Walter Benjamin: The Story of a Friendship

by Gershom Scholem, Lee Siegel (Introduction)

Gershom Scholem is celebrated as the twentieth century's most profound student of the Jewish mystical tradition; Walter Benjamin, as a master thinker whose extraordinary essays mix the revolutionary, the revelatory, and the esoteric. Scholem was a precocious teenager when he met Benjamin, who became his close friend and intellectual mentor. His account of that relationship--which was to remain crucial for both men--is both a celebration of his friend's spellbinding genius and a lament for the personal and intellectual self-destructiveness that culminated in Benjamin's suicide in 1940.



At once prickly and heartbroken, argumentative and loving, Walter Benjamin: The Story of a Friendship is an absorbing memoir with the complication of character and motive of a novel. As Scholem revisits the passionate engagements over Marxism and Kabbala, Europe and Palestine that he shared with Benjamin, it is as if he sought to summon up his lost friend's spirit again, to have the last word in the argument that might have saved his life.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, Philosophy, Memoir, Jewish, German Literature, History

328 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 1981

About the author

Gerhard Scholem, who, after his immigration from Germany to Israel, changed his name to Gershom Scholem (Hebrew: גרשם שלום), was a German-born Israeli philosopher and historian. He is widely regarded as the founder of the modern, academic study of Kabbalah, becoming the first Professor of Jewish Mysticism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His close friends included Walter Benjamin and Leo Strauss, and selected letters from his correspondence with those philosophers have been published.

Scholem is best known for his collection of lectures, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (1941) and for his biography Sabbatai Zevi, the Mystical Messiah (1973). His collected speeches and essays, published as On Kabbalah and its Symbolism (1965), helped to spread knowledge of Jewish mysticism among non-Jews.

Reviews

[Justin Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid enough look at Benjamin's life, obviously slanted by Scholem's wish to write a slightly different kind of hagiography than Benjamin's other hagiographers. Despite the fact that Scholem only saw Benjamin once in the very productive, final seven years of his life, he would have us believe that Walter never stopped being a theologian, and that Benjamin's Marxist language was just an attempt to make his thought palatable to other Marxist intellectuals. This isn't convincing as a statement of fact, but it is convincing as a reading of the thought: Benjamin's 'materialism' is silly, optimistic nonsense, whereas his more gnomic thought is at least interesting. Scholem's criticism of the later work is, then, valuable in itself.

As for the man, it's impressive that even with the absolute best of intentions--Scholem clearly loved Benjamin--the man himself comes off as insufferable: conceited, selfish, oblivious, and deceptive, as well as incredibly insecure, so that he constantly needed a guru to whom he could attach himself (e.g., Brecht). Intelligent, sure, and probably great company, but not the guy I'd like to have to rely on.

[Jonfaith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Obviously only part of the Benjamin Saga but it is certainly an enjoyable if tragic narrative. Reading this also brings Scholem’s correspondence with Hannah Arendt to the fore.

Synopsis: Scholem claims that Benjamin was always a god fearing Jew, potentially a Zionist and that it was only his pecuniary struggles which led him to leftist ideology. Of course Arendt and Brecht have completely different perspectives, but that’s what makes it interesting.
Again, this delineation of friendship is remarkable and the context of German Jewish life between the wars is a necessary document.

Knocking this out in Frankfurt with the Arcades Project weighing on my lap.

[Chuck LoPresti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just as the title says - the story of a friendship between two brilliant intellectuals. I had to constantly remind myself that I wasn't reading the critical opinions of Benjamin and at many times I wished I was instead. But this is no fault of Scholem - it is a shortcoming of my own. I mention this because I imagine most people interested in this book are familiar with Benjamin's writings, 'Art In The Age Of Mechanical Reproduction' at the least, and are seeking more of the stunning insight of what is in my opinion the most important critic of the 20th-C. Evidence of Benjamin's genius only exists in this work as reflected by his friend. Don't make my mistake, heed my warning and your experience might require less adjustment than mine. What you should expect is an examination of the friendship that developed though a mutual love of thought and books - something most readers will find easy to appreciate. There is enough biographical detail to keep Benjamin scholars engaged and I've come to a much more comprehensive understanding of Benjamin, the man not the thinker, though his exchanges with Scholem. So while this book lacks the epiphany attentive and prepared scholars will receive when reading Benjamin - it does contain a compelling story of a friendship. There is little joy here - Benjamin was horribly "unlucky" and most that know about him - know how his life ended. Scholem writes about his friend with respect and skill, add another charming Kitaj painting to the deal and you get what you've paid for. To me - you can't re-read Benjamin enough and that's exactly what I'll do next - any man that appreciates Ensor, Leskov, Walser and Klee is worth knowing more about.

