator of this event.
The certitude of the collaborating force which is accorded to
man connected the end of time with present life." We do, it is .
true, live in an unredeemed world, "but out of every human life
connected to the world more than capriciously a seed of
redemption falls into it and the harvest is God's. " 64
Buber' s sharp turn against the revolutionary element in
Jewish messianism is connected with another important point, his
striking aversion to the apocalyptic. Buber is among those-no
less than Franz Rosenzweig and a long line of liberal Jewish
thinkers-who, at least in his later period, represent a tendency
to remove the apocalyptic sting from Judaism . I have discussed
this tendency in detail in my lecture, "Toward the Understanding
of the Messianic Idea in Judaism . " 65 It represents a legitimate
tendency, opposed, to be sure, by one no less legitimate, bitterly
rejected by Buber but extremely effective.
63. Ibid., p. 753·
64. Ibid., pp. 755, 757·
65. The Messianic Idea, pp. 1-36.
 MARTI N BUBER'S CONCEPTION OF JUDAISM 163
For Buber, the apocalyptic is a distortion and falsification of
the prophetic impulse which arose under Iranian influence and
about which he now has to say as many bad things as he did in his
earlier period about the Law. An excellent expression of this
attitude, which runs through all his later writings, can be found in
his essay Prophetie und Apokalyptik.66 Prophecy and Apocalypse
represent two basic attitudes for him, and he takes a passionate
position on them. The prophet who is addressed by God belongs
himself in the midst of events, in which he wants to take a hand
with his summons to conversion, and in which he participates by
staking his whole self. For the task of the prophet is not to be a
soothsayer but to confront people with alternative decisions. The
apocalyptic man, by contrast, stands over against the midst of
events; he sees in them an unalterable course which has now,
when the end of time is dawning, become visible and which leads
not to a fulfillment of history but to its annihilation ; only then
will arise the new eon, the world of Utopia, which follows the
great catastrophe.
"For the seer the future is not something that comes into
being; it has, as it were, been ever-present in heaven. That is why
it can be 'unveiled' to the visionary and he can then )Jnveil it to
others. " "A small measure of bad seed was sown in Adam's heart
at the beginning" as is said in the apocalypse of the so-called
fourth book of Ezra. Now the whole harvest must sprout, and
only when it has been cut in the final catastrophe can the soil of
the good appear . In place of decision in the sense of the prophets
there is only the separation of the chosen from a fallen creation
destined to doom. "The human being can accomplish nothing,
but then there is no longer anything for him to accomplish. "
Buber sees an optimistic modern transformation of the originally
pessimistic Jewish apocalyptic element in Karl Marx's vision of
the future, whose "primordial prophetic ground" he denies
because he sees in him an apocalyptic in secular form, who is
indifferent to the inner change of human beings which precedes
the change of the world, being only concerned with the
unalterable course of events that will swallow up previous history
66. Schriften, II, pp. 925-42. The quotations in the following paragraph come from
these pages. (The essay appears as "Prophecy, Apocalyptic, and the Historical Hour" in
On the Bible, op. cit. , pp. 172--87.-Ed.)
 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM I N CRISIS
in a revolutionary way-and who thinks that the coming
catastrophe of these events ought, if anything, to be hastened. In
the modern version of the apocalyptic, which he finds not only in
Marx but rediscovers among the Protestant theologians of . Karl
Barth's school, Buber sees a codification of all that which is most
calculated to trigger his objections. He attempts to the best of his
ability to minimize the significance of this factor in the history of
Judaism.
Therewith, however, he was driven to a revision-albeit not a
very decisive one-of his attitude toward the Law, in which the
steadfastness of the conservative element as an antiapocalyptic
factor now appears to him in a more positive light. This change of
position stands out above all in Pharisiiertum,67 his 1925 essay
against Oskar H. Schmitz. Now he no longer finds rigid legalism
in the position of the Pharisees toward the Law. He acknowl­
edges that a "living tradition" existed there
which basically, it is true, wished to be nothing other than the
taking over of something handed over, something orally pre­
served, but which in its reality nevertheless in every new
generation gave new expression to every new situation: an
expression, which to be sure, had to legitimize itself by its link
with tradition, but in this process broadened and modified its
stock and indeed changed matters.68

Buber goes so far as to say that "the Pharisees, when they

ventured · to interpret Scripture, projected it into the area of
worldly events." This amounts to a new tone, of which little
could be heard in Buber' s earli.e r period. But Buber is still very
far from according normative Judaism, halakhah, a central
position, in his conception of Judaism . In his discussion of
Christianity, which he undertook in his weakest book, Two Types
of Faith ( 1950 ), and tied to a discussion-an extremely dubious
one, to be sure-of the allegedly different meaning of faith,
emunah, in Judaism and of pis tis in the New Testament, the Law,
and the attitude of Judaism and Christianity toward it, decidedly
takes second place. In his other writings of this period as well,
which proceed under the slogan of I and Thou, he distinguishes
67. Der Jude und sein ]udentum, pp. 221-30.
68. Ibid., p. 222.
 MARTIN BUBER'S CONCEPTION OF JUD�AISM 165
between the Commandment, which is the demanding address of
revelation to man, and the Law, in which the summons is
objectified and all too soon deteriorates and dies off in the
It-World.69 His pronouncements about the Law become more
measured, but for what is close to his heart in his reflections on
Judaism, the Law still means nothing.

VI

Buber' s principal work in the grasp and interpretation of the

great phenomena of Judaism concentrated on the Bible and
Hasidim, which in his view coincided completely and in different
forms proclairned the same message of authentic Judaism, the
realization of the genuine-maintained by him to be unmediated
-relation of I and Thou in the lived moment, the relation
lending life and meaning to all times and forms. But one may
point to a difference in his attitude to these two areas which is
most visible in his work and which ought to have set the reader
thinking-had it ever been noticed. Buber' s writings on the Bible
present themselves, at least in their literary structure and manner
of execution, as scientific analysis. They fit into the traditional
framework of scientific questioning; they are circumscribed-by
precise indications of sources and-compared to his other
writings-a downright strikingly rich and seemingly ostentatious
discussion of scholarly literature on the subject. His exegeses are,
to be sure, as I have already said, pneumatic exegeses when it
comes to the crunch. But it is pneumatic exegesis with learned
notes, which cause its pneumatic character to recede a bit or
even blot it out. His Hasidic writings, however, avoid all these
accessories. They represent ex cathedra pronouncements which
offer no encouragement of help or verification by their sources.
Here I may perhaps be permitted to mention something
personal by way of illustration. Only once, in 192 1 , when I was
still very young did I succeed, with great pressure, to bring Buber
to the point of accompanying a book of his-Der Grosse Maggid
und seine Nachfolge (The Great Maggid and His Succesors) with
6g. Schriften, II, p. 108o.
166 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
references to his sources. I talked to him about the impetus such
an inclusion would necessarily give to serious readers with a good
knowledge of Hebrew to compare his stories with the originals
and that, indeed, they were entitled to such a comparison. He
promised to ponder the matter and as a compromise he finally
added to the book a list of references that was, as he wrote to me,
to be "printed separately in a small edition and sent free of
charge to anyone interested. " In this case there was at least a
reference to the title and edition of the book that served as a
source for each of the stories, though there still was no indication
of exact page numbers. Even this concession, which so obviously
went against his grain, disappeared from his later Hasidic books
and editions and only in 1957 did he permit himself to be
persuaded at least to include the titles of his source books for the
Hebrew version of his Tales of the Hasidim. For him that was the
utmost limit of his accommodation to historical and scientific
discussion. He held too closely to the completely personal note he
had lent to Hasidism to wish to expose it to the cold light of
confrontation with traditional critical methods.
It was inconvenient for Buber to accentuate this difference
between his attitude and that of pure research, and I myself only
gradually became aware of the severity of that difference. When
I visited him in Germany in 1932, I said to him, "Why don't you
at long last write an expository work on the theology of
Hasidism?" He replied, " I intend to do that, but only after you
have written a book about the kabbalah. " I said, "Is that a deal?"
He said, "Maybe. " At the time I did not yet understand that he
was unable to maintain a scholarly attitude toward this topic. It
was a shattering experience for me to learn as much when, in
1943-two years after the publication of the book of mine he had
been awaiting-! went to him so that, as I told him in advance,
we could have a talk, in which I could explain to him my
fundamental doubts about his interpretation of Hasidism ; doubts
which had grown during long years of continuous study of the
texts and which I have aired elsewhere. 70
Buber listened with great seriousness and with great tension.
70. " Martin Buber's Interpretation of Hasidism," in The Messianic Idea of Judaism
(New York: Schocken Books, 1971), pp. 227-50.
 MARTIN BUBER'S CONCEPTION OF JUDAISM 16 7
When I was done he was silent for a very long time. Then he said
slowly and stressing every word, "If what you are now saying
were right, my dear Scholem, then I would have worked on
Hasidism for forty years absolutely in vain, because in that case,
Hasidism does not interest me at all. " It was the last conversation
I ever had with Buber about substantive problems of Hasidism.
Words failed me. I understood that there was nothing more to be
said.
Just as Buber's work on the Bible exhibits itself in the
presentation of the Biblical text itself in the medium of his new
translation and in the interpretive discussion of that text, so do
his efforts on behalf of the Hasidic world of ideas resolve
themselves in his collection of Hasidic anecdotes of didactic
content, as represented most impressively in the Tales of the
Hasidim and in the interpretive works in which he presents what
he calls the "Hasidic message. " Buber was aware of the paradox
of his enterprise when he "directly expressed as message, the
message to humanity which Hasidism did not wish to be, but was
and is. Thus I express it as such against its will, because the world
is in such great need of it today. " 71 At the same time, however,
he emphasizes that he has not " transposed" this message into
"ilnpenetrable abstraction," and has thus also tried to preserve
the mythic forms in which the Hasidic essence expressed itself. In
this he disassociated himself from the contemporary postulate of
the demythologization of religion, for "myth is not the subse­
quent investiture of a truth of faith, it is the instinctual product of
the creative vision and creative memory of what is overwhelm­
ing, and nothing abstract can be extracted in this case . " 72 One
must, however, say that, his own protests notwithstanding, he
does not fail to engage in very far-reaching attempts in just that
direction. The emphasis on those tendencies in Hasidism that
according to him contain its message to the world and at the
same time its innermost Jewish meaning is based in large part on
a fusion of those tendencies through concepts forged by himself.
His own contribution to the understanding of Judaism appears to
the same extent in that act of forging as its analysis would render
7 1 . Schriften, III, p. 74 1 . (The Origin and Meaning of llasidism, edited and translated
by Maurice Friedman [New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1g6o], p. 22.-Ed.)
72. Ibid., p. 946.
!68 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM I N CRISIS
visible what is problematic, that is to say questionable, about it.
While previously Hasidism appeared to Buber as a paradigm
of "activist mysticism," he later finds in it a summons to an
actualization of the I-Thou relation, which is realized in the
concreteness of the world without any mystical transports. The
characteristic mystical features, which he had previously accen­
tuated, are now cast aside, or else they are reinterpreted.
Remaining crucial to him are the transcendence of the separation
between the sacred and the profane, the consecration and
sanctification of every concrete deed, no matter of what it
consists, a pansacramentalism which is to be "open toward the
world, pious toward the world, in love with the world. " 73
The tendency toward the overcoming of the separation
between the sacred and the profane which, according to Buber,
attains to a "highly realistic perfection" in Hasidism, is also set off
sharply for him against the background of an opposite tendency
that meets the eye, a situation leading to a strict demarcation of
the two spheres. 74 It is, after all, precisely the opposite tendency
which fundamentally characterizes the world of halakhah, the
Jewish order of life under the Law. Buber, however, looks at it
this way: the separation of the two spheres is only provisional, for
even according to older view� the Law stakes out only that area
which "has already been claimed for sanctification, " while in the
messianic world everything will be sacred. Thus the profane "can
be seen as a preliminary stage of the sacred; it is that which has
not yet been sanctified. " 75
It is in this sense that Buber interprets a famous saying by one
of the great tzadikkim, Rabbi Menahem Mendel of Kotzk-a
saying that, to be sure, had a completely different meaning in its
original context-" God dwells \vherever he is admitted." What
matters, in other words, is the sanctification of everyday life.
"What is necessary is not the attaining of deeds that consist of
the sacramental or the mystical, what is necessary is the doing of
what one is assigned to do, the habitual and obvious in its truth
and pure aspect." 76
73· Ibid., p. 844.
74· Ibid., P · 939·
75· Ibid.
76. Ibid., p. 812.
 MARTIN B UBER'S CONCEPTION OF JUDAISM 1 6g
For Buber, that is the meaning of Hasidic pansacramentalism.
Man has to fulfill his calling in the concrete world itself, not by
way of mystical transports out of it or by way of esoteric or even
magical performances in it. Buber contrasts the principle of the
selection of sacramental materials and actions in the movement
of the Protestant Reformation with the Hasidic attitude which,
according to him, "knows that the sacramental substance is not
to be found or maintained in the totality of things and functions
but believes that it can be awakened and redeemed in every
object and action, " namely " through the fulfilling presentness of
the whole, wholly dedicated person, through sacramental exis­
tence. " 77
What gives Buber's conception its specific tone is this acute
stress of a tendency for which there is undoubtedly ample
evidence in Jewish literature, and certainly in Hasidic literature
especially. He has, to be sure, bought this particular conception
at a high price, namely by a resolute disregard of those features in
which the encounter with the concrete is interpreted as its
transcendence, because in the true encounter-and that is the
tenor of the decisive Hasidic texts-the concrete loses the
character of its concreteness and is taken up into the divine.
Upon closer inspection, Hasidism' s "love affair" with the world
turns out to be Buber' s love affair with the world. The Hasidic
attitude was much more dialectical than it appears in Buber. In
Buber' s later writings his heated polemic against all gnosis
contributed to this unequivocal glorification of the "concrete. "
H e considered Jewish kabbalah to be gnosis; with good reason, to
be sure. While previously, in an excellent formulation, he had
defined Hasidism as "kabbalah become ethos" 78 he now sees
Hasidim-precisely when it is most characteristic-as the oppo­
site of kabbalah. What he had previously seen, in a no less
felicitous expression, as the "deschematization of mystery" 79 is
now polemically overstated in antitheses.
Buber' s predilection for exaggerated antitheses, which no
longer pinpoint the real phenomena of faith, though they always
contain a grain of truth, is a fundamental weakness of his work.
77· Ibid., p. 84 1 .
78. Ibid., p. 15.
79· Ibid., p. 8 10.
 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
His theses thereby more than once run the danger of flipping
over into the absurd. The most radical formulations of what
Buber' s slogan of the sanctification of everyday life declares to be
the basic , tendency of a Hasidism that has left the kabbalistic
element behind are to be found precisely in kabbalistic writings.
For Buber, however, there is an eternal opposition between what
he calls Devotio and gnosis. In his interpretation of Judaism he
feels himself to be the spokesman of Devotio against gnosis,
which he designates as a "great power in the history of the
human spirit. " BO Gnosis is for him the presumption of a
knowledge of God that does not behove us while Devotio signifies
service to the divine, the presupposition of which is that the
servant never understands his own self as the Self.
Though ever so little is gained by such antitheses for the
understanding of historical phenomena, they all give an exact
picture of Buber' s conception. Even in his later phases he takes
the side, as he did at the beginning, of that which cannot be
formulated, the creative beginning and doing against all forms of
the great religious traditions, which if one takes a closer look, are
gnosis in Buber' s sense, or corroded by it. He concedes that the
gnostic element determines the mythical elements of Hasidism,
but he denies-to the point of running the danger of manifest
self-contradiction-that this has anything to do with the creative
impulses which avail themselves of myth and transform it. The
infinite slipperiness of his formulations permits him to surmount
such contradictions.
Buber began his activity as spokesman for Judaism in his
"Three Addresses on Judaism. " In contrast to the great gesture
represented by these speeches stand the speeches published in
1952 at the end of his life, which are permeated by deep
resignation and depression. The voice has become soft, the
spokesman stands at the brink of despair and is aware of the
bitter irony that he, the philosopher of dialogue, never reached
the point of engaging in a dialogue with his own people.B 1 Few
will be able to read these speeches-the legacy of an old man
Bo. Ibid., p. 953· This polemic against gnosis recurs very frequently in his later
writings; see, for example, Der Jude und sein ]udentum, pp. 194--97.
8 1 . The situation was formulated very precisely in this way by one of his American
critics, Chaim Potok, in Commen tary (March, 1966), p. 49·
 MARTIN BUBER'S CONCEPTION OF JUDAISM 171

who once more summarizes the insight of his life-without being

moved. At the high point of his life and influence, in a speech
delivered in 1933, " Biblical Humanism, " he had still answered
with much greater assurance the questions he now poses for
himself and leaves unanswered.82 Previously he had contrasted
Western humanism with the Biblical variety, which is to say the
summons to become a person "worthy of the Bible, " a person
"who permits himself to be addressed by the voice speaking to
him in the Hebrew Bible and who responds to it with his life . "
Buber demands a rebirth of the normative primal powers to
which life is subject.
Even he who, like me, is . . . incapable of letting the Biblical
word take the place of the voice, even to him it must be certain
that we will never again truly attain to the normative in any other
way except by making ourselves accessible to the Biblical word .
. . . We are no longer a community which possesses [what was
proclaimed by revelation] , but if we open ourselves to the Biblical
word . . . we may hope that those who are gripped in this
way-differently and yet in common-will grow together again
into a community in that original sense . . . . Biblical humanism,
unlike the Western variety, is unable to lift one above the
problems of the moment; it wishes to educate us to steadfastness
in, and confirmation of, the moment. This present stormy night,
these bolts of lightning hurling down, this threat of corruption: do
not flee from them into any world of logos, into any world of
perfect form ; stand fast, hearken to the word in the thunder, obey,
respond! This fearful world is the world of God. It challenges you.
Confirm yourself as God's person in it!
These words sum up Buber' s understanding of Judaism.
Buber' s activity is contained in the tension between the summons
from the year 1933 , marking the onset of the great catastrophe of
the Jewish people, and the still, small voice of those speeches
called "At the Turning Point. " Perhaps the melancholy words of
praise with which one of the great Hebrew poems of this century
begins hold good for Buber, too:
Blessed are those who sow but do not reap.

Bz. Schriften, II, pp. 1087--gz. ("Biblical Humanism" appears in On the Bible, op. cit.,
PP · Z l l-16.-Ed.)
 Walter Benjamin *

In 1965 it will be twenty-five years since Walter Benjamin-for

as many years a close friend of mine-took his own life when, on
his flight from the Germans, he had crossed the Pyrenees into
Spain with a group of refugees, and the local official at Port-Bou
threatened to turn them hack and extradite them to France. He
was forty-eight years old at the time. A life lived entirely beyond
the footlights of the public scene, though linked with it through
his literary activities, passed into complete oblivion, except for
the few who had received an unforgettable impression from him.
During over twenty years, from the onset of the Nazi era in
Gennany to the publication of a collection of the majority of his
most important writings in 1955, his name was as thoroughly
forgotten as any in the intellectual world. At best he was the
subject of an esoteric whispering campaign that some of us
assiduously promoted. It is due largely to the intense efforts of
Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno that this has changed in the
German-speaking world. Adorno never tired of pointing out
Benjamin's towering stature; moreover, at a time when it was by
no means easy to find a publisher for a venture of that kind, he
succeeded in winning over the Suhrkamp Verlag for the publica­
tion of a two-volume edition of Benjamin 's writings (Schriften) .
In the generation of authors as well as readers now coming into
o A lecture in German delivered at the Leo Baeck Institute, New York, October 1964.
Published in Neue Rundschau, LXXVI (Frankfurt, 1965), pp. 1-2 1 . English version
published in Yearbook of the Leo Baeck Institute, X (London, 1965), 1 1 7-36; translated by
Lux Furtmiiller, and reprinted here, slightly revised.
 WALTER BENJAMIN 1 73
its own, he is greatly respected as the most eminent literary critic
of his time; some of his writings have come out in new editions,
the large volume of selected writings, Illuminations, was pub­
lished conspicuously and in a substantial edition, and in the
course of the current year we can expect the publication of a
fairly comprehensive selection of his letters-some of them very
important-edited by Adorno and myself. They will present a
picture of his life and work.
I first set eyes on Walter Benjamin late in the autumn of 1913
at a discussion between the Zionist youth and Jewish mem hers
both of Wynecken's "Anfang" group and the Free German
Student Association, which he attended as the main spokes1nan
of the latter group. I have forgotten what he said but I have the
most vivid memory of his bearing as a speaker. This left a lasting
impression because of his way of speaking extempore without so
much as a glance at his audience, staring with a fixed gaze at a
remote corner of the ceiling which he harangued with much
intensity, in a style incidentally that was, as far as I remember,
ready for print. I noticed the same behavior on some later
occasions. At the time he was considered the best mind in that
circle in which he was fairly active during the two years before
the First W�rld War, for a while as president of the Free Student
Association at Berlin University. By the time I made his
acquaintance-one day in summer 1915 during my first term,
when we were following up a discussion on a lecture by Kurt
Hiller who had treated us to a passionate rationalist debunking of
history-he had completely withdrawn from his former circle. In
the years 1915 to 1923 when, living in almost complete seclusion,
he followed his studies and took the first steps to launch out
beyond them I was on very close terms with him and spent much
of that time, especially 1918 and 1919 in Switzerland, together
with him . The problem of Judaism and its discussion occupied a
central place in our relationship in those years. Between 1916
and 1930 Benjamin considered again and again, on various
occasions and in the most different situations, whether he should
not leave Europe and go to Palestine. Actually he never got
beyond the initial efforts and preparations, and this, I am
convinced, was not by accident. Late in the summer of 1923 I
went myself to Jerusalem . In the following years he embarked-
1 74 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
hesitantly at first, afterwards, especially from about 1930, with
growing determination-on the attempt to absorb historical
materialism into his mental system and make it the basis of his
literary production. During that period there were only two
occasions, in Paris, when I spent days or even weeks in his
company and we had lively, indeed at times tempestuous
discussions about the new turn in his thinking, which I was
unable to approve and considered a denial of his true philosophic
mission. Until his death we conducted a correspondence which
was very intense at times, and his letters are among my most
precious possessions. Thus my picture of - Walter Benjamin,
though authentic in its way, has always been determined by
personal decisions.
In his youth his character was marked by a profound sadness.
I remember a postcard to him from Kurt Hiller who took him to
task for his "unserene cast of mind . " I would assume that his
profound understanding of the nature of sorrow and its literary
manifestations which dominates so many of his works is related to
this trait. At the same time he had in his earlier years an element
of personal radicalism, even personal ruthlessness, strangely
contrasting with the almost Chinese courtesy that generally
characterized his social intercourse. When I first came to know
him, he had with utter harshness and lack of compunction
severed nearly all relations with his friends of the youth
movement, because they had ceased to mean anything to him. In
the process he deeply hurt some of his former friends. In
conversation he hardly ever mentioned such matters. That
conversation of his-a meeting place of wit and gravity-was of
extraordinary intensity. In it his passionate logic was probing
depth after depth, and straining after ever greater precision of
utterance. What thinking really means I have experienced
through his living example. At the same time he had an effortless
command of felicitous metaphors and striking images saturated
with meaning yet always direct and to the point. Faced with
unexpected views, he was utterly free of prejudice and sought to
illuminate their sense or their place in a wider context from no
less unexpected angles. This undogmatic manner of thinking
contrasted with his pronounced firmness in judging people.
His most enduring personal passion was the collecting of
 WALTER BENJAM IN 1 75

books. In him the author and the collector were combined in rare
perfection, and this passion added an admixture of gaiety to his
somewhat melancholy nature. An essay published in his
Schriften-"U npacking my Library"-beautifully displays that
gaiety. We read there the sentence inspired by Jean Paul: "Of all
the methods of acquiring books, the one considered most
reputable is to write them, " whereas "among the customary
means of acquisition the most genteel for collectors [is] that of
borrowing with subsequent nonreturn. " His own library, which I
knew quite well, clearly mirrored his complex character. The
great works which meant much to him were placed in highly
baroque patterns next to the most out-of-the-way writings and
oddities, of which-both as an antiquarian and as a philosopher
-he was no less fond. Two sections of this collection have
remained most vividly in my memory: books by mentally
deranged authors and children's books. The "world systems" of
the mentally deranged, which he had brought together from I do
not know what sources, provided him with material for the most
profound philosophical reflections on the architecture of systems
in general and on the nature of the associations that nourish the
thinking and imagination of the mentally sound and unsound
alike.
But the world of the children's book meant more to him. It is
one of Benjamin's most important characteristics that throughout
his life he was attracted with almost magical force by the child's
world and ways. This world was one of the persistent and
recurring themes of his reflections, and indeed, his writings on
this subject are among his most perfect pieces. (Only some of
them are included in the Schriften.) There are the entrancing
pages on the subject in his volume of aphorisms, One- Way Street
(Einbahn-strasse), which include what must be the most beautiful
passages ever written about postage stamps; there are no less
outstanding essays about exhibitions of children's books and
related topics, works dedicated to the as yet undistorted world of
the child and its creative imagination, which the metaphysician
describes with reverent wonder and at the same time seeks
conceptually to penetrate. Further passages on this subject occur
very frequently in his other writings. To Benjamin the work of
Proust marks the point where the worlds of the adult and the
1 76 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM I N CRISIS
child are most perfectly interfused, and accordingly one of the
cardinal points of his philosophical interest. Lastly, this fascina­
tion found an outlet in the records of his own childhood that he
wrote down in the early 1930s under the title A Berlin Childhood
around 1 900. Much of this appeared at the time in the
Frankfurter Zeitung in the form of separate pieces, but it was not
published as a complete work, in the form originally conceived,
until after World War II. Here poetry and reality have become
one. It has often been asserted that Schelling, the philosopher, at
the height of his creative powers wrote Nachtwachen (Night
Vigils), one of the most important romantic prose works, under
the pseudonym of "Bonaventura. " It is not certain whether this is
correct. If it were, it would be the most exact parallel to
Benjamin's book, written as it is in a prose that combines crystal
limpidity with continual pervasive movement and appears re­
laxed as well as thoroughly tough, a prose that could only have
been conceived in the mind of a philosopher turned storyteller.
"Narrative philosophy" was Schelling's ideal. In this book by
Benjamin it has been achieved in an undreamt-of manner. The
philosopher and his outlook is present behind every one of these
pieces, but under the gaze of memory his philosophy is trans­
muted into poetry. Though lacking in all the attributes of a
German patriot, Benjamin had a deep love for Berlin. It was as a
Jewish child whose forefathers had been settled in the regions of
Mark Brandenburg, Rhineland, and West Prussia that he experi­
enced his native city. In his description the city's flagstones
and its hidden corners, which open themselves up before the
child's eye, are transformed back into a provincial isla:qd in the
heart of the metropolis. "In my childhood I was a prisoner of
the old and the new West, the two city quarters my clan
inhabited at the time in an attitude of defiance mingled with
self-conceit. This attitude turned the two districts into a ghetto
upon which the clan looked as its fief. " How a child of that
golden ghetto explores its length and breadth, how he shines the
light of his imagination into all its corners as if it were the child's
universe, was brought vividly to life by Benjamin thirty years
later in his recollections.
It was the small things that attracted him most. To create, or
discover, perfection on the small and very smallest scale was one
 WALTER BENJAMIN 1 77
of his strongest urges. Authors like Johann Peter Hebel or the
Hebrew writer S. Y. Agnon, who achieved perfection in stories of
the smallest compass, enchanted him time after time. That the
greatest is revealed in the smallest, that-as Aby Warburg used
to say-" The Lord God dwells in the detail" : these were
fundamental truths to him in many ways. This inclination lends a
special note to his volume, One- Way Street. For what matters
here is not the aphoristic form but the underlying intention : to
present in the briefest literary utterance something complete in
itself. The same trait was manifest in his handwriting which
reflected that extreme bent toward smallness, yet without the
slightest sacrifice of definition or accuracy in his minutely shaped
characters. It was his never-realized ambition to get a hundred
lines onto an ordinary sheet of notepaper. In August 1927 he
dragged me to the M usee Cluny in Paris, where, in a collection of
Jewish ritual objects, he showed me with true rapture two grains
of wheat on which a kindred soul had inscribed the complete
Shema Israel.

II

In the years that have passed since the publication of his

Schriften, a good deal has been written about Benjamin, much of
it silly or petty. He had too strong an element of the enigmatic
and unfathomable in his mental makeup not to provoke that sort
of thing. And his critics' misunderstandings would surely have
been a source of amusement to him who even in his brightest
hours never abandoned the esoteric thinker's stance. As Adorno
said very aptly about him, "What Benjamin said and wrote
sounded as if born of mystery, yet its force derived from
cogency." The peculiar aura of authority emanating from his
thought, though never explicitly invoked, tended to incite
contradiction, while the rejection of any systematic approach in
all his work published after 1922-a rejection that he himself
proclaimed boldly from the hoardings-screened the center of
his personality from the view of many.
That center can be clearly defined : Benjamin was a philoso­
pher. He was one through all the phases and in all the fields of his
 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM I N CRISIS
activity. On the face of it he wrote mostly about subjects of
literature and art, sometimes also about topics on the borderline
between literature and politics, but only rarely about matters
conventionally considered and accepted as themes of pure
philosophy. Yet in all these domains he derives his impulse from
the philosopher's experience. Philosophical experience of the
world and its reality-that is how we can sum up the meaning of
the term metaphysics, and that is certainly the sense in which it is
used by Benjamin. He was a metaphysician; indeed, I would say,
a metaphysician pure and simple. But it was borne in on him that
in his generation the genius of a pure metaphysician could
express itself more readily in other spheres, any other sphere
rather than in those traditionally assigned to metaphysics, and
this was precisely one of the experiences that helped to mold his
distinctive individuality and originality. He was attracted more
and more-in a fashion strangely reminiscent of Simmel, with
whom otherwise he had little in common-by subjects which
would seem to have little or no bearing on metaphysics. It is a
special mark of his genius that under his gaze every one of these
subjects discloses a dignity, a philosophic aura of its own which
he sets out to describe.
His metaphysical genius flowed from the quality of his
relevant experience, its abounding richness pregnant with sym­
bolism. It was this latter aspect of his experience, I believe, which
invests many of his most luminous statements with the character
of the occult. Nor is this surprising. Benjamin was a man to whom
occult experiences were not foreign. Rarely though-if ever-do
they appear in his work in their immediate unprocessed form.
(This is presumably why he was able to recapture the occult
character of Proust's decisive experience with unsurpassed
precision.) In his personal life, incidentally, this trait found
expression in an almost uncanny graphological gift of which I
witnessed a good many instances. (Later on he tended to conceal
this gift.)
Even where he takes up controversial topics of literary and
general history or politics as his starting point, the metaphysi­
cian's eye penetrates deep below the surface, and reveals in the
objects of his discourse fresh layers bathed in a light of strange
radiance. In his earlier works he seems to describe the configura-
 WALTER BENJAMIN 1 79
tion of such layers as if writing under dictation, while later on this
immediacy gives way to an increasingly precise understanding of
the tension and the dialectic motion astir in his subjects. He
proceeds from the simplest elements, and entirely unexpected
vistas open themselves up to him ; the hidden inner life of his
subjects is manifest to him . His discursive thinking commands
great trenchancy, as displayed, for instance, in his first book, Qn
the concept of art criticism among the early German romantics.
In most of his work, however, this discursive element of strict
conceptual exposition takes second place to a descriptive method
by which he seeks to let his experience speak. It is this descriptive
method which seems so strangely to open his subjects up to him,
and which invests even short papers and essays of his with a
character at the same time fragmentary and final.
To say that Benjamin is a difficult author would be an
understatement. His major works demand an unusual degree of
concentration from the reader. His thought was greatly com­
pressed and inexorable in the often excessive brevity of exposi­
tion. Accordingly, his works-if I may say so-need to be
meditated upon. At the same time they are written in a masterly
prose of rare incandescence. His essay on Goethe's Elective
Affinities ( Wahlverwandtschaften), which moved Hofmannsthal
to enthusiasm, combines in a manner unique in aesthetics the
highest elevation of style with the deepest thought. The same
applies to the last section of his book on the Trauerspiel. By
contrast many of his smaller and smallest pieces-especially the
essays in Die Literarische Welt, Die Gesellschaft, and Frankfurter
Zeitung-are written with a gusto and facility of expression that
seem to veil the profundity of interpretation. As his masterpiece
in this genre I would rate the essay on Gottfried Keller, although
others-for instance those on Johann Peter Hebel, Paul Scheer­
bart, Robert Walser, Nikolai Leskov, and Max Kommerell-come
close to it. No wonder that the combination came off, sprang into
life spontaneously as it were, where he was able to pay homage.
Among the scholars of his own generation in the field of German
literary history there was but one whom Benjamin recognized
without reservation, "notwithstanding the decisive difference of
his own views [as a Marxist?] from the author's. ,, Yet this was not
a Marxist like Georg Lukacs, or some other " Left" author, but a
180 ON JEWS AND J UDAISM IN CRISIS
man fro1n the opposite camp. It was Max Kotnmerell, younger by
several years, who had broken free from Stefan George's school
and who, later on, by a stroke of irony, was granted the venia
legendi in German literature at Frankfurt University that had
been denied to Benjamin on his one and only bid for an academic
position. He admired in him the very qualities which he himself
so conspicuously possessed, although he used them very dif­
ferently: "The mastery of physiognomic description and the
dynamic range of his understanding which assessed not only the
characters, but also, and above all, the historical constellations in
which they encountered one another. "
His metaphysical genius dominates his writings, from the
unpublished " Metaphysics of Youth," which he wrote in 1913 at
the age of twenty-one, to the "Theses on the Philosophy of
History" of 1940, his latest extant piece of writing. It is man­
ifested especially in two spheres that increasingly interpenetrate
in his work : the philosophy of language and the philosophy of
history. The one bent led to a growing preoccupation with
literary critical analysis, the other similarly to social-critical
analysis. But throughout it was always the philosopher speaking,
unambiguous, an unmistakable voice. For about ten years he
upheld the concept of the philosophic system as the form proper
to philosophy, after which he himself was groping. Kant exerted a
lasting influence on him, even where-as in the recently
published "Program of the Coming Philosophy"-he passionately
challenges the validity of the experience expressed in that
philosophy. He expected that an experience of infinitely greater
richness would still have to be fitted into what was basically
Kant's frame of reference, however great the necessary modifica­
tions. But this ideal of the system, reflecting the traditional
canons of philosophy, was corroded and eventually destroyed in
his mind by a skepticism that stemmed in equal proportions from
his study of neo-Kantian systems and from his own specific
expenence.
Margarete Susman has referred to an "exodus from philoso­
phy" said to have occurred in Germany after World War I and to
have ushered in a completely new mode of thinking. What she
meant, to judge from her examples, was the tendency to turn
from idealis1n to existentialism and theology. Few 1nen can have
 WALTER BENJAM IN

