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The Messianic Idea in Judaism: And Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality
Gershom Scholem, who created the field of Kabbalah studies as a scholarly discipline, gradually came to see the complex relationship between Jewish mysticism and Messianism. This relationship is important not only for an appreciation of the mystic and Messianic movements but for Jewish history in general.
Scholem clarifies the Messianic concept and analyzes its transformation in the Kabbalah up to the paradoxical versions it assumed in the Sabbatian and Frankist movement, in which sin became a vehicle of redemption.
Scholem clarifies the Messianic concept and analyzes its transformation in the Kabbalah up to the paradoxical versions it assumed in the Sabbatian and Frankist movement, in which sin became a vehicle of redemption.
400 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1971
About the author
Gershom Scholem
143 books203 followersGerhard 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
March 7, 2012
It's like a b-sides collection from a band known for putting out really long concept albums.
This isn't a bad thing.
This isn't a bad thing.
August 23, 2016
This is the Scholem I have been seeking!
Jewishness as apocalyptic messianic mysticism that abolishes the material world as we know it.
Jewishness as apocalyptic messianic mysticism that abolishes the material world as we know it.
January 2, 2023
I had read most of this previously, but set it down and didn’t pick it back up. I decided to just restart it. The subject is interesting and Scholem does a good job covering it. As I noted in a previous review, there have been a number of Jewish messianic claimants. Bar Kokhba was an earlier claimant. His rebellion pretty much caused the Romans to expel the Jews from Palestine. A later notable claimant was Shabbatai Zevi. Both people’s influence actually negatively impacted Jews. Shabbatai Zevi is definitely a name that most Orthodox Jews would rather have stricken from Jewish history. As I said in that other review, the who’s who list of false Jewish messiahs could almost be a who’s who list of important Kabbalists. Those figures are given ample space here. Abraham Abulafia and Isaac Luria both claimed to be the messiah. Their influence on Kabbalah was substantial. It was their version of Kabbalism that provided the theological base for someone like Zevi. Scholem was one of the foremost authorities on Zevi. He includes a lot of information on him here. He has a separate book dedicated to him as well. Zevi had quite a following before converting to Islam. Even with his conversion, he still had a loyal following. These followers were know as Shabbatians, and they formed their own community. A community that was not looked upon fondly by Orthodox Jewry. Out of these Shabbatians came a man named Jacob Frank. Quite a sick individual.
There are some essays in here that I don’t feel are totally relevant to the topic of messianism. There’s a essay or two dedicated to Zionism, which is only very tangentially relevant. Most of the early Zionist were atheists and socialists. Like Theodor Herzl, most of them weren’t religious. Other than that, the book contains some great information.
There are some essays in here that I don’t feel are totally relevant to the topic of messianism. There’s a essay or two dedicated to Zionism, which is only very tangentially relevant. Most of the early Zionist were atheists and socialists. Like Theodor Herzl, most of them weren’t religious. Other than that, the book contains some great information.
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December 26, 2023"Jewish messianism is in its origins and by its nature - this cannot be sufficiently emphasized - a theory of catastrophe. This theory stresses the revolutionary, cataclysmic element in the transition from every historical present to the Messianic future." p. 7
There is the concept of the Messiah who "continually waits in hiding. " In one "rabbinic fable" of this concept dating back to the second century, the Messiah is hidden among the "lepers and beggars of the Eternal City" at the gates of Rome. " p12
Maimonides " set about to restrict the scope of Messianic utopianism to an absolute minimum" no doubt influenced by the appearance of David Alroy in Kurdistan and the Messianic movement in Yemen. p. 22
Sabbatia Zvi (1626-1676) was recognized in Palestine by Natan of Gaza as the Messiah. He apparently was severely mentally imbalanced. When he apostatized rather then be killed by the Sultan there were those who continued to follow him. The Donmeh (Sabbatians) in Turkey were a crypto-Jewish sect who came into being when they followed the example of Sabbatia Zevi by converting to Islam but continuing to practice Judaism in secret.