[Andrew]

I so wanted to like this. I so wanted to hear about the intellectual debates and adventures of life in Weimar-era Berlin, about Walter Benjamin and his habits. What I got was Gershom Scholem trying to shoehorn Benjamin's thought into this mystical framework. The mysticism, together with the almost fanatical Zionism of Scholem's perspective (almost as if he was blaming Benjamin's death on his desire to remain in Europe... although that could be me overreaching as a reader), together with Scholem's kind of shitty storytelling skills, made this a real disappointment.

[david · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ringside seats to two great twentieth century minds.

A friendly tussle of words and perspectives.

Just great.

A privilege to become a spectator.

[Maurizio Manco · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Bene, io tocco un estremo. Un naufrago alla deriva su un relitto e che si arrampica sulla cima dell'albero ormai fradicio. Ma di lassù egli ha la possibilità di dare un segnale che lo può salvare." -Walter Benjamin, lettera a Gershom Sholem, 17 aprile 1931 (cit. a p. 361)

[Antônio Xerxenesky · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interessante e frustrante na mesma medida. Apenas para fãs de Benjamin e do caráter mais místico de Benjamin. É como se WB estivesse cindido entre duas pulsões - de um lado, a secularização do mundo, promovido pelo marxismo à moda de Frankfurt; de outro, o messianismo judaico, puxado pelo Scholem. Boa parte da frustração expressa por GS no livro é que o WB não adere tanto quanto ele gostaria aos estudos cabalísticos. Para uma visão mais ponderada de Benjamin, vale recorrer a Michael Lowy.

[M. Sarki · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyed this book even within my difficulty in understanding and my lack of experience and knowledge regarding Judaism and the European experience between the world wars and the journey up to the beginning of another war to end all wars. Gershom Scholem was an engaging writer who did have an understanding few others may have regarding the historical events happening in his, and Benjamin's, lifetime. I believe after reading this book that Gershom was fair in his assessments and the relationship he had with Walter Benjamin. This is a beautiful edition (1981) and I am glad I read it.

[Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gershom Scholem’s project to know and claim Benjamin as truly mystical seduced by a non-Jewish trend of enlightenment is as obnoxious as those who attempt to deny Benjamin’s profoundly religious character in favour of claiming him solely as a secular prophet of Marxism but there’s something that stings about it too.

Scholem’s friendship is destructive, he wishes to insist on the otherworldliness or unknowability of Benjamin as an object of knowledge while turning him into a fetish for his project of spiritual Zionism. He unfairly weaponises his friend into a tool of his own bourgeois solipsism by turning his radical Jewish non-Jewishness (per Deutscher) into an indictment of the attempts of Jews to live with the world and not against it. His friendship is a friendship in bad faith, his love is real but it is a love of bad faith. He hears the call to keep his brother but does not head the responsibility of keeping the realness of his brother instead of maintaining a self-serving truth process.

A distinction can be made between true and real friendships where true friendship is dogged by a solipsistic narcissism that disallows the realness of the friended object as an object in itself with its own subjectivity. Real friendship in comparison would thus, at the very least, be a dialogical process between two objects that permit the non-equivalence between the friend as a sensuous object and friend as a real object. The impossibility of truly knowing someone is not a tragedy itself but the drive of the social instinct in resolving the distance between objects. Scholem was certainly a true friend to Benjamin but given this biography of Benjamin as his sensuous object, I cannot say he was a real one.

If anything, this book serves as a damning self-testimony against Scholem as he accidentally tells on himself, reinscribing the story of Cain and Abel in the milieu of the 19th century central European literary-academic scene. He seems to have resented Benjamin’s continual worldly mysticism yearning to have him lost in the same chauvinistic scholastic delirium. At every point, he refuses to truly entertain Benjamin's Marxism reducing and dismissing it with an undeniably bourgeois self-satisfaction. Between Brecht and Scholem is it any wonder that suicide was the only mode of offering to the world he was left with? Scholem could never hope to match the gift of the Benjaminian fire alarm as a radical rupture, a surgical incision to begin the healing of the world, so in jealousy of Benjamin's proximity to the divine he murders Benjamin the real object of history to leave in its place Benjamin his foolish friend who just needed to shut up, be a good little bourgeois mystic and emigrate to Palastine.