provided more drastic an illustration of this exodus than Walter

Benjamin, who forsook systematic philosophy to dedicate himself
to the task of commenting on the great works, a task which at
that time-with his prime interests still belonging to theology­
he considered preliminary to commenting on sacred texts. This
goal, though clearly envisaged, he never reached ; the provisional,
halfway stage remained the ever-changing and yet enduring field
for his productivity, and the form of his philosophy was
determined by the method of commentary. After the liquidation
of the driving force of system, a dialectic unfolds in his
commentaries that seeks to record the intrinsic movement of
each object of contemplation at its specific historical locus. True,
everything is still viewed from one common angle of vision here,
but the separate pieces can no longer cohere into a unified
system, which in his eyes became increasingly suspect of
brutality.
The themes of most of his papers now become those of
literary criticism, different though Benjamin's writings in this
field are from the customary ingredients of that genre. Only
rarely are his analyses and reflections literary in the conventional
sense of being concerned with the structure and value of an
important work. They are almost invariably philosophical prob­
ings of their specific and in particular their historical aura, to use
a concept that often recurs in his writings, seen from many
different angles. Each of his pieces outlines, as it were, an entire
philosophy of its subject. Clearly, having set himself the task of
interpreting and plumbing the depths of the great works of
literature-in his eyes, incidentally, greatness did not always
coincide with public fame-the philosopher did not surrender to
the methods of literary history he had come to recognize as more
than dubious, but worked all the time with the inheritance of the
philosophical inspiration that never deserted him . He was at his
most inspired where he felt the appeal of a kindred impulse or an
inspiration close to his own-nowhere more so than in the cases
of Marcei Proust and Franz Kafka to whose world he devoted
years of intense exploration, of impassioned reliving and de­
tached rethinking. In such cases there were virtually no limits to
the overflowing metaphysical richness at his command in re­
capturing the unique historical situation that he saw reflected
182 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS

in these works, its very uniqueness manifesting complete univer­

sality. It is nearly always this combination of historical cum
philosophical insight with a wide-awake and highly articulate
awareness of artistic values that turns his essays-and sometimes
the shortest among them in particular-into true masterpieces.
What was the anatomy of the imagination of "his" authors­
though in fact he was theirs, possessed rather than self-possessed
-and how was the mainspring of their imagination connected in
each case with the characteristic tension of the historical and
social ambience that determined their production? These were
the questions that fascinated him .
To Benjamin, mystics and satirists, humanists and lyricists,
scholars and monomaniacs are equally worthy of philosophical
study in depth. As he proceeds he is liable without warning to
switch from the profane to the theological approach, for he has a
precise feel for the outline of theological substance even when it
seems dissolved altogether in the world of the wholly temporal.
And even where he thinks that he can successfully avail himself
of the materialist method, he does not close his eyes to what he
has perceived with the utmost clarity. For all his renunciation of
system, his thought, presented as that of a fragmentarian, yet
retains a systematic tendency. He used to say that each great
work needed its own epistemology just as it had its own
metaphysics. This constructive tendency in his mode of thinking
-constructive even where applied to destructive facts or
phenomena-also conditions his style. Meticulously pointed,
shining with a contemplative luster that refuses the slightest
concession to the fashionable expressionist prose of those years,
this style is deeply embedded in the processes of a mind striving
after order and cohesion. Benjamin's "texts" really are what the
word says: "woven tissues. " Although in his youth he was in close
personal contact with the rising expressionism which celebrated
its first triumphs in Berlin at that time, he never surrendered to it.
In his best works the German language h as achieved a perfection
that takes the reader's breath away. It owes this perfection to the
rare achievement of blending highest abstraction with sensuous
richness and presentation in the round, and thus bears the
hallmark of his notion of metaphysical knowledge. In a wonderful
fashion his language, without abandoning depth of insight, closely
 WALTER BENJAMI N
and snugly fits the subject it covers and at the same time strives
in competition with the subject's own language from which it
keeps its precise distance. I know yery few authors of this
century whose writings include a comparable number of pages of
sheer perfection. The tension between the language of Benja­
min's analyses or interpretations and the texts on which they are
based is often stupendous. The reader-if I may use a mathemati­
cal simile-finds himself between two transfinite classes recipro­
cally related, though not by a one-to-one correspondence. The
perfection of language in Goethe's Elective Affinities or in Karl
Kraus's polemical pages is matched in Benjamin's treatment of
those works by the new beauty of the interpreter's language,
which seems to descend from the language of a recording angel.
Small wonder, then, that Hofmannsthal was overwhelmed by the
long essay on the Elective Affinities; small wonder, too, that
Kraus, while acknowledging that the essay devoted to him was
"well meant, " did not understand a word of it.
In his finest works, philosophy in a converted form, trans­
figured as it were and pellucid, recedes into a wonderfully
concentrated language of humanity. In the flow of periods it
becomes visible only as an aura. Benjamin's greatest achieve­
ments in this direction are A Berlin Childhood around 1 goo and
his introductions to letters from the century 1783-1883 that he
had collected and published under the pseudonym of Detlev
Holz at the end of 1936 during the Hitler era in the volume
Deutsche Menschen which, in dedications to friends, he de­
scribed as "an ark I built when the fascist deluge began to rise . "
This volume owed its utter anonymity-its shining brilliance
radiating inwards and never penetrating to the public-to the
grotesque circumstances of its publication by a forgotten Swiss
publisher who soon after went bankrupt. For many years
collectors paid high prices for secondhand copies of the allegedly
lost book until-not untypical of the fate of Benjamin's work in
general-the bulk of the original edition was found stored in the
cellar of a Lucerne bookseller, just when the book had been
reprinted in Germany in 1962.
184 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS

III
For more than two years Benjamin worked to attain habilita­
tion as a Dozent (lecturer) in modern German literature at
Frankfurt University, encouraged at first by the head of the
department, Professor Franz Schultz, who promptly backed out
as soon as he received the thesis, covering his retreat with polite
maneuvers. He and the head of the Aesthetics Department,
Professor Hans Cornelius, complained in private that they did
not understand a word of the work. Yielding to strong pressure,
Benjamin unfortunately agreed to withdraw the thesis, which
was sure to be rejected. He had already lost his rapport with the
university and with the university way of organizing the pursuit
of learning. Having felt obliged to undertake the attempt, its
failure in circumstances bound to arouse bitterness nevertheless
moved him to a sigh of relief, expressed in his letters. He was all
too well aware of the kind of game that was being played in the
academic disciplines of philosophy and literary history. Yet, by
withdrawing the paper as a thesis, he lost the opportunity of
publishing it with a foreword that would have recorded for
posterity the ignominy of the university that turned the thesis
down. He had actually written the foreword and it is still in my
possession. Indeed, it may be said that this paper-published in
1928 under the title Der Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels
(The Origin of German Tragic Drama)-is one of the most
eminent and epoch-making habilitation theses ever submitted to
a philosophical faculty. Its rejection, which set Benjamin finally
on the road of the free-lance writer-or more aptly of the hornme
de lettres compelled to earn his living by his pen, was a symbol
-

of the state of literary scholarship and the mentality of the

scholars during that Weimar period that has lately been the
subject of so much praise. Even when it was all over, long after
World War II, a highly equipped representative of that branch of
learning was capable of dismissing the failure of Benjamin's
academic bid with the nefarious and insolent phrase that "one
cannot habilitate Geist. " It was in keeping with that state of
affairs that the book, when published, encountered a profound
silence, and that in the years before Hitler only one specialized
journal deigned to review it.
 WALTER BENJAMIN
Admittedly, Benjamin did not make things easy for his
readers. He prefaced his book with a chapter on epistemology in
which the guiding philosophical ideas underlying his interpreta­
tion were flaunted as a warning to the reader rather than
explained. The secret motto behind it-he used to say-was the
nursery rhyme's injunction: "Hurtle over root and stone, ware
the boulder, break no bone." This introduction bas ahvays
frightened off many readers. It stands forbiddingly in front of the
book-an angel with the flaming sword of abstract reason by the
gates of a paradise of the written word. Benjamin held in reserve
the advice to potential readers to skip the chapter and return to it
at the end, but he did not make this generally known. Accord­
ingly the experts' silence, which for years enveloped the book like
a heavy veil, is to some extent understandable.
It is impossible to deal in a few words with this immensely
rich book, the only one, incidentally, which Benjamin ever
completed as such. In his philosophical exploration and dynamic
portrayal of German tragic drama in the Baroque period, his
main object was to vindicate the philosophical reputation of the
category that was crucial not only to tragic drama but to the
world of the Baroque altogether: the category of Allegory, whose
hidden life nobody has more movingly recaptured than Benjamin
in this work. He was perfectly aware that German tragic drama
could not stand comparison with the accomplished forms of
Baroque drama in the hands of a Calderon or Shakespeare, but
the very uncouthness and crudity of construction of the works
seemed to him to bring out all the more clearly the structure and
interplay of the motive ideas working in them . What ostensibly
was intended as a continuation or imitation of classical tragedy,
with its roots in the world of mythology, is here recognized as its
counterimage, decisively determined by wholly different spiritual
patterns. Benjamin undertook to show how aesthetic ideas are
most intimately bound up with theological categories. It was his
aim to uncover the inner life, the dialectic movement in the
fundamental concepts of that world of Baroque allegory, indeed
to reconstruct it out of that dialectic. That he did succeed is
perhaps the outcome of the special way in which here the
philosophy of language and the philosophy of history, though
dialectically dissociated, are fused in his metaphysical attitude in
!86 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
a union fed-through channels at that time still unobstructed­
by the most fertile impulses of his thought.
In his later works the materialist method-however subtly
and (if I may say so) heretically he applies it-to some extent
intrudes between his intuition and its conceptual exposition, and
to the same extent that union becomes again problematic. He
sought to identify his dialectic-the dialectic of a metaphysician
and theologian-with the materialistic dialectic, and for doing so
paid a high price-too high a price, I would say. About those
works which Benjamin conceived under the aegis of historical
materialism a critic has said that at any rate his interpretation of
the doctrine was "so brilliant and self-willed that it escapes the
characteristic boredom usually engendered by the purblind
application of that system to literary history in particular. " There
is a good reason for that self-willedness, for the idiosyncratic trait
in his materialism . To Benjamin, the approach of historical
materialism was a heuristic method which, he said, had to be
checked against its results every time to see how far it would take
one in earnest, but which at least held out some promise of a way
out of the manifest bankruptcy of bourgeois literary scholarship.
From his point of view, then, he was embarking on a large-scale
experiment when working with that method which, he hoped,
would prove the best vehicle for the expression of his dialectic
insight.
Now it may be said that in the course of the interminable
discussions that have raged during the past forty years about the
nature of historical materialism and of the Marxist method in
general, interpretations so vastly different were put forward that
they might be thought to cover almost anything. From what
Benjamin called the "unsubtle analysis" of Kautsky and Mehring
in Die Neue Zeit, the path leads, somewhat tortuously, to modes
of reasoning where Marxism itself is again so deeply embedded in
the Hegelian world of thought where its origin lies that the
differences become problematical. It could be argued that this is
Benjamin's position ; but I do not believe that it is. Indeed, the
peculiar self-willedness of Benjamin's materialism derives from
the discrepancy between his real mode of thought and the
materialist one he has ostensibly adopted. His insights are in all
essentials still those of the metaphysician who, it is true, has
 WALTER BENJAMIN

evolved a dialectic of inquiry, yet one that is worlds apart from

the materialist dialectic. His insights are those of a theologian
marooned in the realm of the profane. But they no longer appear
plainly as such. Benjamin translates them into the language of
historical materialism. Sometimes it happens in a flash, and then
the translation turns out well and serves its purpose. At other
times the operation is carried out all too laboriously and
self-consciously. Deep insights of the philosopher of history and
of the critic of society, which have their source in his own
entirely metaphysical mode of thinking, are thus presented in
materialistic disguise. I have certainly found no evidence that
such insights ever flow from the use of the materialistic method
itself, least of all in the most admirable works of his late period.
Herein lies both the strength and the weakness of those works.
Their strength, because the undiminished fertility of his intuition
is still revealed in the subjects of his inquiry, and so seems to
invest the materialist approach with tremendous depth and
inexhaustible riches. Their weakness, because his genius tends to
forsake its very essence in that transplantation, and this brings a
shadowy and ambiguous element into some of his works. It is not
hard to distinguish between the method and the insights
accommodated in it. The critical reader still stands to profit
abundantly. Yet it seems to me that there is undeniably
something disjointed in those works as a result of that contradic­
tion.
Yet, whenever his intuition was allowed to flow freely without
being forced into the materialist mold, Benjamin was able, even
in that late period, to produce works of compelling force and
inviolate beauty unmarred by the faintest false note. This is
demonstrated by some of his later essays, foremost an1ong them
"The Storyteller, Reflections on the Works of Nikolai Leskov"­
writing of a quality unexcelled in its own genre-and the great
essay on Franz Kafka. In contrast there stand two great pieces
from the last five years of his life that embody the most valuable
results of his attempt to commit his thought with utter intensity
to the materialist categories and establish the affinity, or indeed
identity, of the two worlds. They are "The Work of Art in the
Age of Mechanical Reproduction" and "On Some Motifs in
Baudelaire. " The former was for a long time only available in a
!88 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
French translation, which presented forrnidable hurdles to under­
standing, until the German text at last became accessible in 1955.
This essay-on which Andre Malraux drew amply for his
philosophy of art-is one of the most important contributions of
the last generation to the philosophy of art and can be
confidently expected to remain a potent influence. And yet, even
in the magnificent design of what Benjamin considered the first
serious materialist theory of art, the reader is struck by a glaring
discrepancy between the two parts.
The first part offers a metaphysical-philosophical interpreta­
tion hinging on the concept of the aura of a work of art-defined
by him as "unique revelation of a distance, however close"-and
its loss in the photomechanical process of reproduction. This part
is packed with exciting discoveries and illuminations of problems
in the philosophy of art which he was the first to perceive. It rests
on a purely metaphysical concept taken over from the mystical
tradition. In the contrasting second part, on the other hand,
Benjamin attempted to develop from Marxist categories what I
am inclined to describe as an enchantingly wrongheaded philoso­
phy of the film as the one true revolutionary form of art. Against
the background of Chaplin's art he analyzes the reality and the
U topian potential of the film, with its promise of infinite
happiness.
Benjamin pinned the highest historical hopes on the cinema
as the art form proper and congenial to the proletariat on the
threshold of its rule. In a long passionate conversation about this
work in 1938, he said in answer to my objections, "The missing
philosophic link between the two parts of my essay, about which
you complain, will be supplied more effectively by the Revolu­
tion than by me. " I would say his Marxist faith had an element of
naivete that was utterly alien to his thinking. This thinking once
more emerges in its full stature in his paper on one of his favorite
authors, Baudelaire. In its most superb section, where he uses
philosophical-historical analysis to deduce Baudelaire's situation,
that inherent contradiction which we have discussed here is all
but completely laid bare.
Even as a historical materialist Benjamin, apart from one
exception, is preoccupied only with so-called " reactionary"
authors such as Proust, Julian Green, Jouhandeau, Gide, Baude-
 \VALTER BENJAMIN 189
laire, and Stefan George. The exception is Brecht, who for years
held Benjamin spellbound and fascinated. Brecht, after all, \vas
the only author in whom he was able to observe the creative
processes of a great poet at close quarters. Also, he had much in
common with Brecht's at first strongly anarchistically tinged
brand of communism . Although Brecht did not provide the first
impulse, it was undoubtedly his influence which made Benjamin
attempt in earnest to absorb historical materialism into his
thinking and his work or even to fit all his thinking and work into
the frame of historical materialism . Brecht, the tougher of the
two, left a profound imprint on the more sensitive nature of
Benjamin, who had nothing of the athlete in him. That it was in
any way for Benjamin's good is more than I would dare to claim.
Rather, I am inclined to consider Brecht's influence on Benja­
min's output in the thirties baleful, and in some respects
disastrous.
From 1927 on Benjamin worked on, apart from his published
writings, a plan for another book in which he intended to fuse
and at the same time test his historical-philosophical and his
poetic intuition by tackling a subject of the highest order. The
project underwent many transformations. It began as an essay
"Paris Arcades"-passages dating frorn the middle of the nine­
teenth century, framed with shops and cafes that became a
characteristic feature of the city. But the subject kept expanding
into an historical-philosophical work for which he eventually
chose the title Paris-Capital of the Nineteenth Century (Paris­
Hauptstadt des 1 9. ]ahrhunderts ) . The book was never finished,
and this may be put down as much to his precarious material
circumstances which did not leave him enough time either for
meditation on his theme or for its final execution, as to his mental
development which led to a point where the project appeared to
him a self-liquidating venture. Here, indeed, the philosophy of
history and the ·philosophy of language were to have merged with
such finality and cogency that the philosopher's comments
became redundant. Eventually the ideal form of the work-unat­
tained, unfinished, and presumably unfinishable-was conceived
as a montage of quotations from the literature of the period that
was to epitomize the Marxist metaphysician's analysis which,
coming full circle, had now returned to its sources. Thus the
1 90 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
work was designed as a lucid counterpart to the profundities of
the book on tragic drama. Impracticable as the idea proved to be
in the end, we owe to Benjamin's unremitting endeavors in those
long years a large number of in1portant drafts and completed
manuscripts of varying length on a variety of themes both in his
immediate and in his wider field. Some of the most important
were published at the time in the Zeitschrift fur Sozialforschung
and some others later from his posthumous papers. Benjamin's
sketches and selected excerpts from his source material for the
Parisian book were found among these valuable posthumous
papers that-unlike their author-safely survived the troubled
war years in France, hidden away in the Bibliotheque N ationale,
and have yet much to contribute to a better appreciation of his
way of thinking.

IV

There is a profound difference between the main body of

Jewish authors who have become famous in German literature
and one group among them that is very small, though of the
highest rank . Those in the former group-including in the last
generation such writers as Arthur Schnitzler, Jakob Wassermann,
Franz Werfel, Stefan Zweig-unquestioningly look upon them­
selves as forming part of German culture and tradition, as
belonging to the German people. It was a lurid and tragic
illusion . Berthold Auerbach, one of the first authors of that type,
at the end of his life and at the beginning of Stoecker's
anti-Semitic movement, summed it up in words that have
become famous, though, alas, they were spoken into the void : "In
vain have I lived, in vain have I suffered . " Only very few among
the first-rate minds of German-speaking Jewry did not succumb
to that illusion. Freud, Kafka, and Benjamin belong to those few .
Almost throughout their productive lives they shunned German
phraseology, even the phrase "we Germans, " and they wrote in
full awareness of the distance separating them from their German
readers. They are the most distinguished among the so-called
German-Jewish authors, and it is as much their lives that bear
witness to that distance, its pathos and its creative quality or
 WALTER BENJAMIN
potentiality, as their writings in which things Jewish figure rarely
if at all.
They did not fool themselves. They knew that they were
German writers-but not Germans. They never cut loose from
that experience and the clear awareness of being aliens, even
exiles, that most other authors from among the German-Jewish
elite labored with so much earnest and ardor and yet with utter
lack of success to evade or repudiate. Closely as they knew
themselves tied to the German language and its intellectual
world, they never succumbed to the illusion of being at
home-an illusion, it is true, against which they were forearmed
by specific personal experiences (though these availed nothing in
other cases) . I do not know whether these men would have been
at home in the land of Israel. I doubt it very much. They truly
came from foreign parts and knew it.
Benjamin undoubtedly had his quirks. I have sometimes been
asked whether his attitude toward Judaism was not perhaps one
of those quirks to which he clung with all his obstinacy. But this
is not the case. On May 25 , 1 925 , shortly after the world of
Marxist dialectic had first appeared in his field of vision, he said
in a letter that two crucial experiences lay still ahead of him :
contact with Marxist politics (he still thought little of the theory
of Marxism at the time) and with Hebrew. This statement
provides a key to the understanding of Benjamin, for these are
precisely the two experiences that never came his way. It is a
deeply and authentically revealing statement in a matter where
my own personal experience, which in any case is scarcely
communicable in a convincing way, might be found inconclusive.
When we inquire after the Jewish element in this man and his
production, it is entirely in character with Walter Benjamin's
contrariness and complexity that the Jewishness of which he was
intensely aware as the root of his being, and often also as the
ultimate destination of his thought, should be present only in
overtones in the bulk of his work, though admittedly in very
conspicuous places, for instance in the prospectus for the
projected journal Angelus Novus, or in the "Theses on the
Philosophy of History, " his last work. But there is much more
behind it.
In the years of withdrawn study and preparation during
1 92 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM I N CRISIS
World War I and immediately afterward, the phenomenon of
Judaism occupied him a great deal, and he read sporadically but
widely about the subject. When I told him in 1916 that
Philosophy of History or Reflections on Tradition (Philosophic der
Geschichte, oder iiber die Tradition)-a large four-volume work
on the kabbalah by Franz Joseph Molitor, a pupil of Franz von
Baader-published sixty to eighty years earlier, was surprisingly
still available at the publishers', this was one of the first works on
Judaism which he acquired. For many · years it occupied a place
of honor in his library. In Franz Rosenzweig's Star of Redemp­
tion the most original work of Jewish theology of our genera­
-

tion, of which Benjamin, on the evidence of many of his own

writings, was an avid reader-as well as in the kabbalist writings,
he experienced that profound attachment of genuine Jewish
theological thinking to the medium of language that became so
marked a feature of his own work. In letters and conversations,
he returned time after time to Je\vish issues, and while going out
of his way to emphasize his own factual ignorance, he would yet
quite often approach them with his relentless intensity and delve
into problems of Judaism as a matter that concerned him
personally and fundamentally. Many a letter of his stands as a
curious testimony to this interest.
In the autumn of 1916, Benjamin was writing to a corre­
spondent to whom he usually gave his views on literary subjects.
In connection with sorne remarks about the writer Rudolf
Borchardt-who had tried so hard to blur his Jewish origin­
Benjamin felt impelled to write an enthusiastic epistle in praise of
Judaism. He had just read Ahad Ha-am and been profoundly
impressed by his essay "The Law in the H eart" (Die Thora im
Herzen). Benjamin even said it was not certain whether he would
not himself go to Palestine after the war. His correspondent, also
a Jew, wrote in his reply in December 1916 that he had been
amazed by Benjamin's profession of faith in Judaism and found it
altogether inexplicable unless there was a woman behind it. I can
still see Benjamin's sly winks when he read that letter to me. The
correspondent did not know that Benjamin was actually about to
marry the daughter of one of the well-known pioneer-members of
the Zionist movement, Professor Leon Kellner, the editor of
Theodor Herzl' s Zionist writings and of his diaries. This young
 WALTER BENJAMIN 1 93
woman naturally encouraged his Jewish awareness, but was
hardly in a position to influence it to any great extent. It is true,
on the other hand, that his approach to the second great subject
to which he meant to dedicate his experience, to revolutionary
Marxist policy, was palpably made under a woman's influence.
Benjamin's "theological thinking"-a marked tendency of his
early years that impressed itself on all who came into close
contact with hitn at the time-took its bearings (instinctively, I
almost added) from Jewish concepts. Christian ideas never held
any attraction for him. Indeed, he had an undisguised distaste for
the type of neo-Catholicism which, at the time, was much in
vogue among Jewish intellectuals in Germany and France.
Two categories above all, and especially in their Jewish
versions, assume a central place in his writings: on the one hand
Revelation, the idea of the Torah and of sacred texts in general,
and on the other hand the messianic idea and Redemption. Their
significance as regulative ideas governing his thought cannot be
overrated.
Over and over again one meets in his writings, often indeed in
the most unexpected places, instances of a preoccupation with
the problem of sacred texts, for instance in most of his papers on
�he philosophy of language, in the essay "The Task of the
Translator" in the book on German tragic drama ( Trauerspiel),
but also in his remarks about the verbal imagination of children,
when he says that "sentences formed in play by a child out of
words [given in advance] are more akin to the language of sacred
texts than to the colloquial language of the grown-ups. " For
many years he considered the confrontation with the sacred texts
of Hebrew tradition as the crucial literary experience of which he
stood in need to come really into his own . I shall never forget the
superb manner in which he declared his commitment to his
coming task as a commentator of Jewish texts in a great
discourse-of which I was a witness-with Dr. Judah Magnes,
the chancellor of the nascent Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in
Paris in August 1927, when he contemplated the idea of
preparing himself for a teaching assignment at the university.
Yet, from his pen we have only one example of such a
confrontation with the Bible. (Benjamin, incidentally, was no
great admirer of Buber' s Bible translation but a keen reader of
1 94 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM I N C RISIS
the old translation edited by Leopold Zunz whose austerity
deeply impressed him. ) This one instance is provided by the
comments he wrote in 1916 and 1927 about the statements on
the nature of language in the first three chapters of Genesis­
pages of rare concentration and beauty.
It must be emphasized that later on when he had turned to
historical materialism, out of those two categories of Revelation
and Redemption only the latter was preserved expressis verbis,
but not the former, closely though it was bound up with his basic
method of commenting on great and authoritative texts. In the
process of transformation of his thought the notion of Revelation
vanished-or rather, I am inclined to suspect, remained unsaid,
having become truly esoteric knowledge. The proud emphasis
which, to the last, characterizes his references to the utopian
category of religion, to Redemption and the messianic idea,
whereas its existential (more aptly perhaps: its substantive)
category disappears, must be related to the structure of what I
would call his materialist theology. (I would characterize his
latter-day thinking as a materialist theory of Revelation whose
very subject no longer figures in the theory.)
I said that for years Benjamin sought to go all the way to
Judaism which, he hoped, would offer scope for the homecoming
of his innermost intentions. Around 1930 he abandoned that hope
as unrealizable in his life ; yet echoes of fundamental Jewish
concepts continued all the time to reverberate in his writings,
now stamped with the seal of the Marxist dialectic. Thus he
brings to light the Jewish element in Karl Kraus even at the stage
of ultimate estrangement, when he identifies the "Jewish cer­
tainty" that "the world was the scene for the sanctification of the
name" as the root cause of the contrasting attitudes to language
of Karl Kraus and Stefan George ; or he will base his analysis of
the world of Franz Kafka on the categories of the halakhah and
haggadah.
In addition, an apocalyptic element of destructiveness is
preserved in the metamorphosis undergone in his writing by the
messianic idea, which continues to play a potent part in his
thought. The noble and positive power of destruction-too long
(in his view) denied due recognition thanks to the one-sided,
undialectic, and dilettantish apotheosis of "creativity"-now
 WALTER BENJAMIN 1 95
becomes an aspect of redemption, related to the immanence of
the world, acted out in the history of human labor. A new
concept of subversiveness now appears in his writings frequently
and in the most surpri5ing contexts, and illuminates for him
patterns of profound meaning behind the phenomena he studies.
There are few important works of his during that period where
this concept does not play a central part, avowed or hidden, in
inspiring his analyses, as for instance in the most characteristic
essay Der Destruktive Charakter, or in the great essays on Kraus,
Proust, and Kafka. He developed an extremely accurate and
sensitive feeling for the subversive elements in the oeuvre of great
authors. Even in authors whose picture of the world exhibits
mostly reactionary traits he heard the subterranean rumblings of
revolution, and generally he was keenly aware of what he called
"the strange interplay between reactionary theory and revolu­
tionary practice. " The secularization of Jewish apocalyptic
doctrine is plain for all to see and nowhere denies its origin. The
talmudic image of the angels created anew each moment in
countless hosts, only to be destroyed and return into naught after
having raised their voices before God, unites his earlier with his
later writings. It appears at the end of his announcement of the
projected journal Angelus Novus, which was never to materialize.
This was in 1922, at the height of his theological period. It
appears again at the end of his seemingly materialist essay of
193 1 on Karl Kraus, which ushers in his later production with a
Marxist bugle call. Yet, those ever new angels-one of them he
found in Paul Klee's painting Angelus Novus, which he owned
and deeply loved-bear the features of the angels of judgment as
well as destruction. Their "quickly fading voice" proclaims the
anticipation of the apocalypse in history-and it was this that
mattered to him .
Jewish inspiration pure and simple, with n o adjustment even
to the terminology of the materialist dialectic, dominates Benja­
min's tireless striving after an understanding of Kafka, whose
writings he studied from the first with passionate involvement.
This tendency is manifest above all in the great essay of 1934 to
which Bertolt Brecht responded with the charge that "it was
aiding and abetting Jewish fascism." It reveals itself also in his
formidable letter of 1 938, in which he sketched a new portrait of
1 96 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM I N CRISIS
Kafka that he intended to execute in a book if a publisher could
be found. The concepts of justice, of the study of Scripture and of
exegesis are here consciously introduced and developed as Jewish
concepts. " Study"-we read here-"is the gate of justice. And
yet Kafka dared not attach to study those promises that tradition
held out for the study of the Torah. His acolytes are beadles, but
they have lost the house of prayer ; his scholars are disciples, but
they have lost the scripture. " Equally far removed from Max
Brad's optimistic interpretation of Kafka and from the existential­
ist interpretation which has been the fashion in recent years,
Benjamin perceived the negative inversion to which the Jewish
categories are subjected in Kafka's world; there the teaching no
longer conveys a positive message, but offers only an absolutely
Utopian-and therefore as yet undefinable-promise of a
postcontemporary world. We are left nothing but the procedures
of a "Law" that can no longer be deciphered. These procedures
became the central feature of Kafka's vision. Benjamin knew that
in Kafka we possess the theologia negativa of a Judaism not a
whit less intense for having lost the Revelation as a positive
message.
Benjamin, who was aware of a close affinity with this
a1Jthor-Proust and Kafka were probably the authors truly
familiar to him at the deepest level-saw in the exegetic passages
so often presented by Kafka the crystalization of Torah tradition
mirrored in itself. The twelve lines on the interpretation of Don
Quixote he considered to be the most perfect extant piece of
Kafka's writing. Benjamin's commentaries on Brecht, among
which the one on the " Legend of the Origin of the Book of T' ao
teh Ching on Lao-tse' s Way into the Emigration" is perhaps most
outstanding, represent the ultimate form assumed by the com­
mentary in Benjamin's hands. He fully realized that he was
embarking on a problematic venture when he put this form in the
service of interpreting revolutionary rather than archaic and
authoritative texts. Indeed, these commentaries display a rare
and pathetic helplessness-disconcerting in a mind of Benjamin's
sovereign power-that is entirely absent from his interpretation
of other texts. And yet, it is obvious that he had made up his
mind-even if the price was high-not to forgo the explosive
force which he more than any Jewish contemporary had redis-
 WALTER BENJAMIN 1 97
covered in the mysterious life of the con1mentary as a decisive
religious category.
Among the Jewish categories which he introduced as such
and upheld to the last is the messianic idea; nothing is wider of
the mark than the notion that he took it over from Ernst Bloch,
though the two met on common Jewish ground. Another is the
idea of remembrance. The last paragraph in Benjamin's work
that can be chronologically placed, representing a confessio in
extremis as it were, reads-all the more strikingly for being part
of a quasi-Marxist text on historical time-like an apotheosis of
Judaism : "The soothsayers who found out from time what it had
in store for them certainly did not experience time as either
homogeneous or empty. Anyone who keeps this in mind will
perhaps get an idea of how past times were experienced in
remembrance, namely in just the same way. We know that the
Jews were prohibited from investigating the future. The Torah
and the prayers instruct them in remembrance, however. This
stripped the future of its magic, to which all those succumb who
turn to the soothsayers for enlightenment. This does not imply,
however, that for the Jews the future turned into homogeneous,
empty time. For every second of time was the street gate through
which the Messiah might enter. "
The Judaism encompassed in this description was the goal
which Walter Benjamin approached asymptotically throughout
his life, without ever attaining it. Yet it may be stated that his
deepest intuition, in the spheres of creation and destruction alike,
sprang from the very center of that Judaism ; and this statement
about Benjamin, the thinker, loses nothing of its dialectic range
by the fact that it is also about a life often beset by the dread
shadows of loneliness, consumed in longing for fellowship, though
it be the apocalyptic fellowship of revolution; by the fact that it
illuminates the story of that burning, pining life with a deep
radiance.
 Walter Benj amin and
His Angel*

Among the peculiarities of Benjamin's philosophical prose-the

critical and metaphysical prose, in which the Marxist element
constitutes something like an inversion of the metaphysical­
-theological-is its enormous suitability for canonization ; I might
almost say for quotation as a kind of Holy Writ. In this respect it
enjoys one advantage over the canonical texts of Marx, Engels, or
Lenin, so beloved by Marxists: its deep connection with theology,
the inspiration of which remained enduringly vital to Benjamin
until the end, determining . its special form, which cloaked so
many important sayings of Benjamin's (and, Heaven knows,
unimportant ones as well) in the aura of the ex cathedra. At a
very early stage, his enemies spoke of the authoritarian ontology
[Konstatierontologie] in his writings. Indeed, I am not the only
one who has noticed that young Marxists "quote Benjamin like
Holy Writ. ,, 1 His sentences often enough have the authoritarian
stance of words of revelation, as which they were in fact
considered by him to no slight extent during his youthful
metaphysical period. "It is a metaphysical truth that . . . " was a
favorite sentence of Walter Benjamin's in the years in which I
came to know him, and it was followed by an assertion deeply
enmeshed in the theological, and frequently surpassingly odd. In
• "Walter Ben;amin und sein Engel, " in Siegfried Unseld, editor, Zur Aktualitiit
Walter Benjamins (Frankfurt-am -Main : Suhrkamp Taschenbuch No. 150, 1972). Trans­
lated by Werner J. Dannhauser.
1 . C. Z. von Manteuffel in the Neue Zurcher Zeitung, December 13, 1970, in the
supplement Literatur und Kunst, p. 53·
 WALTER BENJAMIN AND HIS ANGEL 1 99

regard to this manner, there is hardly a difference between the

" Metaphysics of Youth" of 1913 and the "Theses· on the
Philosophy of History" of 1940, notwithstanding all contrasts in
substance. Basically he would have accepted his appointment as
Church father, or as some now like to put it, Marxist rabbi, quite
graciously, though with dialectical reservations. The gesture of
the esoteric writer perceived in him by Adorno and me was that
of the produ.c er of authoritative sentences, and that, to be sure,
also means, from the very outset and because of their essence,
sentences lending themselves to quotation and interpretation.
What is illuminating in them is meshed with the thoroughly
enigmatic, as in none of the other authors who now, with varying
degrees of plausibility, are quoted together with him (from Bloch
or even Lukacs to Brecht and Adorno) . They are sentences from
the Holy Writ of an initiate, scarcely and scantily disguised, at
once rational and mystical, as is becoming to sentences of this
kind.
In stretches of Benjamin one finds original impressions,
insights, or experiences transposed into or communicated by
direct language and focused into Marxist reflection, or at least
dressed up as such. A judicious reader like Marianne Kesting has
said of Benjamin's tendency to cast a bridge between Marxist
H

conceptualization and aesthetic procedures" that he associatively

kep t up this tendency, especially in the late writings centering
around the work about the Pariser Passagen ("The Arcades"),
and that much that was fruitful had come out of this. To be sure :
"His associations are those of genius and lead further, but they
are no longer Marxist. " 2 It is this fact with which the Marxist
readers of Benjamin find it so hard to come to terms, or of which
they take no cognizance.
Everyone knows how Benjamin's Marxist writings point in a
definite direction, even though no end can be seen to the
discussions about the definition of the direction. One can hardly
doubt Benjamin 's resolution in his attempt to use the matter and
terminology of the class struggle as the content not only of world
history but of philosophy as well. And yet doubts force them­
selves on the careful reader of this "mountain" of thoughts,
2. Deutsche Zeitung-Christ und Welt, September 10, 197 1 , p. 1 1 .
200 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM I N CRISIS

.:r,;s;;:z 2$ ,•. $\'!),;:!f'� �";i f< "� , ;:�� ..

