Scholem has made Jewish studies more complicated for us, to be sure. He draws a wedge between religion and politics; he shows language’s inability to disclose the meaning that we want it to (or even that it wants to); he shows that Rabbinic literature is not some hard-and-fast code that we are simply commanded to follow; and (for me, most importantly), he raises the question as to whether justice amounts to suspending judgment. Scholem was very much interested in those moments in Judaism that transgressed the normative Rabbinic tradition and its instantiation of laws. That his antinomianism remains intellectual, rather than becoming practical, is what separates him from a figure like Jacob Taubes.

Weidner’s book is a book for Scholem scholars and, in that context, it is exquisite. To my knowledge, it is the first treatment (in English) to span the entirety of Scholem’s youthful writings. Weidner tarries closely alongside...

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