[G · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un libro brillante acerca de una amistad compleja. Walter Benjamin y Gershom Scholem fueron amigos íntimos desde su juventud temprana hasta el anunciado suicidio de Benjamin ocurrido en 1940. Estas memorias de Scholem son una crónica de esa amistad, por lo cual este libro es una doble biografía, la de ambos. Scholem narra sus impresiones, experiencias y opiniones sobre Benjamin mientras se explora a sí mismo en la imagen que Benjamin le devuelve. Queda claro en estas memorias que el centro del pensamiento de Scholem era la mística judía y las matemáticas. El centro intelectual de Benjamin, en cambio, era la literatura, en particular en su relación con el pensamiento judío y el materialismo dialéctico. Este último, sin embargo, se desarrolló durante la última década de vida de Benjamin. Parece que Benjamin era muy sensible, pero dinámico, enérgico. Quizás la fuerte influencia de Scholem lo llevó a una visión mística de la literatura. Luego, una fascinación posiblemente erótica por Asja Lacis -revolucionaria rusa de profesión como dice en su autobiografía- lo arrastró hacia un marxismo que Scholem describe como forzado. Opino que este libro es inquietante. El lector atento, benjaminiano, creo que no puede dejar de percibir alguna molestia en los comentarios epistolares de Scholem sobre el suicidio anunciado por el mismo Benjamin. En mi opinión, Scholem priorizó la doctrina, la intelectualidad cuando su tarea como amigo era otra: ayudar a Benjamin -sensible y deprimido- en lugar de aceptar sus anuncios de autodestrucción. Creo que Scholem ha sido para Benjamin como una anti-Brod para Kafka. En cualquier caso, el libro es sumamente interesante. Sus relatos nos acercan a la persona de Benjamin, quizás el mayor crítico de su tiempo, un pensador que nos ilumina aún hoy para comprender mejor la cultura en general, la política, la historia, el arte y, en particular, la literatura. Opino que se trata de una lectura muy recomendable junto con los libros de Walter Benjamin, todos sus libros. Su refinada sensibilidad creo que se muestra con claridad en libros como Calle de Mano Única, Infancia en Berlín y Diario de Moscú.

[Kerry Pickens · Rating 4 out of 5]

Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem were German Jewish intellectuals who met in college and continued their friendship until Benjamin’s death. Scholem wrote this book about their relationship because he didn’t feel that a proper portrait of his friend had been written, and to dispute accounts that Benjamin was not as religious as other people portrayed him (namely Hannah Arendt). Scholem, who had left Europe for Israel in 1923, had set up a meeting between Walter Benjamin and Judah Leon Magnes, chancellor of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Magnes was impressed with Benjamin and offered him a position at the university with some conditions. Magnes wanted to read some of Benjamin’s published work and he wanted Benjamin to study Hebrew. Magnes provided funding for the Hebrew studies to Benjamin. Scholem was already working as a professor of Jewish mysticism (Kabbalah) at the university. What transpired was Benjamin kept saying he was going to follow through with the job offer and never did. Benjamin ended up going to the French/Spanish border after France was invaded by the Nazis. He had Portuguese papers of transit but the Spanish guards would not let him enter Spain, and were going to turn him over to French police who would give him to the Nazis. Benjamin committed suicide the next day rather than face the French police. It’s a tragic story for such a prominent writer and intellectual. Due to Benjamin’s inability to follow through with tasks, he only published three books during his lifetime and lived in poverty. His fellow writers including Brecht helped support him, and the majority of his work was either lost or published after his death by his friends. After reading Scholem’s account of Benjamin’s behavior it made me wonder if Benjamin was on the autistic spectrum. His wife Dora believed Benjamin was obsessive compulsive and autism was yet to be diagnosed by Dr Asperger, a Nazi physician.

[Cherry Rasnic]

Meandering, dilute, but delights like an daytime drink with an old acquaintance. The same intricacy which is tedious when Scholem gets bogged into intellectual drama that has not remained relevant becomes a hidden delight when he gives his hot takes on names an educated reader does recognize.

I love Benjamin so much and desperately feel the profound lost potential. There were so many opportunities for him to become something beyond what he became, so many opportunities for him to escape the slowly closing jaws. Mostly I'm reading this to feel closer to Walter Benjamin, and I think it accomplishes that. I'm somehow comforted by the chain of niche intellectual figures which passes through me to 1930s Berlin and back to all the now-obscure names that fascinated Bemjamin and his colleagues. Maybe all the little figures in my life will be parasocially imagined by 22nd century nerds.

