Metaphysics of the Profane: The Political Theology of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem, New York: Columbia University Press, 2003, 337pp.

M etaphysics of the P rofane eric jacobson M etaphysics of the P rofane The Political Theology of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem columbia university press new york Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893 New York Chichester, West Sussex Copyright © 2003 Columbia University Press All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Jacobson, Eric. Metaphysics of the profane : the political theology of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem / Eric Jacobson. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–231–12656–5 (cloth : alk. paper)—ISBN 0–231–12657–3 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Benjamin, Walter, 1892–1940—Contributions in political theology. 2. Scholem, Gershom Gerhard, 1897—Contributions in political theology. 3. Political theology. 4. Messiah—Judaism. 5. Judaism and politics. 6. Language—Philosophy. 7. Justice (Jewish theology) I. Title. B3209.B584 J33 2003 261.7'092—dc 2002031455 Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper. Printed in the United States of America c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 p 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 für misako contents preface xi introduction 1 part i Messianism 1. the messianic idea in walter benjamin’s early writings 19 The Messianic State: Does the Messiah Initiate or Consummate? The Division of the Holy and Profane 31 The Messianic Intensity of Happiness 35 Tragic Devotion 38 The Worldly Restitution of Immortality 45 Nihilism 49 2. gershom scholem’s theological politics Tradition and Anarchism 53 Zion: Anarchist Praxis or Metaphor? 56 A Programmatic Torah 61 Revolutionary Nihilism 63 Cataclysmic Anarchism 68 Critical Anarchism 76 52 24 viii contents part ii On the Origins of Language and the True Names of Things 3. on the origins of language 85 Metaphor of the Divine 89 The Magic of the Inexpressible 93 Symbolic Revelation 99 Magic and the Divine Word 101 Reception As Translation 106 Misinterpreting the Sign 109 Judgment 111 Jewish Linguistic Theory and Christian Kabbalah 114 4. gershom scholem and the name of god 123 Structure of Symbolic Mysticism 128 The Creating Word and Unpronounceable Name 131 Matter and Magic in the Torah and Its Letters 134 Grammarians of the Name 138 Microlinguistic Speculation 141 Metaphysics of the Divine Name 144 A Microlinguistic Science of Prophecy 147 A Messianic Conception of Language 151 part iii Justice and Redemption 5. prophetic justice 157 On the Origins of Evil 157 Worldly and Divine Restitution 164 Theses on the Concept of Justice 174 The Justice of Prophecy 184 6. judgment, violence, and redemption Judaism and Revolution 193 Violence and the Politics of Pure Means 203 The Strike As Revolutionary Means 206 Punishment and Fate 209 Pacifism, Anarchism, and Violence 210 Violence and Myth 215 193 contents ix Divine Postponement, Judgment, and the Question of Violence 220 The Righteous, the Pious, the Scholar 224 abbreviations notes bibliography index 233 235 331 317 preface Many new materials are presented here for the first time in English, including previously untranslated selections from Gershom Scholem’s journals and letters, the early writings of Walter Benjamin, and unpublished material from the Scholem Archive in Jerusalem. A short note on the use of the German in this work is therefore due. Each citation is given in translation, followed by the original that Columbia University Press has kindly allowed me to include in the notes to the chapter. In the case of Benjamin, several works from the early period are now available in English, and I have sought to refer to these translations whenever possible. Nevertheless, I have chosen to modify them to better serve this study. On occasion, reference is given but the translations will strongly diverge. I would like to thank Suhrkamp Verlag for kind permission to reproduce Walter Benjamin’s “Theologisch-Politisches Fragment,” from Gesammelte Schriften II:203––204, “Notizen zu einer Arbeit über die Kategorie der Gerechtigkeit,” and Gershom Scholem’s “Der Bolschewismus,” from Gershom Scholem, Tagebücher I:401–402 and II:556–558, and “Thesen über den Begriff der Gerechtigkeit” (Scholem arc. 1599/277.34) from the Gerschom Scholem Archive in Jerusalem. Many thanks to Rafi xii preface Weiser, Department of Manuscripts, the National and University Library in Jerusalem, for permission to reproduce Scholem’s Hebrew rendition of Benjamin’s “On Language As Such and the Language of Man.” Chapter 1 has appeared in a modified form under the title “Understanding Walter Benjamin’s Theological-Political Fragment” in Jewish Studies Quarterly 8, no. 3 (2001): 205–247. An abbreviated version of chapter 2 appeared in Italian as “Anarchismo e traditione ebraica: Gershom Scholem” in Amedeo Bertolo, ed., L’anarchico e l’ebreo, pp. 55–75 (Milan: Elèuthera, 2001). In preparing this work, there are several individuals to whom I am most grateful. I would like to thank Dietrich Böhler, Peter Carrier, Werner Konitzer, Michael Löwy, Christopher Powers, Andrea Garetto, Martin Schmidt, Kelly Ann Stoner, and Jürgen Thaler for their comments on the first