Amir Engel | The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (original) (raw)

Books by Amir Engel

Gershom Scholem (1897–1982) was ostensibly only a scholar of Jewish mysticism, yet he occupies a ... more Gershom Scholem (1897–1982) was ostensibly only a scholar of Jewish
mysticism, yet he occupies a powerful role in today’s intellectual imagination, having influential contacts with an extraordinary cast of thinkers, including Hans Jonas, Martin Buber, Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, and Theodor Adorno. In this first biography of Scholem, Amir Engel shows how Scholem grew from a scholar of an esoteric discipline to a thinker wrestling with problems that reach to the very foundations of the modern human experience.
As Engel shows, in his search for the truth of Jewish mysticism Scholem molded the vast literature of Jewish mystical lore into a rich assortment of stories that unveiled new truths about the modern condition. Positioning Scholem’s work and life within early twentieth-century Germany, Palestine, and later the state of Israel, Engel intertwines Scholem’s biography with his historiographical work, which stretches back to the Spanish expulsion of Jews in 1492, through the lives of Rabbi Isaac Luria and Sabbatai Zevi, and up to Hasidism and the dawn of the Zionist movement. Through parallel narratives, Engel touches on a wide array of important topics, including immigration, exile, Zionism, World War I, and the creation of the state of Israel, ultimately telling the story of the realizations—and failures—of a dream for a modern Jewish existence.

Papers by Amir Engel

Modern Intellectual History

The article explores the interaction of the German, Jewish, and Christian traditions in the first... more The article explores the interaction of the German, Jewish, and Christian traditions in the first part of the twentieth century in Central Europe to show three cases, in which these traditions merge into one. I name the result of this interaction “Jewish–Christian religiosity.” The name conveys a desire, common to the cases discussed, to overcome the traditional distinctions between Jews and Germans and Jews and Christians. It also conveys the belief that spirituality could bridge the gap between people and promote a more open society for all. All three cases expand notions first conceived by Romantic and idealist thinkers in order to facilitate interest in arcane Jewish sources like the Kabbalah and Hasidism. As the article suggests, eclectic worldviews like those discussed here may appear unfamiliar, but they continue intellectual and cultural trends that were discussed in the literature before.

New German Critique, 2014

Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, 2020

The fact that bizarre intellectual trends and teachings, like occultism, parapsychology, and neop... more The fact that bizarre intellectual trends and teachings, like occultism, parapsychology, and neopaganism played an important role in modern German culture is thoroughly documented by scholars of German history. Experts on German-Jewish history, however, still tend to describe German-Jewish culture as one formed around the ideals of ‘Bildung’ and the Enlightenment. As a result, German-Jewish occultism, mysticism, and other non-Enlightenment texts and authors have received relatively little scholarly attention. The present article aims to help correct this bias by introducing a new framework for the study of German-Jewish culture, and by examining an all but forgotten case study: Meir Wiener and his work. After introducing the term ‘Western esotericism’, developed by scholars of religious studies, the article uses it to explore two of Meir Wiener’s strangest and virtually forgotten works. Wiener, it is shown, produced fantastically esoteric works in the context of German expressionism...

New German Critique, 2020

This article reconstructs two “modes of memory” in postwar West Germany and explores an underappr... more This article reconstructs two “modes of memory” in postwar West Germany and explores an underappreciated historical trajectory. These two modes offer radically different ideas about why Germany should remember its past. In the immediate aftermath of the war, Karl Jaspers called on Germany’s citizens to remember the atrocities of the Nazi past so they could open a new chapter in the nation’s history. Twenty years later, at the zenith of the economic miracle, Jean Améry made a similar demand. His, however, was not a constructive call for responsibility and improvement, like Jaspers’s call, but one of anger and resentment. Juxtaposing these two calls for memory shows that, against every intuition, the immediate postwar period, defined by unprecedented human loss and physical devastation, was also a moment of energy and hope, while the height of the Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle) was also one of melancholy and discontent.

German Studies Review, 2016

The essay discusses German Jewish cultural renewal in the aftermath of the World War II and the H... more The essay discusses German Jewish cultural renewal in the aftermath of the World War II and the Holocaust. In order to do so, it offers a comparative study of three prize-reception speeches, given in West Germany after the Holocaust by notable Jewish figures. Although these speeches vary greatly, they all seek to perform German Jewishness shortly after the long and honorable tradition of German Jewry was brutally demolished by National Socialism. This article investigates how they thus partake in an attempt to renew German Jewish culture after the catastrophe of the Holocaust.