I'm surprised by how little sentiment comes across from Scholem in recounting the sure march towards the end. I guess I'm left feeling a little empty and alienated from the subjects of the memoir. Much like Scholem, I guess. I can't imagine what it must have been like to witness Benjamin's internal decline from afar, basically completely powerless. I wish more of Scholem's heart made it into words, but I feel wrong putting demands like that on the text. Maybe I just can't really understand male friendship. Maybe I just can't really understand the Shoah.

I hope I know a scholem or two.

[Stephen Durrant · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rereading Walter Benjamin's challenging essay "The Task of a Translator" and, at about the same time, passing near Portbou, Spain where he committed suicide in 1940, somehow inspired me to read this book, written by the distinguished scholar of Jewish mysticism, Gershom Scholem. I found it both interesting and mildly disappointing. Interesting because it gives some idea of the rich cast of characters in the Jewish-German intellectual world of the 1920s and 1930s--that is, a world on the edge of unimaginable tragedy. The book disappointed me in that Scholem, who was near the center of that world, at least until he moved to Jerusalem, gives little detail about the major intellectual issues to which he alludes. That is, plenty of names appear and alliances between various scholars are noted, but relatively little texture is provided. Such a weakness, I suspect, arises because of the long years between the events described and the time, late in his career, when Scholem penned this book. But there is, perhaps another reason, and that is Scholem's almost obsessive engagement with one particular argument: his contention that Benjamin, his good friend, was really in the tradition of Jewish mystics and was only a latecomer to the world of Marxism, which Benjamin never really integrated successfully into a convincing intellectual position. I am certainly in no position to judge whether Scholem is correct or not, but surely, as a Jewish mystic himself, he certainly would wish that his friend was one too, and not primarily a Marxist, for which Scholem had little sympathy.

[Leyland · Rating 3 out of 5]

A beautiful and engrossing portrait of one of the most interesting figures and thinkers in the interwar period, not to mention appearances of people like Brecht, Arendt, and Adorno. The gang is really all here.

I wanted to read this more as a primer to get myself used to Scholem’s voice to better understand his writings on Kabbalah, and was blown away by how good the translation was here. While the book itself, especially in the early goings as Scholem and Benjamin get their feet under them intellectually, gets incredibly bogged down in references to titles and authors, it opens up as time passes.

Since it’s of those books where the author is obviously well read and deeply knowledgeable about what he’s writing about, you can’t help but read into the whole thing the tragic end of Benjamin’s life, and the impact that he had on Scholem himself. You also can’t help but notice the sheer amount and beauty of Jewish thought and contribution to German culture, just tossed aside by the Third Reich.

[Michael Joe Armijo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this while watching the 2023 Netflix mini series, TRANSATLANTIC, Walter Benjamin is featured during the last years of his life.

I was attracted by this book because of the title, THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP. It is written by Gershom Scholem who befriended Walter Benjamin. Both were writers and both weee born in Berlin. Benjamin died in Portbou, Spain from suicide at age 48 while Scholem died in Jerusalem, Israel at age 84.

I found the story boring in parts (which explains the 3-stars rating), sad and yet uplifting when you realize the amass of letters they exchanged without seeing one another for years at a time.

If these intellectual men were alive today they’d clearly be my elders. I’m fortunate to have read this story as I have learned from both of them posthumously. There were times where I felt in some regard that I was very much like the two of them.

It was a special friendship and if I had not read it all I would not have taken these wonderful words from it:

HERMENEUTICS: The branch of knowledge that deals with interpretation

He had a large, very respectable room with many books, which struck me as a philosopher’s den.

Associating with Benjamin was fraught with three difficult requirements:
-respect for solitude
-his utter aversion to discussing the political events of the day and occurrences of war
-that overlooking of his secretiveness (it was in keeping with this aversion that he tried to keep his acquaintances separate.

Another thing that was striking about him was his extraordinary sensitivity to noise, which he often referred to as his “noise psychosis”. It really could disturb him. Once he wrote to me: “Do other people manage to have peace and quiet? I’d like to know the answer to that.”

Benjamin said he was still not sure what the purpose of philosophy was, as there was no need to discover “the meaning of the world”.

The word SOMEHOW is the stamp of ‘a point of view in-the-making’.

