Zadoff: Gershom Scholem and Joseph Weiss, A Correspondence 1948-1964 (2012)

Noam Zadoff (editor), Gershom Scholem and Joseph Weiss, A Correspondence 1948-1964, Jerusalem : Carmel , 2012

The correspondence between the Hassidism scholar Joseph Weiss (1918-1969) and his teacher Gershom Scholem (1897-1982) touches upon many different subjects. It describes different aspects of the academic life in Israel , England and the USA , and it tells an important chapter in the historiography of the Hassidic movement, in which Weiss played a central role. This book describes the friendship between a teacher and its student and it reveals the complex relationship between them throughout three decades. In a memorial lecture to Weiss held in 1970, one year after his death, Scholem said: “I considered him in many ways the closest of my pupils, and the dialogue between us, a dialogue in the true sense of a term so much abused nowadays, went on for nearly thirty years”. The letters brought in this volume are this dialogue and they reflect a relationship based on friendship and mutual respect between two of the most prominent Jewish intellectuals on the 20th century.

From an announcement on the Ha-Safran email list