"We saw with the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 that it was a couple of generations before the Jewish people could come to grips with what had happened in the "course of the sixteenth century" This should give us an idea of what is yet to be perceived about the Holocaust. p. 311
There is the concept of the Messiah who "continually waits in hiding. " In one "rabbinic fable" of this concept dating back to the second century, the Messiah is hidden among the "lepers and beggars of the Eternal City" at the gates of Rome. " p12
Maimonides " set about to restrict the scope of Messianic utopianism to an absolute minimum" no doubt influenced by the appearance of David Alroy in Kurdistan and the Messianic movement in Yemen. p. 22
Sabbatia Zvi (1626-1676) was recognized in Palestine by Natan of Gaza as the Messiah. He apparently was severely mentally imbalanced. When he apostatized rather then be killed by the Sultan there were those who continued to follow him. The Donmeh (Sabbatians) in Turkey were a crypto-Jewish sect who came into being when they followed the example of Sabbatia Zevi by converting to Islam but continuing to practice Judaism in secret.
"We saw with the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 that it was a couple of generations before the Jewish people could come to grips with what had happened in the "course of the sixteenth century" This should give us an idea of what is yet to be perceived about the Holocaust. p. 311
January 12, 2022
Scholem breathes life into topics little known by basically everyone but him. hard to imagine what more you could want from a thinker. illuminating, meticulous, exhilarating
February 17, 2018
Narozdíl od dalších knih autora mě tahle tolik nezaujala. Obsahovala témata hodně odborná, pro mě už dost okrajová a nezajímavá. Často jsem se nechytal a přeskakoval.
April 18, 2025
The first few essays are a great introduction to Gershom Scholem's work and were a fun challenge.
July 14, 2026
Gershom Scholem was the mystical influencer or Walter Benjamin and Adorno.
How that Messanism is received and what the meaning could be within the Jewish world is explained throughout the book with links to the (Jewish Mystic) Kabbalah and the fascinating period of Jewish sects: Sabbatianism (followers of Sabbatia Zevi) and its extension the Frankists (followers Jacob Frank). All these aspects ca be linked to the Diaspora.
The deep connection with so called Jewish enlightenment is the Key Learning Point and important to understand the later secular way of thinking and is feeding my personal interest with regard to Walter Benjamin and the Frankfurter Schule who was influenced by Scholem in a direct or indirect way
The core of the book tracks the shocking psychological shift from the Sabbatian movement to the radical nihilism of Jacob Frank (1726–1791) and other Jewish splits or movements/communities like the Marranos, The Crypto-Jewish Sect of the Dönmeh (Sabbatians, p. 142, ff)
Redemption Through Sin - Heretical Psychology (p.78, ff.)
The historical turning point occurred in 1666 with the apostasy (conversion to Islam) of Sabbatai Zevi. Mainstream historians initially dismissed this movement as mere "charlatanry" or "mass psychosis," systematically burning texts to suppress the collective memory. Scholem, however, treats it as the unacknowledged "unconscious motor" that paved the way for the Haskalah (the Jewish enlightenment) by "breaking the ghetto walls from within".
It is very interesting to learn more about the Jewish mystical history of Heresy and Jewish sects which without any doubt influenced Benjamin's formulation of historical materialism and in a more secularised way Adorno’s negative dialectics.
I also read it as preparation to read Franz Rosenzweig’s ‘The Star of Redemption’. (p. 320, ff)
Scholem views the Rosenzweig's Star as a philosophical/ theological "lightning rod whose task it is to render harmless its destructive power ..." (p. 323)
and
"... truth that redemption possesses not only a liberating but also a destructive force ...Rosenzweig sought at least to neutralize it in a higher order of truth." (p. 323)
You get an interesting exploration how Jewish mystical thought survived the catastrophic collapse of German idealism after World War I by recovering its (hidden) metaphysical sources.
“Jewish Messanism in in its origins and by its nature - that cannot be sufficiently emphasized – a theory of catastrophe. This theory stresses the revolutionary cataclysmic element in the transition from every historical present tot the Messianic future.”(p. 7)
Without “birth pangs of the Messiah” - which can be applied to the ‘terrors of the Last Judgment the birth of a new world can not occur (cf. p.8-12)
Historians claimed that after the rise of Christianity, apocalypticism had died out within Traditional Rabbinic Judaism, or that it was a "dead end." Rationalist thinkers like Maimonides even attempted to completely eliminate the apocalyptic element in order to keep Judaism rational.