stages of this project as well as Anson Rabinbach and Gary Smith for their criticism. Thanks to the Visiting Research Fellows program at the Hebrew University and staff at the National and University Library in Jerusalem, in particular the Gershom Scholem Archive and Library, I was able to consult the Scholem Archives in 1998. Giulio Busi, Johanna Hoornweg, and Claudia Ulbrich are gratefully acknowledged for their efforts in the work being awarded a Tibertius prize by the Senate of Berlin’s Department of Culture in 2000. In preparation of the manuscript for publication, I am very grateful to Wendy Lochner and Susan Pensak at Columbia University Press for their tireless efforts as well as Frank Böhling, Harry Fox, Sander Gilman, Julie Kelley, Josephine Rodigues, Samira Teuteberg, and Myrna Weissman for their help and good advice. Most of all, I am grateful to Joseph Dan for his guidance through every phase of this work. Despite this support, any remaining errors are my own. M etaphysics of the P rofane introduction What began with a visit to Berlin, one rainy summer a few years after the fall of the wall, burgeoned into the following study of the intellectual partnership of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem, which I wrote over a period of nine years at the Free University of Berlin. Metaphysics of the Profane: The Political Theology of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem concerns an early phase in the thinking of both authors, bound in many ways to the period surrounding the First World War. Their friendship could have begun as early as the fall of 1913, when Scholem’s Zionist youth group, Jung Juda, met the Sprechsaal der Jugend, which was formed under the influence of the anarchist pedagogue Gustav Wyneken.1 Benjamin had been chosen that evening by Wyneken’s group to speak on the question of Zionism.2 Yet the first encounter between the two actually took place on July 16, 1915, in the library of the University of Berlin.3 Following this initial meeting, their friendship was to span twenty-five years, until Benjamin’s suicide in 1940 while fleeing the Nazis. The most intensive phase of this intellectual partnership began in 1915 and probably reached a peak during the highly creative but also isolated period of the authors’ residence in the town of Muri, Switzerland in 1918. It most definitely culminates in 1923 with Scholem’s departure for Palestine. Other than two brief encounters in 2 introduction Paris in the 1930s, the authors were never to meet again. Following Scholem’s departure, the discussion takes the form of letters—those best preserved date from the years 1933 to 1940—that Scholem published with great satisfaction toward the end of his life.4 On account of Scholem’s efforts we are able to examine this late period with relative ease. Yet the early years, which were undoubtedly seminal for the later exchange, remain largely unknown. Recent publications of Scholem’s journals and letters in German have made a record of these discussions available to the public for the first time.5 Other early manuscripts in Scholem’s hand have yet to see the light of day. The nature of these highly theoretical discussions has also contributed to the fact that this formative period remains for the most part unexplored. Benjamin’s and Scholem’s ideas, which I have here characterized as an early political theology, are the focus of this study. Politics were clearly a main issue of debate. The beginning of their relationship, in marked contrast to its development, was constituted by a shared interest in politics, with the activities of the young Scholem a central topic. This was perhaps the period in Scholem’s life when he was most politically engaged, attending clandestine meetings with his brother Werner (later USPD-Faction representative with Luxemburg and Liebknecht to the Reichstag)6 and campaigning with the Jung Juda against the First World War, for which he was thrown out of the Gymnasium a year before graduation.7 Passionately stating the case for a socialism with an “anarchist streak,”8 Scholem developed a penchant for revolutionary and utopian political theory that was to have a considerable influence on Benjamin, carving the contours of an intellectual exchange that spanned their entire friendship. Scholem’s magnum opus, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, begins with a dedication to Walter Benjamin as the genial metaphysician, critic, and scholar. Yet more than simply a eulogy for a friend, these three dimensions of Benjamin were to have an influence on Scholem extending far beyond the “friendship of a lifetime,” as he puts it in the English version. Indeed friendship is, to the best of our knowledge, that which one experiences in a lifetime, yet the tenor, focus, and, to a great degree, content of the early period of intellectual exchange and mutual influence was to penetrate far into the recesses of Scholem’s late work, many years after Benjamin’s death. The nature of these early influences can be said to have shaped the very basis and structure of his conception of Judaism. More than a friendship, the relationship between the authors can rightly be introduction 3 termed an intellectual partnership, one that was essential for Scholem’s work as a whole. But what does this say about the