GERSHOM SCHOLEM AND THE RESEARCH OF SABBATIANISM

This thin book is a prelude to a larger task that lies ahead: the authoring of a comprehensive monograph on Gershom Scholem’s scholarly oeuvre as informed by the vast material preserved in his archive. Or, in other words, presenting the “Major Trends in the Study of Jewish Mysticism” as established by Scholem. This book is concerned with one—albeit central— component of this story that awaits to be told, that of Scholem’s study of the Sabbatian movement. By presenting for the first time the narrative arc of what is arguably Scholem’s greatest scholarly achievement as informed by his own archive, Gershom Scholem and the Research of Sabbatianism offers a complete picture of the development of the scholarship of this critical chapter in the history of Jewish mysticism.

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Professor Jonatan Meir serves as a faculty member in the Goldstein-Goren Department of Jewish Thought at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He is a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities and is the author of numerous studies on various forms of Jewish Literature and Jewish Mysticism. Dr. Shinichi Yamamoto is a scholar of Kabbalah and Sabbatianism at the University of Tokyo; he has recently published Kabbalah: Historical and Conceptual Perspectives (Tokyo 2015). The authors are the editors of Gershom Scholem, History of the Sabbatian Movement (Jerusalem and Tel Aviv: Schocken Institute for Jewish Research and Schocken Books, 2018)