.t·

Paul Klee, A ngelus No vus

which, as he himself expressed it in a letter of May 1935 to

Werner Kraft,3 was to have been transformed in such a direction.
3· Walter Benjamin, Briefe, II ( 1966), 659. Noteworthy is the parallel formulation in
an (unprinted) letter to Alfred Cohn of May, 1935, where the talk is of the "beneficial
process of recasting, in which the whole, originally directly metaphysically organized mass
of thought [of "The Arcades"] has been transferred into an aggregate condition [sic] more
suitable to present existence."
 WALTER BENJAMIN AND HIS ANGEL 20 1

Untransfigured, in fact offering stiff-necked resistance to this

well-advertised transfiguration-and sometimes overpowered or
executed only by purely verbal-rhetorical means, sometimes not
even that-many of the pieces and notes connected with "The
Arcades" offer open and unfeigned refuge to the mystical
tradition and confess their continuity with it. That such pieces as
those about Leskov and Kafka and ot_h ers destroy the legend of
the unequivocal line of development in Benjamin's productivity
has, as suggested above, often led to their suppression in the
minds of his Marxist commentators among the New Left. That is
understandable enough, though not to the advantage of a real
understanding of Benjamin's work. Embedded in a Marxist (and
vociferous) vicinity, they represent true pieces de resistance for
the reception of Benjamin that has now become fashionable.
It is, therefore, appropriate to point to aspects of Benjamin's
person and thought that are neglected by his current interpreters,
or cast aside embarrassedly. To these belong, and perhaps above
all else, his ties to the mystical tradition and to a mystical
experience which nevertheless was a far cry from the experience
of God, proclaimed by so many oversimplifying minds as the only
experience deserving to be called mystical. Benjamin knew that
mystical experience is many-layered, and it was precisely this
many-layeredness that played so great a role in his thinking and
in his productivity. If I may speak from my own experience,
Benjamin's most amazing trait was the connection between
pronounced clairvoyance and the gift for dialectical subtlety on
the one hand, but also the inclination to connect this clair­
voyance with fantastic theories, which in earlier times he readily
surrendered if contradicted and then by burrowing sought to
penetrate deeper into the matter itself; while in his later pe­
riod he often stuck to them stiff-neckedly under the pretext
of a purely heuristic procedure. The intimate interweaving of
mystical-cosmic and Marxist insights, which penetrate each other
or appear one alongside the other, is first visible in his little book
One- Way Street, about the last piece of which, "To the
Planetarium," a critic has said with very good reason, "Here
enthusiasm divulges a mystical fixation before some artifice
withdraws the former to a rational and morally aloof dialectic. " 4
4· Dietrich Bohler in Neue Rundschau, LXXVIII ( 1967), 666 .
202 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS

In my essay about Walter Benjamin5 I have emphatically pointed

to this two-- track aspect of Benjamin's thinking, in which mystical
intuition and rational insight are frequently only seemingly
connected by dialectic, and in what follows I am going to present
a striking example of that aspect.
Behind many of Benjainin' s writings stand personal, indeed
most personal, experiences which by projection into the objects
of his works disappeared or were put into code, so that the
outsider could not recognize them or at least could do no more
than suspect their presence. Such is the case, for example, in The
Origin of German Tragic Drama ( Trauerspien with the theory of
melancholy, by which he described his own constitution. So, too,
fifty years after the composition of his famous treatise on
Goethe's Elective Affinities, which represents a high point of the
literature of aesthetics, one may be allowed to divulge the simple
but hidden truth that this work-"altogether incomparable" as
Hofmannsthal called it-and its insights were possible only
because they were written by Benjamin in a human situation that
corresponded uncannily to that of the novel. It was, after all, the
_
"plantlike muteness" and beauty of that "Ottilie" who at the
time entered his life so consequentially, which stood at the source
of his intuitions about the meaning of the beautiful, and about
the Luciferian depth of the "appearance" in which the beautiful
conceals and reveals itself. Along the same line is the small piece
of an autobiographical nature, about himself and his angel, to
which I wish to direct attention here. It represents a depiction of
Benjamin's self-disquieting, to be sure-so important to him
that on two consecutive days he wrote it down in two versions.
As such it seems to me illuminating and precious, even though it
is admittedly very much in need of a commentary.

II

This piece, with a title that seems truly enigmatic, of

"Agesilaus Santander," is in a notebook of Walter Benjamin's
that is to be found among his literary remains in Frankfurt, which
5· See above, pp. 172-97·
 WALTER BENJAMIN AND HIS ANGEL 203

after Theodor Adorno's death are under the control of a panel

constituted to assume such responsibility. This notebook contains
writings from the years 193 1 and 1933, in which his most diverse
observations, Marxist and wholly incompatible with Marxism, are
intermingled. Thus it contains (pp. 15-16) "Reflections on
Broadcasting" and (pp. 25-27) under the caption "Art for the
People-Art for the Connoisseur" the summary of a discussion
held in the autumn of 193 1 with Willy Haas, the editor of the
Literarische Welt, in which Benjamin, in Marxist terms, squarely
defends the thesis that art is meant for connoisseurs of art. On pp.
3 1-35 there follows a sketch, "Doctrine of Similarity," 6 written
during the spring of 1933 on the island of lbiza after his flightlike
departure from Berlin in March, and which contains a theory of
occult phenomena of which he sent me an abridged _ version
(omitting essential material) ; only the latter has previously
appeared in his collected works (Vol. 1, pp. 507-10) . Afterwards
follows, on pp. 37-39, the "Agesilaus Santander" in a shorter
form (p. 39) dated Ibiza, August 12, 1933, and in a somewhat
longer and final version (pp. 37-38) dated the following day.
From April to October of 1933 Benjamin lived on Ibiza (in San
Antonio), where he had first taken up residence from May to the
middle of July 1932, a period from which the first pages of the
notebook "Notes on the ]ugendstil" possibly stemmed.
The circumstances under which the piece originated are not
known. One may, however, raise the question posed to me by
Peter Szondi during a discussion I had with him about the piece,
whether "Agesilaus Santander" might no.� be the prod1.1ct of a
fever delirium. According to Jean Selz ( Uber Walter Benjamin,
[Frankfurt, 1968] , p. 49) Benjamin had malaria in the summer of
1933. He indicates no exact dates, only that Benjamin left Ibiza
in October. Opposed to this, to be sure, is the indication of
Benjamin himself, who in a later application to a French
administrative office-obviously in connection with his planned
naturalization or extended residence permit in France-gave the
dates and duration of his stays. We possess a copy of this
application, according to which he left lbiza on September 25,
6. Now available in Zur Aktualitiit Walter Benjamiru (Frankfurt-am-Main: Suhrkamp
Taschenbuch No. 150, 1972), pp. 23-30.
204 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM I N CRISIS
1933. From there he jumps over to October 6 and indicates a
Paris address for this date. According to a letter to me of October
16, 1933, from Paris, we know that he arrived in Paris seriously ill
and that toward the end in lbiza he had been "generally no
longer healthy, " and that the day of his departure from there
"coincided with the first of a series of highest fever attacks. "
After his arrival in Paris, malaria had been diagnosed. Could he
perhaps have already suffered from this malaria on August 12 and
13, six weeks before his departure? In his letter to me of July 3 1 ,
1933, in which he reports about the composition of the important
piece, "Loggien" in A Berlin Childhood, he tells me that he had
been ill for about two weeks. On the other hand, one finds there
the passage, "The great heat has begun here. The Spaniards, who
know its effects, speak of 'August madness' as a completely
common thing. It gives me much pleasure to follow its onset
among the foreigners. " Obviously, then, he himself had not yet at
this time felt its appearance. Nevertheless, one cannot exclude a
possible connection between the origin of the piece and a first,
still relatively slight, attack of malaria, however hypothetical this
must remain. In any case, Selz in his recollections drew the
indication from his later knowledge of the diagnosis of Benja­
min's malaria, about which he learned only in Paris after
Benjamin's return and thus provides no certain proof that the
latter really had malaria as early as August. The whole problem
carries little weight, I am convinced, for the understanding of the
text, for the latter's construction and world of images have an
immanent logic that does not differ from his usage in many other
writings.
In what follows I reproduce the text of both versions:

[First Version]
A gesilaus Santander

When I was born the thought came to my parents that I

might perhaps become a writer. Then it would be good if not
everybody noticed at once that I was a Jew: that is why they
added to the name I was called two very unusual ones. I do not
 WALTER BENJAMIN AND HIS ANGEL 205
wish to divulge them . Suffice it to say that forty years ago parents
could with difficulty see farther ahead. What they held to be a
remote possibility has come true. But their precautions, meant to
counter fate, were rendered without force by the one most
concerned. Instead of making public the two provident names by
his writings he locked them within himself. He watched over
them as once the Jews did over the secret name they gave to each
of their children. The latter did not come to know it before the
day of their attainment of maturity. Since, however, that can
occur more than once in life, and perhaps, too, not every secret
name remains always the same and untransfigured, its transfigu­
ration might reveal itself on the occasion of a new maturity. It
does not, therefore, remain any the less the name that contains in
itself all the life forces, and by which the latter can be sumtnoned
forth and guarded against the unauthorized.
Yet this name is in no way an enrichment of him who bears it.
It takes away much from him, but above all the gift of appearing
wholly as he was of old. In the room I last occupied, the latter,
before he stepped out of the old name, armored and encased,
into the light, put up his picture at my place: New Angel. The
kabbalah relates that in every instant God creates an immense
number of new angels whose only purpose is, before they dissolve
into naught, to sing His praise before His throne for a moment.
Mine was interrupted in doing so ; his features had nothing about
them resembling the human . As for the rest, he made me pay for
having disturbed him at his work. For in taking advantage of the
circumstance that I came into the world under the sign of
Saturn-the planet of slow rotation, the star of hesitation and
delay-he sent his feminine form, after the masculine reproduced
in the picture, by way of the longest, most fatal detour, even
though both were so very much adjacent to each other.
He did not, perhaps, know that thereby he brought to the
fore the strength of him whom he accosted. For nothing can
overcome my patience. Its wings resemble those of the angel in
that very few pushes are enough for thern to preserve themselves
immovably in the face of her whom my patience is resolved to
await. But it, which has claws like the angel and knife-sharp
wings, does not look as though it threatens to pounce on her
whom it has sighted. It learns from the angel how he encom-
206 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
passes his partner in his view, but then yields by fits and starts,
and incessantly. He pulls him along on that flight o into a future
from which he has advanced. He hopes for nothing new from the
latter except the view of the person he keeps facing.
So I journeyed with you, no sooner than I had seen you for
the first time, back from whence I came.
Ibiza, August 12, 1933

[Second, final version]

Agesilaus Santander

When I was born the thought came to my parents that I

might perhaps become a writer. Then it would be good if not
everybody noticed at once that I was a Jew. That is why besides
the name I was called they added two further, exceptional ones,
from which one could see neither that a Jew bore them nor that
they belonged to him as first names. Forty years ago no parental
couple could prove itself more far-seeing. What it held to be only
a remote possibility has come true. It is only that the precautions
by which they meant to counter fate were set aside by the one
most concerned. That is to say that instead of making it public by
the writings he produced, he proceeded with regard to it as did
the Jews with the additional name of their children, which
remains secret. Indeed, they only communicate it to them when
they reach maturity. Since, however, this maturity can occur
more than once in life, and the secret name may remain the same
and untransfigured only to the pious one, its change might reveal
itself all at once with a new maturity. Thus with me. It therefore
remains no less the name which joins the life forces in strictest
union and which is to be guarded against the unauthorized.
Yet in no way is this name an enrichment of the one it names.
On the contrary, much of his image falls away when that name
becomes audible. He loses above all the gift of appearing
anthropomorphous. In the room I occupied in Berlin the latter,
o Benjamin had first written journey (Fahrt), then changed it to flight (Flucht) and
written the word flight under it once more.
 WALTER BENJAMIN AND HIS ANGEL 20 7
before he stepped out of my name, armored and encased, into the
light, put up his picture on the wall: New Angel. The kabbalah
relates that in every instant God creates an immense number of
new angels, all of whom only have the purpose, before they
dissolve into naught, of singing the praise of God before His
throne for a moment. The new angel passed himself off as one of
these before he was prepared to name himself. I only fear that I
took him away from his hymn unduly long. As for the rest, he
made me pay for that. For in taking advantage of the circum­
stance that I came into the world under the sign of Saturn-the
star of the slowest revolution, the planet of detours and
delays-he sent his feminine form after the masculine one
reproduced in the picture by way of the longest, most fatal
detour, even though both happened to be-only they did not
know each other-most intimately adjacent to each other.
He did not, perhaps, know that the strength of him whom he
thus wanted to accost could show itself best in this way: namely
by waiting. Where this man chanced upon a woman who
captivated him, he was at once resolved to lurk on her path of
life and to wait until sick, aged, in tattered clothes, she fell into
his hands. In short, nothing could enfeeble the patience of the
man. And its wings resembled the wings of the angel o in that
very few pushes were enough to preserve themselves long,
immovably in the face of that which he was resolved no longer to
leave alone.
The angel, however, resembles all from which I have had to
part : persons and above all things. In the things I no longer have,
he resides. He makes them transparent, and behind all of them
there appears to me the one for whom they are intended. That is
why nobody can surpass me in giving gifts. Indeed, perhaps the
angel was attracted by a gift giver who goes away empty-handed.
For he himself, too, who has claws and pointed, indeed
knife-sharp wings[,] does not look as though he would pounce on
the one who has sighted. He fixes his eyes on him firmly-a long
time, then yields by fits and starts but incessantly. Why? In order
to pull him along with himself on that way into the future on
which he came and which he knows so well that he traverses it
o First Benjamin wrote those of the angel, and crossed it out.
208 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS

without turning around and letting the one he has chosen out of
view. He wants happiness : the conflict in which lies the ecstasy of
o o
the unique, ["once only"] new, as yet unlived with that 0 bliss
of the "once more," the having again, the lived. That is why he
can hope for the new on no way except on the way of the return
home, when he takes a new human being along with him. Just as
I, no sooner than I had seen you, journeyed back with you, from
o o o
whence I came.
Ibiza, August 13, 1933

III

Before I undertake to explain this thoroughly hermetic text,

something must be said about the picture central to it, Angelus
Novus by Paul Klee. That picture was painted by Klee in 1920 in
M unich and carries the signature " 1920 /32. " From 19 19 to the
end of his life, the work of Klee is interspersed with pictures and
drawings of angels on some fifty sheets, in large part from the last
years of his life. As his son Felix Klee wrote in a letter of March
1972, "it enticed Paul Klee to render the messenger of the
gods-often even in human tragicomedy. " Thus there happens to
exist a picture Angel Brings What Was Wished with the
signature 1920/91 in which the angel seems rather like a waiter
or waitress serving the order wished for by Klee. In the works
and portfolios about Klee a whole number of such angels is to be
found, above all from his later years, as, for example, in the two
books by Will Grohmann, Paul Klee ( 1954) and Paul Klee­
Handzeichnungen (Sketches) ( 1959) . Since, as far as is known, no
remarks by Klee himself are to be found about these angels, no
reason exists in connection with what is to be considered here for
going more closely into the sentences which Grohmann in 1954
(pp. 348-50) dedicated to this theme in Klee. There he attempts
to place the angels closer to those of Rilke' s " Duino Elegies"
o
First only: in that the "once only, " new, as yet unlived with it; then improved as in
the text.
o o
" That" (fener) instead of the crossed out, preceding "that" (dem).
o o o
-

First: journeyed back from whence; then crossed out and newly written journeyed
back with you from whence.
 WALTER BENJAMIN AND HIS ANGEL zog
which, according to Grohn1ann, "like Klee' s angels, live in the
great unity en1bracing life and death and see in the invisible a
higher order of reality" (p. 348). For an analysis of the
significance and position possessed by Klee' s picture Angelus
Novus in Benjamin's life and thought, these (rather doubtful)
pronouncements are not relevant, since Benjamin's contempla­
tion of the picture was nourished by completely different
motives, as will presently be shown.
Klee' s picture was exhibited in May and June of 1920 in the
great Klee Exhibition of the Hans Goltz gallery in Munich ; in the
latter's catalog, which appeared as a "special Paul Klee issue" of
the periodical Der Ararat, it is listed on page 24 as numher 245
but not reproduced. It is a relatively small watercolor, which was
first reproduced at page length opposite page 128 in Wilhelm
Hausenstein' s book, Kairuan oder eine Geschichte vom Maler
Klee (Munich, 192 1 ) . Hausenstein, who lived in Munich, could
have seen the picture while it was still in Klee' s studio or at the
Goltz gallery. It was later reproduced again-obviously from
Hausenstein' s book-in the monograph "Paul Klee" by Carola
Giedion-Welcker (Stuttgart, 1954), on page 1 84. At the time
Benjamin was not in Munich, but he might have seen it at a small
Klee Exhibition which took place in April 1921 in Berlin
somewhere on the Kurfiirstendamm, and which he n1entioned as
a special attraction in a letter to me of April 1 1, 192 1 (Letters,
Vol. I, p. 262) . I do not, however, even know whether the picture
was actually exhibited there.
In any case it was returned to Goltz, for Benjamin obtained it
in Munich, when he visited me there in the end of May and the
beginning of June 1921 . He brought me the picture with the
request to keep it for him until he once more would have a
permanent lodging in Berlin, where great personal difficulties had
arisen in his life. Until the middle of Nove 1nber 1921 the Angelus
Novus hung in the residence-first Tiirkenstrasse 98, later
Gabelsbergerstrasse 5 1 -I shared with my subsequent first wife,
Elsa Burchardt, in whose room it was hanging, a fact to which
Benjamin referred in several letters. On November 27, 1921, he
had already received the picture in Berlin, where I had sent it to
him according to his wish (Letters, Vol. I, p. 282) . Until his
divorce it hung in the study of his residence at Delbriickstrasse
210 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
23, over the sofa, and later in his last residence at Prinzregenten­
strasse 66. In the Hitler era, a female acquaintance brought ·him
the picture to Paris around 1935. At the time of my visit in
February 1938 it was again hanging in his large room at 10 Rue
Dombasle. When, in June 1940, he fled from Paris and stored his
papers in two suitcases-which George Bataille, connected with
Benjamin through the College de Sociologie, founded by Bataille,
temporarily kept hidden in the Bibliotheque Nationale-Benja­
min cut the picture out of the frame and stuffed it into one of the
suitcases. And so after the war it made its way to Adorno in
America and later in Frankfurt. Benjamin always considered the
picture his most important possession, even though he obtained
another picture by Klee in the preceding year, namely Perform­
ance of the Miracle, but one I have never seen. When at the end
of July 1932 he wanted to take his own life and wrote a
testament, he designated it as the special personal gift he
bequeathed me.
Klee' s picture fascinated him most highly from the very first
moment on and for twenty years played a significant role in his
considerations, as Friedrich Podszus said in his biographical
sketch about Benjamin, using a formulation expressed by me in
the course of a conversation (Benjamin, Illuminationen, p. 44 1 ) :
as a picture for meditation and as a memento of a spiritual
vocation. To be sure, the Angelus Novus also represented
something else for him : an allegory in the sense of the dialectical
te nsion uncovered in allegories by Benjamin in his book about
tragic drama. In his conversations as well as in his writings, he
frequently had occasion to speak of the picture. When he
obtained it we had talks about Jewish angelo logy, especially of
the talmudic and kabbalistic kind, since at that time I was just
writing a piece about the lyric of the kabbalah, in which I gave a
detailed account of the hymns of the angels in the representa­
tions of the Jewish mystics. 7 From my own long contemplation of
the picture also stems the poem "Gruss vom Angelus, " which I
dedicated to Benjamin on his birthday on July 15, 1921, and
which I published in the notes to the collection of his letters (Vol.
I, p. 269).
7· This essay, a critique of a book by M. Wiener, Lyrik der Kabbala, appeared in the
autumn of 1921, in the monthly periodical edited by Buber, Der Jude, VI, 55--68;
concerning the hymns, see especially pp. 6o-6 1 .
 WALTER BENJAMIN AND HIS ANGEL 211

In Benjamin's letters, the picture is first mentioned in a

postcard of June 16, 192 1 , which he and his wife Dora jointly
wrote me from Breitenstein on the Semmering, when the picture
was already on my wall. There the Angelus Novus is designated
by his wife as the "newly created protector of the kabbalah, " and
Benjamin himself indulged in humorous intimations in the form
of quotations from nonexistent periodicals. In the Journal of
Angelology he pretended to have read : " Under the influence of
the Turkish climate the heavenly Klee-leaf has added three new
leaves. It is henceforth reckoned among the species of the
four-leaved (lucema fortunata) . We will keep our subscribers
informed about the further development of the magic plant. " In
contradiction to this, he simultaneously quotes "a private report
of the central organ for little books" : "The dear little demonology
does not agree with the Angelus. He requests the removal of the
same to Berlin. Signed: Dr. Delbriick. " The heavenly Klee-leaf
was, naturally, the · picture by Klee hanging in the Ti.irkenstrasse,
and the three new leaves referred to me, Elsa Burchardt, and his
friend Ernst Schoen, who was then visiting with us in the
Ti.irkenstrasse. That at the time Benjamin did not yet connect
any Satanic-Luciferian thoughts �lith the picture follows from his
remark about the "little demonology" the angel could hardly
bear. This little demonology was a booklet without title and text,
consisting only of the reproductions and symbols ("characters")
of demons, in reality the Tafelband to Dr. Faus(s Book of Black
Magic, which had been published about 1840 in Stuttgart by
lithography. The little book was originally in the possession of
Benjamin,8 who gave it to me as a gift in the latter half of April
192 1 , in gratitude for my intervention in a matter touching his
life deeply; at that time he also suggested we adopt the familiar
form of address "Du" instead of "Sie . " I still have the book.
Benjamin frequently made use of the signature " Dr. Dei­
bruck" in humorous or satiric communications; in doing so he
alluded to the house of his parents at 23 Delbri.ickstrasse in
8. Hugo Ball described this copy in his journal (Flucht a us der Zeit, 1927, p. 243) after
his visit with Benjamin on M arch 3, 1919: "A kabbalistic book on magic with
demonological illustrations. Devils who bring to view an intentional banality in order to
conceal that they are devils. Plump chubby-faced wenches who trail off into a lizard's
body. Offspring of the fiery sphere, of a fat obtusiveness . . . . Banality corpulent and
strapping, accentuated in order to mislead."
212 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM I N CRISIS
Berlin-Griinewald. In the letters to me from the year 192 1 , he
made several further references to the Angelus Novus, in whose
name he held forth or thanked me about various matters. On
August 4, 1921, when he accepted the offer of the Heidelberg
publisher Richard Weissbach to edit a periodical for him and
notified rne of it (Letters, ·vaL I, p . 271 ) he had already decided to
call it Angelus Novus. For the periodical, as he expressed himself
in its prospectus (all that was to reach the printing stage), was
from the beginning to have in common with the angel the
ephemeral character of the latter. This ephemeral quality seemed
to Benjamin the just price it had to exact for its striving after
what Benjamin understood as true actuality: "Why according to
a talmudic legend even the angels-new ones each moment in
innumerable bands-are created so that, after they have sung
their hymn before God, they cease and dissolve into the naught.
Let the name of the periodical signify that such actuality as is
alone true should devolve upon it. " 9 Klee' s picture itself is not
mentioned here.
In the course of the years, Benjamin associated very diverse
conceptions with the angel, whom he apostrophized in the text
reproduced above. In an (unprinted) letter of November 18,
1927, shortly after my return from Europe to Jerusalem, he
referred to my poem to the Angelus in a rather cheerful
connection-in relation to the "University of Muri, " invented by
us, fro 1n whose Transactions at that time I had had my brothers
in Berlin, who were printers, print, with his active intercession, a
"Philosophical Alphabet" which was dedicated to Benjamin and
presented itself as the "official didactic poem of the Central and
State University of Muri . " Here he called my poem "the poem to
the guardian angel of the university. " The guardian angel of the
kabbalah from the year 192 1 has become the guardian angel of
the University of Muri, in whose Transactions a "philosopher"
and a "kabbalist"-who in a traditional sense were neither a
philosopher nor a kabbalist-made the traditional university and
its scholars the object of their derision. The angel, not yet sunk in
melancholy as he was later to be, still speaks to both of us, joined
g. Schriften, Vol. II (1955), p. 279. (Vol. II of the final edition Gesammelte Schriften
has not yet appeared.)
 WALTER BENJAMIN AND HIS ANGEL 21 3

in a common cause. One "lays him down on twigs of roses

[Rosenzweigen] , " which is to say he still finds in Franz Rosen­
zweig's Jewish-philosophical work an abode where he can tarry.
The angel whom Paul Klee evoked in his picture was
certainly enigmatic-though enigmatic in a completely different
way than, say, the angel of the " Duino Elegies" and other poems,
in whom, after all, the Jewish element of the messenger who
transmits a message is altogether lost. In Hebrew, after all, the
word for "angel" is identical with that for "messenger" (malakh) .
Everlasting angels like, say, the archangels or Satan, seen as the
fallen angel of the Jewish and Christian tradition, were evidently
less important for Benjamin than the talmudic theme of the
formation and disappearance of angels before God, of whom it is
said in a kabbalistic book that they "pass away as the spark on
the coals. " To this, however, was added for Benjamin the further
conception of Jewish tradition of the personal angel of each
human being who represents the latter's secret self and whose
name nevertheless remains hidden from him. In angelic shape,
but in part also in the form of his secret name, the heavenly self
of a human being (like everything else created) is woven into a
curtain hanging before the throne of God . This angel, to be sure,
can also enter into opposition to, and a relation of strong tension
with, the earthly creature to whom he is attached, as is reflected
in Benjamin's assertions in the "Agesilaus Santander. " In August
1927, when Benjamin and I spent an extended period of time
together in Paris, I had just published a Hebrew work of research
containing, among other things, detailed texts on the angelology
and demonology of the kabbalists of the thirteenth century, and I
told him about these.
The Luciferian element, however, entered Benjamin's medi­
tations on Klee' s picture not directly from the Jewish tradition,
but rather from the occupation with Baudelaire that fascinated
him for so many years. The Luciferian element of the beauty of
the Satanic, stemming from this side of Benjamin's interests,
comes out often enough in his writings and notes. His recently
published notes "On Hashish" referred, in a record of a
hashish-impression of January 15, 1928, to a "Satanic phase" he
went through during this intoxication : "My smile assumed
Satanic features: though more the expression of Satanic knowing,
2 14 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS

Satanic contentment, Satanic serenity than that of Satanic

destructive activity. " 10 However, while the "indescribably beau­
tiful face" of a human being can appear as " Satanic features­
with a half-suppressed smile" about 1932 in Benjamin's partly
unpublished "Self-portraits of the Dreamer," the anthropomor­
phous nature of Klee' s angel, now changing into the Luciferi.a n, is
no longer present when one (perhaps two) years later he wrote
the piece concerning us here. But the theme of the message
transmitted by the angel has not disappeared. Its content, to be
sure, changes along with Benjamin's conceptions. Does he bring
news from Above? News about the Self of him who views him
and about his fate? Or perhaps news about what is occurring in
the world of history, as it finally appeared to Benjamin, when he
recognized the angel of history in the Angelus Novus? The
following considerations will provide more exact information
about this.

