As Messianism Turns to Heresy

This volume presents the transcripts, based on a rare set of voice recordings, of a series of lectures delivered by Scholem in the Spring of 1966 while serving as Visiting Professor and Joseph and Helen Regenstein Chair at Hebrew Union College-Institute of Jewish Religion in Cincinnati. Scholem's course would have been one among very few such classes on American soil, where Kabbalah had yet to become established as a central concern of Jewish Studies.

As transcripts of classroom discussions, these lectures give a sense of Scholem's complex personality as a teacher. He was a scintillating speaker and an academic aristocrat; he was often jovial, sardonic--but also, and more than occasionally, something of an intellectual bully. These transcripts offer a full picture of Scholem's charisma and power as a lecturer and are a living testament to Scholem's deep engagement, even enrapturement, with the messianic impulse at the heart of Judaism and his quest to impart that love to his students. They are a fascinating portrait of his captivating presentation style, the dramatic power of his unfolding of narrative and historical drama, his attention to detail but also his interest in the realm of grand ideas. They represent a light from the archive, the intellectual fruits of a towering scholar who, over the course of nearly six decades, shaped three generations of researchers and whose writings remain a cornerstone of Jewish Studies.