Comparative Literature, 2020

While there is growing interest in the postwar era, the cultural characteristics of the period af... more While there is growing interest in the postwar era, the cultural characteristics of the period after World War II and the period’s historical scope are still largely underdetermined. The purpose of this article is to offer a more nuanced use of the term postwar and insights into the cultural landscape of this enormously significant moment in the history of the West. To do so, it examines three major works of what is termed here the immediate postwar. These works are fundamentally dissimilar and yet, it is argued, share an emotional disposition. As shown, all three works exhibit a complex dialectical coupling of horror and anticipation. In other words, this article demonstrates that the cultural production of the postwar period (in the exact sense of the term) is characterized, on the one hand, by a sincere depiction of suffering and depravity but, on the other, by an intense engagement with questions about the moral and social future.

After launching his career with the 1947 publication of his dissertation, Occidental Eschatology,... more After launching his career with the 1947 publication of his dissertation, Occidental Eschatology, Jacob Taubes spent the early years of his career as a fellow and then professor at various American institutions, including Harvard, Princeton, and Columbia. During his American years, he also gathered together a number of prominent thinkers at his weekly seminars on Jewish intellectual history. In the mid-60s, Taubes joined the faculty of the Free University in West Berlin, initially as the city's first Jewish Studies professor of the postwar period. But his work and interest expanded beyond the boundaries of the field of Jewish Studies to broader philosophical questions, particularly in the philosophy of religion. A charismatic speaker and a great polemicist, Taubes had a phenomenal ability to create interdisciplinary conversations in the humanities, engaging scholars from philosophy, literature, theology, and intellectual history. The essays presented here represent the fruit of ...

Gershom Scholem (1897–1982) was ostensibly only a scholar of Jewish mysticism, yet he occupies a ... more Gershom Scholem (1897–1982) was ostensibly only a scholar of Jewish mysticism, yet he occupies a powerful role in today’s intellectual imagination, having influential contacts with an extraordinary cast of thinkers, including Hans Jonas, Martin Buber, Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, and Theodor Adorno. In this first biography of Scholem, Amir Engel shows how Scholem grew from a scholar of an esoteric discipline to a thinker wrestling with problems that reach to the very foundations of the modern human experience. As Engel shows, in his search for the truth of Jewish mysticism Scholem molded the vast literature of Jewish mystical lore into a rich assortment of stories that unveiled new truths about the modern condition. Positioning Scholem’s work and life within early twentieth-century Germany, Palestine, and later the state of Israel, Engel intertwines Scholem’s biography with his historiographical work, which stretches back to the Spanish expulsion of Jews in 1492, through the lives of Rabbi Isaac Luria and Sabbatai Zevi, and up to Hasidism and the dawn of the Zionist movement. Through parallel narratives, Engel touches on a wide array of important topics, including immigration, exile, Zionism, World War I, and the creation of the state of Israel, ultimately telling the story of the realizations—and failures—of a dream for a modern Jewish existence.

Scholar and Kabbalist: The Life and Work of Gershom Scholem

Zutot

The purpose of this essay is to examine one of Gershom Scholem’s most obscure undertakings, a pro... more The purpose of this essay is to examine one of Gershom Scholem’s most obscure undertakings, a proto-Dadaist and antiwar text that he published, together with a few friends, during the first year of World War One. As is shown, this project has drawn heavily from the work of one of the leading avant-garde poets, later among the founding members of the Dada movement in Zurich, Hugo Ball. Discussed side by side, the works of Gershom Scholem and Hugo Ball offer a unique view onto the anti-war sentiment and the need for experimental language in an attempt to express a disdain so profound and fundamental that words and sentences seem unable to capture.

Comparative Literature, 2020

Albeit growing interest in the “postwar” era, its cultural characteristics of the period after Wo... more Albeit growing interest in the “postwar” era, its cultural characteristics of the period after World War Two and its historical scope are still largely underdetermined. The purpose of this article is to offer a more nuanced use of the term ‘postwar’ and first insights into the cultural landscape of this enormously significant moment in the history of the West. In order to do so, it examines three major works of what is termed here the “immediate postwar.” These works are fundamentally dissimilar and yet, it is argued, share an emotional disposition. As shown, all three works exhibit complex dialectical coupling of horror and anticipation. In other words, this article demonstrates that the cultural production of the postwar period (in the exact sense of the word) is characterized, on the one hand, by a sincere depiction of suffering and depravity, but on the other by an intense engagement with questions about the moral and social future.