IV

When Benjamin wrote this piece on Ibiza, his situation was

that of the refugee who in every sense leads an existence on the
brink of desperation. Three weeks earlier, he had written me on
July 24, 1933, that he had lowered his necessities of life to a
"minimum that could hardly be lowered any further. " His
capacity of concentration on spiritual matters was of an almost
miraculous intensity precisely in such situations. A relative of his
quoted to me from a lost letter from him during such a condition
an unforgettable sentence she had retained verbatim : "I pluck
flowers on the brink of subsistence. " The review of his life
occupied him most deeply during these rnonths. Out of it also
arose the new meditation about the angel that is set down
here-when the picture itself was no longer with him but present
only in his imagination. The latter allied itself with the review of
his life as writer, as Jew, and as unrequited lover. That in so
desperate a situation he nevertheless decided on writing an
10. Walter Benjamin, Uber Haschisch. Novellistisches. Berichte. Materialien. Edited
by Tillman Rexroth. Introduction by Hermann Schweppenhauser (Frankfurt-am-Main:
Suhrkamp Taschenbuch No. 21, 1972), Sentence 6g.
 WALTER BENJAMIN AND HIS ANGEL 2 15

observation which for all its melancholy is harmonious and does

not totally slip into the hopeless, an observation establishing a
certain equilibrium of the impulses moving his life-this permits
a glance at the forces which then and for so long after prevented
his self-destruction and which he summarized by the image of
patience, for which he here praises himself with such overwhelm­
ing justification.
The following explanation is based on the text of the second,
final version, but the important variations of the first one are
taken into consideration.
Benjamin proceeds from the fiction that at his birth his
parents gave him, besides the name Walter, two additional and
thoroughly peculiar names, so that he might if necessary use
them as a literary pseudonym without directly being recognized
as a Jew, as was inevitable in case of the employment of the name
Walter Benjamin. (In Germany, "Benjamin" would invariably be
a Jewish name.) To be sure, by, as it were, anticipating his
relation to his angel-even if only in Benjamin's imagination-his
parents expressed more than they could have guessed. For what
conceals itself behind the enigmatic name of the Spartan king
Agesilaus and the city of northern Spain, Santander? 1 1 Nothing
other than a significant anagram . Benjamin's taste for anagrams
accompanied him through his whole life. It was one of his main
pleasures to make up anagrams. In several of his essays he used
the anagram Anni M . Bie instead of the name Benjamin. A whole
page on which he had written anagrams in his own hand is to be
found among his posthumous papers in Frankfurt. In his book on
tragic drama he wrote that in anagrams "the word, the syllable,
and the sound, strut around, emancipated from every handed-
1 1. A young scholar who became familiar with Benjamin's sketch in connection with a
lecture by me pointed out the possibility to me that Benjamin was stimulated to the use of
this name by a passage in Karl Marx's The Eighteenth Bromaire of Louis Napoleon, where
a famous ancient anecdote about King Agesilaus is quoted; cf. the edition in Volume 8 of
the Werke of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (Berlin, 196o), pp. 175 and 623. This
conjecture is, however, unacceptable, for while Benjamin had read just this writing by
Marx (of whom he otherwise read very little), he did so only in June 1938, during his last
visit with Brecht in Skovsbostrand. This follows from Benjamin's carefully kept list of
books read by him, the main part of which has been preserved, and on which the book by
Marx is listed as number 1649. Before 1933, Benjamin had completely read only one
writing by Marx at all, namely in 1928 the book Klassenkiimpfe in Frankreich, number
1074 of his list.
216 O N JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
down association \Vith meaning, as a thing that may be exploited
allegorically, " 1 2 whereby he defined as much the inclination of
Baroque writers for anagrams as his own inclination .
Jean Selz also most clearly observed this same feature about
him. "Sometimes he also investigated and considered a word
from all sides and in so doing ofte � discovered in its individual
.
syllab!es an unexpected meaning" ( Uber Walter Benjarnin, p. 40) .
And Selz observed this feature precisely on Ibiza, where the
present piece \vas written. And what he says here about the
syllables of a word holds as much for the combination of
individual letters in the words that make up the anagrams.
Agesilaus Santander is, sealed as it were with a superfluous
"i, " an anagram of The Angel Satan (Der Angelus Satanas) . Such
an Angel-Satan is spoken of not only in Hebrew texts as, for
example, the Midrash Rabba for Exodus, Section 20, paragraph
10, but also in New Testament texts, where, in Paul's Second
Letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 12: 7, there is talk of the
Angelos Satanas, who is identical with the fallen, rebellious
Lucifer.
Benjamin, who published his own writings under his civil
name, made no use, as he says, of this name; he "proceeded . . .
as did the Jews with the additional name of their children, which
remains secret" and which they reveal to them only when they
reach maturity. This is an allusion to the Hebrew name which
every male Jewish child receives at circumcision and which is
used instead of the usual civil first name in religious documents
and synagogue services. In fact this name is "secret" only insofar
as no use is made of it by assimilated Jews, even though their
children after the completion of the thirteenth year of life­
when, according to Jewish law, they reach maturity-are called
up by this name for the first time in order to read from the Torah
in the synagogue (bar mitzvah) . Among Jews this " reaching of
maturity" means only that they are now obligated under their
own responsibility to keep the commandments of the Torah, and
that for purposes of public prayer, requiring at least ten
"mature" participants, they are among those counted . Indeed, on
this solemn occasion, the father pronounces a-to say the
12. Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. I (1974), p. 381.
 WALTER BENJAMIN AND HIS ANGEL 21 7
least-peculiarly sober blessing: "Praised be [He] who has
removed my responsibility for this one here [ sicn . "
Benjamin transposes this conception further into the mystical.
Maturity, which for the Jewish tradition has a sexual character
only marginally, is now related to the awakening of love, which
can occur more than once in life, namely with each real new love.
For the pious man, which is to say the man true to the Law, his
"secret name" remains "perhaps" unchanged throughout his life,
because apart from the marriage sanctified by the Law he knows
no renewed sexuality in reference to other women . For hitn, by
contrast, who like Walter Benjamin does not count himself
among the pious, the change of his name can reveal itself all at
once with a new reaching of maturity, which is to say with a new
love. "Thus with me"-with a new, passionate love there was
revealed to him, in place of the name Agesilaus, allegedly given
to him by his parents, the new name which is hidden in the old
one as an anagra1n . To the formula employed here, "Thus with
me" [So mir], there corresponds, at the end of this sketch in the
final version, the phrase "Just as I" obviously referring to the
same event in his life.
But even in the new transformation of the old name it retains
its magic character. It is the name Angelus Satanas, which joins
together the angelic and demonic forces of life in the most
intimate union, indeed one by which (in the first version) those
forces are even summoned forth . Like every truly secret magic
name, it may not be trusted or disclosed to unauthorized ones.
No wonder that in this sketch, too, Benjamin does not make it
public undisguised . To be sure, here a part is also played by the
association with the words Benjamin wrote at the end of
One- Way Street (1927) in a no less mystically inspired sentence
about the teaching of antiquity, one closely connected with his
notes " Concerning the Mimetic Faculty, " which were written in
the spring of 1933 · In his book One- Way Street (in the piece "To
the Planetarium ") he does not, it is true, speak of the bond of the
life forces in the tnagic name, but of the future which will belong
alone to those who "live from the forces of the cosmos, " in other
words just those in whom the cosmic forces of life are tied
together most intimately-even though not as in the case of
Agesilaus Santander in a name, but in the intoxication of cos1nic
2 18 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
experience that the human being of antiquity possessed and that
Benjamin still sought to rescue for the expected seizure of power
by the proletariat-more in the spirit of Blanqui than of Marx.
From this point Benjamin's piece turns to the angel and the
latter's association with his own, obviously secret, name. For this
name is for Benjamin no enrichment of him who bears it, as is
clearly stated in the first version. Unexpectedly the human person
of Benjamin now changes into the angelic-Luciferian nature of
the angel in the picture by Paul Klee, a nature connected so
unfathomably deeply and indeed magically with his own . The
first version still states, unambiguously referring to the name
Agesilaus Santander as Benjamin's name, that the new name,
which he discovered in it due to a new situation of life, takes
away much from him, above all the gift of perseverance by virtue
of which he was able " to appear wholly as he was of old."
Somehow he is no longer identical with himself. In the final
version, however, the talk turns to the picture of this new name,
which was revealed to him . Everything said here about this
picture must, in connection with what follows, be referred to the
picture by Klee.
Now if this picture is called Angelus Novus, whereby its
proper name-which is to say the one it should have according to
Benjamin-"becomes audible," then at the same time it loses
much. While in the first version Benjamin's secret name took
from him the gift of being himself, of seeming wholly as of old;
the picture of this name, the Luciferian angel, loses the gift of
appearing anthropomorphic, as is said in the final version. Here
Benjamin transcends the old angelogical tradition according to
which the angel of a person preserves the latter's pure, arche­
typal form [Gestalt] and thereby becomes anthropomorphic . The
next sentence deals with the transformation of the name
Agesilaus Santander, the "old name" as it is called in the first
version, into the name Angelus Satanas, which comes to light out
of it, "armored and encased," through a permutation of the
letters. For Benjamin the name projects itself on a picture,
instead of the customary view, according to which a picture is
approximately circumscribed by a name. This picture, however,
does not call itself Angelus Satanas, though it is that, but rather:
new angel . The second version makes precisely clear that this was
 WALTER BENJAMIN AND HIS ANGEL 21 9

not the true name in Benjamin's sense. For the angel passed
himself off as a new one belonging to those whose only function
consists of a hymn before the throne of God, "before he was
prepared to name himself. " On the picture in Benjamin's room
he did not name himself, but Benjam in knew with whom he was
dealing. The description "armored and encased" refers to the
way of the depiction of the angel in the picture. Benjamin
interrupted the angel from the singing of his hymn, or else, in
that in Klee' s picture he confined him for years in his room, he
took him away "unduly long" from the chanting of his hymn, as
the second version says.
The following is intelligible only if one takes into considera­
tion the situation in which, as Benjamin sees it here, the new
name, upon the reaching of a new maturity, stepped out of the
old name and at the same time settled down in the picture by
Paul Klee in his room. Benjamin's marriage from 191 7 to April
1921 proceeded unimpaired, unaffected by other experiences of
love, in spite of many other difficulties. It came to a destructive
crisis in the spring of 1921, one full of consequences for his life,
when on seeing J ula Cohn again in Berlin he developed a
passionate inclination for her. She was a young artist and sister of
a friend of his youth, a woman to whom he was tied only by a
casual friendship between 1912 and 191 7 and whom he had not
seen again since then. This love remained unrequited, but for
years it constituted the discreet center of his life. When he
obtained the Klee picture he was in the throes of his love,
through which also, as he sees it in these pieces, his new secret
name was revealed to him, transmitted by Klee' s picture.
Benjamin was born under the sign of Saturn, as he expressly
testifies only here in all the writings of his known to me. Thus the
angel, to whom astrological characterology was no less familiar
than to the author of The Origin of German Tragic Drama and to
his melancholy nature, could make him pay for the disturbance of
his heavenly and hymnal performance. 13 For after he had
13. One may perhaps point to an almost obtrusive parallel between Benjamin's
relation to the angel and a Jewish tradition about Jacob's battle with the angel in Genesis
32:27. Here, too, the tradition of the Talmud and the Midrash fluctuates about whether
the angel with whom Jacob wrestled at the break of day was an angel of light or perhaps
Samael, the name of Satan or Lucifer in the Jewish tradition. The "man" who, according
to the text of the Bible, wrestled with Jacob and at the break of day said to him, "Let me
220 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS

appeared to Benjamin in masculine form in the picture by Paul

Klee, he sent him, as if to square his account with Benjamin, his
feminine form in the earthly appearance of the beloved woman;
not, to be sure, in the direct fulfillment of a great love, but rather
"by way of the longest, most fatal detour," which is probably an
allusion to the difficult, and for Benjamin fatal, situation into
which this relationship, remaining essentially unconsummated,
had brought him . One could perhaps also interpret the sentence
to mean that the detour refers to the time from 19 14-when he
met the girl, indeed extraordinarily beautiful-to 1921 during
which his life made long, and for him fatal, detours, as for
example his first engagement in 1914 and his marriage, which in
retrospect, at least during certain periods, he experienced as fatal
to himself. This interpretation corresponds with the sentence
about Saturn as "the planet of detours and delays" : he became
conscious of his love only after great delay.
What does not seem transparent is the concluding remark of
this sentence to the effect that the angel and his feminine form in
the figure of the beloved did not know each other though they
had once been most intimately adjacent to each other. In the
same year in which the Angelus appeared in his life, there also
appeared almost at the same time this woman in the center of his
life, although they did not see each other in spite of this
"adjacency" : when she was in Berlin, the Angelus was not yet
there-if, that is, he was not to be seen in the above mentioned
Klee exhibition which Benjamin visited at the time . And later,
when he had obtained the picture, she was in Heidelberg, her
go, for the dawn is coming," supposedly said to him, according to one version of the
Jewish legend : "I am an angel and since I have been created the time has until now not
come for me to say my hymn [before God], but just now the hour for the singing has
come." And just as Benjamin's angel makes him suffer for having prevented him from the
singing of his hymn, by detaining him in his room, so also does the angel of the Biblical
narrative, and the legend spun out of it, exact suffering for the delay of his hymn by
dislocating Jacob's hip joint. In the M idrash (Genesis Rabba 78, § 1) an opinion is expressly
brought up that Jacob's angel is among those " new angels" ever and again created anew,
whose task is limited to the singing of hymns. Just as Benjamin in his encounter with the
angel transfigured his own name Agesilaus Santander to a new secret name, so too does
Jacob, according to the Biblical narrative, change his own name in his battle with the
angel and is from then on called Israel. And in the Jewish legend, too, the angel refuses,
upon Jacob's question, to give his own name: " I do not know into what name I will
transfigure myself" -completely like Angelus Novus's not wishing to give his real name to
Benjamin.
 WALTER BENJAMIN AND HIS ANGEL 22 1

residence at the time. When in the late summer of 192 1 she was
in Berlin, where I made her acquaintance, the picture was still
hanging in my place in Munich. However, the sentence about
adjacency could also refer to the fact that before Klee' s picture
itself had been painted in Munich, Jula Cohn, who was a
sculptress, had her , studio in Munich at the time Benjamin
studied there from autumn 19 15 to 19 16.
Benjamin's virtue of patient awaiting, which is exhibited by
the Saturnian features of hesitation, the slowest revolutions and
decisions, is, as he now says, his strength. The angel, in this a
genuine Satanas, wanted to destroy Benjamin through his
"feminine form" and the love for her-in the first version the text
says "accosted" him ; the second version speaks of the fact that he
"wanted to accost" him in this manner-but in the history of this
love the angel first really demonstrated Benjamin's strength. For
when he ran into a woman who cast her spell on him, he was
resolved (the first version is silent about this) to assert the
fulfillment of this love by "lying in wait" on the life path of this
woman, until at last, "sick, aged, in tattered clothes" she would
fall to his lot. The general formulation of the sentence (in the
second version) possibly includes a number of women who cast
this spell over him, and could refer to both of the women who
played a role in Benjamin's life after the crisis of his marriage : to
the "feminine form " of the angel in the person of Jula Cohn and
to Asja Lacis, who had great influence on his life from 1924 to
1930, especially on his political turning to revolutionary thinking,
but over whom he could cast his spell as little as he could over his
earlier (and partly concurrent) great love. He lay in wait on the
life path of both women, but above all, when he wrote the piece
under consideration, still on that of J ula Cohn, from whom he did
not wish to leave off, although in 1929-1930 he divorced his wife
for Asja Lacis, without this divorce then leading to marriage or
closer ties with her. When he wrote this piece in 1933, she had
already been back in Russia for three years, and he never saw her
again, while during these years Jula Cohn, married and the
mother of a child, lived in Berlin and at the time also made a
wooden bust of him-lost in the chaos of war-of which I possess
two photographs. The expectation to which he gives expression in
the sketch was not fulfilled. But Benjamin had the right to say of
222 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN C RISIS

himself, " Nothing could enfeeble the patience of the man . ,

Benjamin was the most patient human being I ever came to
know, and the decisiveness and radicalism of his thinking stood in
vehement contrast to his infinitely patient and only very slowly
opening nature. And to deal with Benjamin one had to have the
greatest patience oneself. Only very patient people could gain
deeper contact with him. 14
Thus in the following sentences he praises the wings of his
patience, which resemble the wings of the angel that are open in
Klee' s picture, in that they maintain themselves with a minimum
of exertion in the presence of the beloved one for whom he waits.
The reason Benjamin passed from the unequivocal formulation of
the first version, referring to the person of the beloved, to the
more equivocal formulation of the second version is probably
connected with the clearer specification of the figure of the angel
in the latter. For the final formulation contains not only the
possible reference to the presence or countenance of the beloved
one-whom he was resolved never to leave even though he did
not possess her-but also an assertion about the angel himself,
who maintains himself in the presence of Benjamin, onto whom
he casts his wide-open eyes, whose glance never seems to become
empty, and whom as the person chosen by him, he was resolved
never to leave. From a statement about the wings of patience, the
second version goes on to a statement that refers more precisely
to the wings of the angel, who, after he has once descended from
heaven, holds him, as his Angelus Satanas, under his sway for
years, indeed in some way until the end. This passing from the
patience of Benjamin to the angel himself is also carried through
in the further sentences of both versions. In both versions the
Satanic character of the angel is emphasized by the metaphor of
his claws and knife-sharp wings, which could find support in the
depiction of Klee's picture. No angel, but only Satan, possesses
claws and talons, as is, for example, expressed in the widespread
14. Even during his internment in the stadium near Paris and in Nevers in the autumn
of 1939, Benjamin made an indelible impression on people who came into closer contact
with him at the time, by his infinite and stoic patience, which he demonstrated without
any ostentation whatever and under the most difficult conditions. This has been made
grippingly clear to me only recently by the oral descriptions I owe to Moshe Max Aron
(from Frankfurt, now in Jerusalem) who lived closely together with Benjamin during
Benjamin's whole stay in the camp from September 1 to the middle of November 1939.
 WALTER BENJAMIN AND HIS ANGEL 223
notion that on the Sabbath witches kiss' the "clawed hands" of
Satan.15
In the first version, Benjamin speaks further of his patience,
which, though it conceals a secret sharpness in itself, nevertheless
makes no arrangements actively to pounce "on her whom it has
sighted, " which is to say the beloved. Instead, it learns .from the
angel, who likewise encompasses his partner in his view, though
he does not accost him, but rather yields and thereby pulls him
along, as Benjamin here interprets Klee's picture. From here on
the first version at once goes on to the conclusion. The second
version is, by way of contrast, decisively different and more
detailed. In a wholly new turn of Benjamin's view, the angel no
longer resembles that which Benjamin has or is, but rather all
that from which in his current state he has had to part, what he
no longer has. He mentions not only the people from whom he
has had to part, but also the things that meant something to him,
especially emphasizing the latter. As a refugee at the beginning
of a new turn of his life he is removed from those who were close
to him . At a distance they take on something of the angel, who,
after all, is also no longer with him .
But more: it was precisely in the things he possessed in his
room in Berlin and toward which he had attuned a deep
contemplative relation that the angel had settled. By entering
into these objects he made them transparent, and behind the
surface of these things, which he remembers with a lively
imagination, Benjamin sees the person for whom they were
destined. This sentence finds its explanation in Benjamin's
testament of July 27, 1932, written by him only one year earlier,
in which he enumerated those objects which meant much to him
and bequeathed one to each of his male and female friends. Thus
he sees himself as a gift giver into whose gifts the angel has
wandered. This pleasure in giving often occupied Benjamin as a
predominant feature of his character, and whoever knew him,
knows how right he was. In the Berlin Chronicle, which was also
written on Ibiza, but a year earlier, he speaks of it as one of two
features he has inherited from his maternal grandmother (Hed-
15. As, for example, it is mentioned in Holty's Hexenlied. See Gedichte by Ludwig
Heinrich Holty (Hamburg, 1783), p. 143. The claws of Satan are a common metaphor in
the Christian tradition.
224 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM I N CRISIS
wig Schoenflies) : "my pleasure in giving and my pleasure in
traveling. " 1 6 The angel himself-so he sees it now-was perhaps
allured by a "gift giver who goes away empty-handed, " who had
to part from everything that was near to him .
The turn of the phrase about the gift giver who goes away
empty-handed re1ninds one of the conclusion of the book on
tragic drama (p . 233) that quotes the famous verse from Psalm
126 : 6 in a paraphrase by one of the Baroque writers: "With
weeping we strewed the seed into the fallo\v land/ and went
away in grief. " Whereupon Benjamin then notes " Empty-handed
does allegory go away. " Just like the melancholy view that
discovers in things the infinite depth of allegories, without
however being able to complete the step over the transitory into
the religious sphere and therefore at long last goes away
empty-handed, because here salvation can fall to one's lot only by
way of a miracle; so does it also happen to the gift giver, who
goes away empty-handed, who never attains to the beloved
whom he has given great portions of his creative power as a gift,
even though in his imagination he had realized the deepest
community with her, of which the conclusion of the piece is to
speak.
Before this, however, Benjamin's consideration becomes
engrossed once again in the form and nature of the angel, who,
before he took up residence in the vanished things, used to
confront him daily. Reference has already been made to the
difference between the two versions, in which an assertion about
Benjamin's patience is transformed into one about the angel
himself. For now it is the angel who, though he possesses claws
and knife-sharp wings for attack, does not look as if he is about to
"pounce on the one who has sighted. " It is difficult to decide
whether in this dependent clause the word "him" [ ihn] has been
omitted due to Benjamin's neglect or whether it remains
meaningful even without this supplement. I incline toward the
first conception. While in the first version it is the beloved whom
Benjamin's patience keeps in his field of vision, it is now
Benjamin himself who has sighted the angel who was allured by
16. Cf. Berliner Chronik (Frankfurt-am-Main: Bibliothek Suhrkamp, No. 251, 1970),
Bo.
 WALTER BENJAMIN AND HIS ANGEL 22 5
him. Even though the angel would have reason enough to pounce
on Benjamin who, after all, interrupted his hymn, he proceeds
completely differently. He grasps him who has attained a vision
of him, who lets himself be tied eye to eye, finnly in his own eye.
Then, however, after he has tarried long with Benjamin, he
withdraws inexorably. He does so because it corresponds to his
being, only now really disclosed to Benjamin. He takes with him
the human being who encounters hi1n or whom he encounters,
for whom he perhaps has a message-not wholly in vain is the
head of the angel in Klee' s picture there, where curls are to be
expected, encircled by scrolls of writing on which his message
may have been inscribed.
The following sentences now disclose the nature of the angel.
In the first version it still says that he pulls along his partner in
the flight into a future "from which he has advanced. " He knew
the latter for it was his origin, and so he can hope for nothing
new from it except the view of the person he keeps facing. He
has been pushed forward from the future and goes back into it.
This is wholly in the sense of the verse Karl Kraus put into the
mouth of God in his poem, "The Dying Man" (Der Sterbende
Mensch) .
"You remained at the origin. Origin is the goal. "
(Du bliebst am Ursprung. Ursprung ist das Ziel.) 17
This verse was well known to Benjamin and he quoted it in an
important passage, to be discussed below, in his last piece, which
is intimately connected with the one we are considering.
In the final .version there is, to be sure, more cautious talk of
"that way into the future on which he came. " Did he also come
from the future? It is not directly said here but seems implied by
the continuation. For how else should he know this way so well
"that he traverses it without turning around and letting the one
he has chosen"-that is to say Walter Benjamin himself-"out of
view. " Also pointing to this is the talk of the way of the return
home, which is precisely the way into the future. Holding him in
his sway, he pulls his human partner along with him and
17. Karl Kraus, Worte in Versen, I (1916), 67. Cf. also Werner Kraft, Die Idee des
Ursprungs bei Karl Kraus in Siiddeutsche Zeitung, July 25, 197 1 .
226 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
therewith makes him a participant in what the angel really
wants : happiness, even though in this regard he perhaps has as
little success as Benjamin himself, to whose life happiness was
denied, unless it is meant in the one sense here defined and
whose dialectical character corresponded to Benjamin's deepest
intention.
The association of the angel with happiness was first derived
from my poem about the picture by Klee in which the angel says
resignedly :
My wing is ready for a flight,
rm all for turning back;
For, even staying timeless time,
r d have but little luck.
(Mein Fliigel ist zum Schwung bereit
Ich kehrle gem zuriick
Denn blieb ' ich auch lebendige Zeit
Ich hiitte wenig Gluck. )
The happiness of which my poem spoke referred, to be sure, to
the success of his mission, of which he expected little. For
Benjamin, however, this happiness, as the angel wishes it, has a
wholly new meaning. It refers, amazingly enough, to "the conflict
in which lies the ecstasy of the unique ('once only'), new, as yet
unlived, with that bliss of the 'once more,' the having again, the
lived. "
The paradox of this formulation is evident. In contrast to the
familiar formula, "once and never again, " happiness is based on
the conflict between the "once only" and the "yet again. " For in
this sentence the unique, the "once only, " is precisely not that
which one has lived through, the now of "lived time," as the
French expression "le temps vecu " expresses it, but rather the
wholly new and as yet unlived. In contrast to it stands the "once
more," directed to that which is capable of repetition, to
repetition of that which one has already lived through. 1 8 In
18. Here, then, already five years before Benjamin's paper on Baudelaire, in the
picture of Angelus Novus, the opposition, the "dialectic between the new and the
ever-same" is addressed or sighted, the opposition with which the third part of his
planned book on Baudelaire was to find its conclusion and crown, as he wrote to Adorno,
Briefe, Vol. II, p. 793· A basic theme of Benjamin's thinking is here still enclosed in
mystical form. To be sure, already in 1929, in a polemically skilled opposition to
 WALTER BENJAMI N AND HIS ANGEL 22 7
leaping out of the familiar formula, Benjamin describes the
melancholy happiness of the dialectician. Thus, too, there
probably corresponds to the angel's way into the future of the as
yet unlived and the new, an expectation of happiness that can
only be fulfilled on the way of the return home, that once again
traverses what one has already lived through . And the new,
which he can only hope for on the way of the return home,
consists only in taking along a new person to his origin. In the
first version this newness was formulated even more reticently.
There the new was not the taking along of a new person on the
way of the return home, but only the view of the person to whom
the angel turns his eyes, and which is the only one he can hope
for from the future from which he came. In the final version, the
way of the return home is no longer the flight into the Utopian
future, which, rather, has disappeared here.
Standing over against these delimitations of happiness­
which certainly say much about the angel but also something
about the nature of Walter Benjamin's expectations of happiness
-is the enigmatically ambiguous formulation of the concluding
sentence, which poses the question : is the addressee of this
sentence the angel or the beloved? Did Benjamin, when he first
saw the angel, and Klee' s picture affected him like a revelation of
his own angel, journey back with the latter into the future that
was his origin? Or does he address the beloved, whom he puts in
a position parallel to the angel? As if he wanted, as it were, to
say: When I for the first time really, that is to say lovingly,
perceived you, I took you along to the place from which I came. I
consider this second interpretation of the sentence to be the
correct one. The "Just as I, no sooner than I had seen you" by
which the concluding sentence is introduced, seems to me clearly
to refer to the same situation discussed in this version after being
introduced by the sentence "Thus with me. "
I would paraphrase as follows: Just as with me, Walter
Benjamin, the transformation of my secret name was revealed all
at once in the moment of the "new maturity, " the awakening of
love, so I also journeyed, after scarcely having truly seen you for
"experience" [Erlebnis] he had formulated: "Experience [Erlebnis] wants the unique, and
sensation, practical experience [Erfahrung], that which is ever the same." (Gesammelte
Schriften, Vol. III [1972], p. 198.)
228 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
the first time "back with you from whence I came," which is to
say: I took you, the beloved, along on the way from the origin
into the future, or, however, on the way into this origin itself, in
which I felt at one with you. Just as th e angel takes along a new
person on the way of the return home, so also did I take you
along, when you appeared to me anew, on my way to the origin .
Of what, precisely, this origin from whence he came consisted­
this remains unsaid. Is it the future of happiness, which in the
sense of the happiness desired by the angel, he hoped to enjoy
with her, even though he did not achieve it, or is it an origin in
another area, lying beyond the erotic sphere? I do not dare to
decide between these possibilities. In any case the turn of the
phrase "saw you for the first time" cannot at all refer to
Benjamin's first encounter with Jula Cohn, whom after all he had
in no way seen for the first time in 192 1 , when the angel
appeared to him and he himself was transformed in love along
with him . It seems to me that the context also precludes referring
the sentence to Asja Lacis, whom he did not see at all until 1924.
In his encounter with the angel, Benjamin, in accordance
with this piece, undergoes an illumination about himself. Benja­
min expressed himself about the character of such an illumination
in an essay on surrealism written in 1928 (published in the
Literarische Welt in the beginning of 1929) , employing a
formulation the equivocality of which may have escaped some of
his more recent readers. He speaks there about occult experi­
ences and phantasmagoria:
All serious research into occult, surrealistic phantasmagoric
gifts, and phenomena has as its presupposition a dialectical
interweaving which a romantic mind will never appropriate . . . .
Rather we penetrate the mystery only to the extent that we
rediscover it in daily life. . . . The most passionate investigation of
telepathic phenomena, for example, will not teach one half as
much about reading (which is an eminently telepathic procedure)
as the profane illumination of reading will about telepathic
phenomena. Or: the most passionate investigation of a hashish
intoxication will not teach one half as much about thinking (which
is an eminent narcotic) as the profane illumination of thinking will
about hashish intoxication. The reader, the thinking one, the
waiting one, the JUineur are as much types of the illuminated as
 WALTER BENJAMIN AND HIS ANGEL 229
are the opium-eater, the dreamer, the drunken one. Not to speak
of that most fearful drug-ourselves-which we take in solitude. 19

According to Benjamin's sentence about the profane illumina­

tion of the reader and other types, out of the experience of daily
life-if one would only get to the bottom of it-there leaps the
mystical experience, the occult event still hidden in it. Reading is
for him an occult event, although the philosophers do not like to
admit this. For "profane illumination" is nevertheless still
illumination and nothing else. The experience of the reader, the
thinker, or the fianeur already contains everything that the
so-called mystical experience contains, and does not first have to
be forced into the latter. But in contradistinction to the
materialistic conception of such experience, which causes mysti­
cal or occult experience to disappear, the latter is still present
precisely there (in everyday experience) .20 In the phantasmagoria
of his imagination, the picture of the Angelus Novus becomes for
Benjamin a picture of his angel as the occult reality of his self.

It has been shown how in 1933 Benjamir. understood the

picture Angelus Novus in a deeply personal manner. But already
in 1931 a perspective of Klee' s picture had opened up to him, in
which, in addition to the personal-mystical conception of the
angel depicted above, a historical one first asks to be heard. Here,
too, the angel appears in a prominent place, at the end of the
great essay on Karl Kraus, in which almost for the first time in
Benjamin's writings a Marxist way of thinking seeks to make its
way alongside one based on the philosophy of language and
metaphysics. Just at the end of his considerations-guided by
such inspiration-of the social function of Karl Kraus, he comes
to speak again of the Angelus Novus, in whom he once more
recognizes the mission of Karl Kraus:
One must rather have followed the architect Adolf Loos in his
19. W. Benjamin, Angelus Novus, 1966, pp. 213-14.
20. This interpretation of the sentence contradicts the one by K. H. Bohrer, Die
gefiihrdete Phantasie oder Surrealismus und Terror (Frankfurt, 1970), p. 44·
230 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
battle with the dragon "ornamentation, " 2 1 one must have ab­
sorbed the Esperanto of the stellar creatures abounding in
Scheerbart's stories, or have sighted Klee's New Angel, who would
rather free human beings by taking from them than make them
happy by giving to them, in order to grasp a humanity which
confirms itself by destruction.

Seen that way, the emancipation that is perhaps hidden in the

mission of the angel stands in opposition to happiness-an
emancipation somewhat remote from the Revolution's auguries
of happiness . Because of this, too, the humanity of justice, which
is Karl Kraus's strictest feature, is destructive. The demon
contained in Karl Kraus has been conquered by the angel:
Not purity and not sacrifice have become the master of the
demon; where, however, origin and destruction find each other, it
is all over with his dominion. His conqueror stands before him as a
creature made out of child and cannibal, not a new man; an
inhuman creature, a new angel . Perhaps one of those who,
according to the Talmud, are created anew each moment in
innumerable hosts, in order-after they have lifted up their voice
before God-to cease and to vanish into nought. Lamenting,
accusing, or jubilating? No matter-the ephemeral work of Kraus
is an imitation of this quickly vanishing voice. Angelus-that is the
messenger of the old etchings.22

Before Benjamin dared to put his own confrontation with the

angel down on paper, when he himself, almost hopeless like the
angel, sat on Ibiza and had had to separate himself from
everything that was part of him, he had already recognized the
"perfect nature" of Karl Kraus-if I may use the expression of
the old masters of hermetics-in the form of the angel (an
inhuman angel as also in "Agesilaus Santander" ) . He, who
undertook language's revenge on its destroyers, the press, is still
one of the angels of the talmudic legend. It is no longer certain
whether this angel recites a hymn, a song of jubilation, before
God, for he would rather recite lamentations or accuse the
destroyers of language, true to his hidden Satanic nature ; indeed,
in Hebrew the word Satan has the meaning of "accuser." But as
21. An allusion to the essay by Loos, Ornament und Verbrechen, 1907.
22. Schriften, Vol. II, pp. 194--95.
 WALTER BENJAMIN AND HIS ANGEL 23 1

in the announcement of the periodical Angelus Novus, the truly

actual is the ephemeral, and therefore the work of Karl Kraus
imitates that quickly vanishing voice of the angel which has
remained from the Jewish conception.
The final form which the angel assumed for Benjamin
emerged from a new connection between these two views in the
essay of 193 1 and the sketch about himself of 1933. In the
beginning of 1940, after his release from the camp in which, like
almost all of the refugees from Hitler's Germany, he had been
interned after the outbreak of the war, Benjamin wrote those
"Theses on the Philosophy of History" in which he accomplished
his awakening from the shock of the Hitler-Stalin pact. As a reply
to this pact, he read them at this time to the writer Soma
Morgenstern, an old acquaintance and companion in misfortune.
They are as much a discussion of social democracy, as they
constitute a metaphysical justification of a "historical material­
ism," which owes more to theology-to which it so emphatically
refers-than could be stomached by its current " Marxist"
readers. These, after all, as their writings prove abundantly, feel
themselves completely capable, like Marx himself, of managing
even today without theology and therefore in their interpreta­
tions they must emasculate the relevant passages in Benjamin.
With good reason did an open-minded reader like Jiirgen
Habermas describe these theses, and precisely the one that will
concern us here as "one of the most moving testimonies of the
Jewish spirit . " 23 For Benjamin, at the end of his life, historical
materialism is no longer anything but a "puppet" that can win
the historical game only by taking into its service the hidden
mastery of theology, "which today, as we know, is wizened and
has to keep out of sight. " It did not, to be sure, remain all that
invisible in these theses, in which frequently nothing remains of
historical materialism except the term itself.24
Following the above cited verse from my poem of 1921,
which serves as a motto, one reads in the ninth of these theses :
There is a painting by Klee called Angelus Novus. It shows an
angel looking as though he is about to move away from something
23. J. Habermas, Philosophisch-politische Profile (Frankfurt-am-Main : Suhrkamp
Taschenbuch No. 265, 1971), p. 55·
24 . In 1 940 , his conception of the signifi cance of theology had not deviated essentially
from the one advocated in 1 928, in which, in a sketch in memory of a hashish "trip, " he still
found the "deepe st truths" in the sphere of the theological (Haschisch , p . 75) .
23 2 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is
open, his wings are spread. This is how the angel of history must
look. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a
chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe that keeps piling
wreckage on wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel
would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has
been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got
caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no
longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the
future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before
him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress. 25

Here, then, Benjamin's personal angel, who stands between

past and future and causes him to journey back "from whence I
came," has turned into the angel of history, in a new interpreta­
tion of Klee' s picture. He stares into the past, from which he is
removing himself or just about to remove himself, but he turns his
back to the future into which a storm from Paradise is driving
him. This storm from Paradise blows into his wings and prevents
him from closing them and tarrying. So he proceeds along like a
herald before this storm, which in profane language is called
progress. He announces the future from which he came, but his
countenance is turned toward the past. The new turn of phrase in
the conception of the angel's mission quotes almost verbatim the
old text he had in front of him in his notebooks, at the time of
writing. Whereas in Agesilaus Santander there stood the concrete
human being Walter Benjamin, whom the angel drew along with
him, or after him, into the future out of which he had been thrust,
there now stands man as a general essence, as bearer of the histor­
ical process. But if before it was the patience of the lover who
waits, it is now the stonn from Paradise that drives him into the fu­
ture, though he does not so much as turn around his countenance.
The antithesis in the transformation of the sentences from
patience to storm, which all the more casts light on Benjamin's
changed conception, is a striking one. But what is more, Paradise
is at once the origin and the primal past of man as well as the
utopian image of the future of his redemption-a conception of
I

the historical process that is really cyclical rather than dialectical.

25. Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. I, pp. 6g7-g8.
 WALTER BENJAMIN AND HIS ANGEL 233
"Origin is the goal"-even at this time, and not for nothing, does
this sentence by Kraus stand as motto over the fourteenth thesis.
Even in the earlier sketch the angel yields and withdraws back
into the future "incessantly" or "inexorably." Why incessantly?
The reasons are given only in the theses, in which the storm
prevents him from tarrying and drives him on. Wh �t is really
deeply moving and melancholy in this new image of the angel is
that he walks into a future into which he does not look at all and
will never look, so long as he, as the angel of history, fulfills his
sole and singular mission.
This angel no longer sings any hymns. Indeed, it is more than
doubtful whether he will fulfill his angelic mission at all. That is
connected with Benjamin's conception of the past in this thesis.
That which appears as history and past to the human observer-!
should say to the undialectical philosopher of history-the angel
sees as one great catastrophe, which in a pernicious eruption
incessantly "keeps piling wreckage on wreckage" and hurls it at
the feet of the angel. He knows of his task : he would really like to
"awaken the dead and make whole what has been smashed. " In
this sentence two themes come together that were well known to
Benjamin, a theme from the Christian Baroque and another one
from Jewish mysticism. It is already said in "The Origin of
German Tragic Drama" that for the Baroque writers of allegory
history was not a process in which eternal life takes shape, but
rather a "process of incessant decay . " The Baroque dismember­
ment, of which there is so much talk in the book on tragic drama
and which the angel of this thesis takes up again when he wishes
"to make whole what has been smashed, " is connected with the
melancholy gaze at the past of history. The process of decay has
turned into the one great catastrophe which brings the past
before the angel's eyes only as a pile of debris. At the same time,
however, Benjamin's meaning includes the kabbalistic concept of
tikkun, the messianic restoration and repair which mends and
restores the original being of things, and of history as well, after
they have been smashed and corrupted by the "breaking of the
vessels. " 26 To be sure, for the Lurianic kabbalah the awaking of
26. On this concept, with which Benjamin was familiar from conversations with me as
well as from F. J. Molitor's work, Philosophie der Geschichte, cf. my exposition in Major
234 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS

the dead and the joining together and restoring of what has been
smashed and broken is the task not of an angel but of the
Messiah. Everything historical, unredeemed, has according to its
nature a fragmentary character.
The angel of history, however, as Benjamin sees him here,
fails in this task, which can be fulfilled, in the last thesis of this
sequence, only by the Messiah, who might enter through the
"strait gate" of every fulfilled second of historical time, as
Benjamin says in an exposition concerning the relationship of the
Jews to time and the future. What prevents the angel from such a
completion of his mission? Precisely that storm from Paradise,
which does not permit him to tarry, but also the unredeemed past
itself, which as a pile of debris grows skyward before him .27 That
he can overcome this pile of debris or go so far as to join it
together in a Utopian or redeemed unity, of this nothing is said. It
is precisely "progress" which causes the real tikkun of redemp­
tion to turn into an ever more threatening and insoluble problem.
The solution of that problem, then, in the language of theology,
lies with the Messiah; in the language of historical materialism,
however, for the sake of which Benjamin annexes theology, it
consists of the dialectical leap " in the open air of history, " of the
revolution which for Benjamin is "a tiger's leap into the past, " as
is said in the fourteenth of these theses.
The angel of history is, then, basically a melancholy figure,
wrecked by the immanence of history, because the latter can
only be overcome by a leap that does not save the past of history
in an "eternal image," but rather in a leap leading out of the
Trends in Jewish Mysticism (1961), pp. 268-74. Benjamin also knew my presentation of
these thoughts appearing in 1932 in the article Kabbala of the (Gennan) Encyclopaedia
]udaica, Vol. IX, columns 6g3--g8.
27. Hannah Arendt says of the situation of the angel: "The angel of history observes
the field of debris of the wholly unparadisical past, but the stonn of progress blows him
backwards into the future" (see her Introduction to Walter Benjamin, Illuminations [New
York, 1g6g], pp. 12-13. That book contains a translation of "Theses on the Philosophy of
History" by Harry Zohn, pp. 253--64, from which the passages quoted in this essay have
been adapted). But precisely in the "Agesilaus Santander," which was unknown to
Hannah Arendt, the angel in fact retreats into the future, as there is no mention yet made
of progress. She further remarks on the above-quoted sentence: "that a dialectically
sensible, rationally interpretable process could present itself to such eyes-that is out of
the question." But is that right? Certainly not an unequivocal process, but why not a
dialectically sensible one? The immanent logic of Benjamin's conception, as I have
attempted to present it here, seems to me sensible in spite of the paradox inherent in it.
 WALTER BENJAMIN AND HIS ANGEL 235
historical continuum into the "time of now," whether the latter is
revolutionary or messianic. It is a matter of dispute whether one
can speak here-as I am rather inclined to do-of a melancholy,
indeed desperate, view of history for which the hope that the
latter might be burst asunder, by an act like redemption or
revolution, continues to have about it something of that leap into
transcendence which these theses seem to deny but which is even
then implied in their materialistic formulations as their secret
core. To be sure, with what one is accustomed to call historical
materialism, this angel of the last datable writing by Benjamin
has left in common only the ironic relation of the temlini
technici, which, however, signify the opposite of what a more
robust, less mystical materialist than Walter Benjamin would like
to understand by them.
Benjamin divided up the function of the Messiah as crystal­
ized by the view of history of Judaism : into that of the angel who
must fail in his task, and t�1at of the Messiah who can accomplish
it. In this division, if one keeps in mind the writings of ten years
discussed here, the angel itself has become, sit venia verba,
"transfunctioned . " But his image has remained a "dialectical
image" in the sense of Benjamin's usage of this concept. This
concept first appears in his work in a connection not yet
estranged by Marxism .28 Later he says of it what certainly holds
good of his interpretation of Klee' s angel : "The dialectical image
is a flashing one . . . an image flashing in the Now of
Knowability. " In it the "salvation of what has been is accom­
plished"-and only in it.29
The reality of the messenger from the world of Paradise who
is incapable of accomplishing his mission is dialectically burst
asunder by the storm wind blowing from Paradise. I would
interpret it this way: by a history and its dynamic determined by
Utopia and not, say, the means of production. As angel of history
he really has nothing to hope for from his efforts in its behalf,
nothing other than what became of the angel in "Agesilaus
Santander, " who "can hope for the new on no way" except on
the way of the return home on which, because of an encounter
28. Cf. the piece "Nach der Vollendung," Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. IV (1972), p.
438.
29. In the piece "Zentral-Park," Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. I, ( 1974), p. 682.
 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS

with a new human being, the human being Walter Benjamin, he

takes the latter along with him.
If one may speak of Walter Benjamin's genius, then it was
concentrated in this angel. In the latter's saturnine light Benja­
min's life itself ran its course, also consisting only of "small
victories, " and "great defeats, " as he described it from a deeply
melancholy point of view in a letter which he addressed to me on
July 26, 1932, one day before his intended, but at the time not
executed, suicide.30
30. Briefe, Vol. II, p. 556.
 Two Letters to
Walter Benj amin*

Jerusalem, February 20, 1930

It may be good, after your recent letters-especially the

first one, which aroused a most peculiar feeling of uneasiness in
me-in which you have broached the matter of our acute mutual
concern in a manner altogether unmistakable to me, that we go
on to make it clear to ourselves where we stand. Three years ago
you were of the opinion, which I shared with you, that you had
arrived at a point where a fruitful coming to terms with Judaism
appeared as the one and only way to a positive progress in your
work. On the basis of this insight, about which both of us seemed
to be certain, I did what I did, for the purpose of securing you the
possibility of realizing your intentions. Now the question-and
o o

after three years have elapsed, it seems to answer itself on the

basis of your position and preoccupations-is as follows : has not
that idea, at one time even described and advocated by you to
Magnes, become a thing of the past? After all, you prove in actu
that, on the one hand, the cluster of problems into which you
have delved, and, on the other hand, the position of the most
outstanding literary critic you have achieved-or in any case, I
am sure, can achieve-prove to be continuously fruitful and
positively self-fulfilling for you, and all this, contrary to your own
expectations, altogether beyond that Jewish world of which we
o
From Walter Benjamin, Briefe (Frankfurt-am-Main : Bibliothek Suhrkamp, 1966),
edited by Gershom Scholem and Theodor W. Adorno, Vol. II, pp. 51o-12; 525-29.
Translated by 'Verner J. Dannhauser.
o o
Scholem had secured him a stipend that was to make it possible for him to devote
himself exclusively to the study of Hebrew for one year .-Ed.
 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
thought at that time . I deem it advisable that we get this clear, if
only so that I am not put into a false position here in Jerusalem,
since, after all I can't very well maintain year after year that you
are about to come to a decision at which, it seems to me ever
more probable, you will never really arrive.
Since, however, both of us know all too well from long
experience that with you more than with most people, it is only
your inner inhibitions that bring about your outer ones, we must
face the following question. Isn't it obvious that the inhibitions
that have now been asserting themselves for twelve years as
regards your position on these Jewish matters, though in a
different spiritual or physical form in each epoch of your life, are
so fundamental, that instead of indulging in false illusions about a
coming to terms with Judaism that can never come to be, though
for fifteen years we considered such a coming to terms as our
common cause, it would be better and preferable squarely to face
the reality (still distressing to me, but at least unequivocal) of
your existence beyond that world? It is, after all, evident that
from your present absorption in problems you are posing for
yourself you will turn to new and different ones ; that the opinion
you expressed three years ago to the effect that without the way
to Hebrew the only way of unobjectionable activity would lead
from literature into the labors of pure party politics-that this
opinion has turned out to be exaggerated and false and that
especially from the loftiness of your presumptive position as the
one genuine critic of German literature one can see no necessity
of a way to Hebrew.
With these considerations I would like to induce you not only
to come to terms with yourself about this matter-! have the
impression that you will, after all, hardly contradict, that in this
case you do not like to do that, and especially not with due
passion-but to explain it to me with the same frankness I offer
you and believe I have a right to expect from you concerning this
question above all others; so that, come what may, we do not
mutually deceive ourselves by means of a private apocalypse
about the divergences of our courses of life. I am, after all,
certainly the man who will endure things with composure and
perhaps even a tolerable degree of understanding, if it should
turn out to be a fact that in this life you can and do no longer
 LETTERS TO WALTER BENJAMIN 239

cou nt on a real encou nter wi th J u dai s m beyond the me diu m of

our fri endship .
S o m e ti m e s I believe that in speaking abou t these thi ngs you
show 1n ore consideration for me than con s iderati on for you r­
self. As paradoxical as that may s ound, I really thi nk i t is a
correct rendering of your positi on i n many a mo1n e nt and I
would have to feel differently abou t you than I do feel if I were
not to suffer from thi s s i tu ation . Now and th en I say to m yself:
out of fri endship to m e Walter do es not dare to fu rni sh a clear
account of h i s condi tion, he avoids "transferring hims elf i nto
th e center of that condition in a knowi ng way" *-but I as sure
you that neither morally nor sy1n bolical ly can or shou l d thi s be
a valid reason for you·. For me it is far more i mportan t to know
wh ere you really are th an where you perh ap s hope to betake
yourself one day , s ince , after all , the con s ti tu tion of your life
m ake s i t certai n that you-more than anyone els e-will always
arrive at a place different from the one you desi red . If, how­
eve r, I should p rove to be completely wrong in these
th oughts-of cours e , I don't believe I am-well; i t is all the
better to have expressed th e m for once . In any case , you r
biography for th e las t te n years provides ample occas ions for
such errors , even among your fri ends . All the 1nore mus t we
wi sh that the cri si s of your external life * *-which I must infer
fro m th e inti m ati ons of your lette rs , wi thout, however, having
th e power to intercede-will at leas t als o resu l t in securi ng you
clarity abou t whe re you belong as well as where you s tand .
Though t in friendship and wri tte n wi th all my heart .

Yours,
GERHARD

II

Jericho, M arch 31, 1931

Dear Walter :
I am staying in Jericho for a week, occupied by doing nothing
o
Quotation from a piece by Benjamin.-Ed.
o o
His divorce.-Ed.
24 0 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
and the like, in preparation for a visit from my mother and my
brother occurring in Jerusalem next week; tomorrow morning I
am going to take a little journey on the Dead Sea, on which I
have never been in all these years. My idleness was interrupted
by the copies of your letters, those to [Bertolt] Brecht and [Max]
Rychner, <� which will have to substitute for an "original letter. "
The letter to Brecht confirms my expectation, which I have had
all the while, that nothing could come of the journal of which you
write me, though in my ignorance I can't say much about the
matter. On the other hand, I would like to tell you a few things
about the other letter, which to a certain extent strikes me as
being addressed to me as well. I very much regret not knowing
Rychner' s essay, which may well contain real insights. However,
what can be said about your letter is presumably independent of
that-the question die cur hie? is in any case well formulated.
o o

I beg of you to receive my remarks as an abbreviation and in the

same spirit of benevolence, which you were entitled to expect
from the reader of the letter.
Since I have become familiar with more or less comprehen­
sive specimens from your pen of the consideration of literary
matters in the spirit of dialectical materialism, the insight has
taken hold of me in a clear and distinct manner that in this
production you perpetrate a self-deception in a peculiarly
intensive way; for me this is especially and most significantly
documented by your admirable essay on Karl Kraus, which I
unfortunately do not have here with me.
The expectation you express that so obviously understanding
a reader as Mr. Rychner will know how to find in this essay, in
any sense whatever, a justification of your sympathies for
dialectical materialism "between the lines" strikes me as com­
pletely misleading: the exact opposite is much more likely to be
the case, by which I mean the following. It seems to me that it is
clear to every open-minded reader of your writings that while in
recent years you have exerted yourself frantically-pardon me
for saying so-to expound your insights, which are in part very
o A Swiss literary historian and journalist ( 18g7-1965) and friend of Hugo von
Ho&nannstahl and Paul Valery, who labored to bring classical world literature to the
attention of German readers.-Ed.
o o
"Say why you are here"-a medieval prover� Ed.
 LETTERS TO WALTER BENJAMIN

far-reaching, in a phraseology approaching the Communist one as

far as possible, but that-and this is what seems to me to
matter-a stupendous incompatibility and lack of relation exists
between your real and alleged process of thinking. You reach
your insights not, say, by a strict application of a materialist
method, but completely independent of it (in the best case) , or
(in the worst case, as in some of your pieces of the last two years)
by playing with the ambiguities and dissonances (Interfer�nzer­
scheinungen) of that method. As you yourself put it with perfect
correctness to Mr. Rychner, your own and solid insights grow out
of-to put it briefly-the metaphysics of language, which is quite
properly the field in which, having attained undisguised clarity,
you could be a highly significant figure, the legitimate heir of the
most fruitful and authentic traditions of a Hamann and Hum­
boldt.
By contrast, the ostensible effort now to fit these results into a
framework, in which they suddenly present themselves as the
seeming results of materialist reflections, introduces into your
thought a wholly alien form-element, one easily detached by
every intelligent reader, and one which imprints on your
productions of the time the stamp of the adventurous, ambigu­
ous, and prestidigitatious. You will understand that I do not use
such a demonstrative mode of expression without the greatest
reluctance ; but when I picture to myself the altogether fantastic
discrepancy gaping between the true method and the one alleged
by the terminology in so excellent and crucial an essay as the one
on Karl Kraus; when I think of the way everything suddenly
limps there because the insight of the metaphysician about the
language of the bourgeois, or let us even say that of capitalism,
is in an artificial and all-too-transparent manner identified with
those of the materialist about the economic dialectic of society to
such an extent that it might almost seem as if one entailed the
other!-then I am dismayed to have to tell myself that this
self-deception is possible only because you will it, and more : that
it can last only as long as it is not put to the materialist test .
The complete certainty I maintain to having about what
would happen to the body of your writing, if it were to chance to
appear within the Communist Party is quite woeful. I almost
believe that you will this state of suspension, when you ought
 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
really to welcome every means of ending it. That your dialectic is
not that of the materialist to which you try to approximate it
would turn out to be unequivocally and explosively clear the
moment your fellow dialecticians, as could not fail to take place,
would unmask you as a typical counterrevolutionary and bour­
geois. As long as you write for bourgeois citizens about bourgeois
citizens, the genuine materialist can afford not to care, I might
say not to give a damn, whether you wish to harbor the illusion of
being at one with them. On the contrary, he ought really to have
every interest, from a dialectical perspective, to strengthen you in
your illusion, for presumably even he could realize that on that
terrain your dynamite might be stronger than his. (Comparable,
let us say-pardon the parallel-to the way he encouraged
certain psychoanalytic Bolshevists in Germany a la Erich Fromm,
whom in Moscow he would immediately send to Siberia.) You are
of no use to him in his own camp, for there the first steps to the
heart of the matter would lead to a blowup revealing the purely
abstract identification of your spheres of interest. Since it
happens that you yourself, in the other corner, are to a certain
extent interested in a certain in suspense state, you get along
quite well with each other. The only question is, to say this in a
seemly way as well, how long, given so ambiguous a relationship,
the morality of your insights, one of your most precious
possessions, can remain healthy.
Yet it is not the case, as you may perhaps see it, that you ask
yourself how far one can get, say, by way of experiment with the
attitude of the materialist, since in your creative procedure it is
evident that you have never yet and in no case assumed that
position; what is more, as an old theologian, I believe I am
permitted to say that you are totally incapable of doing so
successfully. It is, of course, conceivable, given a certain
robustness of your resolution which I believe I can presuppose in
this case, that you can pretty well project your insights-reached
as you so truly say by theological procedures-onto the terminol­
ogy of materialism, along with a few inescapable dislocations to
which nothing corresponds in that which is to be duplicated-di­
alectica dialecticam amat. Therefore the two of you may after all
keep up your illegitimate association fo r a long time, namely
exactly as long as circumstances will permit you to persist in your
 LETTERS TO WALTER BENJA MIN 243
ambiguity; and that, with the historical conditions now obtaining,
can be a very long time. Thus as much as I dispute that there was
so1nething, as you maintain to Rychner, that led you to the
application of the materialistic view, to which your work, after
all, adds no significant contribution whatever, as much do I
understand that you have succumbed to the self-deception that
the introduction into metaphysics of a certain slant and terminol­
ogy in which there is reference to classes and capitalistn, though
hardly to (heir opposites, turns your reflections into materialist
ones.
The sure means of proving the full truth of my view, namely
your entry into the ranks of the Communist Party, is, to be sure,
one I can recommend to you only ironically. After all, to test how
far a strict observation of the economic-materialist methods of
research leads away from the ideal attitude of the metaphysical­
dialectical activity and procedure of science (in order to vary
your formulation)-to undertake such a test, which can only end
in a capitis diminutio of your existence, is something that as a
friend I am incapable of advising you without any further ado. I
am rather inclined to assume that one fine day this connection
will end as inadvertently as it began. If I am mistaken about that,
then the high expenses of that mistake will, as I fear, have to be
borne by you, which, to be sure, will be paradoxical, but only
fitting to the situation that will then have arisen : you would, to be
sure, not be the last, but perhaps the most incomprehensible
victim of that very confusion bet\veen religion and politics, the
articulation of which in their proper relation could be expected
more definitely from none other than you yourself. But, as the
ancient Jews of Spain used to say, What time can do, reason can
also do.
About other matters, another time. I am always waiting for
letters from you; perhaps this one will set your fountain pen into
polemical motion!

With the most heartfelt greetings,

YouR GERHARD
 Israel and the Diasp ora *

If I am to speak about Israel and the Diaspora and, more

precisely, about their mutual interdependence, I can scarcely
cherish the illusion of saying anything really new on this subject.
In recent years, indeed since the establishment of the State of
Israel, no subject has been treated with greater intensity and
passion than this one. Whatever could have been said, from every
possible point of view and in every possible way, has long ago
been said. I almost believe that I am just about the only Jew with
any power of articulation who has still not spoken about this
topic.
There is, to be sure, a good reason for my reticence about
expressing myself on this subject : I have no firm, certain,
unequivocal ans\ver to offe�. My own thoughts-and which one
of us could be without thoughts on this topic?-were of a
contradictory nature, and I could not get anywhere with myself.
Throughout my life I was tossed hither and yon by expectations
and disappointments; expectations from the Jewish people in
general and, in particular, from us who were at work in the land
of Israel. I have come to know many phases of this process, from
·highest expectation to deepest disappointment, indeed despair;
and I have gone through them 1nyself. That has left me without
any inclination to speak with any semblance of authority, which
o "Israel und die Diaspora," a lecture delivered at the annual convention of the
League of Swiss Jewish Communities, Geneva, May 14, 1g6g. Published in Gershom
Scholem, ]uda ica 2 (Frankfurt-am-Main : Bibliothek Suhrkamp, 1970), pp. 55-76.
Translated by Werner J. Dannhauser.
 ISRAEL AND THE DIASPORA 245
in this case could have been nothing but presumption and
pretense. I would nevertheless like to present and offer for
reflection some considerations that seem to me to be of special
relevance to the discussion of this complex problem . It is
certainly true that throughout my life I have believed in the
rebirth of the Jewish people through the Zionist movement, but
within the framework of that belief-which, nonetheless, in oh so
many an hour, threatened to dissolve because it struck me as
deceptive-! belonged much more to the group of those who
posed questions than to those who knew how to give answers.
Given the multiplicity of aspects disclosed by a consideration of
the relationship between Israel and the Diaspora, aspects I wish
to consider here, an answer can, after all, be only an affirmation
of a faith and a hope-and one might say that even that would
amount to a good deal.
There is an old saying that is the basis for many a Jewish
legend : on the day of the destruction of the Temple, the Messiah
was born. , This bold sentence, which, coming from the old
Rabbis, certainly is food for thought, probably expresses in a
paradoxical form the feeling-not to say the knowledge-that
the great historical catastrophe of the Jewish people and
redemption are inseparably connected, dialectically intermeshed.
With the falling into ruin of the Temple, the main focus of a
people that had understood itself as God's chosen people, the
possibility of redemption is disclosed from another level and from
a focal point that cannot as yet be determined. Of what did this
" redemption" consist? Concerning this question, one finds the
most various and contradictory views in the history of Judaism
and its theology. This is not the place to speak of that. But in
whatever way "redemption" was understood, even in the formu­
lations of the faithful and the mystics, it always terminates in a
restitution of the destroyed central focal point; a restitution
drawing its strength not only from the intercession of a supernat­
ural, divine power, but also from the depth of the catastrophe
itself, from the experience of exile, which was the experience of
Israel's homelessness in the world of history.
The religious categories in which the experience is described
have undergone a change in recent generations, certainly not for
everyone, but for very many of us. But even the most secular
246 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS

forrns in which this experience defines itself in the large circles of

those who do not deny their Jewish identity-who, indeed, affirm
it passionately-still vibrate in resonance with a secret tone of
tlie religious. After all, the old saying of Dostoevsky's, certainly
no great admirer of the Jews, that he could not conceive of a Jew
who had no God, has been confirmed by the religious passion
with which the Jewish socialists and fighters for the social
revolution took up their cause.
This falling apart of, and indeed conflict between, concep­
tions that are on the one hand religious and tradition-oriented,
and on the other hand secularized and directed to a metamorpho­
sis of Judaism into rejuvenated forms-it is this point which here,
too, in the discussion occupying us, plays a highly significant role.
The relationship between Israel and the Diaspora, J ewishness in
galut, cannot be illuminated unless we give an account of the
processes and differentiations connected with the emergence of
Zionism and especially persistently with the founding of the State
of Israel. What I mean by this can be rendered clearly.
At the time of the appearance of the Zionist movement, the
Jewish communities of the Diaspora represented institutions in
which a Judaism, on which the struggle for Emancipation had
left its imprint, defined itself in purely religious categories,
originating in trains of thought that were religiously orthodox but
which might also have been liberally reinterpreted. Measured
against the totality of Jewish life in the period before Emancipa­
tion, it was a most watered-down version of Judaism ; in fact,
many people were effectively involved who were completely
indifferent to religion but who devoted much energy to the social
tasks of the communities. The moving force in all this was much
less the religious tradition affirming such activity than it was a
thoroughly irrational tie, often enough in contradiction to its own
ideology, and a readiness to assume responsibility for the Jewish
community. As yet such activity was not backed by a conscious
affirmation of what may be called profane tasks by people who
anxiously set great store on emphasizing that only religious
convictions (which often they no longer even had) separated
them from their fellow citizens.
Zionism broke with all this and sought to replace fictions and
games of hide-and-seek in Jewish life with honest and open
 ISRAEL AND THE DIASPORA 24 7
relationships. It was-if I may for once avail myself of a
fashionable term-an avant-garde movement, borne by a small
minority that was bound to provoke the opposition of the Jewish
communities precisely because of its contempt for the fictitious
element in the latter's conventions. Nor is it any wonder that a
breakthrough to a freer stance, and one felt to be revolutionary
by the spokesmen of the time, appealed precisely to not a few of
the most active elements among the youth.
If Zionism triumphed-at least on the level of historical
decisions in the history of the Jews-it owes its victory preemi­
nently to three factors that left their imprint on its character: it
was, all in all, a movement of the young, in which strong
romantic elements inevitably played a considerable role; it was a
movement of social protest, which drew its inspiration as much
from the primordial and still vi tal call of the prophets of Israel as
from the slogans of European socialism; and it was prepared to
identify itself with the fate of the Jews in all-and I mean
all-aspects of that fate, the religious and worldly ones in equal
measure.
These were the characteristics that called forth the courage of
a departure and a new start, of the construction of a life that was
no longer a fiction, in one's own land, and then, when the time
came, the courage to liberate and help organize those forces
leading to the foundation of Israel. It is true that no one can say it
would have come to that without that monstrous catastrophe,
which in an equal manner concerned all Jews, whether they
happened to think of themselves as a people, religious commu­
nity, or whatever-even when it did not physically affect the
individual. It is idle to speculate about this question. But that in
this period there was on hand a concentration of force which
could crystalize the will to life of the Jews and their exertions on
their own behalf, no longer secretly but on the open and exposed
plane of history, and if absolutely necessary even the history of
war-that is the great and unique achievement of Zionism.
Ever since its above-mentioned origins, however, this great
achievement has contained built-in contradictions which are
eminently significant precisely for the questions we are now
posing and pondering, and which it would be completely
impossible to pass over in silence. The different tendencies,
 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM I N CRISIS
whose often extreme confrontation dominates the life of Israel in
so many respects, are an expression of these contradictions. The
focal point of these contradictions, however, is a question that
has never been clearly resolved in the Zionist movement, and for
the good reason that no unequivocal answer to it was possible. I
am thinking of this question: was Zionism a revolution in the life
of the Jewish people, a rebellion against the latter's existence in
galut, which it negated radically in order to inscribe on its banner
an equally radical new beginning in the land of Israel; or was it
rather to be understood from the perspective of an awareness of
historical continuity, as a continuation and evolution of those
forces that have determined the existence and endurance of the
Jewish people even during the long years of dispersion? Did it
merely represent a metamorphosis of those forces, which had to
prove themselves in different historical conditions and in new
social relationships and, therefore, would the physiognomy of this
community or society not deviate very much from the one that
had characterized Judaism in the times of exile? Or was it not
rather a question of a break with just this past, of a summoning
up of wholly new forces, which would seek their roots not so
much in our historical heritage as in the resolution to a
wholehearted effort on behalf of a new humanity? Could the two
tendencies-the conservative, indeed reactionary one, and the
revolutionary, indeed Utopia-oriented one-reach an under­
standing or at least a common ground on which they could meet
without mutually annulling and negating each other?
The Zionist movement was the arena of lively discussions of
these questions. They took place essentially beyond the properly
political setting of goals and the partisan political maneuvers
which outwardly determined the history of the movement. For
even within the framework of common political ideas, opinions
about tills highest and deepest question diverged widely and were
to a great extent a matter of temperament and personal decision.
Added to this should be the fact that the most clearly visible
exponents of these conceptions hardly played a role on the level
of politics, even completely rejecting the latter or at least
maintaining the greatest reserve toward it. That is as true of
Ahad Ha-am, the most influential spokesman of a rather conser-
 ISRAEL AND THE DIASPORA 24 9
vative conception of the rebirth and renewal of the Jewish
people, as of Micha Josef Berdyczewski and Josef Haim Brenner,
who were the most important n1entors of those who advocated
and affirmed the break of the new Jew with his past. It was
precisely they who exercised a considerable influence on the
socialist halutz movement. That movement, concerned with the
concrete formation of new styles of life and community-to grow
out of the socialist communes of those who worked the land­
was marked by a particularly strong awareness of a break with
the past. It will always remain notable how in this case such
incompatible elements as the critique of society from a socialist,
Tolstoyan, and, paradoxically, Nietzschean point of view were
often strongly at work alongside each other. At this point the
conscious passing over of the history of Israel in exile, in galut,
the reaching back to primal Biblical times, which was later to
become significant, played hardly any role yet, except perhaps in
romantic fantasies. Since, however, the historical situation did
not demand a decision, the different tendencies, each in its
sphere, could coexist with a minimum of friction. After all, the
provisional nature of all that happened within the framework of
the avant-garde, which before World War II constituted the
heart of the new y is huv-the Jewish settlement-was clear to all
the participants. Since they felt themselves to be the avant-garde
halutzim, they awaited the great reinforcement, the masses, who
were to procure a real embodiment for their versions of the
future.
It was also characteristic of this situation that the ideas of
Ahad Ha-am, for whom the relations between the new Center
and the Diaspora were from the start a focal point for his
thought-that is to say, the setting up of a spiritual center for the
whole Diaspora, one that was to rise on a new social foundation
-that these ideas could maintain themselves almost without any
conflict alongside of the properly political conceptions. Only a
handful of radical adherents of A had Ha-am' s thought, to which I
myself belonged for a great many years, anticipated an inescapa­
ble conflict between these conceptions. But of whatever kind the
conceptions were that I have briefly identified here, their
adherents without exception drew their strength from the great
25 0 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
reservoir of the yet -unawakened Diaspora, and it did not matter
at all in this respect whether in their theories they "affirmed" or
"negated" that Diaspora.