legacy of the genial metaphysician, critic, and scholar? What is thus an appropriate measure to evaluate the lasting significance of Benjamin thought? If we consider the reception of Benjamin’s work, where Theodor Adorno has long been considered the most important successor, it was actually Scholem who was the first to extend Benjamin’s philosophical tradition to his own thought, indeed remaining closer in many ways to the early categorical analysis. In this respect the Marxist reception of Benjamin’s work in the 1970s was incorrect where it sought to paint Scholem as a conservative. It failed to see Scholem’s critique of Bolshevism, as well as his friend’s turn to Marxism in the later years, as a product of his early “metaphysical anarchism,” which the authors indeed developed together. In this sense the need for a reappraisal of Scholem’s work is overdue. I have therefore sought to make Benjamin’s influence on Scholem’s work one of the key aspects of this book, beginning with the early period and extending into Scholem’s late studies on Kabbalah. It would also have been a task of great worth to extend the early political theology to Benjamin’s more mature writings, particularly with regard to a messianic understanding of history. Yet this question, in its own magnitude and complexity, and necessarily predicated on a firm conception of the early period, will have to be reserved for a future project. Despite these initial words, the reader will find the personal anecdotes of the authors reduced to a minimum in the following study, not because they fail to make good reading—they often do—but because they tend to substitute for a project establishing the main currents of their thought. I have therefore sought to restrict the narrative aspect of this study to the chronology of the exchange and to the social and historical conditions that affected them rather than focusing on biographical events themselves.9 The aim of this book is to provide a close reading of the authors, seeking to reconstitute the character and verve of their early political theology. To that end I have sought to explain their theory in an exegetical manner, favoring speculative commentary over personal association.10 Nevertheless, I do not think that it can be emphasized enough how thoroughly unique this partnership was in relation to its historical moment—a moment that would conclude with the campaign to exterminate German and European Jewry. As with every other aspect of German-Jewish culture, the Shoah has also fundamentally altered the nature and meaning of this partnership, placing 4 introduction Benjamin and Scholem squarely within a generation that culminates centuries of German-Jewish culture. I have here tried to give the Englishspeaking reader insight into the intellectual atmosphere that gave rise to these ideas, from contemporary political and theological thinking in figures like Franz Rosenzweig, Ernst Bloch, and Gustav Landauer to influences such as Franz Joseph Molitor, Samson Raphael Hirsch, and Søren Kierkegaard. One of the central problems facing this book is Benjamin’s early relationship to Judaism. In his late Passagen Werk Benjamin explained his stance toward theology using the metaphor of ink and a blotter, suggesting that theology permeates all aspects of his thought. During his interaction with Scholem in the early years these thoughts become more concerned with articulating a distinctly Jewish dimension, albeit a Judaism unique to what he himself had experienced. His experience in this regard, no less than Scholem’s, was one to which all German Jews were subjected: either convert and thus abandon Judaism, assimilate and abandon the question, or turn to Zionism and seek an Erneuerung des Judentums, a “rejuvenation of Judaism” in the words of Martin Buber. “The problem of Jewish spirit,” he writes to Buber in a letter from November 1915, “is one of the most central and consistent objects of my thought.”11 Yet, unwilling to be subjected to the terms constructed by any of these positions, Benjamin sought to forge his own path to an understanding of Judaism. If his goal was to be able one day to call his thinking a “philosophy of Judaism,” as Scholem reports, a study of the theological dimension of Benjamin’s thought would also need to evaluate the degree to which this was achieved. However, if this proves difficult, because of Benjamin’s rather modest knowledge of Judaism and classical Jewish literature, we must then evaluate his legacy in Scholem, on whom the statement made a lasting impression.12 In this respect I think it is necessary to try to dispel a misconception some have associated with such a project—an illusion that no doubt has much to do with the tremendous interest in the study of Judaism in Germany today. Clearly the wish to repair an intellectual tradition so utterly destroyed over a half century ago cannot be restored by overcompensation, in which a German Jew is made to appear to have been more concerned with Judaism than he or she truly was. Instead, a careful evaluation is needed, whereby the one does not rule out the other. I did not see any reason to portray Benjamin as having been more occupied with Judaism than he was, nor the opposite, for that matter. At best I would only hope to have followed a course introduction 5 laid out by