The essay discusses German Jewish cultural renewal in the aftermath of the World War II and the ... more The essay discusses German Jewish cultural renewal in the aftermath of the World
War II and the Holocaust. In order to do so, it offers a comparative study of three
prize-reception speeches, given in West Germany after the Holocaust by notable
Jewish figures. Although these speeches vary greatly, they all seek to perform German Jewishness shortly after the long and honorable tradition of German Jewry
was brutally demolished by National Socialism. This article investigates how they
thus partake in an attempt to renew German Jewish culture after the catastrophe
of the Holocaust.

The genius of Gershom Scholem is largely beyond dispute. Even his fiercest critics admire his int... more The genius of Gershom Scholem is largely beyond dispute. Even his fiercest critics admire his integrity and dedication, among other qualities. 1 Yet one of Scholem's greatest accomplishments has gone mostly unnoticed. Scholem portrayed his Zionism and his attraction to the kabbalah as a response to the largely assimilated modern Jewish environment in which he grew up. The young Scholem, it seems, joined the Zionist movement because it offered a tangible solution to the contemporary problems of Jewish life in exile. It appears that this was the context in which he dedicated himself to the study of the kabbalah. Against the background of spiritual confusion and social apathy endemic to the modern Jewish environment of his childhood, Scholem set out to rediscover the veiled sources of Jewish mythology and make them relevant again. The image that Scholem thus created is suggested by the title of his autobiography, From Berlin to Jerusalem. With this book Scholem implied that he had extracted himself from the confusion of exile and found clarity in

Gershom Scholem (1897–1982) was ostensibly only a scholar of Jewish mysticism, yet he occupies a ... more Gershom Scholem (1897–1982) was ostensibly only a scholar of Jewish
mysticism, yet he occupies a powerful role in today’s intellectual imagination, having influential contacts with an extraordinary cast of thinkers, including Hans Jonas, Martin Buber, Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, and Theodor Adorno. In this first biography of Scholem, Amir Engel shows how Scholem grew from a scholar of an esoteric discipline to a thinker wrestling with problems that reach to the very foundations of the modern human experience.
As Engel shows, in his search for the truth of Jewish mysticism Scholem molded the vast literature of Jewish mystical lore into a rich assortment of stories that unveiled new truths about the modern condition. Positioning Scholem’s work and life within early twentieth-century Germany, Palestine, and later the state of Israel, Engel intertwines Scholem’s biography with his historiographical work, which stretches back to the Spanish expulsion of Jews in 1492, through the lives of Rabbi Isaac Luria and Sabbatai Zevi, and up to Hasidism and the dawn of the Zionist movement. Through parallel narratives, Engel touches on a wide array of important topics, including immigration, exile, Zionism, World War I, and the creation of the state of Israel, ultimately telling the story of the realizations—and failures—of a dream for a modern Jewish existence.

Modern Intellectual History

The article explores the interaction of the German, Jewish, and Christian traditions in the first... more The article explores the interaction of the German, Jewish, and Christian traditions in the first part of the twentieth century in Central Europe to show three cases, in which these traditions merge into one. I name the result of this interaction “Jewish–Christian religiosity.” The name conveys a desire, common to the cases discussed, to overcome the traditional distinctions between Jews and Germans and Jews and Christians. It also conveys the belief that spirituality could bridge the gap between people and promote a more open society for all. All three cases expand notions first conceived by Romantic and idealist thinkers in order to facilitate interest in arcane Jewish sources like the Kabbalah and Hasidism. As the article suggests, eclectic worldviews like those discussed here may appear unfamiliar, but they continue intellectual and cultural trends that were discussed in the literature before.

