Summary
Gershom Scholem, the scholar of Jewish mysticism and messianism whose 1959 warning on the perils of acting on the messianic claim supplies the closing argument of Lustick’s Conclusion, and whose studies of the messianic idea and of Shabbatai Zevi document Chapter 2’s history of activist messianism (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel).
Details
- In 1959, well before the rise of Gush Emunim, Scholem observed that the messianic idea has held an extraordinary attraction for Jews, and found it unsurprising that “overtones of Messianism” and a “readiness for irrevocable action in the concrete realm” accompanied the success of Zionism; recalling the catastrophic revolts against Rome and the Sabbatian episode, he warned that “the blazing landscape of redemption” is a hazardous field for political ambition, and that Jews have had to pay an exceedingly high price for acting on these beliefs (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 7, lines 9129-9400).
- Scholem’s question, as Lustick quotes it: “Whether or not Jewish history will be able to endure this entry into the concrete realm without perishing in the crisis of the Messianic claim which has virtually been conjured up” — the question, Lustick writes, which the Jew of this age poses to his present and to his future (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 7, lines 9129-9400).
- The quotation is cited to Scholem, “Toward an Understanding of the Messianic Idea in Judaism”, in The Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality (New York: Schocken Books, 1971), pp.35-36 (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 7 note 12, lines 9401-9498).
- Chapter 2’s notes cite Scholem’s messianic-idea essays and his Sabbatai Sevi for the history of Jewish messianism and the Sabbatian movement (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 2 notes, lines 2060-2277).
Related pages
For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Jewish Fundamentalism, Gush Emunim, Zionism