Scholem many years before: not seek to apply Judaism to Benjamin but rather Benjamin to Judaism. The title of this study should also be qualified by a few remarks. I have taken to the term metaphysics to highlight the basic nature of the thinking addressed in this study: it is a highly speculative philosophy of fundamental questions regarding politics and theology, drawing on a near scholastic aptitude for categorical analysis and Talmudic rigor within a conception of divine continuity of meaning. In this way it is in fact a philosophy of divine as well as profane questions. “Metaphysics,” Scholem once remarks in his Swiss notebook, “is a legitimate theory in the subjunctive form. This is the best definition I have found so far; it says everything.”13 The tenor of this discussion is indeed abstract, speculative, subjunctive, and, in the case of Benjamin, even to the furthest possibilities of German grammar. Yet although the methodology is metaphysical, the subject matter is not solely ethereal. The emphasis of the authors is, in fact, distinctly oriented toward worldly affairs, not merely in the sense of somehow “secularizing” theological notions to take on profane meanings but also in advocating qualified restraint with regard to the divine realm while searching for its link to the profane.14 Rather than a metaphysics of divine realms, the early political theology is concerned with the profane and consciously addresses itself to it. One might indeed want to question the use of the term metaphysics here, where the word speculation might suffice, not to speak of the broader meaning of the use of such categories as messianism or justice. But in this regard I did not make it my task to draw normative conclusions from the authors’ dialogue, nor have I sought to preform a critique of their ideas. The focus of this study is to seek an accurate presentation of the authors’ views, to make them accessible to the general public and ultimately susceptible to criticism. The use of the term political theology also requires some explanation. It stems from a desire for a concise phrase to serve as an umbrella for subject matter related to messianism, speculations on divine language and on justice. It goes without saying that the use of the term here has nothing to do with Nazi theorist Carl Schmitt’s use of it in the title of a publication in 1923, after the period in question.15 In contrast to Schmitt, who spuriously claimed to have invented the term,16 the view presented here is that political theology begins with the Torah and the political and religious structure of the Israelites, their classes of priests and judges, the divine ordination of 6 introduction kings—in short, everything that led Josephus to coin the term theocracy to capture the meaning of their social and religious organization.17 It is in a biblical sense that political theology is used here. This work is divided into three parts that reflect the main areas of discussion: messianism, language, and justice. Part 1 is perhaps the most accessible to readers familiar with Benjamin’s early writings, for it attempts to frame the context of the discussion on messianism within the early work and the categories he himself establishes in the period. This is followed by a broader portrayal of Scholem: the categories of his theological politics and the metamorphosis this politics undergoes. The discussion then turns to the linguistic aspect of the authors’ exchange, examining the proposals of Benjamin’s early essay from 1916, “On Language As Such and the Language of Man,” in light of the history of linguistic speculation in Judaism. Benjamin’s proposals on language and its relationship to Judaic linguistics becomes a formidable influence in Scholem’s first studies of Jewish mysticism. It is an influence, however, that Scholem is unable to fully explore until his late essay of the 1970s, “The Name of God and the Linguistic Theory of the Kabbalah,” where he applies Benjamin’s linguistic speculations to the history of the Kabbalah and Judaism. The reader will now hopefully be steeped in the perspectives and terminology of the authors for part 3, on justice. It focuses on their idea of divine justice, first formulated through Benjamin’s critique of the notions of original responsibility, the highest good, law, and right, followed by Scholem’s application of the categories to the Torah and particularly to the prophets. It is here in part 3 that we see political theology come to fruition as a metaphysical tradition. I would like to begin here with a more comprehensive overview of the chapters. Part 1 focuses on Benjamin’s early concept of the messianic in history. According to Benjamin, the advent of Messiah is clearly juxtaposed to the course of history shaped by the mighty and powerful. The Messiah disrupts history and is determined to usher into worldly affairs a transformative age. The first question we are faced with is whether this world to come is seen by Benjamin as a consequence of the Messiah’s arrival or of a world fermented by humanity but consummated by the Messiah. In other words, does the Messiah bring on redemption or is the arrival of the Messiah, after the initiation of human activity, the a posteriori signal that redemption has come? This question, which is just as essential for