Gershom Scholem

A brilliant mathematics scholar, Gershom Scholem scandalized his professors and family by deciding to devote himself to the study of Hebrew and Jewish mysticism, the Kabbalah. Schocken met the 21 year old Scholem in 1918. Schocken was highly impressed by the young student’s brilliance and audacity. He began meeting Scholem in his home, and started supporting him. The patronage continued after Scholem’s move to Jerusalem in 1923, where he eventually became professor at the Hebrew University and director of the Schocken Institute of Jewish Mysticism.

In 1933 Schocken gave Scholem a long-term contract to produce the definitive history of Jewish mysticism. This eventually led to Scholem’s 1943 magnum opus Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, published by Schocken’s publishing house in New York. The philosopher Hannah Arendt called the book “a striking study of the role of mysticism in man’s search for meaning in life, and in Jewish existence in particular.”

Schocken was very fond of Scholem. He financed Scholem’s research trips, gave stipends to his graduate students, and bought rare, centuries-old manuscripts needed for his research. In 1940, Schocken said in a lecture that if there was “one man on earth he envied” it was Scholem – his path through life, his character, and his work. In 1981, the German government awarded Scholem the Pour le Mérite, Germany’s highest civilian distinction.

The Institute for Jewish Mysticism

In 1939, just as the Nazis plunged the world into World War II, Schocken founded the Institute for Jewish Mysticism in Jerusalem. Headed by Prof. Gershom Scholem and housed within the Schocken Library in Jerusalem, the institute produced research that was later published by Schocken’s publishing houses and in the cultural supplement of his Haaretz newspaper. In Scholem’s words, Schocken funded the Institute in order to “produce genius.” The Institute advanced the work of young scholars such as Chaim Wirszubski, Isaiah Tishby, and Joseph Weiss. Tishby, among the best-known researchers to benefit from this affiliation, used his years at the Institute to lay the groundwork for his Zohar Anthologies (Mishnat ha-Zohar, 1949 – 60).