Lurianic Kabbalah – the teachings of Rabbi Isaac Luria of Safed in the sixteenth century – on the notions of good and evil, and concluded that, in order to achieve redemption in times of exile and catastrophe, the messiah and his followers are commanded to transgress prevailing norms and laws, to commit evil deeds, overturning divine law and religious commandments. The original Hebrew text discusses such transgressions in detail – from moral crimes to forbidden sexual acts and religious blasphemies, culminating in apostasy: Sabbatai Sevi converted to Islam, Jacob Frank to Christianity. The followers of both, however, retained their Jewish faith beneath the ostensive practice of their newly acquired religions as crypto-Jews, forever the subject of suspicion and aversion. But the need to transgress the given law, to challenge predominant morality for the sake of true redemption and liberation, was the main motif of Scholem’s own modern rendering of the Sabbatian and Frankist doctrines. This was the subject of Scholem’s conversations in New York with Theodor and Gretel Adorno, attended by Max Horkheimer, who, as noted above, feared that such scholarship might only affirm certain anti-Semitic prejudices (the year was 1938), and he was “seriously concerned about the prospect of more of this kind actually appearing in print.” Adorno himself, however, must have been better able to relate to Scholem’s theory, in particular to its disobedient, anti-normative, and anti-authoritarian – one might also suggest: anarchist – elements. Additionally, Scholem’s historical reading of heretical messianism emphasized the materialistic, social, and psychological aspects of such soteriological theories. Rather than explaining them from a merely theological point of view, Scholem offered an interpretation that analyzed the heretical mysticism of the Sabbatian and Frankist movements – as well as Lurianic Kabbalah in which they originated – as giving expression to the material, social, and psychological needs of the exiled Jewish communities. Later on, in his autobiography From Berlin to Jerusalem, he in fact referred to Adorno and the Frankfurt School as a latter-day incarnation of such heretical sects.19
Nevertheless, whereas the personal meetings transformed Scholem’s perception of Adorno, enabling him to transcend his initially skeptical premises and suspicions, Adorno, for his part, experienced this encounter as more complex. Along with his fascination for Scholem’s anarchist mystical theories and his respect for the latter’s erudition in both German philosophy and Jewish history, Adorno was also somewhat perplexed by his theological – one might add, arguably, political-theological – worldview. Specifically, as he noted in his report to Benjamin, Adorno was definitely uneasy about Scholem’s heavyhanded effort to advance the theological element in Benjamin’s – and in his own – thought. Scholem, Adorno suspected, claimed authority not only over Benjamin’s thought, which conspicuously merged theology with materialism, but also over Adorno’s own philosophy, in which – despite numerous theological references and metaphors – theology ultimately plays a rather marginal role.
Such proximities of interest and differences of perspective did, however, allow Adorno and Scholem to establish a fruitful and profound dialogue. At the same time, it is important to note that their differences and dissensions were initially expressed only covertly, mainly in letters to Benjamin. After Benjamin’s death, they were transmuted into a less tangible, underlying tenor of the exchange. As the correspondence shows, these differences were not detrimental to their relationship but contributed, rather, to the sensitive and nuanced communication. They added an underlying facet of irony that continuously conceals but never eliminates the discrepancies. Precisely because of these proximities and differences, much is left unsaid in the correspondence. What the authors agree on is assumed as a given; what they disagree about is softened in order to avoid confrontations. Although continuously kept at bay, however, the tensions – interpersonal and, more substantially, theoretical, conceptual, and perspectival – are hard to overlook. The correspondence therefore requires a form of active reading between the lines, of filling in the gaps with information available through other sources. What the authors write to each other gains an additional dimension once it is read in the light of their exchanges with Benjamin and others, as well as their published and unpublished writings.
Benjamin’s suicide in 1940 – which took place when he was attempting to escape the Nazi occupation of France but was turned back at the French border in Port-Bou, Spain – deeply affected his two close friends. Their correspondence, which began a year before Benjamin’s death, grew more intense as they shared reports about his precarious situation, and their concerns about his fate became grave. After his death, their recently forged friendship was strengthened by their mutual efforts to preserve Benjamin’s legacy. Adorno and Scholem joined forces in the project of editing and publishing Benjamin’s writings and letters. Although not completely unknown, Benjamin’s work eluded widespread public attention during his lifetime. His numerous newspaper articles and literary reviews, along with the four books he published between 1920 and 1928 (with an annotated edition of letters written by German intellectuals, entitled Deutsche Menschen [German men and women], in 1936), could not have guaranteed him the reputation he enjoyed in the succeeding decades. This reputation is entirely indebted to his friends’ efforts – against all odds and in the face of countless obstacles. The correspondence provides extensive evidence of the struggles Adorno and Scholem undertook to establish Walter Benjamin as the outstanding seminal figure of modern European thought that he has meanwhile become. Readers familiar with Benjamin’s work may find it surprising to discover in the correspondence that, without Adorno and Scholem’s monumental efforts and harsh struggles, Benjamin’s writings – and his status as an intellectual figure – would most likely have been doomed to oblivion. It is perhaps no exaggeration to suggest that Walter Benjamin as we know him today, as a writer, philosopher, and cultural critic, is, to a certain degree, a “product,” a “creation” fashioned by his two close friends. Not only did Adorno and Scholem struggle to bring Benjamin’s writing into the light of the public, they were also concerned with each and every detail of the way Benjamin – both the man and his work – would be received and perceived. As editors of the first publication of his collected writings, they made careful choices as to which texts to include and how to present them, bringing to the fore those writings that they considered significant and representative of his thought and omitting those that they would rather not have seen published. In any event, this was the harsh critique leveled at the two editors following the publications of Benjamin’s collected writings and correspondence. They were charged with manipulating the content and the reception of his work, reclaiming his thought as either too Marxist or too theological. Wherever one falls with respect to these accusations, the correspondence between Adorno and Scholem shows that their editorial work, and their efforts to establish Benjamin’s intellectual legacy, involved substantial theoretical and practical debates on how to decipher, interpret, and present his thought.
In 1950, Adorno published Benjamin’s Berlin Childhood around 1900, a collection of literary, autobiographical aphorisms, which Benjamin intended, without success, to publish in book form. (Some of these aphorisms were published in journals, most of them pseudonymously).20 Adorno edited the book based on the manuscript he had previously received from Benjamin and on their earlier conversations. He also wrote an afterword, which he did not sign. The volume was published by the newly established Suhrkamp Verlag, as the second title in its prestigious series Bibliothek Suhrkamp. It was a colossal commercial failure.21 A first collection of Benjamin’s writings, under the modest title Schriften [Writings], was published a few years later, edited by Gretel and Theodor Adorno, together with Friedrich Podszus, the editor for Suhrkamp. They were substantially assisted by Scholem, who, as Adorno writes in the introduction (this time signed with his name), “provided the manuscripts of the early writings and altogether contributed to the realization of the project with his advisory participation.”22 The two-volume edition was published in 1955, making Benjamin’s work available to a broader audience for the first time. In the following years, Adorno collaborated with Scholem on an edited collection of Benjamin’s letters. Published in 1966, the collection received significant attention and led to a wide-ranging discussion of Benjamin’s life and work. Whereas Benjamin’s early writings had received hardly any attention, and the publisher – reluctant to avoid another unmarketable Benjamin volume – balked even at the idea of a volume collecting his letters, the response to this publication was spectacular. In fact, the debates on Benjamin’s legacy were so intense