II

To be sure, when the historical hour was at hand and in the

wa� e of World War II-of the destruction of the Jews precisely
in those countries from which Zionism had drawn its strongest
impetus, and the establishment of Israel as a state-the great
immigration set in of which we had all dreamed for so long; then
everything turned out differently. Millions of those Jews on
whom we had counted most, who were to us more than all the
others the very embodiment of the Jewish people and its
capacities, were dead; they had died in a way, moreover, that
burdened the collective consciousness of the Jews with a shock, a
trauma in its deepest strata that no analysis will ever resolve .
Everything that from now on came to pass among the survivors
stood-and stands-in the shadow of this trauma. That is as true
of Israel, where all those tendencies of which I have spoken were
deeply affected and transformed by the attempts to master this
trauma, as it is of the Jews in the Diaspora. All were confronted
by a fact with which they had not reckoned, a fact that boggled
the mind, and the reaction to which involved a task for one's
awareness that was as urgent as it was insoluble. It is this
community of a deeply felt experience concerning and agitating
all of us so directly, that-far above and beyond all theories or
even theologies-represents the strongest emotional bond be­
tween Israel and the Diaspora. I do not want to go so far as to say
that the questions about our relation to tradition and to the
history of Judaism as a society molded by religious inspiration
have become insignificant or even meaningless. But let us not
delude ourselves : compared to the inconceivable, incomprehensi­
ble concrete fact that has intervened so destructively in our life
as Jews, these things recede into the background. The "existential
situation" of the Jews, as perhaps one can say in this case, has
changed in our generation .
The establishment of the State of Israel ensued under
 ISRAEL AND THE DIASPORA
completely unique conditions that can never occur again. The
unsolved questions that went along with that establishment, and
with which we will have to come to terms in these decades, were
no less serious and urgent than the necessity of this positive act of
founding, which represented our response to the situation in
which we found ourselves. Though this establishment of Israel is
inseparable from the history of the Jews that preceded it, it was
surely accompanied by an idea-and one playing a decisive
role-connected with the inability of the Diaspora to secure the
life of the Jews and their existence as Jews, no matter how these
Jews understood themselves and their connection with Judaism.
That trauma of which I have just spoken assumed in Israel the
form of the slogan : Neve r again! We would never again live
under conditions in which our existence, its affirmation or
negation, is determined by others and we are the passive
recipients of our fate. We wanted ourselves to bear the
responsibility for the vital decisions we could not evade. That led
to reactions such as had previously almost never been experi­
enced in our community, and certainly never as central phe­
nomena of this community.
The passion for taking care that the tragedy of the Jews,
accompanied by the ambiguous and uncanny silence of those
who had powe � , would never again be repeated, determined
much that happened in Israel. The problem of force and
violence, which previously had played only a marginal role in our
lives, and as such had indeed been rejected by many of us or not
reached the level of awareness, now posed itself emphatically
and inescapably. In fact, this was the case even before we were
forced to defend ourselves in battle with the Arabs. The
discussion about the conditions and limits of force and violence,
about the meaning of the army, of armed intervention, for the
constitution and progress of our lives is to a great extent based on
the determination expressed by the slogan never again to be
exposed, defenseless, and passive to our fate. The deep aversion
of the Jews to the glorification of anything military, which can be
felt in Israel as well, was forced to confront the experiences of
our most recent history. The past twenty-five years have not been
without certain tendencies to overemphasize the elements of
force and violence, but it is evident that to a most extraordinary
252 0 :'\J JEWS A:"JD JUDAISM IN C HISIS

degree Israel relates to its arrny not as to a military caste capable

of having a life of its own, but as to a people's militia.
But it would be deceitful to delude oneself about the fact that
the affinnation of force and violence in situations in which our
existence is at stake has appeared in our generation in a
completely different light than it did previously, and not only in
Israel but very widely in the Diaspora as well. It is most
remarkable that it was precisely a question so remote from the
traditional spheres of Jewish life, and which nevertheless forced a
decisive change in our attitude, that led to no conflict between
Israel and the Diaspora; but that precisely on this point-1 would
almost say the most unexpected one-an overwhelming unanim­
ity came about quite spontaneously. In view of the strong
quietistic element in the attitude of the Jews-and particularly of
the spokesmen of Jewish communities-toward their environ­
ment, as we know it from the past, this is no small matter.
When we look back on the most recent generations of Jews
and their relationship to things Jewish, we find, I believe, two
ideals or model examples which have played a formative role and
which were bound to come into conflict, but one more likely to
be fruitful than destructive. I mean the ideal of the talmid
hakham and the halutz. For two thousand years the goal of
Jewish upbringing was the talmid hakham, the authority on
Scripture, the master and keeper of tradition, who was able to
pass it on in living form. At his side and in competition with him,
there appeared-fifty years ago, with the end of World War
1-the ideal of the halutz, the pioneer who undertook the
founding and establishment of a new life on the old earth in a
new spirit, and who understood himself as a vanguard of the
great masses who were to follow. Alongside a contemplative,
spiritual ideal, there appeared an active one aimed at a transfor­
mation of our lives, one which profoundly influenced and moved
even many of those who did not themselves join that vanguard.
The concept of vanguard itself includes two factors, a forward
striving aimed at the new as well as a conscious relation directed
backward as it were to the totality for whose sake it acts. I t was
never the intention of the halutzim, the pioneers, to run away
from their people and form a new one . They knew of their bonds
to their people by a common history and a common hope. In
 ISRAEL AND THE DIASPORA 2 53
spite of all their bitter and radical criticism of the fonn of
existence of J e\VS in the galut, they would never have thought of
denying their people-as did a large part of the arriviste Jews
of the nineteenth century. The education they provided did not
consist of a doctrine, but rather, however problematic that may
be, was acco 1nplished by furnishing a living example.
What is the significance of these two ideals for the Diaspora
and for Israel? In itself the ideal of the taln-,id hakham was
independent of any connection with Israel and could be com­
pletely realized even in the Diaspora, within the continuity of the
Je\vish community. But it is precisely in the Diaspora of today
that its effect-to say nothing of its reality-has altogether faded.
There, people of this type and institutions for their training
(called yeshivot) can be found in only a very few places. But it is
precisely in Israel where the ideal of the halutz found its natural
home and its fulfillment that, paradoxically, the revitalization of
this ideal as well succeeded in no small measure. The seedbeds of
the Torah are enjoying a considerable blossoming and exert a
strong attraction in Israel itself and in circles of the Diaspora
vitally important to us. They constitute an effective connecting
link between Israel and the Diaspora. In many of them, to be
sure-by no means in all-a tendency is becoming evident
toward seclusion, toward separatism, toward the formation of a
caste that turns its back on life in Israel and on affecting that
life-a tendency that is in sharp contrast to the former function
of these institutions. After all, the yeshivah was always open to
Jewish life and the Jewish community and never denied its
demands. It not only gathered people in, it also sent them back
out. I believe it will be important for future developments
whether this tendency toward isolation, alarming to many of us,
can be overcome, an overcoming that will be possible only from
within.
There is also a life of tradition that does not merely consist of
the conservative preservation, the constant continuation of the
spiritual and cultural possessions of a community. That, too,
certainly is tradition, and education in large part depends on it.
But tradition is something else as well. There are domains of it
that are hidden under the debris of centuries and lie there
waiting to be discovered and turned to good use. There is such a
254 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
thing as renewed contact with what has been forgotten or has not
yet come to the fore. There is such a thing as a treasure hunt
within tradition, which creates a living relationship to which
much of what is best in current Jewish self-awareness is indebted,
even where it was-and is-accomplished outside the framework
of orthodoxy.
Even within the ideal of the halutz, however, changes have
taken place. With the onset of the great immigration and the
disappointment that this immigration was nevertheless not great
enough to correspond to the expectations we had tied to it, many
transformations took place here as well. The halutzim are no
longer among themselves; the new life takes effect in areas that
previously had been far beyond the ken of the original intention
to bring about a radical rearrangement of Jewish society. With
the building up of the machinery of the state, the absorption of
great masses of people who came directly from almost medieval
and quasi-feudal environments, reality itself posed wholly new
tasks, for which the aristocratic and puritanical models of the
halutz elite were no longer adequate.
The estrangement between Israel and the Diaspora after 1950
spread out from two points of contention : the Israelis were not
"Jewish" enough for the Diaspora, which wanted to see model
Jews in them who corresponded to traditional conceptions and
who would undialectically continue the latter; and the Jews of
the Diaspora disappointed the Israelis no less by not coming en
masse when gates-and hearts-were open to them. Both points

furthered tendencies toward the polarization of contrasts and

engendered no little bitterness. Both were based on an oversim­
plification of events in the Jewish world which could not be
handled that way. Both parties were unwilling or unable to grasp
the events taking place on the other side, which were in
themselves contradictory enough. The absence of a great immi­
gration from the countries of the free world played a large part in
the tendencies, which were advocated here and there, to let
Israel be on its own and to dismantle the bridges to a Diaspora
that had missed its chance. Both of these phenomena which soon
became visible contained much despair and defiance of those
who had been disappointed.
At the same time, however, the old question of the relation
 ISRAEL AND THE DIASPORA 255
between Israel and the Diaspora thereby entered a new phase.
Tendencies, both negative and positive, which previously were
discernible only vaguely and dimly, could now be defined with
much greater clarity. That goes as much for the change in the
attitude of the Jews of the Diaspora-as individuals and even
more as groups-toward the great undertaking that is Israel, as it
does for the attitude of Israel to the Diaspora. Not only the
experiences since the withdrawal of the English, but above all
those of the last two years, since the Six-Day War, have
promoted a clarification and resolution of this relationship. It is
only natural that on both sides lively developments could be
discerned in which centripetal and centrifugal tendencies were
bound to be brought into relief and to enter into conflict with
each other. That is true, albeit in different ways, of all of us.
Let me speak first of the Diaspora. There was certainly no
dearth of signs of dissolution here. It was precisely in a state of
separation from others that many individual Jews in the postwar
era preferred and found it easier to give up their ties to all that
was Jewish and to seek their salvation in a resolute severing of
their connections with the Jewish world. They may have been
aware of their past, but they no longer wanted to have anything
to do with the future of the Jews. During our whole lifetime we
have heard this song of the great tasks of humanity, compared to
which the parochial interests of Judaism are infinitesimal and of
negligible weight. In the first half of this century we frequently
engaged in passionate discussion with those holding this view,
and we were always clear about the impulses leading to this flight
into self-abnegation. Today it is easier to look these tendencies in
the face. We know that even the deepest estrangement can again
and again issue in a turning to Judaism-spontaneous and
transforming those affected that way-whether we qualify it as a
return or in some other way. For example, whoever has come in
contact with French Jews will know how thin the allegedly firm
ground is that favors a turning away, the centrifugal tendency. In
the most unexpected places this ground and the atmosphere of
declarations which often enough hover in a vacuum are pierced
by a deeper feeling of identity. These things do not permit of
organization, though it is certainly not only occurrences in the
environment that shape them, but indirectly also our intentions
 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM I N CRISIS
and achievements. At the same time, this tendency toward
dissolution is countered by an extraordinarily strong centripetal
impetus which has gripped the Jews of the Diaspora. The wish
not to evade the tasks posed for us as Jews by the present, and
even more by our future, the awareness of the indissolubility of
the bond between Israel and the Diaspora forges the physi­
ognomy of this generation and determines their decisions. The
Jewish community of today looks different from the one with
which we had to deal in our youth. It has lost the merely anxious
regard for alien frowns and has recognized itself as part of a
whole that has to accomplish far more than merely religious and
philanthropic tasks. It has absorbed the reciprocality between
itself and Israel into its life as a determining force. It is inevitable
that this will produce tensions bet\veen the two poles around
which the community's activity is centered. After all, the
securing of duration and the fulfillment of the tasks posed by the
Diaspora require actions different from the opening toward Israel
now seen as necessary.
This tension, however, is not to be found only among the Jews
in the Diaspora. It is even more evident in what is now taking
place in Israel. Here, too, it is a matter of centrifugal and
centripetal tendencies. I would like to clarify what is at stake
here by two metaphors. Can Israel and its function be compared
\Vith a rocket-say that Apollo XI of which we have read so
much recently, from which parts detach themselves and shoot
out into the unknown toward the promised landscape of the
moon or toward new stars? The astronauts are, to be sure,
directed from the earth but they must themselves see to it that
they advance; they struggle for air, have to come to terms with
their gravity and weightlessness, and are at first able to use. only
such knowledge as they have learned on earth. But must not a
gradual independence in the progress of their mission be
reached? Will not a part of the rocket detach itself completely
and lead its own life? Is Israel, created by the forces of the Jewish
people and out of the native soil of the Diaspora, not destined to
detach itself once and for all from that native soil and to lead a
new life as a new nation with a new rootedness in the events of
recent years? Or are we rather dealing-to counter the techno­
logical metaphor with a biological and historical one-with a
 ISRAEL AND THE DIASPORA 25 7
whole whose parts are all mutually dependent on each other,
where the isolation of one part, no matter how crucial a link or
constituent, must lead to the destruction of the whole?
We all know the question so often put to us, and which we
put to ourselves: are we first and foremost Jews or Israelis? The
posing of this question entails a parting of minds in Israel as well.
The past twenty years have seen a crystalization into unmistak­
able clarity of the centrifugal tendencies which strive to disman­
tle Israel's connection with the Diaspora. Their spokesmen have
liquidated for themselves the history of the Jews and their
rootedness in it, or at least they claim to have done so. In place of
the reliance on the Jewish people and its tradition, they
recommend to us that we give up Zionism, which is to say _ any
orientation by "Zion, " which is to say any scale of values that
understands itself as Jewish. They recommend to us a merging
into an allegedly " Semitic world, " a term whose sham luster
scarcely conceals its total lack of content. The romantic souls
among them-and there is no lack of them-have extolled the
cult of Baal and Astarte to us, in case we are unable to make do
with pure secularization. These cults are to seiVe the purpose of
overcoming the slogans of monotheism that are "hostile to life . "
The far-reaching propaganda that has been made for the new
slogans stands in crying contradiction to their complete lack of
seriousness. It is, however, true that behind the extravaganzas of
the so-called "Canaanites" who demand to be heard among us,
one finds the genuine problem of which I have previously spoken.
The question to which that problem can be reduced, and which
we encounter everywhere, is, as I have said : what are we first and
foremost, Jews or Israelis? It is evident that this question is of
decisive significance for the relationship between Israel and the
Diaspora. It leads to a parting of minds.
I am convinced that the existence of Israel no less than that of
the Diaspora depends on our placing the primacy of our
connection with the Jewish people-its history and present
state-at the center of our decisions. Indeed, to that pointed
question I have mentioned, I reply without hesitation : we are first
and foremost Jews, and we are Israelis as a manifestation of our
Judaism. The State of Israel and its construction is an enterprise
meant to serve the Jewish people, and if one deprives it of this
258 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS

goal, it loses its meaning and will not prevail long in the stormy
course of these thnes. The ideology of an Israel dissociating itself
from its historical roots and connections, which is suppo'sed to
purchase us political peace, terminates with an inner and horrible
logic in the liquidation of the whole, as is most clearly to be seen,
admittedly much against the will of the author, in the case of Uri
A vneri' s Israel without Zionists, launched not long ago in Europe
amidst great clamor.
Beyond physical survival in extreme situations, the impor­
tance of which we have all come to recognize, and in the very
actualization of which great human and socially dynamic forces
manifest themselves, the question will be always put precisely­
and with good reason to us: whether we will have more to offer to
our people than this survival. The linking up with a preexilic
Israel, through a conscious passing over or elimination of two
thousand years of Jewish history that have shaped us all, can be
accomplished only by way of proclamations and in abstracto, but
not in historical reality. The return to Zion-which is not
identical with dissolving into the Levant-will have incalculable
consequences for the formation of our future if it does not try to
avoid the fruitful tension between the forces that find expression
in that return by coming to a one-sided and all-too-easy decision
in favor of one of these forces. That is as true of an orientation
directed to an untransformed preservation of tradition as it is of
one seeking to cut us off from the roots of that tradition. Zionism
was and is the Utopian retreat of the Jews into their own history
and thereby, to be sure, a fruitful paradox open in equal measure
to the past and the future. This retreat has not ended with the
establishment of Israel. Rather, it entered a new phase, one
which has most glaringly illuminated its central significance for
the fate of the Jews. Without the impulses coming from the new
life in Israel, the Judaism of the Diaspora will fall into decay. But
Israel, too, is in need of the conscious connection and relation to
the whole, the service and transformation of which, in the final
analysis, constitutes the justification of its existence, its ratio
essendi.
It is beyond doubt that the contact with the old and new
land, the confrontation of a new historical and social situation,
and the necessity of taking an active and positive part in it, have
 ISRAEL AND THE DIASPORA 259
awakened extraordinary energies. No less true, however, remains
the old saying that all Jews have to stand up for each other: we
are all in the same boat, and the most palpable experience of
even the most recent times teaches us that again and again. To be
sure, it is possible to jump out of the boat and to disclaim the
common responsibility. That is the meaning of those centrifugal
tendencies, in Israel as well as in the Diaspora, which I have
discussed. As dangerous as they are, they are without significance
for our continuity and for the judgment of history upon us.
How profoundly the awareness of the unity of our fate has
gripped precisely that younger generation in Israel of which, or in
whose name one has so often liked to maintain the contrary-to
this a collection of conversations with soldiers from kibbutzim,
published shortly after the Six-Day War, bears moving and
humanly gripping witness. Notwithstanding all the awkwardness
of spontaneous formulations, it is by far the most illuminating
document o t our spiritual existence hitherto produced by Israel.
Never have reflection about ourselves, doubts about ourselves,
and astonishment about the experience of our unity been
presented in a more honest unpretentious, discriminate manner
than in these conversations of young people, scarcely one of
whom has ever seen or experienced the Diaspora. Measured
against this testimonial, the numerous symposia of Jewish intel­
lectuals which have taken place in Jerusalem, Paris, and New
York frequently have-with all their excess of articulation-an
air of ghostly unreality about them .
To us, the "old-timers," it was always quite clear that Israel
stands or falls with our identification with the Jewish people.
Here we sought our true identity, the source of our renewal,
above and beyond all formulas and forms. That the "young, "
however, for whom all this was bound to be much more
problematic, had the same experience in a formative hour of our
history-that is ground for our hope that the bridges between us,
between galut and Israel, will not break down. Israel and the
Diaspora are both faced by a crisis threatening their existence.
Almost everywhere, the weather forecasts warn of an approach­
ing storm. In order to master the tasks posed by this crisis, we
cannot do without each other. The most important of those tasks
probably lies in the area of education, which must create a
260 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
synthesis between tradition and the new values growing out of
our coming to terms with the reality of our lives, with the reality
of the Jewish people in Israel. It is a task not to be accomplished
today or tomorrow, and will for years remain our common cause.
The building of a bridge between us and the Diaspora, the wish
not to permit an abyss between the two partners, and to
overcome any situation threatening to create one, is vital to the
common cause of the Jews.
However, as I conclude these observations, I should like to
say one thing: it is the personal factor in this mutual concern that
will be decisive when all is said and done. Let us not deceive
ourselves! No matter how useful and stimulating may be the
pilgrimages, visits, educational activities for the preservation and
development of what we have in common, and whatever else will
come to our minds-they will not be decisive for our relationship.
Decisive will be the personal and most intimate factor. What
matters is whether we are involved personally, whether we
discover a direct connection transcending everything institu­
tional, which is to say whether we discover the unity in our
difference, even where this unity of feeling and hope cannot yet
be formulated in adequate concepts.
 Reflections on
Jewish Theology*

If I undertake here to reflect on the position and possibilities of

Jewish theology today, it should be clear that, as things stand, a
systematic disquisition could only be given by someone possess­
ing a fixed standpoint, an Archimedean point as it were, from
which these questions could be put into systematic order. I am
not among these fortunate ones. What I can do, basically, is to
raise fundamental questions; for I have no positive theology of an
inflexible Judaism. In what follows I hope to make clear why this
is the case.
There are four questions which today are central to me in
discussions of this kind:
( 1 ) The question of the authoritative sources on which such a
theology can draw ; in other words, the question of the legitimacy
of Revelation and Tradition as religious categories which can
constitute the foundation of a Jewish theology.
(2) The question of the central values, or of the ideas
underlying such values, that can be established from such sources
and from the conviction that God exists.
(3) The question of the position of Judaism and its tradition in
a secularized and technologized world.
(4) Finally, the question of the meaning, in this context, for
our life and thought as Jews, of the decisive and subverting
events of Jewish history in our time, that is, of the catastrophe of
o Originally published in The Center Magazine, Vol. VII, No. 2 (March-April 1974),
pp. 57-71 , translated by Gabriela Shalit, and based on a lecture given at the Center for
the Study of Democratic Institutions. The present version is revised according to the
original German manuscript.
262 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
the Holocaust and everything connected with it, as well as of the
establishment of a Jewish commonwealth in Israel, the ]uden­
staat.

It goes without saying that the question of our relation to the

tradition of Judaism and to its history as that of a people that
even under very different social relations was always formed and
developed in a decisive way by religious inspiration has not
become meaningless or moot even in an age of secularization.
The fact that so many people from opposing camps, such as
that of the pious and that of the consciously and emphatically
irreligious, nevertheless confess their identity as Jews with such
intensity suffices to make the topicality of the question clear. Yet
we should not succumb to the illusion that in the face of the
concrete experience of the Hitler years-which affected our lives
as Jews in such an overwhelming, unfathomable manner, and in
one which basically is probably unthinkable as well-this ques­
tion was not given a new Gestalt or is not represented in a new
configuration and against a new background. If I may use a
fashionable expression in this context, the "existential situation"
of the Jews has changed in our generation. What is more, it is
even questionable whether we ourselves are at all capable of
formulating the implications of this change adequately, not to
speak of doing so exhaustively.
Insofar as we consider ourselves members of a community
which is undergoing a historical process of transformation visible
to all, which in part is also in a state of beginning the like of
which we have hardly known since the destruction of the
Temple, one may doubt that we are able to anticipate the
multiple facets of this seminal process, which will unfold only in
the course of its concrete development. vVe are necessarily
barring our own way, being unable to jump over our own
shadow. It is impossible objectively to reflect the experience of a
community while the process is still going on. That is why what I
am going to say here must necessarily be presented with all due
modesty.
 REFLECTIONS ON JEWISH THEOLOGY 263

How much easier, in this connection, is it for the Orthodox,

above all in respect to the first and second questions! They
possess a fixed framework, a system of coordinates, that cannot
be questioned. They are the fortunate possessors of an Archime­
dean point which renders senseless such questions as we have
posed; that is because their conviction of the divine character of
the Torah-which puts it beyond historical questioning-pro­
vides them \Vith a standard which, at least in principle, enables
them to formulate answers to all the questions arising in the life
of the Jew. Beyond this, to be sure, we need not conceal that the
meaning of what is called "orthodoxy," i.e., what is meant by the
Hebrew expression ,N,W" "j�N ., � ,,w , is altogether contro­
versial. Otherwise, of course, there would not have been those
bitter quarrels over this question that took place in the tenth,
thirteenth, and from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries.
Even today one can obtain from Jews who declare themselves
Orthodox very different answers to the question of what they
mean by that. Perhaps one or another of the participants in this
symposium who professes allegiance to this camp will be able to
take a more legitimate stand on this question than I can. He will
also, perhaps, be able to answer the question as to whether the
scale of values which are being proclaimed and propagated as
Jewish in theology-moral theology, in particular-is really fixed
and unalterable and can stand up even to the tempests of these
times in which a secularized world boasts of its possession of en­
tirely different, indeed sometimes diametrically opposed, values.
The first three questions I posed at the beginning are of
particular-! would even say bitter-urgency for anyone who no
longer possesses the Orthodox system of coordinates. The first
question, really the most comprehensive one, also by implication
includes the question as to the validity or applicability of
important and codified teachings of Jewish theology; I will have
occasion to speak of them.
Before one can speak about theology, one must necessarily
speak about the sources on which such theology can draw. The
observer confronts at least three different stages in which the
religious world of Judaism has unfolded, even though each of
these stages was itself full of inner flux and rich, indeed overrich,
in contradictions. I mean the Bible, the rabbinical tradition, and
 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS

the kabbalah; the last must be regarded as a definitely original

fresh beginning on the basis of the two previous sources.
In this context the Bible is not understood as the historical
record of Israel's national literature as far as it has been
preserved; as such it could contain the most disparate elements
without raising any need to harmonize them-a thoroughly
legitimate perspective, for which the theological validity of
Biblical statements is irrelevant. Here I am thinking of the Bible
as a canon of authoritative religious statements, of which at least
a part presents itself as the word of God, and to the whole of
which religious authority was ascribed by Judaism in the course
of its historical crystalization. Both in view of its character as a
religious authority and because of the numerous and in part
blatant contradictions appearing in it, this whole required
interpretation, hermeneutic, and harmonization. This process
went on in an impressive manner in rabbinical tradition, in
halakhah and aggadah; the latter was of particular theological
relevance because the immediate expression of the religious
thinking of wide circles was concentrated in it with particular
originality, i.e., by way of the interpretation of Holy Writ.
All three stages here have left an especially impressive stamp
on the liturgy of the synagogue, which thus became a precious
and true mirror of the religious world of Judaism ; the most recent
authors, to be sure (as can be seen above all in the case of Franz
Rosenzweig), have made only very selective use of its testimony.
What these three stages have in common is their unapologetic
character, as is particularly evident in aggadah and kabbalah.
The thought processes of the latter tend to be communicated
unreflectively, and they forge their own justification as against
other categories. In this they differ essentially from the theologi­
cal literature proper to medieval philosophy of religion from
Sa' adia by way of Maimonides to Crescas and Alba, as well as
from the more modern reflections on Judaism from Mendelssohn
to this day. There religious thought is apologetically oriented
toward the respective categories of the dominant philosophies,
from the Arabic Kalam and Aristotle to Kant, Hegel, Dewey, and
even Heidegger. The outstanding characteristic of these theolo­
gies, regardless of their basic differences, is their strictly selective
attitude toward tradition. They disregard anything traditional
 REFLECTIONS ON JEWISH THEOLOGY 265
they find undigestible and by its nature unsuitable for apologetic
purposes. That, for example, is the reason why the religious world
of kabbalah is completely excluded from the Jewish theology of
the nineteenth century up to the time of Hermann Cohen
and others; it falls victim to the censorship of contemporary
prejudices. Everybody cuts the slice suiting him from the big
cake.
Thus a great variety of choices presents itself. The reader of
the relevant literature who expects to find a uniform picture of
what is put forth to him as Judaism must be astonished at the
multitude of contradictions dominating such depictions. The
most important of these contradictions, and precisely for the
contemporary observer, surely does not concern the conviction of
the existence of God, about which there was no doubt in any of
the stages of the religious development of Judaism, and without
which I could hardly imagine even a discussion like the present
one. It concerns the interpretation to which the concept of
Revelation has been subjected. In what sense could a Jew speak
of Revelation in the historical context of his tradition? And in
what sense can we, here and now, still see in Revelation a
category that has meaning for us? Revelation is not a word that
has an equivalent in the ancient sources that comprise all
occurrences of Revelation. There is a word for the Sinaitic
Revelation as well as for the character of Revelation of the Torah
as a whole. The occurrence is called mattan Torah, "giving of the
Torah " ; the quality of Revelation is called Torah min hasha­
mayim, "the Torah from heaven" (i.e., from God) . As against this,
the theophanies in which God appears to, and communicates
with , the patriarchs or distinguished individuals, and above all
the prophets, are not included in this concept.
The Rabbinic tradition does, to be sure, recognize a manifes­
tation of the divine presence, but, contrary to the pronounce­
ments about the Torah, this constitutes no authority. It is not
experiences of the senses of sight, touch, or taste that constitute
authority, but exclusively those within the sphere of hearing. For
Judaism, Revelation was the word of God, and tradition con­
ceived of the whole of 1'orah as such a word. The question as to
the sense in which one can speak of the word still remains
pertinent, even beyond the Orthodox conception. After all, the
z66 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
matter under discussion is the word of God, which was originally
thought to be sensibly perceptible. That is no less of an
.
anthropomorphism than those other assertions which ascribe
sensible activities to God or speak of His appearance, and which
later on, therefore, were subjected to radical reinterpretations
with a view to eliminating just this anthropomorphic element.
In these discussions about the significance of Revelation as
the word of God, two opposing conceptions came to the fore ;
both of them, to be sure, were still capable of r�maining within
the framework of a religious fundamentalism. Here it must be
emphasized that fundamentalism was kept alive much longer and
with much greater intensity in Jewish-Orthodox circles than
among non-J ews.1 Historical criticism which attacked the imme­
diately divine character of "revealed" texts, that is, the accep­
tance of the verbal inspiration of Holy Writ and above all of the
Torah, was of no importance here-the discussion moved on an
entirely different level. With the verbal inspiration of the Torah,
a different sphere was introduced into history: a sphere which
could nevertheless find its expression within the human and
historical mediums and through its means. Of course, such an
assumption represents a fundamental paradox. Can the human
word contain the word of God in its pure form, or can the word
of God, if it exists, express itself within the confines of the human
language? This is the paradox leading to the speculations of
Jewish theologians on the possible meaning of such Revelations. I
would like here to offer some remarks on the subject.
It was hard to evade the above questions by dismissing them
as irrelevant, but this was nevertheless done in a particularly
drastic manner by S. L. Steinheim, who in 1835 published a great
work with the impressive title of The Revelation According to the
Teaching Concept of the Synagogue (Die Offenbarung nach dem
Lehrbegriffe der Synagoge), a passionate defense of supernatural­
ism-influenced by Heinrich Friedrich Jacobi-that is of the
thesis that if it is not to be a metaphor devoid of content
Revelation must necessarily have as its subject a communication
which human reason, even in its most perfect and legitimate
I. This, incidentally, was already noticed by Franz Rosenzweig; see Kleinere Schriften
(1937). p. szz.
 REFLECTIONS ON JEWISH THEOLOGY 267

immanent application, could never conceive. Thus human reason

must fight against Revelation and the latter must be a paradox.
The content of this communication consists of-is both based
and concentrated on-the doctrine of creation out of nothing.
When in the course of a famous discussion Abraham Geiger
asked him where in the writings he accepted as "revealed" the
content of this Revelation was to be found, he replied that these
convictions were alive in the synagogue and that if he had
invented them himself they would henceforth be characteristic of
the synagogue. (One can say that such frankness is to be found
only rarely in Jewish theology! ) To Geiger's further question as to
how Revelation reached its first organ, he replied that this he
really did not have to know- "but probably through the ear. " 2
Yet if there is validity to the supposition that revelation stems
from the sphere of hearing-and this is indeed supposed by all
the authorities of the rabbinical tradition from Rabbi Akiva to the
fundamentalists of our time-we must ask ourselves how the talk
of the voice of God could be anything more than an anthropo­
morphic metaphor. That, however, is a question which, as the
history of theology has shown, soon led to the dissolution of the
thesis of verbal inspiration, unless it was given a mystical
reinterpretation.
It is, after all, noteworthy that the conception of Revelation
generally accepted in Jewish kabbalistic circles, no matter how
remote it became from its original and naive meaning, according
to its premises not only permitted lively thinking with much
inner logic about the concept of Revelation; beyond this it also
opened up an astonishing measure of freedom for Jewish thought
precisely within the fundamentalist thesis of verbal inspiration
and of the divine character of each word-indeed, each letter.
z. Geiger, in his letter to De renbourg in the year 1 936 , cf. Allgemeine Zeitung des
]udentums (18g6), p. 130. In Steinheim's own work (Vol. I, p. 88):

Insofar as Revelation is divine teaching, a new announcement of God by Him and

about Himself (not only by Him as mere author, but also about Him as the subject
of Hi� announcement), it promises to teach man about a God who to our minds is
an entirely new God; about a supreme spirit whom the human soul cannot discover
and cannot conceive without this outside information and without this message.
Neither through reflection nor through experience, nor through any possible means
by which the human mind develops other truths within itself or from itself, shall
this doctrine of Revelation be explicable, but it shall be of such a character that it
can have reached man only through the ear by an audible word from the outside.
z68 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS

According to kabbalah, God's creative power is concentrated

in the name of God, which is the essential word emanating from
God. The aspect of God representing this creative power of
His-there may be many other aspects still hidden from us-is
imbued with His infinity. He is much greater than any human
word, any articulate expression, could comprehend. Only
through the medium of infinite refraction can the infinite turn
into the finite human word, and even then it lends to such a word
a depth which goes far beyond anything representing a specific
meaning, a communication with other beings. The word of
God-if there is such a thing-is an absolute, of which one can as
well say that it rests in itself as that it moves in itself. Its
emanations are present in everything in all the world that strives
for expression and form. In this context the Torah appears as a
texture woven from the name of God. It represents a mysterious
unity the purpose of which is not primarily to convey a specific
sense, to "mean" something, but rather to give expression to that
creative power itself which is concentrated in the name of God
and which is present in all creation as its secret signature in one
or another variation. Not only is the Torah built upon this name
and unfolded out of it, like a tree growing forth from its root, but
it ultimately represents this name of God. But this also implies
that anything which appears to us as the perceptible "Word of
God," and in addition contains an intelligible communication
about us and our world, is actually something that has already
gone through many, many mediations. The word of God must
contain an infinite richness, which is communicated by it. This
communication, however-and here lies the core of the kabbalis­
tic conception of Revelation-is unintelligible. Its purpose is not
a communication that is easily intelligible. Only after it has
passed through numerous media can such a message, originally
but an expression of the Being itself, become communication as
well.
Thus the difference between that which is called the word of
God and the human word also contains the key to Revelation. No
single definable connection of meaning appears in it but a
multitude of such connections into which this word is subdivided
for us. In other words, the sign of true Revelation is no longer the
weight of the statements that attain communication in it, but
 REFLECTIONS ON JEWISH THEOLOGY z6g
the infinite number of interpretations to which it is open. The
character of the absolute is recognizable by its infinite number of
possible interpretations. Revelation does not yield a specific
meaning; rather it is that which lies behind the meaning of every
word and which thereby lends infinitely rich meaning to every
revealed word. To employ the language of the kabbalists:
infinitely many lights burn in each word. Or each word of the
Torah has seventy-according to some, 6oo,ooo-faces or facets.
Without giving up the fundamentalist thesis of the divine
character of the Scriptures, such mystical theses nevertheless
achieve an astounding loosening of the concept of Revelation.
Here the authority of Revelation also constitutes the basis of the
freedom in its application and interpretation.
Without doubt, this thesis was as far-reaching as it was
dangerous. I would venture to say that only a very vital feeling
for the significance of theological doctrines and religious values,
as many generations developed or derived them from the Torah,
and for the continuity of its tradition has prevented a breakup
into heretical positions-and even this was not always the case.
Small wonder, then, that this also provided the kabbalists with a
legitimation for extraordinarily audacious thoughts which ap­
peared defensible before Orthodoxy within the framework of
mystical exegesis and a mystical tradition, whereas in the
consciousness of those Jewish thinkers who did not share this
conception of Revelation they had long ago deviated into heresy
or even paganism. To a large extent this also explains those wild
protests and bitter complaints about the theology of the kabbal­
ists which abound in the relevant literature, particularly in the
nineteenth century.
The fascination which a number of kabbalistic ideas undoubt­
edly have for a good many Jews of our time, for whom Judaism is
a living whole, could only arouse the distaste of those whose aim
was an apologia based on the possible rationality of Judaism in a
context wh ich seemed to admit only unequivocal dogmatic
formulations. They regarded kabbalah as a blasphemous (Stein­
heim) or pagan (Formstecher, Cohen) monstrosity and absurdity.
During the nineteenth century and up to Cohen, a dominant
feature of this apology was the conviction that Revelation-and
everything based on it-represented, or at least initiated, a
270 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
polemic against, and an overcoming of, myth and (as they saw it)
its speculative transformations in pantheism. To be sure, this
view was placed in doubt by kabbalah, which burst forth in the
center of rabbinical Judaism, and in which the primordial
mythical element reappears often enough with great force. But in
this context I need not deal with that issue.