revolutionaries contemplating revolution (in place of the Messiah) as it is for the messianic idea in Judaism, is taken up through an analysis of one of Ben- introduction 7 jamin’s early texts, the “Theological-Political Fragment.”18 The categories that Benjamin uses to construct the fragment form the basis of the discussion here as well as the political and theological structure of the book in its entirety. One of the categories that consistently reappears in Benjamin’s early thinking is the need for a rigorous partition between the divine and profane. While the divine is enveloped in absolute terms, he directs his attention to the profane, speculating on the meaning of the division and opening up the realm to human activity. After situating the discussion in the division of the divine and profane and then introducing a messianic rupture of these two spheres, the question turns to the role of humanity in the messianic drama. Benjamin seeks to define a dimension of human activity capable of reaching the divine in representative form. This largely unintentional activity requires the kind of devotion he discovers in the hero of tragic drama. In seeking to understand the relationship between the fate of the hero and his or her devotion, the notions of fate and character come into play, with Benjamin drafting a short essay of the same title a few years later. Two theological categories featured in the fragment are discussed here: that of the restitutio in integrum, meaning the messianic promise of the restoration of things to their original state, and immortality as the guaranteed condition of humanity in a messianic age. I propose the necessity of these categories, along with the concept of theocracy, for any messianic theory. The discussion on nihilism, which concludes the first chapter on messianism, makes the transition to a more narrative phase in this study, bringing together Benjamin’s movement toward abstract, political speculation with the historical moment in which he is writing. Benjamin’s early political activities in the German student movement and the influence of anarchist theory are put aside in favor of a retreat from politics. It is arguable whether Benjamin is ever truly political in a practical sense, but his advocacy of a nihilism in conclusion to the fragment has as much to do with the collapse of historical politics following the outbreak of the First World War as with a renewed and intensified commitment to an abstract political theory, governed not by history but by a philosophy of right.19 In this he affirms the role of theology in framing the contours of political analysis. Nihilism, as a “world politics,” contends Benjamin, is also articulated as an affirmative, political idea by Scholem in this period. In Scholem’s case nihilism is preceded by a more traditional political notion of anarchism that he defines in opposition to his brother, Werner Scholem, 8 introduction an avowed independent socialist and later member of the Reichstag. Scholem can be seen here in the broader context of young, Germanspeaking Jews at this time who discover a hidden affinity between Judaism and a utopian, revolutionary consciousness centering around figures such as Martin Buber and Gustav Landauer. Scholem grasps this utopian dimension and seeks to steer it further toward a political conception of Judaism, one able to see the biblical notion of Zion not simply as a metaphorical covenant but as a living obligation and historical goal. Whether Zion should be interpreted as a metaphor or as a program is the focus of a debate between the two authors, and it is also the center of Scholem’s early anarchist Zionism, which I discuss at length here. By the latter part of the war Scholem’s activist front begins to retreat into the background, as a more pensive and, in some ways, critical approach to the potential for immanent transformation emerges. This occurs while Scholem joined up with Benjamin in an intensive phase of intellectual exchange in Muri, Switzerland in 1918. In the remaining sections of part 1, we leave Benjamin behind on the shores of Europe and embark on a narrow journey in search of an overview of Scholem’s theological politics. We begin with Scholem’s research into the messianism of Sabbatai Zvi in his essay “Redemption Through Sin” (1936), followed by a synopsis of his later political reflections, which I have termed a critical anarchism. Here a new perspective on the early political theology is introduced: anarchism comes to describe elements within Judaism rather than a more general political practice or theory. Cataclysmic tendencies in Jewish messianism are understood by Scholem to be anarchic forces that yield new historical forms through their destructive activities. Drawing on this notion, we are able to see how Scholem begins to evaluate radical changes in religious law and observance as anarchic elements within Judaism. His use of anarchism as a critical category gives rise to a notion of Judaism beyond worldly confines, inexhaustible and constantly reinventing itself in the face of new traditions and historical constraints. Finally, in his later years, Scholem turns to a critical form of religious anarchism, claiming that anarchism is the only position that makes religious sense. The second tier of this early political theology