Nationalizing Judaism by Ohana David;Barell Ari;Feige Michael;

Author:Ohana, David;Barell, Ari;Feige, Michael;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Rivka Schatz-Uffenheimer—Zionism Is Messianism

Rivka Schatz-Uffenheimer, an outstanding pupil of Scholem, wrote her doctoral thesis under his guidance on the subject of “Quietist Principles in Eighteenth-Century Hassidic Thought,” which was expanded into the book Hassidism As Mysticism.[58] In her articles and books on Kabbala, messianism, Sabbetaianism, and Hasssidism, she employed the historical-philological method of her teacher and accepted most of his basic premises in the research of Jewish mysticism. About a decade before she received her doctorate, after the publication of Scholem’s monumental work Sabbetai Sevi and the Sabbetaian Movement in His Time, she wrote a short review of the book in which she expressed surprise at Scholem’s critics: “‘Pure Judaism’ cannot digest it, but why should the gnostic principles in the Kabbala of Rabbi Isaac Luria be any more ‘alien’ to the spirit of Judaism than the Aristotelian principles in the ‘Guide to the Perplexed’?”[59] She finished her analysis by saying that because Sabbetai Sevi did little to enrich messianic thought, his prophet Nathan of Gaza took up his pen and transformed him from a persecuted man and an exile into the Messiah of the God of Jacob. Schatz declared that if Scholem were again to summarize the factual side of the Sabbetaian episode with the addition of the new sources he had revealed, it would be a major contribution to Jewish historiography. But what made this book an asset of the first importance to Jewish studies in the time of the Jewish revival was its conceptual impetus that gave a new meaning to things. And she emphasized the bravery of her teacher who dared to present a revolutionary thesis by humanizing a controversial figure: “What is a free man? One who raises his head to reveal and interpret things and is not deterred.”[60]

Schatz edited three collections of Scholem’s lectures—on the Sabbetaian episode, on the beginnings of Kabbala and the Sefer Ha-Bahir (Book of Brightness), and on the Kabbala in Provence. On the thirtieth day after his death she gave a lecture in the National Academy of Sciences on the subject of “The Interpretation of Hassidism as an Expression of Gershom Scholem’s Idealistic Outlook.” In her lecture, she agreed with Scholem that hassidism was not a movement that could be called messianic. A movement that does not have an urgent messianic interest would be, like hassidism, open to an internalization of religious life. At the same time, she did not agree with him that the movement “was compelled to be like this for external reasons.” Relating to Scholem’s description of eighteenth-century hassidism as “messianic mysticism at its best,” she said that in his opinion hassidic thought was not essentially concerned with a speculative theory of mysticism like Kabbala, for instance, but with a pneumenological expression of main conceptual principles and their application to hassidic society. One must see the affinity of Zionism to the Sabbetaian movement and not to the hassidic movement, “whose aims were exilic and which did not have the revolutionary impetus a messianic movement would have.”[61] Schatz

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