II

The concept of Revelation, as expounded here, thus had two

fundamental aspects whose coincidence constitutes its particular
significance for the religious phenomenology of Judaism. On the
one hand, the affirmation of the fundamentalist thesis of the
divine character of the Torah as the absolute Word yielded an
absolute system of reference, a common authoritative basis to
which all further Jewish thinking could refer. On the other hand,
legitimacy was also accorded to progressive insight and specula­
tion, which could combine a subjective element with what was
objectively given. If each word of the Torah was pregnant with
meaning without being unequivocally bound to any single
meaning, it was only a short way to the radical thesis that the
sixty myriads of Israel who received the Torah corresponded to
the 6oo,ooo facets hidden in every word, each of which gave light
only to him for whom it was intended. In principle, then, every
one of the community of Israel has his own access to Revelation,
which is open only to him, and which he himself must discover.
The extraordinary audacity of such a thesis, in which
authority was combined with freedom, was, however, modified in
Judaism by the concept of Tradition, which in Judaism stands at
the side of the concept of Revelation and is coordinated to it. For
if Revelation was an absolute, its application to the lives of its
recipients was impossible without mediation. The call implied in
it transcends the limits of the single concrete action. Only in the
infinite facets, the contingencies of realization in which the
absolute word is mirrored, does it become applicable and thus
can also be concretely grasped by human action. In other words,
the infinite meaning of Revelation, which cannot be grasped in
the one-time immediacy of its reception, will unfold only in
 REFLECTIONS ON JEWISH THEOLOGY 271
continued relation to time, in the tradition which is a tradition
about the word of God and which lies at the root of every
religious deed. Tradition renders the word of God applicable in
time. That seems to me to be the basic complementary thesis,
through which Judaism was able to realize its concept of
Revelation and make it fruitful. From here, the so-called oral
Torah obtained its metaphysical legitimation. It comes as no
surprise that the "voice from Sinai, " which continues to resound
every day, and of which the talmudic sources tell us, became for
the kabbalists the medium from which Tradition originated. The
voice which calls forth incessantly from Sinai receives its human
articulation and translation in Tradition, which passes on the
inexhaustible word of Revelation at any time and through every
"scholar" who subjects himself to its continuity.
What I have said here is a summary of the thoughts which for
many centuries were of decisive influence upon the ideas of
Revelation and Tradition in Judaism, and which were summed
up around the year 1625 in Isaiah Horowitz's Two Tables of the
Law, one of the most popular books of Jewish literature.3 It is
undeniable, whether one admits it or not, that the book
represents a mystical theory, albeit a mystical theory of great
scope. It did not circumvent the problem of how God could
reveal Himself to us in human words by propounding the facile
thesis that this just happened to be a miracle; namely an act of
freedom and of God's mercy in which God unveils Himself to us
in our own language.4 Obviously, such a mystical conception of
Revelation, which at the same time made possible an affirmation
of Orthodox fundamentalism, was not something the nineteenth
century could absorb or appreciate.
However, with the almost complete, or in any case unlim­
itedly effective, undermining of the fundamentalist thesis by
historical criticism and by the philosophies which supported it
just as they were supported by it, the question in Judaism as to
3· See Scholem , The Messianic Idea in Judaism (New York: Schocken Books, 1971),
pp. 262-303: "Revelation and Tradition as Religious Categories in Judaism, .. especially
PP · 30o-303.
4· This is a theory propounded in many Catholic writings, which professed to have
found an answer to these questions in their conception of God's word as an "analogous
expression . .. Cf., for instance, Luis Alonso Schockel, The Inspired Word (New York:
Herder and Herder, 1965).
 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM I N CRISIS
whether and in what sense it was still possible to speak of
Revelation became inescapable. In practically all the theologians
of Judaism whose writings I know, the place which thus became
vacant was filled by an attenuating and subjectivist talk of
Revelation which was bound to destroy Revelation's authorita­
tive character. Revelation in the sense of a divine communication
establishing an authority was now also frequently confounded by
the theophanies the Bible mentions in many places, particularly
in connection with visions. Above all, however, concepts were
introduced which in a disguised form-and denying their origin
-adopted mystical concepts.
That is true of authors as different as Kaufmann Kohler,
Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzvveig, and Martin Buber. They all
polemicized against mysticism while borrowing its metaphors in
case of need. Kohler, the classical theologian of Reform Judaism,
defined Revelation as "the appearance of God in the depth of the
mirror of the soul," to which, to be sure, he adds an ethical
element as being specific to Judaism : "The self-revelation of God
as an ethical power is the historic act in which Judaism is
grounded. " 5 Even Cohen, who finds the progressive develop­
ment of the religious and ethical sense and consciousness in the
records of Revelation, in his later works regards not so much
the isolated "fact" of the Revelation on Mount Sinai, but rather
the "relocation of Sinai into the human heart" allegedly under­
taken by the author of Deuteronomy (30 : 14)-a mystical formula
which has its parallels in the kabbalists, and which appears to be
rather peculiar as the culmination of the rationalist yet deeply
pious thesis according to which Revelation, by which God enters
into a relation to man, is that act "in which the rational human
being is born." 6
Rosenzweig's and Buber' s disquisitions on this point, though
executed within the framework of a philosophy of the dialogue
between man and God, fundamentally acknowledge only one
kind of Revelation-the mystical one, even though they refuse to
5· Kaufmann Kohler, Grnndriss einer Systematischen Theologie des ]udentum.s auf
Geschichtlicher Grnndlage (Leipzig: Gustav Fock, 1910), pp. 28-29.
6. H. Cohen, Religion der Vemunft aus den Quellen des ]udentum.s. (Religion of
Reason Out of the Sources of Judaism) (Frankfurt: J. Kauffmann, 1929), pp. 82, 83, g8.
(English translation by Simon Kaplan, 1972.)
 REFLECTIONS ON JEWISH THEOLOGY 2 73
call it by that name. Thus for Buber, Revelation is a "gegenwiirt­
iges Urphiinomenon ,, (present primordial phenomenon) in the
here and now, that is to say potentially in every here and now,
namely that of the creative encounter between the I and the
eternal Thou in summons and response. In Revelation man
receives not a "content' , but a "presence as strength. " He
receives no fullness of meaning but the warranty that there is any
meaning at all, "the inexpressible confirmation of meaning. " This
meaning is not that of another life-not, say of the life of
God-but of this our own life, this our own world. Revelation,
therefore, is the pure encounter, in which nothing can be
expressed, nothing formulated, nothing defined. The meaning
founded on it can only attain expression in the action of man.
This meaning is not transferable, and not to be forged into
knowledge of general validity. It cannot even be rendered as an
injunction claiming validity.
It is not inscribed on any table that should be erected above all
our heads. Each of us can only preserve the meaning he received
through the uniqueness of his being and through the uniqueness of
his life. Just as no prescription can lead us to the encounter [with
God] , so none can lead from it. . . . That is the Revelation which
is eternally present in the here and now. I know of none which
would not be the same in its primordial phenomenon. I believe in
none. I do not believe in a self-identification of God or in a
self-determination of God vis-a-vis man. . . . What exists is, and
nothing more. The eternal source of power is flowing, the eternal
contact is waiting, the eternal voice is resounding, and nothing
more.7
In the age of Schleiermacher, the protesting anticipations of
Steinheim, a genuine antimystic, were coined against sentences
like this. According to Steinheim, "The word Revelation is so
great and venerable that even he who, by his deeds, desecrates or
destroys it, still believes that he must preserve and honor it in its
empty shell, like the corpse of a slain hero or king." 8
Originally the notion of a one-time Revelation as a historical
1· Martin Buber, Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. I (Munich : Kosel-Verlag, 1962), pp.
152-54. See also pp. 158-59 above.
8. S. L. Steinheim, Die Offenbarung nach dem Lehrbegriffe der Synagoge (Frankfurt­
am-Main: 1835), p. Bs.
274 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM I N CRISIS
fact was hardly compatible with that of a continual Revelation
which always repeated or renewed itself, as is ultimately
presupposed by the category of Tradition even in the rabbinical
and kabbalistic sources. Yet when the former notion fell victim to
historical criticism-one of its most important victims, if not the
most important one-there remained only the latter, a doctrine
conducive to vagueness and ambiguity about the inspiration of
sacred texts or holy men, inspiration which does not manifest
itself by a miracle but by a natural process, which in certain
circumstances is even repeatable. This, then, corresponded to a
large extent-even if it was not so clearly expressed-to the
mystics' talk of an "inner light" or "inner word" as the actual
basis of all Revelation. Instead of speaking about ma-amad har
sinai (the event on Sinai) as the formative historical experience of
the Jewish people, one now spoke of ruah hakodesh (the Holy
Spirit) as the instrument of a Revelation that potentially was
always possible. Not even the existentialist theologians have been
successful in obscuring or obliterating from memory this destruc­
tive state of affairs, although one must admit that they-above
all, Martin Buber and Abraham Joshua Heschel-employed their
considerable eloquence for the purpose of evading the issue.

III

This is the situation in which the large majority of those

whose conviction of God's existence cannot be affected by
historical criticism find themselves today. The binding character
of Revelation for a collective has disappeared. The word of God
no longer serves as a source for the definition of possible contents
of a religious Tradition and thus of a possible theology. Even
where a mystical conception of Revelation is positively admitted,
it necessarily lacks authoritative character. The statements of a
religious nature which came into being in this manner have no
binding force and remain subjective, even when they present
themselves as existentially grounded (notwithstanding the pro­
tests of their protagonists) . I would venture to say that it is no
great distance from such a subjective conception, which trans­
plants Revelation into the human heart, to a secular-humanist
 REFLECTIONS ON JEWISH THEOLOGY 275
conception, as is perhaps most readily apparent in Ahad Ha-am.
Here some profane, more or less romantic or pragmatic catego­
ries such as the Volksgeist (genius of the people), assume the
place of ethical-religious authority. As a former follower of Ahad
Ha-am, I have no illusions regarding the weakness of humanistic
foundations for religious statements, in which God can show up
at best as a fiction, though perhaps as a necessary one.
Quite recently Alex Derczansky spoke rather felicitously of
the "Siamese Twins of Jewish impotence (impuissance), human­
ism and fundamentalism, where the mirage of the former (le
mirage humaniste) would be the answer to the sclerosis of
fundamentalism.9 When the collective to which Revelation
addresses its pronouncements is itself the source from which they
emanate, as in Ahad Ha-am, then it is indeed possible to
understand the changes undergone by the manifestations of the
"genius of the people" during evolution, but surely not their
legitimation. The revolutionaries, who negate such ephemeral
pretension, subsequently emerge as pioneers of a new metamor­
phosis by advocating the historical view. The yardstick for what
should be considered "Jewish" becomes questionable and cre­
dentials uncertain. From such a perspective it even becomes
possible to regard Judaism as no longer based upon positive
authority, but as an eternal protest, an incitement to revolution
which should be evaluated positively, as "The Biblical Call to
Revolt, " the subtitle of Eric Gutkind's Choose Life, one of the
most significant attempts at a discussion of the relationship
between Biblical Revelation and the modern world of 1950. Nor
is it surprising that such an attempt tended to point in the
direction of an antitheology whose theological initiatives were
doomed to failure. IO
In the foregoing exploration I started out from the quest for
the authoritative sources to which a Jewish theology would be
indebted. I did not start out from the faith in God. The reason is
obvious. The conviction of the existence of God, insofar as it is
9· Les Nouveaux-Cahiers, No. 32 ( 1973), p. 74·
10. E. Gutkind, Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt (New York: Henry Schuman,
1952). As far as I know the book has left no traces in the relevant literature; the same is
true of his two other works on Judaism : The Absolute Collective (London: C . W. Daniel,
1937) and The Body of God: First Steps Toward an Anti-Theology (New York: Horizon
Press, 196g).
 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN C RISIS
not itself evoked by Revelation (and that is the only case in which
it is in any way connected with the contents of such a Revelation)
can be regarded as entirely independent of Revelation. No
theology flows from it. It can express itself in as many different
forms as correspond to the multifacetness of the human spirit. A
theology such as we have recently experienced which denies
the existence of its "subject matter," would, of course, be self­
contradictory, whereas the affirmation of God is feasible even if
no definite theological consequences could be drawn from it.
Those consequences which are drawn in the different religions
originally emanated from the awareness that there is such a thing
as Revelation, and only much later were they translated into
philosophical theses. What is left of that in our world, what has
remained alive or is cap�ble of maintaining itself in this world
with renewed force-this may well be the question to occupy us
most. The relevance of religious tradition, of the Holy Scriptures
and the traditions and assertions connected with them, can only
lay claim to a heuristic value, the value of provocations which
may perhaps prove themselves indissoluble in the melting pot of
modern nihilism and full of future possibilities.
Even someone who regards Judaism not as something static,
but as a vital, varying, and unexhausted whole which has
developed under the influence of the basic idea of the oneness of
God, confronts the question of how the consequences drawn
from Judaism in their basic conception retain their meaning in
our time. Here, as so often, the Orthodox have an easier time of
it; they find the manifold doctrines, connected in the course of
the millennia with the divine monotheistic proclamation, firmly
and dogmatically anchored in the Torah, be it the written or the
oral one (Tradition) . For them the aim, as formulated by Samson
Raphael Hirsch, consisted of the " elevation of the age to the level
of the Torah, not the degradation of the Torah to that of th�
age." 1 1 But for those who do not share Hirsch's premises,
probably the majority of those for whom the existence of God
presents no problem, questions as to the contents of monotheistic
Knowledge or Revelation, and their confrontation with the age,
11. S. R. H irsch, Neunzehn Briefe iiber ]udentum (Frankfurt: I . Kauffm ann, 191 1), p.
gz.
 REFLECTIONS ON JEWISH THEOLOGY 277
remain pertinent. The concepts in which these contents were
formulated, and thus also the values whose recognition was
mandatory, are, in their most general version, probably common
to all theologians of Judaism. Their detailed comprehension, to be
sure, was subject to the most far-reaching differences. This also
applies to the three themes in which God's relation to the. world
and to man was · traditionally represented, the themes of Crea­
tion, Revelation, and Redemption.
I have already discussed the problem of Revelation, albeit
from a rather methodological perspective. Insofar as it contained
a message concerning God Himself and His works, no matter
how it came into being, it referred, in the original stages of
Judaism, precisely to the oneness of God and to his status as
creator. A large measure of adaptation to new circumstances was
already necessary in order to discover the idea of Redemption as
an essential part of Revelation. 12 But once accepted as one of the
ingredients of Revelation, the prospect of Redemption proved no
less potent in its effect than the idea of the creation of the world
by God "out of nothing. " It is one of the peculiarities of the
present age that the idea of Redemption, either in its pure form
or in its secularized metamorphoses, has been maintained much
more vigorously in the minds of wide circles than, for instance,
the idea of Creation. The very people who talk most loudly about
Redemption and its implication are often enough those who want
to hear least about the world as Creation . Yet no Jewish theology
whatever can renounce the doctrine that the world is a
creation-as a one-time event or as a continual always self­
renewing process.
Any living Judaism, no matter what its concept of God, will
have to oppose pure naturalism with a definite no. It will have to
insist that the currently so widespread notion of a world that
develops out of itself and even is capable of independently
producing the phenomenon of meaning-altogether the least
comprehensible of all phenomena-can, to be sure, be main-
12. The process of the interaction of these three links in the chain: Creation-Revela­
tion-Redemption, reached its zenith in the second part of Rosenzweig's Star of
Redemption. It must be said, though, that in them the architectonic enthusiasm in
theology overreached itself considerably. A reaction of disillusionment, as evinced in the
writings of Jewish theologians of the last generation in the United States, was unavoidable.
 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
tained, but not seriou s ly held. The alternative of the meaningless­
ness of the world is unquestionably possible if only one also is
prepared to accept its consequences. The philosophical frivolity
with which a number of biologists try to reduce moral categories
to biological ones-one of the most frightening characteristics of
the intellectual climate of our age-cannot deceive us about the
hopelessness of this undertaking. One has only to study one of
these works carefully in order to perceive the equivocations, the
petitiones principii, the latent theologies, and the cracks and
fissures in such intellectual edifices. It will never be possible to
prove the assumption that the world has a meaning by extrapolat­
ing from limited contexts of meaning, yet it is the basic
conviction underlying faith in Creation. Thus it also stands
beyond the ever-changing physical theories which, according to
their very nature, have nothing to say about the origin of the
elements back to which they finally wish to trace all processes.
The Jewish faith in God as Creator will maintain its place,
beyond all images and myths, when it is a matter of choosing an
alternative : the world as Creation and the world as something
that creates itself by chance. The Creation is admittedly not
conceivable in terms of the first chapter of the Book of Genesis,
nor Revelation in terms of Exodus 20, or Redemption in terms of
Isaiah's imagery-and yet all these contain a core which would
be capable of a new articulation even in our time. There is no
doubt that these concepts have undergone changes in the course
of the historical development of Judaism. Their history might be
written. The fact that the Orthodox surprisingly enough and
without opposition have swallowed even the boldest speculations
as they appear, say, in the second volume of Rosenzweig's Star of
Redemption, which might perhaps be- described as variations on
these themes, eloquently attests to how a contemporary revival of
the age-old dicta might prevail. That this was possible only
within a framework of a recognition of the Jewish tradition
regarding the observance of the commandments of the Torah is
shown by the failure of related endeavors by Martin Buber, who
did without this framework and thus-in contradistinction to
Rosenzweig-became unacceptable to Orthodox Jews. That their
affirmation of God, in the forms appropriate to them, contained a
strong appeal for our age is certain-notwithstanding its fre-
 REFLECTIONS ON JEWISH THEOLOGY 2 79
quently doubtful exegetical character. It seems evident to me
that faith (whatever nuance one may attribute to that word) in
God has a particularly close connection with the conception of
the world as Creation.
The famous question of why anything existed rather than
there being nothing, posed by existential philosophers from
Schelling to Heidegger, was not answerable outside and inde­
pendent of the question about God, and this, of course, was the
meaning it had originally, namely in Schelling. God as Creator
was a more fundamental thesis than God in His capacity as
Revealer or Redeemer. It is possible to imagine a theology in
which the only Revelation is the Creation itself, and in fact many
believers in Revelation conceived of it as such. An additional
thesis-independent in the sense of not being deducible from the
prior one-which was established by the monotheistic religions,
though in most different forms, is that yet another Revelation of
God to His creature took place beyond the single or repeated act
of Creation which made the world process possible. Here the
creature was the human being who, endowed with reason, no
matter how limited his reason was thought to be, nevertheless
possessed in it an instrument capable of accomplishing the
highest things. In the religious sense, to be sure, this highest
accomplishment was not what modern man, our contemporary,
understands by it : the scientific penetration into the edifice of
Creation itself. Rather it was the ability to perceive the
Revelation, to assimilate it and to penetrate it. This ability could
admittedly comprise the other one as well, and it is not by chance
that the evaluation of reason has always been one of the central
problems of religions based on Revelation.
An overestimation of reason, which provided a frequent
common meeting ground for "rationalists" and "mystics" stood in
contrast to a skeptical depreciation which emphasized and often
enough exaggerated the limitations of reason. The latter sought to
define Revelation and reason as two opposite poles, yet it could
not evade the central fact that Revelation demanded that it
should be accessible to the reason of man. Here, too, in Judaism
the kabbalists were the ones in particular for whom there existed
a specific affinity between Creation and Revelation, since both
were conceived of as the language in which the divine Being
z8o ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
communicated. And it was the kabbalists who regarded rational
thinking as a linguistic process. I have developed these connec­
tions in greater detail elsewhere. 13 That the creative impetus is of
a linguistic nature, that, therefore, an infinite multitude of
languages suffuses the world, that all the structures we discover
in it have a tendency toward language-this 1nay be regarded as
an extravagant formulation of the common basis of Creation and
Revelation, yet it is a thesis which even in this provocative form
has not lost its meaning even for us.
The same applies to another, no less essential point of Jewish
theology, the prohibition against making images, whose funda­
mental significance can hardly be overestimated. The oneness of
God, once it was confronted with the multiplicity of the mythical
gods, was the condition for the fact that He was impossible to
visualize. This was one of the most revolutionary steps in the
history of mankind. The veneration of an imageless God simulta­
neously cast doubt on the visualizable character that seemed to
pertain to everything created. Nothing created was worthy of
representing what was beyond visualization. Therein was also
virtually incorporated a possible conclusion which by far tran­
scended the comprehension of the Biblical and medieval world.
Is not the visualizable aspect of the world mere pretense; is what
is visualizable not merely an approximation incapable of express­
ing the Creation? Is not Creation itself in its own way just as
much beyond visualization as the Creator? Does not the thesis of
a world in principle beyond visualization , which in the twentieth
century revolutionized physics no less than the ideas of Coperni­
cus and Newton did previously, correspond to the notion of
Creation resulting from the idea of the unvisualizable oneness of
God? The name of God, which the mystics rediscovered in all
Creation and in all Revelation, was the unvisualizable factor
transmitted by God to His creation or communicated therein . It
deprived the visualizable aspect of the world of its power of
evidence; such things could only be ascribed to the world
metaphorically.
The oneness to which the name of God bore witness was
13. Cf. my essay Der Name Gottes und die Sprachtheorie der Kabbala in ]udaica J,
Studien zur ]iidischen Mystik (Frankfurt-am-Main: Bibliothek Suhrkamp, 1973), pp. 7-70.
 REFLECTIONS ON JEWISH THEOLOGY 281

beyond such concepts as "static" or "dynamic. " Its being was

simultaneously movement. In the different stages of the tradi­
tional theology of Judaism it could therefore be conceived in one
category as well as the other. Both are no more than one-sided
aspects of the matter itself.
Corresponding to this is the basically sterile and endless
discussion about the so-called attributes of God, into which I am
not going to enter here. That applies above all to two theses
which are connected to the traditional notions of the doctrine of
the attributes and which could only come about through an
utterly impractical transference to God of purely secular catego­
ries. Thus, of course, they immediately came into hopeless
conflict with each other, a conflict impossible to resolve by any
kind of verbal acrobatics.
What I have in mind are the attributes of omnipotence and
providence, which are allegedly evident in God's acts and which
are in sharpest contradiction with the human freedom of moral
decision. This freedom of decision, however, is the basis of the
moral world of Judaism, which stands and falls with it, today as it
did 3,000 years ago. Nowadays, the least plausible of all
"dogmatic" assertions of Jewish theology is the thesis of the
providence of God, who in His infinite, all-embracing wisdom is
supposed to have foreseen not only the meaning of Creation but
also its development in every detail and at every stage. Even
those convinced of God's existence will find it hard to come to
terms with this doctrine. The living God of the Jewish religion,
the Creator, who, having revealed Himself, can also be ad­
dressed, not only initiated the Creation but participates and is
present in it every moment in a manner unfathomable to us. As
the daily prayer puts it, " In His goodness He renews the work of
Creation each day . " But can the "goodness" mentioned here
really produce any good that was not already accumulated in the
first act of Creation? Does this process not contain moments in
which something new, ever-fresh starts, can come into being? Is
God's freedom in these ever-fresh starts not fully as unpredict­
able as that of man in his moral decisions?
The paradox necessarily engendered by investing God with
human attributes is sterile; I doubt that it contributes anything to
the religious attitude manifesting itself in the view of the world as
282 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
God's Creation. Nothing is gained by its dialectic dissection into
"attributes. " Remaining untouched by this discussion is the
question as to the meaning of Creation, whether it has any
meaning, and whether such meaning (which is not the same
question at all) would also be intelligible to created beings-and
that is still the question at the very core of religion. And even
those who affirm the idea of Creation are undecided as to
whether there really exists a framework within which all created
things develop uniformly and in a definite sense (i.e., what
Judaism refers to as a plan of Creation), or whether Creation
consists of ever-new impulses which unfold only in development
itself, and in which this Creation, moved by the ever-new,
eventually reverts to itself.
With regard to the former assumption I would tend to share
the opinion-despite its metaphorical character-of Erich Neu­
mann, who said, "Why Creation? The answer 'so that, what
unreflected would shine in itself only, should shine in endless
diversity' is age-old, but it satisfies me. " 14 In unmetaphorical
language, of course, this means nothing other than that we
cannot formulate this meaning, even though we affirm it. With
regard to the second assumption, however, the idea of Creation is
indeed unthinkable without being connected with that of
Redemption. For that which definitively and perfectly unfolds in
Creation would be nothing other than the state of Redemption.
The ever-new in it would imply a promise in which it presents
itself not as a hidden impulse but as open fulfillment. This
development, which has its beginnings in the world as Creation,
does not, to be sure, take a straight course. It is a dialectically
constituted process, composed of contradictions and retarding
factors, be their nature ontological or, on the human level, moral.
Before going into this aspect of Redemption as a concept
which has a particular topical interest for us, I would like to say
something more about the concept of Creation. The notion of
continuous Creation is connected with an important concept
through which the kabbalists have tried to grasp it intellectually
by a bold maneuver. Since Creation was at the same time a
14. In a letter from Neumann to C. G. Jung, who was very displeased with this
sentence, cf. C . G. Jung, Briefe, Vol. III (Olten: Walter Verlag, 1973), pp. 4�41.
 REFLECTIONS ON JEWISH THEOLOGY 283
miracle, they sought to render this miracle intelligible through
the concept of tzimtzum ( contraction)-though at a price, that of
giving up the concept of the absolute immutability of God. This
immutability, to be sure, much as it was dogmatically emphasized
and formulated, was always only an expression of impotence in
the face of the infinite variety of God, which (as I have already
mentioned) could just as well be described in human metaphors
as God's absolute mobility. The universe of space and time, this
living process we call Creation, appeared to the kabbalists to be
intelligible only if it constituted an act of God's renunciation in
which He set Himself a limit. Creation out of nothing, from the
void, could be nothing other than creation of the void, that is, of
the possibility of thinking of anything that was not God. Without
such an act of self-limitation, after all, there would be only
God-and obviously nothing else. A being that is not God could
only become possible and originate by virtue of such a contrac­
tion, such a paradoxical retreat of God into Himself. �y positing a
negative factor in Himself, God liberates Creation.
This act, however, is not a one-time event; it must constantly
repeat itself; again and again a stream streams into the void, a
"something" from God. This, to be sure, is the point at which the
horrifying experience of God's absence in our world collides
irreconcilably and catastrophically with the doctrine of a Crea­
tion that renews itself. The radiation of which the mystics speak
and which is to attest to the Revelation of God in Creation-that
radiation is no longer perceivable by despair. The emptying of
the world to a meaningless void not illuminated by any ray of
meaning or direction is the experience of him whom I would call
the pious atheist. The void is the abyss, the chasm or the crack
which opens up in all that exists. This is the experience of modern
man, surpassingly well depicted in all its desolation by Kafka, for
whom nothing has remained of God but the void-in Kafka's
sense, to be sure, the void of God.
Redemption was at first a historical c oncept kept in a
precarious balance between politically national and universal
elements, but it subsequently became much more. The hope for
the wholly new, permeating, and openly presenting itself, in
Creation as such and Creation as the arena of history, here
competed with the hope for the restitution of a lost whole that
 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM I N CRISIS
had broken to pieces. Such a state of paradise or national
blissfulness was dreamed of as a past reality even though it never
existed.
It seems to rne particularly notable that the messianic idea,
the third element in that trilogy of Creation, Revelation, and
Redemption, exercises unbroken and vital power even today.
'
Creation, so closely linked to the conviction of the existence of
God, has to an extraordinary extent receded or vanished from
contemporary consciousness. Outside the fundamentalist minor­
ity, Revelation persists only in enlightened or mystical reinterpre­
tations which, no matter how legitimate they may be, no longer
possess the original vehemence which promoted its enormous
influence in the history of religion. Yet the messianic idea has
maintained precisely this vehemence. Despite all attenuations it
has proved itself an idea of highest effectiveness and relevance­
even in its secularized forms. It was better able to stand a
reinterpretation into the secular realm than the other ideas.
Whereas more than 100 years ago such reinterpretation was still
regarded as an utter falsification of the Jewish idea of Redemp­
tion and messianism-and just by the defenders of the historical
school in Judaism-it has become the center of great visions in
the present age. To be sure, the tensions among the possible
conceptions of the content of the messianic idea were particu­
larly strong in the course of the past two millennia. In their
profusion, the sources of our tradition permitted the extrapola­
tion of very different, even contradictory, elements at any time
and the placing of them in the center. Elsewhere, I have dealt
with several of these aspects in detail. 15
The Jewish tradition preserves a constant conflict-never
ending and never settled-among opposing elements in messian­
ism . Even today it is the case that the exposition of such
tendencies is likely to generate lively controversies. The principal
ones among these are the conflict between apocalyptic tenden­
cies and those aiming at their abolition, as well as between
restorative and Utopian ones. Messianism could be represented
soberly, almost in the manner of Realpolitik, with a slightly
Utopian tinge, as it was by Maimonides, who regarded its
15. In the first four chapters of The Messianic Idea in Judaism, pp. 1-14 1 .
 REFLECTIONS ON JEWISH THEOLOGY 285
apocalyptic and radically Utopian traits with great suspicion and
who sought to eliminate them completely or at least reduce them
to a minimum. Nevertheless, it was also possible to bring the
apocalyptic elements to the fore, as in the impressive codifica­
tions of the works of Isaac Abarbanel and of the Maharal of
Prague. Redemption could be understood as a historical process
-as the culmination or breakdown of history-whose apocalyp­
tic revolutions were necessary before the total newness of a
renewed world could constitute itself or be formed by God. But
Redemption could also be interpreted in a much broader sense:
as Redemption of nature, of the multiformity of Creation striving
for uniformity.
The vision of the Lurianic Kabbala went even further: it
embraced all creation. In it the sum total of the world process,
starting with tzimtzum (contraction), was represented as a gnostic
drama, a drama of failure and reconstruction, but one needed to
achieve what had been seminal in it and had never existed
before. Here Redemption was not only the goal of history, which
thus gave it meaning, but the goal of the whole universe as such.
In this case, the Kingdom of God was no longer just the
realization of the good on our earth, of a state in which the good
would be done by a natural impulse. It was the actualization of
this reign in all the infinite spheres of creation which are affected
by the shevirat hakelim (the breaking of the vessels) . As
extravagant as this enthusiasm for the cosmic redemption of all
that exists and is not in the right place but in exile strikes us, as
vehement is the appeal inherent in this notion.
It is precisely the extravagant aspects of the messianic vision
which played so great a role in its transformation into the profane
and secular, as can be gathered even today from the writings of a
thinker like Ernst Bloch. The optimism, even though only
eschatological, which was preserved in the various forms of these
secular reinterpretations overran the warning signals put up
against it by reason and history. Messianism in our age proves its
immense force precisely in this form of the revolutionary
apocalypse, and no longer in that of the rational utbpia (if one
may call it that) of eternal progress as the Enlightenment's
surrogate for Redemption. This version has only very little left in
common with the concepts of the realization of ethical values in
z86 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN C RISIS
the ideal concept of a messianic future, such as was regarded
central, for example, by Cohen, to the messianic idea. 16 Morality
continues to appear in it only as a most distant frontier. It escapes
the relativisrn of empirical moral concepts in an imperfect world
by jettisoning them and by their nihilistic disavowal. This was
already the case in the heretical messianism of the followers of
Sabbetai Tzvi, which provided our history with an example of a
messianism no longer theoretical but applied. Nor is it unrelated
to this that the Utopia of the world-transforming revolution,
which is to constitute the first real beginning of authentic human
experience, develops its own moral code.
On one important point the secularized apocalyptic-or
theory of catastrophe-of the revolution, which plays so great a
role in contemporary discussions, remains related to the Jewish­
theological impulse in which it originated (even though it refuses
to admit as much) . That is the rejection of the radical internaliza­
tion of Redemption. Not that the history of Judaism was lacking
in attempts-particularly in mysticism, as was only to be
expected-to discover such a dimension in Jewish messianism as
well. But in all its historical forms, Judaism has utterly rejected
the thesis of an inwardness of Redemption that is as it were
chemically pure. An inwardness which did not also manifest itself
in the most external things which, indeed, was not thoroughly
connected with them, counted for nothing here. The thrust
toward the core was at the same time a thrust outward. After all,
that restitution of all things to their proper place which is
Redemption reconstructs a whole which knows nothing of such a
separation between inwardness and outwardness. The Utopian
element of messianism which reigns so supreme in Je\vish
tradition concerned itself with the whole and nothing but this
whole.1 7
The difference between the modern "theology of Revolu­
tion," as it comes to us from so many directions and the messianic
16. Cohen (p. 29 1) went as far as the radical formulation: "The messianic future is the
first conscious expression of the contrast to the empirical sensuality of ethical values." By
this, I presume, is meant the temporary character demonstrated in the relativism of the
application of such values in the imperfect world of history. As against this, then, the
messianic future denotes a sphere which is removed from the restrictions of the ex­
perienced world and in which the values find their perfect, "absolute" realization .
17. Cf. my book The Messianic Idea in Judaism, p. 17.
 REFLECTIONS ON JEWISH THEOLOGY 28 7
idea of Judaism consists to an appreciable extent in a transposal
of terminology. In its new form, history becomes prehistory; the
human experience of which we have spoken turns out not to have
been the authentic one, the latter being accessible only to a
redeemed humanity. That simplified the discussions about the
value, or lack of value, of previous history (which lacked the
essential element of man's freedom and autonomy), and thus
placed all discussions about real, authentic human values on the
plane of eschatology. That opened door after door to an
uninhibitedly optimistic Utopia, one not even to be described by
the concepts derived from an unredeemed state of the world.
That is the attitude behind the writings of the most important
ideologists of revolutionary messianism, such as Ernst Bloch,
Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse, whose
acknowledged or unacknowledged ties to their Jewish heritage
are evident.
However, in the Jewish version of messianism, which, ever
since the age of the Prophets, has not lost the vision of a renewed,
liberated, and pacified humanity, such a vision remains closely
connected with the Kingdom of God. The covenant which binds
God and man not only in Revelation but anew in Redemption
confirms both Revelation and Redemption as being two aspects
of the same phenomenon. 'fhe true Kingdom of God is the
actualization of true humanism. Unfortunately, the modern usage
of the term "humanism" implies an unbearable and highly
,
misleading double meaning. When in the eighteenth and nine­
teenth centuries humanism and humanity were mentioned, no
contrast to a theistic orientation was intended. At that time the
truly human was still the image of God in man which had to be
brought forth and realized. Only much later did an opposing
usage emerge, in which humanism presupposed an agnostic view
of the world, an image of man in which there was no longer any
room for God. Instead one gets an extravagant concept of the
dignity of man, who accomplishes his own Redemption.
But there is another point on which the secularized and the
religious conceptions of messianism-in their recent develop­
ment-concur: the liquidation of the person of the Messiah as the
bearer of the message of Redemption, which finds in him its
expression and its realization. This personal element is undoubt-
z88 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
edly connected with the historical origins of the messianic hope.
It has now become immaterial for wide circles of Jews, even for
some who harbor strong religious feelings, and its only remaining
usefulness is symbolical, as a summation of everything implied by
the messianic idea. For the religious consciousness, the "son of
David," who would renew the Davidic reign and thereby at the
same time establish the Kingdom of God on earth, did not
constitute a necessary component of the messianic expectation.
To be sure, certain features of messianism which had assured it
great popularity were thereby eradicated. These are the features
which in the prophecies of the servant of God as a messianic
figure, had appealed to the religious sentiments of so many
generations precisely by virtue of their disquieting and stimulat­
ing paradoxes.
Even though this figure was depicted here as most personal,
even tragic, there had always been a tendency to see in it not the
embodiment of a messianic personality, but one of the people of
Israel as the bearer of this prophecy. In its historic destiny it
would have to pay the high price for having kept faith throughout
its history with the prophecy of a state transcending history,
perhaps even disparaging history. Such reinterpretation opened
the way to a further generalization. In a secularized world,
suffering humanity itself, or the proletariat-proclaimed by the
founders of socialism, in a fantastic tour de force, to be
humanity's true representative-could take the place of the
suffering servant of God. Yet, even without such "humanist"
extension and reformulation, messianism has developed a de­
structive dialectic of its own within Judaism as well.
For a whole century it was the favorite pastime of the liberal
theology of Judaism to use the messianic idea in order to forbid
the Jews to live their lives on the historical level. In this they
could, of course, base themselves upon a much more ancient
tendency within Orthodox Judaism, which made a virtue of
historical necessity and forbade the Jewish people any historic
initiative, even though the alleged commandment of historical
passivity was hardly compatible with the deepest impulses of
messianism and, in fact, spelled its perversion. None of the many
representatives has done better in expressing this in all its
contradictoriness than Cohen, who could write : "The loss of the
 REFLECTIONS ON JEWISH THEOLOGY z8g
national state is already conditioned by Inessianisin . But this is
the basis of the tragedy of ]etvish p eoplehood [italics in the
original-G .S.] in all historic depth . How can a people exist and
fulfill its messianic task if it is deprived of the coininon hu 1nan
protection afforded by a state to its people? And yet, just this is
the situation of the Jewish people, and thus it must needs be the
meaning of the history of the Jews, if indeed this meaning lies in
messianism . " 1 8 A historical experience of incomparable intensity
has unveiled the eerie character of these sentences (as of so many
liberal theological axioms) . This tragedy was too hollow and too
cheap in its adaptations to an age of bourgeois illusions. Yet it
remains undeniable that the discrepancy recognized, though
perverted, by Cohen between the real history of the Jews, even
in its reentry into contemporary history, and the messianic drive
accompanying this history at the same time as it weakens it,
represents a genuine problem which any Jewish theology in our
time will find inescapable.

