Correspondence, 1939 - 1969. Gershom Scholem
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In addition – and not unrelated – to their scholarly interests, the experience of the Holocaust and the analysis of its meaning played a significant role in Adorno’s and Scholem’s thought and writings, though with divergent emphases and implications. For Adorno, the Holocaust marked the line of demarcation, after which it becomes impossible to continue adhering to any theory of meaning that does not take into metaphysical, philosophical consideration the historical events of the destruction. For Scholem, however, the Holocaust does not mark any line of demarcation at all: he viewed it as the radical but imminent result of a long process of Jewish assimilation, self-oblivion, and loss of agency. It is nevertheless remarkable that, despite – or perhaps because of – the radical impact of these events on the life of both authors (Scholem’s brother Werner, a communist politician in the Weimar Republic, was deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp in 1938 and executed by the Nazis in 1940), their letters do not include an assessment or an interpretation of the meaning of the Holocaust, personally, historically, or ideologically. This, too, remains a decisive underlying facet of their exchange. In the post-war years, one of the central questions in their published writings, as much as in their private correspondence, concerns their relation to Germany and the possibility of a German-Jewish dialogue. Here, the biographical differences could not be more conspicuous. On behalf of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Scholem traveled to Europe in the post-war years to examine the situation of Jewish books and manuscripts that were either looted by the Nazis or left behind by their persecuted, and in most cases exterminated, owners. His first journey took place in 1946, as part of a two-man delegation alongside Avraham Yaari of the National Library in Jerusalem. Their expedition included cities that were centers of Jewish life and culture before the war, which were subsequently covered in debris and destruction. Beginning their journey in London and Paris, Scholem and Yaari traveled to Zurich, Prague, Frankfurt, Offenbach, Heidelberg, Munich, and Berlin. Scholem was devasted by the situation he faced in Europe. For one thing, he felt that it was impossible for him to accomplish the task he was assigned. He was deeply disappointed by the failure to find many of the manuscripts he was seeking and by the disarray of the depots housing the books whose original owners could not be identified. He was also dismayed by the unwillingness of the personalities responsible for the materials to allow for their transfer to the National Library in Jerusalem, which he had hoped to arrange. However, beyond the professional discontent and frustration, it was the humanitarian situation of the survivors that most appalled him. The visits to destroyed synagogues and communities, and to camps of displaced persons, left Scholem with a most distressing impression – not only on account of the concrete situation of the survivors but also concerning the very idea of the possibility of Jewish life in Germany. The visit had a long-lasting negative effect on Scholem’s psyche, and it also seems to have affected his overall health. It took him a long time to recover, and some argue that he never fully recovered from the trauma of the visit. His wife Fania wrote of his personal situation after his return from the journey:
He returned to the Land of Israel physically exhausted and mentally depressed. He would lie down for most of the day, doing nothing, hardly speaking with anyone, and only occasionally repeat sentences like: “The Jewish people has been murdered, has ceased to exist, only smoldering stumps are left, with no strength or direction. Their source of nourishment no longer exists, the people has been cut off at the root. And we in Israel, a handful of people, the remnant (sheerit hapletah), will we really find the strength to build the creative, free society, not materialistic, for the sake of whose formation we came here? Maybe we won’t succeed in the task and we will degenerate, because we are bereft of our nation, we are orphaned.” He was prostrate on his bed, going from couch to couch in his house, without finding repose for himself. Scholem refused to be consoled and he only became himself again and recovered a year later.44
In the years that followed, Scholem was increasingly involved in debates on German-Jewish relations. Consistent with his position from the 1920s and 1930s, but with an added dimension of bitter disillusionment, he was critical and dismissive of the very idea of a “German-Jewish dialogue.” That is, he was not only critical of the possibility of renewing and preserving such a dialogue after the Holocaust, but he was profoundly skeptical of the very thought that such a dialogue had ever existed. In 1964, he wrote explicitly,
I deny that there has ever been such a German-Jewish dialogue in any genuine sense whatsoever, i.e., as a historical phenomenon. It takes two to have a dialogue, who listen to each 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 200 years. This dialogue died at its very start and never took place.45
Scholem maintained this argument over various discussions and publications in the post-war years. For a long time after his journey in search of the lost and looted libraries, he avoided further visits to Germany, and refrained particularly from any public appearances. This applied, however, specifically to Germany. In fact, the situation proved to be rather complex, since Scholem increasingly discovered that the main audience for his developing scholarship could not be limited to the Hebrew University or, for that matter, to the newly established State of Israel. Remarkably, only a few years after the end of the Second World War, and only one year after the establishment of the State of Israel, where Scholem had been one of the leading academic figures, he gradually – intentionally or not, consciously or not – transferred the centerpiece of his scholarly activities to Europe – not to Germany, but to Switzerland, and indeed to the German language. Beginning in 1949, he delivered most, if not all, of his substantial work at the Eranos conferences in Ascona and published it in German in the Eranos- Yearbook. Despite his own objections and against all odds, Scholem practically returned after the war to his native German culture, motivated by both pragmatic reasons of potential readership and publication context and by a certain disillusionment with the Zionist project he so eagerly pursued earlier in his life.46
Despite his gradual return to his native language and to European intellectual surroundings, Scholem nevertheless refused to speak publicly in Germany and to publish his German writings with a German publisher. In 1953 he wrote to Adorno that he deemed it impossible to speak in Germany after the war.47 Three years later, Adorno informed Scholem of newly acquired funds for the initiative to hold at the Goethe University of Frankfurt guest lectures by distinguished scholars on central topics in Judaism.48 The first speaker was Leo Baeck, in 1956. When Adorno formally invited Scholem to deliver a lecture in Frankfurt, Scholem responded: “Perhaps it is the time to speak up. I will think about it.” (In German: “Vielleicht ist es an der Zeit, mal den Mund zu öffnen. Ich denke darüber nach.” Literally: “Perhaps it is time to open the mouth. I will think about it.”) Scholem eventually agreed. He delivered the Loeb Lectures on the Kabbalah in Safed in July 1957, speaking for the first time publicly in post-war Germany.
It was also Adorno’s suggestion that motivated Scholem to publish again in Germany. Until the early 1960s, he published his German-language work with the Swiss publisher Rhein Verlag, directed by his friend Daniel Brody, which was also the publisher of the Eranos Yearbooks. Adorno personally introduced Scholem to Peter Suhrkamp, director of Suhrkamp Verlag, but Scholem initially rejected the idea of having his books of essays on Jewish mysticism published with Suhrkamp, maintaining that he was already committed to Rhein Verlag. However, a few years later, Siegfried Unseld, who replaced Peter Suhrkamp as director of Suhrkamp Verlag after the latter’s death, proposed, once again, that Scholem publish a small volume of essays to be made available to a large German readership. This time Scholem accepted the offer. His first volume of essays, entitled Judaica, appeared with Suhrkamp Verlag in 1963, followed by five additional volumes under the same title (Judaica II–VI), alongside licenced editions of previously published works with Rhein Verlag. This marked the completion of Scholem’s reluctant and critical return to Germany. Nevertheless, he did not discard his critique of the “myth of a German-Jewish dialogue,” which was the title of an essay (originally published in 1964) included in the second of the Judaica volumes in 1970, alongside other essays on German-Jewish relations and the (im)possibility of Jewish life in Germany.