Benjamin’s wife, Dora, recognized the supremacy of the religious sphere of revelation (and for her this was still tantamount to the acceptance of the Ten Commandments as an absolute value in the moral world).

Benjamin stubbornly expounded that there was no such thing as unhappy love (a thesis that was so decisively refuted by the course of his own life).

Benjamin recommended many books to Gershom:

VATHEK by William Beckford
REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE by George Sorel
ADRIENNE MESURAT by Julien Green (I, personally, already ordered this French novel)

Moses Marx shared with Benjamin the passion of book collecting.

“…in order to understand the Kabbalah, nowadays one has to read Franz Karla’s writings first, particularly THE TRIAL.

Johann Andreas Eisenmenger’s book, JUDAISM UNMASKED, is the most scholarly anti-Semitic work in the German language, published in two fat volumes in 1701.

PARIS captured a firm place in his heart; he spent the major part of 1926 there, felt a lively attraction to the city and returned to it whenever possible. His professional obligations, however, repeatedly required prolonged sojourns in Berlin and his letters from there bear the mark of unrest, while those from Paris are much more relaxed and even cheerful.

At present I am virtually alone and in two weeks’ time I shall be absolutely so.

Benjamin admired the actor, Adolphe Menjou, and automatically went to every film he appeared in.

Something that remained astonishing in his life was his capacity for concentration, his openness to intellectual matters, and the harmoniousness of style in his letters. There was in him a store of profound serenity.

“To me it is far more important to know where you really are than where you hope to go someday, for the way your life is constituted it is certain that you, more than anyone else, will always wind up some other place than where you wanted to get.” —Scholem

If you knew the amount of debts I have had to pay in recent months, you could not help having considerable respect for the negative of my financial portrait.—Benjamin

The Third Reich is a train that does not leave until everyone is on board. —Benjamin

“He had an enchanting laugh; when he laughed, a whole world opened up.” —Olga Parem aka Ola, a German-Russian woman who spent time with Walter Benjamin on the island of Ibiza

I am more inclined to assume that one day this relationship will come to an end just as suddenly as it started.—Scholem wrote to Benjamin 3/30/1931

As the Spanish Jews used to say, what time can accomplish, reason can too.

Scholem wrote to Benjamin May 6, 1931:

“…stand by your genius.
Self-deception can lead too easily to suicide.
You are endangered more by your desire for community (even if it be the apocalyptic community of the revolution) than by the horror of loneliness that speaks from so many of your writings.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book is fascinating, sometimes a little unintentionally comic, account not just of this often asymmetric friendship, but also of a critical period of Jewish history, Zionism, and the different approaches to it that Scholem and Benjamin expressed, often to their mutual frustration.

Worth it alone for the notion of *flüchtig hingemachte Männer*:

"Among the books he [Benjamin] read in connection with this seminar was Daniel Paul Schreber's Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken [Memoirs of a neuropath], which appealed to him far more than Freud's essay on it. He also induced me to read Schreber's book, which contained very impressive and pregnant formulations. From a salient passage in this book Benjamin derived the designation "flüchtig hingemachte Männer" [hastily put-up men]. Schreber, who at the height of his paranoia believed for a time that the world had been destroyed by "rays" hostile to him, gave this as an anaswer when it was pointed out to him that the doctors, patients, and employees of the insane asylum obviously existed."

[Eduardo Vara · Rating 4 out of 5]

La biografía de Gershom Scholem sobre Walter Benjamin es, en efecto y ante todo, la historia de una amistad. Un vínculo afectivo que surgió de una admiración intelectual mutua, pero que vivió todo tipo de altibajos mientras ambos desarrollaban sus respectivas carreras y Europa se encaminaba hacia la Segunda Guerra Mundial con la 'cuestión judía' de por medio. Oscilando hasta el último momento entre el misticismo y el marxismo y mucho más impetuoso que Scholem, Benjamin tuvo una vida mucho menos estable que, pese a todo, no le impidió escribir grandes textos de crítica literaria sobre Kafka o Baudelaire o cultivar amistades con importantes figuras de su época como Bertolt Brecht, Hannah Arendt o el propio Scholem, especialista en Cábala judía.

Si algo demuestra este texto es que la verdadera amistad, la que se basa en una admiración personal profunda, resiste al paso de tiempo y perdura pese a la distancia geográfica e, incluso, al distanciamiento ideológico de quienes, tiempo atrás, mantuvieron una armónica sintonía.

