Gershom Scholem

5 De–21 F

Gershom Scholem was born in Berlin, the son of a printer. His interest in Judaica was opposed by his father, but his mother intervened and he was allowed to study Hebrew and the Talmud with an Orthodox rabbi. He studied mathematics, philosophy, and Hebrew at the University of Berlin. In 1918 in Bern he met Elsa Burchkardt who became his first wife. He returned to Germany in 1919 and received a degree in semitic languages at the University of Munich. He wrote his doctoral thesis on the oldest known kabbalistic text, Sefer ha-Bahir. In 1923 he emigrated to the British Mandate of Palestine (now Israel), devoted himself to Jewish mysticism and became a librarian, and then head of the Department of Hebrew and Judaica at the National Library. He went on to become a lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He taught the Kabbalah and mysticism from a scientific point of view, and became the first professor of Jewish mysticism at the university in 1933, remaining in this post until his retirement in 1965, when he became an emeritus professor. In 1936, he married his second wife, Fania Freud. His best-known work is his collection of lectures, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (1941). He is widely regarded as the founder of the modern, academic study of Kabbalah. He died in Jerusalem in 1982.

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