==> Scholem explains this as a historical lie. The apocalyptic tradition never disappeared; it simply continued to flow underground through Talmudic, Aggada, Kabbala, Zohar – literature.
In these ‘underground’ there is a more pessimistic worldview: redemption is a break with history (apocalyptic).
Redemption is “.. a transcendental breaking in upon history, an intrusion in which history itself perishes, transformed in its ruin, because it is struck by a beam of light shining into it from an outside source." (p. 10)
This Messianic moment cannot be calculated, comes suddenly, unannounced .. (cf. p.11)
Through Scholem's re(-dis)-covery of these heretical texts, we can better understand why Benjamin writes about the necessity of a "destructive character," or when he insists that the historical materialist must blast open the continuum of history to salvage the suppressed memories of the past, he is performing a secularized world of Tikkun (the re-establishment of the harmonious condition of the work world “…which in the Lurianic Kabbalah is the Messianic World, still contains a strictly utopian impulse.” (p. 13).
Some links with Walter Benjamin can be illustrated by following notes:
How these Heresies relate to Mystics, Messanism and their Secular versions?
This quote summarizes a lot:
" ...violation of the Torah has become its fulfillment, which they illustrate by the example of a grain of wheat that rots in the earth." (fn 34) . In other words, just as a grain of wheat must rot in the earth before it can sprout, so the deeds of the "believers" must be truly "rotten" before they can germinate the redemption. This metaphor, which appears to have been extremely popular, conveys the whole of sectarian Sabbatian psychology in a nutshell: in the period of transition, while the redemption is still in a state of concealment, the Torah in its explicit form must be denied, for only thus can it too become "Concealed" and ultimately renewed. " (p, 116, quoted from a anti-Sabbatian pamplet Lehishat Saraf, 1726, fn 34)
The mystic principle of Jacob’s Ladder (p. 130-131) which summarizes the deep why of Heresy and why they condemn traditional-passive Judaism or Christianism who sent their messengers to the world (Moses, Jesus, and others) ....but failed as the ‘evil powers’ are too strong! (p. 129-130)
You can read interesting (almost breathtaking if you are interested in mystical insights) quotations of a text The Sayings of the Lord’ with recorded sayings of Frank in the works of Kraushar (Polish Historian).
“we are all now under the obligation to enter the abyss in which all laws and religions are annihilated" (P.131)
“From the abyss, if only the “burden of silence’” is borne, “holy knowledge” will emerge” (p. 131) <
Thus the anarchic element that enters Messianic utopism." … not as a abstract hope without living significance for the present …(cf. p.21, ff. + p.3-4)
This can all be related how Walter Benjamin describes the decaying ruins of the capitalist landscape using the logic of the Frankists who descends into the rotten grain (see quote above), building a profound materialist theory of revolution out of the hidden depths of theology and her sectarian/heresy movements/splits …
You can see also these influences in Adorno’s Negative Dialects: it is only understandable with this background knowledge as I see it know.
This is not the world of rational argument but it can help to understand Religion/Gnostics /Sectarian splits and what we can learn form them to understand the pitfalls of the world of Abstraction And Ideology which are essentially Utopian/Theologian … and that there are alternative ways of thinking, other insights which can be very fruitful to understand world, society and even psychology.
By systematically smashing traditional rabbinic laws from within the ghetto walls, these heretical sects unconsciously paved the way for the Haskalah (the Jewish Enlightenment) and modern secular revolutions. Interesting anecdote is "Red Epistle" of 1799 , a letter of the Frankists that was intercepted by paranoid European governments who mistook these ‘mystical theory of revolution’ for a letter of the French political Jacobins. (p.138-140)
The Step into the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) (p. 141)
The text highlights how these heretical families smoothly transitioned into the leaders of Reform in Judaism , ZIONISM and later postwar secular criticism.
An example quoted is Jonas Wehle of Praag, who seamlessly "took the teachings of the philosopher Kant and dressed them up in the costume of the Zohar and Lurianic Kabbalah".
==> Mystical visions transformed into political programs for civil liberation.
How that Messanism is received and what the meaning could be within the Jewish world is explained throughout the book with links to the (Jewish Mystic) Kabbalah and the fascinating period of Jewish sects: Sabbatianism (followers of Sabbatia Zevi) and its extension the Frankists (followers Jacob Frank). All these aspects ca be linked to the Diaspora.