[Molsa Roja(s) · Rating 5 out of 5]

És gloriós; Scholem no es limita a explicar les funestes peripècies de Benjamin al llarg dels anys, sinó que de retruc explica una època, un zeitgeist, com a espectador de luxe que era en l'ominosa seguretat de la Palestina pre-Nakba. Per a qualsevol persona interessada en Walter Benjamin, aquest relat li resultarà tant senzill com ric per tal de construir-se una imatge més acurada del filòsof a partir de la mirada amorosa però estricta del seu millor company, Scholem.

«Una filosofía que no es capaz de incluir y explicar la posibilidad de adivinar el futuro a partir de los posos de café, no puede ser una filosofía auténtica»

"Un náufrago a la deriva sobre los restos del naufragio, mientras trepa hasta la punta del mástil que ya se hunde. Pero le queda la posibilidad de lanzar desde allí una señal para su rescate."

[Jee Koh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Respectful and loving, but by no means hagiographic. For Scholem, Benjamin was a mystic, even when he was a materialist. The little I've read of Benjamin suggests that Scholem is right. Scholem takes pains in his biography to list Benjamin's intellectual influences and contacts, the people and the books. Benjamin saw in Scholem "living Judaism."Scholem supported the idea that Benjamin committed suicide.

[Yusuf Hacking · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm glad to have read it, because I really wanted to learn more about Walter Benjamin and this book certainly accomplishes that. I'm not sure how well it is written by itself, though. Lots and lots of names mentioned; maybe I just don't have the context, but it was too easy to just glaze over those. Overall, though, I was glad to really see what this time in Europe was like, especially for Jews. Nice read.

[Gilles Russeil · Rating 3 out of 5]

Deux intellectuels juifs allemands nés à la fin du XIXe siècle qui se rencontrent, s'admirent, s'enrichissent, s'opposent, s'écrivent. Le portrait de Benjamin est d'une richesse et d'une grande émotion.

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Benjamin seems the brighter of the two. But this gives a really good insight into these guys intellectual viewpoints.

[Juan Fuentes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Es un libro que hará las delicias de los estudiosos porque la documentación es impecable. A mí que soy simplemente un curioso me ha sobrado información, hubiera preferido algo más divulgativo.

[Hu Sang · Rating 3 out of 5]

Scholem is not a good friend, he can't understand Walter Benjamin's complex inner world.

[Wyatt Browdy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Time to write about this

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was disappointed in this book because I didn't learn much about Benjamin.

[Dionysius the Areopagite]

This book is a blessing and a curse; the number of texts cited in the first part or two alone will be a tremendous chronology, indispensable to even the most ardent bibliophile. I am more interested in Walter Benjamin than Zionism. There, I said it. No, I am not some maniac on Youtube or the author of 'Conspiratorial' books. A problem is a problem. No longer shall I say that one people's problem is more important than the others'. Do not tell me that you know G-d, are chosen by Him, or that you know precisely what happens through death, which no honest human being can claim to knowledge thereof. No living man can advise another on death unless he is insane. Political Religion is insane. I will always love Walter Benjamin, and yes, I will work with my Kabbalah in life, revisit the Torah. But the Talmud has got to go. Its results are too disgusting. I would apologize to the Masons and Rabbis in attendance, but fear not; I am no longer sorry. I have had enough of Scholem, whilst Benjamin will always be dear to my heart. And that's the way it goes down. And if you don't like it, consider the reality of trying to pick a fight with a stranger from thy computer. It is insane. Insane as the Masonic Police Force executing human beings in cold blood. I turn my back on you all. Evil shall never be the answer. Tidings to you, O disintegrating world; woe unto thee, and woe unto the widow's son. Tidings akin to the Essex, the battery-ram whale coming at last to destroy the ship. Even the splinters drown.

Notes, &c, 2016

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a friendship of very profound readers and thinkers where Scholem proves that Benjamin did have a great love for Jewish mysticism, even if it doesn't show up in his writings, and how these friends clash yet remain fast friends and correspond with each other through letters - a very touching yet keeneyed portrait of a melancholic Walter Benjamin. Will help you to read Benjamin in more depth.

[Damian · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finished this while stuck in Houston's George Bush International Airport. I learned a lot about Scholem's involvement with Zionism, 20 years before Israel was founded, as well as a lot about Walter Benjamin. I have to wonder if Scholem is a bit too revisionist of Walter's life.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very poignant memoir of Gershom Scholem's friendship with Walter Benjamin. Scholem narrates the troubled life of his friend with deep tenderness.