IV

I have been speaking of basic religious concepts which, even

within a Judaism that does not repudiate its tradition, contain
problems which appear to me unavoidable outside of fundamen­
talism . A number of their reinterpretations made concessions to
the age of secularism. A number-above all those in the sphere of
the conception of the world as Creation-cannot do without a
fundamental and inescapable contradiction and confrontation of
secularism. From the viewpoint of secularized humanism this is
their weakness ; from the viewpoint of a philosophy of history,
which remains aware of the questionable nature of a totally
secularized world, this is their strength.
These concepts, however, were not on the same level as the
moral concepts underlying the commandments of the Torah
insofar as the latter could be understood as meaningful and
insofar as they also divulged such meaning in the sources
themselves. Man's actions, even when they are directed toward
1 8. Cohen, pp. 3 1 1-12.
zg o ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
his fellow man and the community, are determined by concepts,
by a scale of values, originating from man's relation to God.
The demands of religious ethics are in conflict with a
secularized world. Such determinant values are the demands for
the fear of God, the love of God, humility, and above all for
sanctification, which cannot be imagined as unrelated to the
religious sphere. Concepts such as reconciliation, justice, and
faithfulness (emunah) have a meaning, though a very restricted
one, on the purely social level; they can be imagined without any
reference back to God. As regards holiness and sanctification, and
perhaps more than anything else the fear of God, the highest
values in Jewish ethics, they cannot be put into practice within
the framework of a purely this-worldly ethics. The most promi­
nent characteristics or aspects of the conception of God's actions
in the world, namely severity and compassion, have, in the world
in which we live, been transferred from the hands of God into
those of the materialists and psychoanalysts.
Malcolm Muggeridge, a contemporary of ours with a gift of
biting wit, has expressed this state of affairs as follows: instead
of the old theological quibbles, he finds ours to be a time of
"Freudians looking for their Marx and M arxists looking for their
Freud. " 1 9 Judaism certainly recognized the existence of a secular
sphere to be infused with sanctity. Fear and love were powers
which, under the dictate of the demand for the sanctification of
human activity, attained a religious content reaching far beyond
the experience given to man in his natural life. The profane
sphere, which survived alone in an ever-spreading secularization
of the human condition, had no use for a call such as the one for
sanctification. For such a call presupposes a sphere which
transcends the immanent values for!ll i ng themselves in the course
of development and necessarily remaining relative to the latter.
This was the moral demand and call of Judaism .
The secularizing talk of the "sanctity of life" is a squaring of
the circle. It smuggles an absolute value into a world which could
never have formed it out of its own resources, a value pointing
surreptitiously to a teleology of Creation which is, after all,
disavowed by a purely naturalistic rationalistic view of the world.
19. Malcolm Muggeridge, Chronicles of Wasted Time (London: Colliers, 1972), p. 15.
 REFLECTIONS ON JEWISH THEOLOGY 29 1

But on the other hand, as far as one can see, this process of the
secularization of all aspects of the human carries its own
momentum and cannot be arrested; neither, therefore, can the
dwindling of visible religious authority. Sociology, technology,
and psychology seem to gain the upper hand. The uninhibited
optimism inherent in the expectation that the application of
scientific, progressive discoveries directed to the mastery of
nature (the so-called technological revolution) would also solve
problems of values is completely unfounded. Nevertheless, it
seems as if it will have to spend itself until it will clearly
recognize its limitations, which, of course, are necessarily the
same as those of scientific knowledge in general. Such knowledge
may still be able to lay bare deeply hidden facts or give these
facts a theoretical coherence, but it cannot establish values. That,
however, raises the question as to whether the progress in these
areas, starting from the expectation of making them autarchic,
could lead to the knowledge that they are either closed in
.
themselves or open. In the present state of thi ngs this cannot be
determined, although it could be of decisive importance.
If this " technological world" is closed in itself and leaves no
room for other perspectives, then the conflict between such a
world and the world of Judaism will persist with undiminished
vehemence. In such a world man would be a helpless instrument
of overpowering forces, and at the same time atomized and
isolated, standing .unprotected in the face of the loneliness and
senselessness which oppress and suffo cate him. If, to be sure,
those areas which I have designated as technology, sociology, and
psychology were open or porous, so that something else could
become transparent in them, that would be a situation in which
the religious attitude could develop in a fruitful dialogue with
them.
The urgency of the question as to the significance of
secularization for contemporary Judaism is evident. Can we
adopt the view that Judaism has a positive stand toward such a
process, that as it were it adds to it by complementing it and all
this without coming into conflict with it? Could we perhaps say
with Jacob Neusner: "The heavens tell the glory of God. The
world reveals His holiness. Through mitzvot [good deeds] we
respond to what the heavens say; through Torah we apprehend
29 2 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM I N CRISIS
the revelations of the world. Judaism rejoices, therefore, at the
invitation of the secular city. It has never truly known another
world ; and it therefore knows what its imperatives require"
[italics mine, G.S.] .20 Against this, should it not be maintained
that the demand, starting from the purely religious concept of
sanctity, for the sanctification of the secular by way of a
fulfillment of the Torah based on a divine legitimation, represents
precisely the opposite of real secularization and is incompatible
with the world-immanent values of the new scale of values which
naturalism seeks to establish? In contemporary Jewish society this
question, which obtrudes itself in the most varied facets, can in
no way be circumvented.
If we live in a world in which Revelation as a positive
possession has been lost, the first question is : Does this not mean
the liquidation of Judaism insofar as Revelation is understood as a
specific characteristic of the Jewish people, as the shape in which
it has presented itself in world history? Is not then the slogan
"like all the nations" not the solution, as many quarters pass it off
as the rneaning of Zionism? .And, furthermore, how can the fear
of God be not only a value realizing itself in the world as
such-the same as most values on a religious level-but also a
value immanent in, originating from the world? This was possible
in the sphere called theologia naturalis by Christian theology,
because here there was a rational theology of the knowledge of
God that derived its arguments from meditation in the world
itself. Jewish theology, although it avoided the expression "natu­
ral theology," followed the same line to a great extent.
Where, however, such a dimension of theology ceases to exist,
as it does in the purely secular view of the world, it seems very
difficult to anticipate a positive answer to this question. But can
the purely naturalistic agnostic view, which admits secularism as
the only possibility, be reconciled with the assertion made by so
many thinkers that there is meaning even in the secular sphere?
Much depends on the answer to this question, the discussion of
which produces so many disputes.
The establishment of values depends on the acceptance of a
zo. Jacob Neusner, Judaism in the Secular Age (London: Valentine, Mitchell and
Company, 1971), p. 64.
 REFLECTIONS ON JEWISH THEOLOGY 293
meaning attributable to them. Philosophers of pure secularism,
such as Guyau a hundred years ago and Walter Kaufmann today,
have been trying to understand the phenomenon of meaning by
way of naturalistic considerations. The argument that this was
ultimately an attempt to pull oneself out of the mire by one's
own bootstraps was rebutted by the neo-Hegelians and the neo­
Marxists with an appeal to the dialectic, which allegedly puts an
end to the dogmatism of such controversies. I consider it difficult
to follow these arguments, but at any rate one ought to admit
that on the basis of these presuppositions a fruitful meeting and
discussion is possible between religion, whose message begins and
ends with the meaningfulness of the world, and secularism.
Indeed, if it were possible to follow the line of argument of the
Jewish Reconstructionists, there might perhaps even be an
understanding between the two. The developments of recent
decades, however, did not justify the optimism which inspired
expectations of this kind. The · position of the man of the
secularistic age vis-a-vis his society is more helpless than ever in
his confrontation with naked nihilism.
It has often been said that in the course of millennia Judaism
has proved itself infinitely adaptable without losing its original
impetus. It has adjusted itself to very different forms of societies
without essentially changing its values. It has proved its vitality in
an agrarian society in antiquity, in a medieval society where the
Jewish masses were urbanized and their living conditions were
determined by entirely different occupations, in an absolutist
society, and finally in an industrialist society. Why, then, should it
not prevail in a technological age as well?
If technology is the domination and exploitation of the
functional connection between things, it could be said of it that it
does not so much negate the religious sphere as exclude it per
definitionem. Even the most highly developed technology cannot
make a statement about anything that does not enter into such
functional connection. Its strength, although manifesting itself so
overwhelmingly in everyday life, still remains subject to the
conditions governing science in general and thus also its eventual
limits. The priorities of such domination and exploitation, in
other words the "morality" of technology and thus also the
morality of a completely mechanized age-all this is still
294 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
determined by interests which, no matter how one looks at it,
stand beyond such technology. Bourgeois morality, the anarchis­
tic morality of revolt, the combat morality of revolution-all of
them derive their legitimation from sources other than scientistic
or technical developments themselves.
Should, then, the values governing today' s American "permis­
sive society," for example, be accepted as a logical consequence
of radical secularization? Or is there some chance for those forces
which are resolved to oppose such a society with their own
demands? Actually, even to pose this question would already
mean to answer it affirmatively-if not for the skepticism,
expounded above in greater detail, which is the result of the
disintegration of the dogma of Revelation. Can that which we are
able to learn from the sources of those three stages of Judaism
discussed above persist unchanged, especially in its moral
formulations and demands, when the sanction of Revelation has
become dubious or when it can only be maintained in mystical
forms? I consider it particularly urgent to pose this question for
discussion.
I would like to say something about the above-mentioned
slogan "like all nations, " which became of the greatest contempo­
rary interest through Zionism, through the construction by the
Jews of a new society in their own land, a society bearing full
responsibility for its success or failure, for our relations to the
world around us as well as for the values which are to determine
this construction. I have never been among those who accepted
this as a legitimate formulation of the goal of Zionism. I am quite
convinced that the realization of this slogan could only mean the
transition to the decline or even disappearance of the Jewish
people. The normalization, of which all of us who supported the
Zionist cause had been dreaming, referred to the establishment of
social conditions, in which the appeal of those imperatives which
for millennia were the foundation, the justification, and in times
of fatal catastrophes even the confirmation of our existence,
would not be distorted, falsified, and rendered largely hopeless
through the force of circumstances. Many of us believed that the
forms in which those imperatives might appear could change ; we
never seriously believed that they would or even could disappear
from the center of our existence. I admit that this unshakable
 REFLECTIONS ON' JEWISH THEOLOGY 295

belief in a specific moral center, which bestows meaning in world

history on the Jewish people, transcends the sphere of pure
secularization. I would not even deny that in it a remnant of
theocratic hope also accompanies that reentry into world history
of the Jewish people that at the same time signifies the truly
Utopian return to its own history.
This hope would remain unaffected even by a process of
complete secularization. For in an attempted liquidation of the
values originating in the religious sphere, it would still become
evident which of these values could resist liquidation. Such an
attempt at liquidation, to be sure, is perilous like everything
creative. It would lead to a point of the dissolution of everything
that was specific to the Jews as a whole, or else to a point where
this turned into something positive, more steadfast than all
tradition, because it would be less expected and quite unforesee­
able from the perspectives of the sphere of secularization.
I regard it as one of the great chances for living Judaism-in­
deed, the decisive chance-that it does not attempt to evade this
choice with easy compromises, but rather that it faces it openly
and in the unprotected arena of historical engagement. In other
words, I am convinced that behind its profane and secular
facade, Zionism involves potential religious contents, and that
this potentiality is much stronger than the actual content finding
its expression in the "religious Zionism" of political parties. Why?
Because the central question about the dialectics of living
Tradition-and in the context of Judaism this means above all the
halakhic tradition-will be more fruitfully posed in Israel with an
element of doubt than in the manner it is posed there from a
position of strength, fortified today by cowardly laws. The secular
character of the Zionist movement always contradicted its
inescapable involvement with religious problematics. Subjected
to violent attacks from both quarters, from the Orthodox on the
one hand and from the liberals and assimilationists on the other,
and condemned as allegedly un-Jewish by both sides according to
their respective doctrines of salvation, it had to develop a vivid
sense for what would occur in its confrontation with history,
independent of its detractors.
As long as Zionism was in its rhetorical stage, it could provide
a relatively peaceful home for the most varied slogans. At the
zg6 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
moment when the Zionist vision was about to be realized, it soon
became clear that its most active support came from the sector
which inclined most strongly toward secularism . The state of
Israel would never have become a reality without it. But the
stronger that sector's position became, the stronger a�so became
the tendencies toward the reconsideration of views. The attitude
toward tradition, in construction or destruction, grew inescap­
ably into a central question-truly burning and as yet unre­
solved-which still leaves everything open.
It goes without saying that on the religious level, too, the
situation in Israel differs from that of the Diaspora. The shock
suffered because of the Holocaust by every Jew who was
conscious of his identity, and by many Jews who were not, has
affe cted all centers of Jewish life. How deeply they were affected
is not yet fathomable today, though we may assume that the after
effects, repercussions, and reverberations of this event provide
the background for, and are operative in, everything that is
happening now. In the Diaspora these effects are rather diffuse.
They did not visibly crystalize around a focus, though I would
not say that they are therefore any less powerful. In Israel,
however, where the activity of reconstruction provided a clear
focus which was apt to crystalize the emotional shock-caused
by the German murder of the Jews and the apathy of the
world-around a new Jewish commonwealth, both the negative
and positive aspects were fused into one whole, an entelechy. No
event in Jewish history has so greatly transcended the dimensions
discoverable in the previous experiences of that history as this
event in which the slaughter of millions under the most horrible
circumstances was linked with the most intensive effort for a new
historical beginning.
Yet at the same time the discrepancy among the possible
tendencies of the national rebirth was exacerbated by the
situation outlined here. And that has prevented the formation of
a pure crystalization or Gestalt in this rebirth. This applies above
all to the religious level, on which a living Judaism could prove
itself as much in the renewal of the halakhah as in the change of
its historic Gestalt in which the values of Tradition must be
reformulated in ne\v contexts. Both these possibilities are in
unresolvable contradicti<_>n to the secularization discussed here,
 REFLECTIONS ON JEWISH THEOLOGY 29 7
in which a living Jewish people would resolve to renounce living
Judaism as a binding order of values. These alternatives are, as far
as I can judge, much less operative in the Diaspora.
The special circumstances prevailing in the Diaspora permit
the almost peaceful coexistence of these alternatives. But in
Israel that is impossible in the long run. Precisely the vitality of
the Israeli enterprise-the high tetnperature, if I may say so, of
all processes there-makes it impossible. Here, too, lies the cause
for the increasing tension between Israel and the Diaspora in so
many matters concerning the future of "Jewish life . "
I t would be a grave error if we were to deceive ourselves into
ignoring this state of affairs. This tension does not, as is claimed
often enough, have its principal source in the organization of the
State of Israel and in its presun1ptive demand that its mundane
interests should be identified with moral precepts. Such identi­
fication is manifestly impossible, not to mention that there can
exist great differences of opinion about the true interests of the
state in any given situation. It is not the state but the problems of
Israeli society as a living reality which are relevant here.
Whether, when, and in what form religion will be an effective
force in society-that is indeed a decisive question whose
consequences with regard to the Diaspora as well are unforesee­
able even if we regard it as an indisputable fact that (as it
certainly seems to me) such questions will also assume considera­
ble importance in the conditions that will be prevailing in the
Diaspora itself.
I consider a complete secularization of Israel to be out of the
question so long as the faith in God is still a fundamental
phenomenon of anything human and cannot be liquidated
"ideologically. " I consider a dialogue with such secularization
about its validity, legitimacy, and limitations as fruitful and
decisive. I could not designate the two parties to this dialogue
any better than by two Talmudic words which probably consti­
tute the most sublime synopsis of religious Judaism in the past,
and pcssibly in the future as well. I mean the words living
throughout 2,000 years of Jewish tradition : " the freedom of the
tablets" of the Law and the "broken tablets, " which still lie
together with the holy tablets in the Ark of the Covenant-that is
to say, within the religious dimension of Judaism .
 On E ichmann

Eichmann °

Eichmann has been executed. In its public and historical

aspects the Eichmann case is at an end. All the lessons that might
possibly be learned from the great trial which terminated in
Eichmann's death sentence can already be studied in full. Now
the time has come to etnbark on the soul-searching the affair
demands, and there is no end to thoughts and questions, most of
which are without answer.
Those who approved of Eichmann's being put before the bar
of justice, those who upheld the trial itself as well as the form
chosen for it by the authorities, those who saw in the trial a
tremendous moral achievement in educating the nation toward a
major historical reckoning-a task as necessary to undertake as it
must necessarily fail-in short, all those who are primarily
concerned with the public, moral, and historical aspects of the
trial rather than with its legal side-they are the ones who are
bound to ask themselves whether the execution of Eichmann was
indeed the appropriate finish to this enormous issue. I am certain
that many thousands and hundreds of thousands of the people of
this land are still preoccupied with this question, and I propose to
answer it as best I can.
There is no question but that Eichmann deserved the death
penalty. I have no doubt he did. I have not come forth to find any
merit in him, or, indeed, to discuss any aspect of his deeds and
responsibility that pertains to the legal aspects of the trial. I
assume that from the legal point of view nothing remains to be
o Ammot (August-September, 1962). Translated from the Hebrew by Miriam Bern­
stein-Benschlomo.
 ON EICHMANN 299
said and that he deserved to die a thousand deaths each day. I
come to plead on our own behalf, that is to say on behalf of
Eichmann's potential (if not actual) victims.
The laws of human society are at a loss as to adequate
punishment for Eichmann's crimes. On this point there is general
agreement. There can be no possible proportion between this
crime and its punishment. Neither could his execution serve to
teach a lesson to other murderers of our people. The application
of the death penalty for the murder of millions is not · a
"deterrent" and will not deter any potential murderer likely to
arise against us in the days to come. It is not the deterrent power
of the hanging of one inhuman wretch that will prevent
catastrophes of this kind in the future. A different education of
men and nations, a new human awareness-these will prevent it.
To achieve such a human awareness was the purpose of the
Eichmann trial.
Eichmann was an excellent example of the systematic
destruction of the image of God in man, the "dehumanization"
the Nazi movement preached by all possible means and practiced
as far as possible. The significance of this trial consisted of
revealing to the whole world the meaning of such dehumaniza­
tion; its effects and the price paid by a whole nation which falls
victim to this process. For one can very well say that in the strict
sense two nations, not one, were the victims: the Jewish people,
whose millions were murdered, and the German people, who
became a nation of murderers when it allowed the Nazi doctrine
to gain power over it. If we are "to do justice, " to deter or avenge
the bloodshed of our people, then it must be done to tens and
hundreds of thousands whose hands are soiled with blood.
Which brings me to the main point : the application of the
death penalty to Eichmann constituted an inappropriate ending.
It falsified the historical significance of the trial by creating the
illusion that it is possible to conclude something of this affair by
the hanging of one human or inhuman creature . Such an illusion
is most dangerous because it may engender the feeling that
something has been done to atone for the unatonable. One man,
who is only the corrupt product of the corrupt system which
made his existence and activity possible, is to be hanged, and
many millions, especially in Germany, will see it as an end to the
3 00 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS

whole business of the murder of our people. It will be said that

the Israelis have captured the chief organizer of the murder; let
them hang him and be done with it.
As Jews and as human beings we have no interest in such a
phony "finis. " It was an easy, slight ending in two senses: it was
slight both as to significance and judgment. This hanging was an
anticlimax, the satyr play after a tragedy such as had not been
seen before. One fears that instead of opening up a reckoning and
leaving it open for the next generation, we have foreclosed it.
What superficially seems severity of judgment is in reality its
mitigation, a mitigation in no way to our interest. It is to our
interest that the great historical and moral question, the question
probing the depths which this trial has forced all to face-How
could this happen ?-that this question should retain all its
weight, all its stark nakedness, all its horror. The hangman who
had to execute Eichmann's sentence added nothing to the
situation, but he took away a great deal. As I have said before, he
introduced the misplaced suggestion that this marked "the end of
the story. " It would have been better if we did not have the
hangman stand between us and our great question, between us
and the soul-searching account we have to settle with the world.
Having gone through this trial we should ask ourselves: where do
we stand now with this accounting? What do we really want to
prove to the world? If we wanted to prove that justice is being
done and that a great historical reckoning is being effected, then
a living Eichmann--whether imprisoned by us or put into the
hands of the Germans (who had good reasons for not wanting
him)-was not likely to stand in the way of such a reckoning. But
it is to be feared that an Eichmann who has been hanged will
indeed stand in the way-very much in the way.

Letter to Hannah Arendt0

Jerusalem, June 23, 1963

Dear Hannah,
Six weeks have passed since I received your book on the
Eichmann trial; and, if I write belatedly, it is because only now
o From Encounter (January 1964). Professor Scholem's letter is translated into English
by John Mander.
 ON EICHMANN 30 1

do I have the leisure to devote myself to a proper study of it. I

have not, let me say, gone into the question of the factual and
historical authenticity of the various statements you make. To
judge by your treatment of those aspects of the problem with
which I happen to be familiar, however, I fear that your book is
not free of error and distortion. Still, I have no doubt that the
question of the book's factual authenticity will be taken up by
other critics-of whom there will be many-and it is not in any
case central to the critique I wish to offer here.
Your book moves between two poles: the Jews and their
bearing in the days of catastrophe, and the responsibility of Adolf
Eichmann. I have devoted, as you know, a good part of my time
to a consideration of the case of the Jews, and I have studied a
not insignificant volume of material on the subject. I am well
aware, in common with every other spectator of the events, how
complex and serious, how little reducible or transparent, the
whole problem is. I am aware that there are aspects of Jewish
history (and for more than forty years I have concerned myself
with little else) which are beyond our comprehension ; on the one
hand, a devotion to the things of this world that is near-demonic ;
on the other, a fundamental uncertainty of orientation in this
world-an uncertainty which must be contrasted with that
certainty of the believer concerning which, alas, your book has so
little to report, There has been weakness, too, though weakness
so entwined with heroism that it is not easily unraveled;
wretchedness and power-lust are also to be found there. But
these things have always existed, and it would be remarkable
indeed if, in the days of catastrophe, they were not to make their
appearance once again. Thus it was in the year 139 1 , at the
beginning of that generation of catastrophe; and so it has been in
our own time. The discussion of these matters is, I believe, both
legitimate and unavoidable-although I do not believe that our
generation is in a position to pass any kind of historical judgment.
We lack the necessary perspective, which alone makes some sort
of objectivity possible-and we cannot but lack it.
Nevertheless, we cannot put these questions aside. There is
the question thrown at us by the new youth of Israel: why did
they allow themselves to be slaughtered? As a question, it seems
to me to have a profound justification; and I see no readily
302 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM I N CRISIS

formulated answer to it. At each decisive juncture, however, your

book speaks only of the weakness of the Jewish stance in the
world. I am ready enough to admit that weakness; but you put
such emphasis upon it that, in my view, your account ceases to be
objective and acquires overtones of malice. The problem, I have
admitted, is real enough. Why, then, should your book leave one
with so strong a sensation of bitterness and shame-not for the
compilation, but for the compiler? How is it that your version of
the events so often seems to come between us and the
events-events which you rightly urge upon our attention? Inso­
far as I have an answer, it is one which, precisely out of my deep
respect for you, I dare not suppress; and it is an answer that goes
to the root of our disagreement. It is that heartless, frequently
almost sneering and malicious tone with which these matters,
touching the very quick of our life, are treated in your book to
which I take exception.
In the Jewish tradition there is a concept, hard to define and
yet concrete enough, which we know as Ahavat Yisra.e l: "Love of
the Jewish people . . . . " In you, dear Hannah, as in so many
intellectuals who came from the German Left, I find little trace
of this. A discussion such as is attempted in your book would
seem to me to require-you will forgive my mode of expression­
the most old-fashioned, the most circumspect, the most exacting
treatment possible-precisely because of the feelings aroused by
this matter, this matter of the destruction of one-third of our
people-and I regard you wholly as a daughter of our people,
and as nothing else. Thus I have little sympathy with that
tone-well expressed by the English word flippanc y-which you
employ so often in the course of your book. To the matter of
which you speak it is unimaginably inappropriate. In circum­
stances such as these, would there not have been a place for what
I can only describe with that modest German word-Herzens­
takt? You may laugh at the word; although I hope you do not, for
I mean it seriously. Of the many examples I came upon in your
book-and came upon not without pain-none expresses better
what I mean than your quotation (taken over without comment
from a Nazi source! ) about the traffic with the armbands with the
Star of David in the Warsaw ghetto, or the sentence about Leo
Baeck "who in the eyes of both Jews and Gentiles was the
 ON EICHMANN

'Jewish Fuhrer. ' . . . " The use of the Nazi term in this context is
sufficiently revealing. You do not speak, say, of the "Jewish
leader, " which would have been both apt and free of the German
word's horrific connotation-you say precisely the thing that is
most false and most insulting. For nobody of whom I have heard
or read was Leo Baeck-whom we both knew-ever a "Fuhrer"
in the sense which you here insinuate to the reader. I too have
read Adler's book about Theresienstadt. It is a book about which
a great many things could be said. But it was not my impression
that the author-who speaks of some people, of whom I have
heard quite different accounts, with considerable harshness-it
was not my impression that Adler ever spoke of Baeck in this
fashion, either directly or indirectly. Certainly, the record of our
people's suffering is burdened with a number of questionable
figures who deserve, or have received, their just punishment: how
could it have been otherwise in a tragedy on so terrible a scale?
To speak of all this, however, in so wholly inappropriate a
tone-to the benefit of those Germans in condemning whom
your book rises to greater eloquence than in mourning the fate of
your own people-this is not the way to approach the scene of
that tragedy.

In your treatment of the problem of how the Jews reacted to

these extreme circumstances-to which neither of us was ex­
posed-! detect, often enough, in place of balanced judgment, a
kind of demagogic will-to-overstatement. Which of us can say
today what decisions the elders of the Jews-or whatever we
choose to call them-ought to have arrived at in the circum­
stances? I have not read less than you have about these matters,
and I am still not certain; but your analysis does not give me
confidence that your certainty is better founded than my
uncertainty. There were the ]udenriite, for example ; some among
them were swine, others were saints. I have read a great deal
about both varieties. There were among them also many people
in no way different from ourselves, who were compelled to make
terrible decisions in circumstances that we cannot even begin to
reproduce or reconstruct. I do not know whether they were right
or wrong. Nor do I presume to judge. I was not there.
Certainly, there were people in Theresienstadt-as every
 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM IN CRISIS
former inmate can confirm-whose conduct is deserving of the
severest judgment. But in case after case we find that the
individual verdict varies. Why was Paul Eppstein, one of these
"questionable figures, " shot by the Nazis, foF example? You give
no reason. Yet the reason is clear enough : he had done precisely
that which according to you he could afford to do without serious
danger-he told people in Theresienstadt what awaited them at
Auschwitz. Yet he was shot twenty-four hours later.
Nevertheless, your thesis that these machinations of the Nazis
served in some way to blur the distinction between torturer and
victim-a thesis which you employ to belabor the prosecution in
the Eichmann trial-seems to me wholly false and tendentious.
In the camps, human beings were systematically degraded; they
were, as you say, compelled to participate in their own extermi­
nation, and to assist in the execution of fellow prisoners. Is the
distinction between torturer and victim thereby blurred? What
perversity! We are asked, it appears, to confess that the Jews too
had their "share" in these acts of genocide. That is a typical
quaternio tenninorum.
Recently, I have been reading about a book, written during
the days of catastrophe in full consciousness of what lay ahead,
by Rabbi Moses Chaim Lau of Piotrkov. This Rabbi attempted to
define as precisely as possible what was the duty of the Jew in
such extremities. Much that I read on this moving and terrible
book-and it does not stand alone-is congruent with your
general thesis (though not with your tone) . But nowhere in your
book do you make plain how many Jews there were who acted as
they did in full consciousness of what awaited them . The Rabbi
in question went with his flock to 1�reblinka-although he had
previously called on them to run away, and his flock had called
on him to do likewise. The heroism of the Jews was not always
the heroism of the warrior; nor have we always been ashamed of
that fact. I cannot refute those who say that the Jews deserved
their fate because they did not earlier take steps to defend
themselves, because they were cowardly, etc. I came across this
argument only recently in a book by that honest Jewish
anti-Semite, Kurt Tucholsky. I cannot express myself, of course,
with Kurt Tucholsky' s eloquence, but I cannot deny that he was
right: if all the Jews had run away-in particular, to Palestine-
 ON EICHMANN
more Jews would have remained alive. Whether, in view of the
special circumstances of Jewish history and Jewish life, that
would have been possible, and whether it implies a historical
share of guilt in Hitler's crime, is another question.

I shall say nothing concerning that other central question of your

book : the guilt, or the degree of guilt, of Adolf Eichmann. I have
read both the text of the judgment delivered by the Court, and
the version you substituted for it in your book. I find that of the
Court rather more convincing. Your judgment appears to me to
be based on a prodigious non seq uitur. Your argument would
apply equally to those hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions,
of human beings, to whom your final sentence is relevant. It is the
final sentence that contains the reason why Eichmann ought to
be hanged, for in the remainder of the text you argue in detail
your view-which I do not share-that the prosecution did not
succeed in proving what it had set out to prove. As far as that
goes, I may mention that, in addition to putting my name to a
letter to the President of Israel pleading for the execution not to
be carried out, I set out in a Hebrew essay why I held the
execution of the sentence-which Eichmann had in every sense,
including that of the prosecution, deserved-to be historically
wrong, precisely because of our historical relationship with the
German people. I shall not argue the case again here. I wish to
say only that your description of Eichmann as a "convert to
Zionism' ' could come only from somebody who had a profound
dislike of everything to do with Zionism . These passages in your
book I find quite impossible to take seriously. They amount to a
mockery of Zionism ; and I am forced to the conclusion that this
was, indeed, your intention. Let us not pursue the point.
After reading your book, I remain unconvinced by your thesis
concerning the "banality of evil"-a thesis which, if your subtitle
is to be believed, underlies your entire argument. This new thesis
strikes me as a catchword: it does not impress me, certainly, as
the product of profound analysis-an analysis such as you gave us
so convincingly, in the service of a quite different, indeed
contradictory thesis, in your book on totalitarianism. At that time
you had not yet made your discovery, apparently, that evil is
banal. Of that ('radical evil," to which your then analysis bore
3 06 ON JEWS AND JUDAISM I N C RISIS
such eloquent and erudite witness, nothing remains but this
slogan-to be more than that it would have to be investigated, at
a serious level, as a relevant concept in moral philosophy or
political ethics. I am sorry-and I say this, I think, in candor and
in no spirit of enmity-that I am unable to take the thesis of your
book more seriously. With your earlier book in mind, I had
expected something different.
G ERSHOM ScHOLEM