Stranger in a Strange Land: Searching for Gershom Scholem and Jerusalem
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.56 (690 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 154361891X |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 440 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2016-12-28 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
In doing so he reveals how Scholem's frustration with the bourgeois ideology of Germany during the First World War led him to discover Judaism, Kabbalah, and finally Zionism as potent counterforces to Europe's suicidal nationalism. He vividly conjures Scholem's upbringing in Berlin and compellingly brings to life Scholem's transformative friendship with Walter Benjamin, the critic and philosopher. Prochnik's own years in the Holy Land in the 1990s brings him to question the stereotypical intellectual and theological constructs of Jerusalem and to rediscover the city as a physical place rife with the unruliness and fecundity of nature. In Stranger in a Strange Land, Prochnik revisits the life and work of Gershom Scholem, whose once prominent reputation as a Freud-like interpreter of the inner world of the cosmos has been in eclipse in the United States. Taking his lead from his subject, Gershom Scholem - the 20th-century thinker who cracked open Jewish theology and history with a radical reading of Kabbalah - Prochnik combines biography and memoir to counter our contemporary political crisis with an original and urgent reimagining of the
George Prochnik’s most recent book, The Impossible Exile: Stefan Zweig at the End of the World, received the National Jewish Book Award for Biography/Memoir in 2014 and was shortlisted for the Wingate Prize in the UK. Hehas written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, Bookforum and the LA Review of Books, and is editor-at-large for Cabinet magazine. . P
ecclectic said In-depth study and analysis of the "stranger" in a "strange. In-depth study and analysis of the "stranger" in a "strange land".plus the author's own story of conversion and understanding. Not a light read, but it is well worth the price. Prochnik wraps the reader up in a warm, spiritual tallis as he drives the story home.. "Identity" according to marina Ergas. A very lively picture of Gershom SholemQuestions of identity in Judaism todayThe connection to a Zionism without a soulVery deep. Five Stars wonder historical document.
In ‘Stranger in a Strange Land,’ he again mixes biography and memoir, digging deep into Scholem’s life and work while telling the story of his own relationship with Judaism and Jerusalem, the adopted city of both author and subject…ing a colorful style…But it’s the way Prochnik weaves memoir through this intellectual biography that shows how thoroughly the author’s own life has twined with Scholem’s ideas. But he never loses sight of the essential questions: How are we to live? And in what kind of world?" —Pankaj Mishra, author of Age of Anger: A History of the Present“What a wonderful book this is: gripping, illuminat