Scholem Quotes & Sayings

Golf took young kids like Byron Nelson, Ben Hogan and myself out of the caddie ranks and gave us money and a little bit of fame and let us live in the tall cotton. — Jimmy Demaret

Through Jung [Pauli] became very interested in various kinds of mysticism, including Jewish mysticism. This led Pauli to develop a friendship with Gershom Scholem, the world's greatest authority in that field and in the Cabala, .... On one occasion Scholem asked me to tell him about unsolved problems in modern physics. .... When I mentioned this number --137-- to Scholem, .... He told me that in Hebrew .... The number corresponding to the word 'cabala' happens to be 137. — Victor F. Weisskopf

Why, if all the creatures in the world gathered together to make a single gnat and put a soul into it, they would not succeed!' No more than man can make a gnat can demons, according to another tradition, make anything smaller than a grain of barley. But those who favored the thaumaturgic interpretation of the Book of Yetsirah, and believed that a man or golem could be created with its help,...." Idea of the Golem p. 171 — Gershom Scholem

An exciting and yet highly lucid account of the formation and significance of Karl Kraus's modernist journalism, an activity that Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem regarded as the most Jewish writing in the German language. The Anti-Journalist is the best book I have seen on this engaging topic. — Istvan Deak

As [Gershom] Scholem explains, this [Shabbetaian] doctrine is connected to the idea that 'the elect are fundamentally different from the crowd and not to be judged by its standards. Standing under a new spiritual law and representing as it were a new kind of reality, they are beyond good and evil'. Strauss's philosopher-prophet is a secularized version of the same conceit. — Shadia Drury

A similar tradition on the creative power of letters forms the basis of the following midrash on Job 28:11.... This brings us to the text that played so important a part in the development of the golem concept: the Book of Yetsirah or the Book of Creation.... We do not know the exact date of this enigmatic text,.... We can only be sure that it was written by a Jewish Neo-Pythagorean some time between the third and sixth century. — Gershom Scholem

It is very difficult to say nowadays where the suburbs of London come to an end and where the country begins. The railways, instead of enabling Londoners to live in the country have turned the countryside into a city. — Anthony Trollope

So what is the fallout for dogs of the Lassie myth? As soon as you bestow intelligence and morality, you bestow the responsibility that goes along with them. In other words, if the dog knows it's wrong to destroy furniture yet deliberately and maliciously does it, remembers the wrong he did and feels guilt, it feels like he merits a punishment2, doesn't it? That's just what dogs have been getting - a lot of punishment. We set them up for all kinds of punishment by overestimating their ability to think. Interestingly, it's the "cold" behaviorist model that ends up giving dogs a much better crack at meeting the demands we make of them. The myth gives problems to dogs they cannot solve and then punishes them for failing. And the saddest thing is that the main association most dogs have with that punishment is the presence of their owner. This puts a pretty twisted spin on loooving dogs 'cause they're so smart, doesn't it? — Jean Donaldson

The totalitarian attempt at global conquest and total domination has been the destructive way out of all impasses. Its victory may coincide with the destruction of humanity; wherever it has ruled, it has begun to destroy the essence of man. — Hannah Arendt

I answer one of your letters, then lie in bed in apparent calm, but my heart beats through my entire body and is conscious only of you. I belong to you; there is really no other way of expressing it, and that is not strong enough. — Franz Kafka

We live in our language like blind men walking on the edge of an abyss. This language is laden with future catastrophes. The day will come when it will turn against those who speak it. — Gershom Scholem