Walter Benjamin, the Kabbalah, and Secularism
Author(s)
Kam Shapiro
Publication Name
AJS Perspectives: The Magazine of the Association for Jewish Studies
Publication Date
Spring 2011
Publisher
Association for Jewish Studies (AJS)
Abstract
Where do we look in this world for signs of the next? What do they tell us of what is to come, and of our part in our own transformation? These were acute questions in the chaotic interwar period during which the German Jewish critic Walter Benjamin came of age, when modern confidence in human rationality and faith in historical progress had been shattered by mass culture, global economic crises, and world war. In the course of an unfolding political and personal catastrophe--ending with his likely choice of suicide as an alternative to capture by the Gestapo--Benjamin sought redemptive potentials among the ruins of modernity. In formulating what he once called a "weak messianism," he drew on both Marxism and Jewish theology, especially the mystical tradition of the Kabbalah, with which he became familiar through his friend Gershom Scholem. His peculiar blend of materialist and theological criticism, along with his famously hermetic style, have puzzled many readers and licensed diverse interpretations. Benjamin's appeal to messianism has been identified alternately with the triumph of the proletariat and the restoration of divine language. It has also illustrated certain affinities, however, between secular and theological visions, including especially their potential for mutual entanglement.
Editor
Bunzl, Matti
Havrelock, Rachel
Havrelock, Rachel
Geographic Coverage
Germany
Copyright Info
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BJPA Record
Bibliographic Information
Walter Benjamin, the Kabbalah, and Secularism. Spring 2011: https://archive.jpr.org.uk/object-bjpa12009
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