The deep connection with so called Jewish enlightenment is the Key Learning Point and important to understand the later secular way of thinking and is feeding my personal interest with regard to Walter Benjamin and the Frankfurter Schule who was influenced by Scholem in a direct or indirect way
The core of the book tracks the shocking psychological shift from the Sabbatian movement to the radical nihilism of Jacob Frank (1726–1791) and other Jewish splits or movements/communities like the Marranos, The Crypto-Jewish Sect of the Dönmeh (Sabbatians, p. 142, ff)
Redemption Through Sin - Heretical Psychology (p.78, ff.)
The historical turning point occurred in 1666 with the apostasy (conversion to Islam) of Sabbatai Zevi. Mainstream historians initially dismissed this movement as mere "charlatanry" or "mass psychosis," systematically burning texts to suppress the collective memory. Scholem, however, treats it as the unacknowledged "unconscious motor" that paved the way for the Haskalah (the Jewish enlightenment) by "breaking the ghetto walls from within".
It is very interesting to learn more about the Jewish mystical history of Heresy and Jewish sects which without any doubt influenced Benjamin's formulation of historical materialism and in a more secularised way Adorno’s negative dialectics.
I also read it as preparation to read Franz Rosenzweig’s ‘The Star of Redemption’. (p. 320, ff)
Scholem views the Rosenzweig's Star as a philosophical/ theological "lightning rod whose task it is to render harmless its destructive power ..." (p. 323)
and
"... truth that redemption possesses not only a liberating but also a destructive force ...Rosenzweig sought at least to neutralize it in a higher order of truth." (p. 323)
You get an interesting exploration how Jewish mystical thought survived the catastrophic collapse of German idealism after World War I by recovering its (hidden) metaphysical sources.
“Jewish Messanism in in its origins and by its nature - that cannot be sufficiently emphasized – a theory of catastrophe. This theory stresses the revolutionary cataclysmic element in the transition from every historical present tot the Messianic future.”(p. 7)
Without “birth pangs of the Messiah” - which can be applied to the ‘terrors of the Last Judgment the birth of a new world can not occur (cf. p.8-12)
Historians claimed that after the rise of Christianity, apocalypticism had died out within Traditional Rabbinic Judaism, or that it was a "dead end." Rationalist thinkers like Maimonides even attempted to completely eliminate the apocalyptic element in order to keep Judaism rational.
==> Scholem explains this as a historical lie. The apocalyptic tradition never disappeared; it simply continued to flow underground through Talmudic, Aggada, Kabbala, Zohar – literature.
In these ‘underground’ there is a more pessimistic worldview: redemption is a break with history (apocalyptic).
Redemption is “.. a transcendental breaking in upon history, an intrusion in which history itself perishes, transformed in its ruin, because it is struck by a beam of light shining into it from an outside source." (p. 10)
This Messianic moment cannot be calculated, comes suddenly, unannounced .. (cf. p.11)
Through Scholem's re(-dis)-covery of these heretical texts, we can better understand why Benjamin writes about the necessity of a "destructive character," or when he insists that the historical materialist must blast open the continuum of history to salvage the suppressed memories of the past, he is performing a secularized world of Tikkun (the re-establishment of the harmonious condition of the work world “…which in the Lurianic Kabbalah is the Messianic World, still contains a strictly utopian impulse.” (p. 13).
Some links with Walter Benjamin can be illustrated by following notes:
How these Heresies relate to Mystics, Messanism and their Secular versions?
This quote summarizes a lot:
" ...violation of the Torah has become its fulfillment, which they illustrate by the example of a grain of wheat that rots in the earth." (fn 34) . In other words, just as a grain of wheat must rot in the earth before it can sprout, so the deeds of the "believers" must be truly "rotten" before they can germinate the redemption. This metaphor, which appears to have been extremely popular, conveys the whole of sectarian Sabbatian psychology in a nutshell: in the period of transition, while the redemption is still in a state of concealment, the Torah in its explicit form must be denied, for only thus can it too become "Concealed" and ultimately renewed. " (p, 116, quoted from a anti-Sabbatian pamplet Lehishat Saraf, 1726, fn 34)
The mystic principle of Jacob’s Ladder (p. 130-131) which summarizes the deep why of Heresy and why they condemn traditional-passive Judaism or Christianism who sent their messengers to the world (Moses, Jesus, and others) ....but failed as the ‘evil powers’ are too strong! (p. 129-130)
You can read interesting (almost breathtaking if you are interested in mystical insights) quotations of a text The Sayings of the Lord’ with recorded sayings of Frank in the works of Kraushar (Polish Historian).