New German Critique, 2014

Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, 2020

The fact that bizarre intellectual trends and teachings, like occultism, parapsychology, and neop... more The fact that bizarre intellectual trends and teachings, like occultism, parapsychology, and neopaganism played an important role in modern German culture is thoroughly documented by scholars of German history. Experts on German-Jewish history, however, still tend to describe German-Jewish culture as one formed around the ideals of ‘Bildung’ and the Enlightenment. As a result, German-Jewish occultism, mysticism, and other non-Enlightenment texts and authors have received relatively little scholarly attention. The present article aims to help correct this bias by introducing a new framework for the study of German-Jewish culture, and by examining an all but forgotten case study: Meir Wiener and his work. After introducing the term ‘Western esotericism’, developed by scholars of religious studies, the article uses it to explore two of Meir Wiener’s strangest and virtually forgotten works. Wiener, it is shown, produced fantastically esoteric works in the context of German expressionism...

New German Critique, 2020

This article reconstructs two “modes of memory” in postwar West Germany and explores an underappr... more This article reconstructs two “modes of memory” in postwar West Germany and explores an underappreciated historical trajectory. These two modes offer radically different ideas about why Germany should remember its past. In the immediate aftermath of the war, Karl Jaspers called on Germany’s citizens to remember the atrocities of the Nazi past so they could open a new chapter in the nation’s history. Twenty years later, at the zenith of the economic miracle, Jean Améry made a similar demand. His, however, was not a constructive call for responsibility and improvement, like Jaspers’s call, but one of anger and resentment. Juxtaposing these two calls for memory shows that, against every intuition, the immediate postwar period, defined by unprecedented human loss and physical devastation, was also a moment of energy and hope, while the height of the Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle) was also one of melancholy and discontent.

German Studies Review, 2016

The essay discusses German Jewish cultural renewal in the aftermath of the World War II and the H... more The essay discusses German Jewish cultural renewal in the aftermath of the World War II and the Holocaust. In order to do so, it offers a comparative study of three prize-reception speeches, given in West Germany after the Holocaust by notable Jewish figures. Although these speeches vary greatly, they all seek to perform German Jewishness shortly after the long and honorable tradition of German Jewry was brutally demolished by National Socialism. This article investigates how they thus partake in an attempt to renew German Jewish culture after the catastrophe of the Holocaust.

Comparative Literature, 2020

While there is growing interest in the postwar era, the cultural characteristics of the period af... more While there is growing interest in the postwar era, the cultural characteristics of the period after World War II and the period’s historical scope are still largely underdetermined. The purpose of this article is to offer a more nuanced use of the term postwar and insights into the cultural landscape of this enormously significant moment in the history of the West. To do so, it examines three major works of what is termed here the immediate postwar. These works are fundamentally dissimilar and yet, it is argued, share an emotional disposition. As shown, all three works exhibit a complex dialectical coupling of horror and anticipation. In other words, this article demonstrates that the cultural production of the postwar period (in the exact sense of the term) is characterized, on the one hand, by a sincere depiction of suffering and depravity but, on the other, by an intense engagement with questions about the moral and social future.

After launching his career with the 1947 publication of his dissertation, Occidental Eschatology,... more After launching his career with the 1947 publication of his dissertation, Occidental Eschatology, Jacob Taubes spent the early years of his career as a fellow and then professor at various American institutions, including Harvard, Princeton, and Columbia. During his American years, he also gathered together a number of prominent thinkers at his weekly seminars on Jewish intellectual history. In the mid-60s, Taubes joined the faculty of the Free University in West Berlin, initially as the city's first Jewish Studies professor of the postwar period. But his work and interest expanded beyond the boundaries of the field of Jewish Studies to broader philosophical questions, particularly in the philosophy of religion. A charismatic speaker and a great polemicist, Taubes had a phenomenal ability to create interdisciplinary conversations in the humanities, engaging scholars from philosophy, literature, theology, and intellectual history. The essays presented here represent the fruit of ...

Gershom Scholem (1897–1982) was ostensibly only a scholar of Jewish mysticism, yet he occupies a ... more Gershom Scholem (1897–1982) was ostensibly only a scholar of Jewish mysticism, yet he occupies a powerful role in today’s intellectual imagination, having influential contacts with an extraordinary cast of thinkers, including Hans Jonas, Martin Buber, Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, and Theodor Adorno. In this first biography of Scholem, Amir Engel shows how Scholem grew from a scholar of an esoteric discipline to a thinker wrestling with problems that reach to the very foundations of the modern human experience. As Engel shows, in his search for the truth of Jewish mysticism Scholem molded the vast literature of Jewish mystical lore into a rich assortment of stories that unveiled new truths about the modern condition. Positioning Scholem’s work and life within early twentieth-century Germany, Palestine, and later the state of Israel, Engel intertwines Scholem’s biography with his historiographical work, which stretches back to the Spanish expulsion of Jews in 1492, through the lives of Rabbi Isaac Luria and Sabbatai Zevi, and up to Hasidism and the dawn of the Zionist movement. Through parallel narratives, Engel touches on a wide array of important topics, including immigration, exile, Zionism, World War I, and the creation of the state of Israel, ultimately telling the story of the realizations—and failures—of a dream for a modern Jewish existence.

