"Words of Substance Must Have Both One Meaning and Another": Reappraising the Scholem-Weiss Debate

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Abstract

This essay examines one of Gershom Scholem's most dialectically tensed fields of study, the study of Hasidism, in relation to the work of another prominent scholar of Hasidism, Joseph George Weiss. Through revisiting both of these authors' works, I argue that although no direct polemical argument with Scholem can be found in Weiss's oeuvre, strands of contention can be traced by a series of décalages-displacements, moments of tension-that enable Weiss to continue and reiterate some of Scholem's arguments and at the same time to divert them into independent paths of exploration. In particular, I focus upon two such cases of décalage: magic and anthropocentrism.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationIJS Studies in Judaica
EditorsMirjam Zadoff, Noam Zadoff
PublisherBrill Academic Publishers
Pages76-94
Number of pages19
DOIs
StatePublished - 2019

Publication series

NameIJS Studies in Judaica
Volume19
ISSN (Print)1570-1581

Keywords

  • Baal Shem Tov
  • Dov Baer
  • Gershom Scholem
  • Hasidism
  • Jewish mysticism
  • Joseph Weiss
  • kabbalah
  • magic
  • uniomysticism

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