“we are all now under the obligation to enter the abyss in which all laws and religions are annihilated" (P.131)
“From the abyss, if only the “burden of silence’” is borne, “holy knowledge” will emerge” (p. 131) <
Thus the anarchic element that enters Messianic utopism." … not as a abstract hope without living significance for the present …(cf. p.21, ff. + p.3-4)
This can all be related how Walter Benjamin describes the decaying ruins of the capitalist landscape using the logic of the Frankists who descends into the rotten grain (see quote above), building a profound materialist theory of revolution out of the hidden depths of theology and her sectarian/heresy movements/splits …
You can see also these influences in Adorno’s Negative Dialects: it is only understandable with this background knowledge as I see it know.
This is not the world of rational argument but it can help to understand Religion/Gnostics /Sectarian splits and what we can learn form them to understand the pitfalls of the world of Abstraction And Ideology which are essentially Utopian/Theologian … and that there are alternative ways of thinking, other insights which can be very fruitful to understand world, society and even psychology.
By systematically smashing traditional rabbinic laws from within the ghetto walls, these heretical sects unconsciously paved the way for the Haskalah (the Jewish Enlightenment) and modern secular revolutions. Interesting anecdote is "Red Epistle" of 1799 , a letter of the Frankists that was intercepted by paranoid European governments who mistook these ‘mystical theory of revolution’ for a letter of the French political Jacobins. (p.138-140)
The Step into the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) (p. 141)
The text highlights how these heretical families smoothly transitioned into the leaders of Reform in Judaism , ZIONISM and later postwar secular criticism.
An example quoted is Jonas Wehle of Praag, who seamlessly "took the teachings of the philosopher Kant and dressed them up in the costume of the Zohar and Lurianic Kabbalah".
==> Mystical visions transformed into political programs for civil liberation.
March 8, 2019
This book is a series of lectures on the Messianic Idea and Jewish history. Begins looking at conservative, restorative and Utopian forces, and moves to tracing general mystical thought through Jewish history. Covers Sabbatian ideas, Hasidism, Medieval period, enlightenment, 18th, 19th centuries, Zionism, and Martin Buber.
October 20, 2011
A work of pure genius. From just one short lecture of his I developed the beginnings of my MA thesis.
May 1, 2025
مجموعه مقالاتی از گرشوم شولم در مورد مسیحاباوری در عرفان قبالا.
کمابیش ایدهٔ جدیدی نداشت. اگه گرایشها و مکاتب اصلی عرفان یهود رو ازش خونده باشید، بیشتر حرفها رو اونجا زده.
کمابیش ایدهٔ جدیدی نداشت. اگه گرایشها و مکاتب اصلی عرفان یهود رو ازش خونده باشید، بیشتر حرفها رو اونجا زده.
July 9, 2026
It was incredibly well-researched, but I didn’t care for the focus. I was hoping for greater focus on Jewish views of the Messianic prophecies of the Tanakh. However, after the first two chapters, the author focused almost exclusively on the evolution of Messianic beliefs among the Sabbatians and Hasidim.
January 12, 2020
love the section on shabtai tzvi
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July 12, 2026A study on the various ideas of Messianism in Judaism, stressing its public and communal dimensions. Focusing on Rabbinic Judaism, Scholem highlights how that tradition's conservative, restorative, and utopian ideas crystallize into the Messianic idea, one that is absent of hope in history.
May 24, 2020
Another great book by Scholem. This one dealt heavily with Sabbatianism and early Hasidism, and it intensified my interest in reading his monograph on Sabbatai Zevi. The format, a collection of articles and lectures, makes for some irritating repetition; some of the later pieces also feel inessential, especially once we start getting down to book reviews. But most of the book is exciting, challenging reading from a master of his field.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews