Gershom Scholem Quotes on Knowledge
Gerhard, later Gershom, Scholem was a German-Israeli philosopher, historian, and the founder of the academic study of Jewish mysticism. This page collects quotes attributed to Gershom Scholem on the topic of knowledge, drawn from across the philosopher's works.
Quotes
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Attributed to Gershom Scholem:
“Kabbalah is the secret history of Judaism.”
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Attributed to Gershom Scholem:
“Tradition is not the dead repetition of the past, but its living interpretation.”
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“Ch. 1 : Religious Authority and Mysticism”
We shall start from the assumption that a mystic , insofar as he participates actively in the religious life of a community, does not act in the void. It is sometimes said, to be sure, that mystics, with their personal striving for transcendence, live outside of and above the historical level, that their experience is unrelated to historical experience. Some admire this ahistorical orientation, ot -
“Ch. 2 : The Meaning of the Torah in Jewish Mysticism”
Here I need not go into the paradoxes and mysteries of Kabbalistic theology concerned with the seflroth and their nature . But one important point must be made. The process which the Kabbalists described as the emanation of divine energy and divine light was also characterized as the unfolding of the divine language . This gives rise to a deep-seated parallelism between the two most important ki