Scholar and Kabbalist: The Life and Work of Gershom Scholem

Zutot

The purpose of this essay is to examine one of Gershom Scholem’s most obscure undertakings, a pro... more The purpose of this essay is to examine one of Gershom Scholem’s most obscure undertakings, a proto-Dadaist and antiwar text that he published, together with a few friends, during the first year of World War One. As is shown, this project has drawn heavily from the work of one of the leading avant-garde poets, later among the founding members of the Dada movement in Zurich, Hugo Ball. Discussed side by side, the works of Gershom Scholem and Hugo Ball offer a unique view onto the anti-war sentiment and the need for experimental language in an attempt to express a disdain so profound and fundamental that words and sentences seem unable to capture.

Comparative Literature, 2020

Albeit growing interest in the “postwar” era, its cultural characteristics of the period after Wo... more Albeit growing interest in the “postwar” era, its cultural characteristics of the period after World War Two and its historical scope are still largely underdetermined. The purpose of this article is to offer a more nuanced use of the term ‘postwar’ and first insights into the cultural landscape of this enormously significant moment in the history of the West. In order to do so, it examines three major works of what is termed here the “immediate postwar.” These works are fundamentally dissimilar and yet, it is argued, share an emotional disposition. As shown, all three works exhibit complex dialectical coupling of horror and anticipation. In other words, this article demonstrates that the cultural production of the postwar period (in the exact sense of the word) is characterized, on the one hand, by a sincere depiction of suffering and depravity, but on the other by an intense engagement with questions about the moral and social future.

The essay discusses German Jewish cultural renewal in the aftermath of the World War II and the ... more The essay discusses German Jewish cultural renewal in the aftermath of the World
War II and the Holocaust. In order to do so, it offers a comparative study of three
prize-reception speeches, given in West Germany after the Holocaust by notable
Jewish figures. Although these speeches vary greatly, they all seek to perform German Jewishness shortly after the long and honorable tradition of German Jewry
was brutally demolished by National Socialism. This article investigates how they
thus partake in an attempt to renew German Jewish culture after the catastrophe
of the Holocaust.

The genius of Gershom Scholem is largely beyond dispute. Even his fiercest critics admire his int... more The genius of Gershom Scholem is largely beyond dispute. Even his fiercest critics admire his integrity and dedication, among other qualities. 1 Yet one of Scholem's greatest accomplishments has gone mostly unnoticed. Scholem portrayed his Zionism and his attraction to the kabbalah as a response to the largely assimilated modern Jewish environment in which he grew up. The young Scholem, it seems, joined the Zionist movement because it offered a tangible solution to the contemporary problems of Jewish life in exile. It appears that this was the context in which he dedicated himself to the study of the kabbalah. Against the background of spiritual confusion and social apathy endemic to the modern Jewish environment of his childhood, Scholem set out to rediscover the veiled sources of Jewish mythology and make them relevant again. The image that Scholem thus created is suggested by the title of his autobiography, From Berlin to Jerusalem. With this book Scholem implied that he had extracted himself from the confusion of exile and found clarity in

Telos, Jan 1, 2006

Abstract Seeking Mandela is a disappointing book. This is not because it does injustice to the su... more Abstract Seeking Mandela is a disappointing book. This is not because it does injustice to the subject matter of its research. The opposite is true: the book deals with the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and with the historical transition of power in South Africa in a ...

אני מביא כאן את שתי התגובות שפורסמו למאמר הביקורת של ואת תגובתי אליהן. יש לשים לב, כי בניגוד למצו... more אני מביא כאן את שתי התגובות שפורסמו למאמר הביקורת של ואת תגובתי אליהן. יש לשים לב, כי בניגוד למצוין בכותרת לתגובה שלי, יש בגוף הדברים תשובה לא רק לקרביץ אלא גם ליקירה.