Reflections on Modern Jewish Studies

Gershom Scholem’s “Reflections on Modern Jewish Studies” (published in Hebrew in the newspaper Haaretz in Palestine) outlined his dissatisfaction with traditional European methods of approaching Jewish history and presented a vision for studies of Judaism rooted in Zionist culture. Scholem in particular attacked Wissenschaft des Judentums (The Science of Judaism), the nineteenth-century German academic movement, which he disdained particularly for its rejection of mystical elements such as kabbalah. “Reflections,” composed during the Holocaust, argued that the destruction of European Jewry meant that the responsibility for teaching Jewish scholarship had officially passed to the community in the land of Israel and that this new scholarship thus required new methodologies. Scholem’s scholarship received mixed reactions and sparked debate that continued for decades, ultimately shaping the field of modern Jewish studies. His approach strongly influenced the Jerusalem School of history, which emphasized the importance of Hebrew primary sources and interpreted Jewish history in ways that avoided viewing it primarily as a series of responses to external persecution.