is the conception of language, which likewise constitutes part 2 of this study. Turning back to 1916 and his early essay, “On Language As Such and the Language of Man,” we find Benjamin employing the story of creation to construct a philosophy of introduction 9 language based on a concept of innate meaning. In his analysis language is not the means to expression but is the expression of all things and ideas. Here the content of a thing is not expressed through language but in it. In this way creation is key to Benjamin’s theory, and, by painting the broader context of linguistic speculation in Judaism, particularly in Genesis and midrashic literature, Benjamin’s categories emerge as part of this tradition. With Benjamin’s supposition that the essence of a being or an idea is its language, we are immediately confronted by the problem of linguistic expression. Benjamin formulates the question in the following way: if a thing or idea is its language, then what is the meaning of a metaphor? And, when referring to the divine, what else are we to find in language other than a metaphor? In questioning the idea of representation, Benjamin seeks to inquire into an existence beyond the possibility of expression, here meaning the existence of the divine within language. He attempts to address this problem in the story of creation: God expressed His inner substance to create humanity, and ultimately the universe, “in His image,” but He Himself remains incommunicable, inaudible, and untranslatable. The act of creation is performed linguistically and therefore suggests to Benjamin the existence of a divine language distinct from our own. He then turns to the names given by Adam to the animals and asks, How could Adam have known the names of the created beings unless they somehow communicated themselves to him? The name thus becomes the focal point of speculation as to the linguistic expression of an object, the expression of its “substance of the intellect.” With the idea that the animals somehow expressed themselves to Adam in such a way that he was able to recognize and therefore give them their names, Benjamin considers the magic defined in the relationship between an object and its name in the context of revelation, a transmission of this “substance” from the divine to the profane. A magical transition from the inexpressible to finite expression must take place here as well, he adds, supporting the observation with another passage from Genesis on the creation of Adam. Benjamin, in his reading, plays down the physical aspects of the transition of the spirit of life, God’s spirit, to Adam, thus deliberately steering his interpretation away from Hamann and other linguistic thinkers who emphasize an incarnation theory in the word of God forming the flesh of the son—in other words, a Christian linguistic theory. The relationship between the expression of the named and the namer is brought fully into theological focus, with the problem for Adam of knowledge in God succeeding the act of naming. 10 introduction Benjamin seeks here to address the finite nature of the human word in relation to the infinite nature of God’s. This linguistic transition from God to Adam, from a creating word to a naming one, and, ultimately, after the expulsion from paradise, from divine language to the profane, is examined by Benjamin in the concept of translation. In all forms of expression he seeks to define a continuous transporting of one language into another, from written to acoustic, from animate to inanimate, from profane to divine. In the expulsion from paradise the expression of this translation was lost. What emerges in its place is a language of “damaged immediacy,” as Benjamin writes, examined here in the confusion between sign and symbol. In the breakdown of an immediate relationship between a name and the thing that is named, a multiplicity of words abound for the same object, just as a multiplicity of languages exist for the same expression. Profane language emerges from paradise damaged. Yet human language is not without any reference to its predecessor, claims Benjamin, seeing within humanity a residue of the creating word of God. This creating word is preserved in profane expression in the language of judgment—the dimension of justice in the profane. Judgment is deemed the ray of hope through which a redeemed language of pure immediacy will once again be established, while immediacy harkens back to a pure linguistic state in the garden of Eden. The “irony” of the fall to which Benjamin refers at the end of this episode is that the expulsion from paradise was not the birthplace of good and evil but an example of how God administers divine justice; the existence of the two in the form of the fruit of the tree precedes the forbidden act. Thus the lesson that this passage carries for Benjamin is one of the “mythical origins of law.” This is expanded in part 3. At this point I turn from a close analysis of Benjamin’s early philosophy of language to explain the discussion in the context of possible influences. The newly published materials from Scholem reveal a tremendous debt to the Christian Kabbalist Franz Joseph Molitor and his book Philosophy of History; or, On Tradition (1827), whose critical influence on Scholem began to take effect around the time of the authors’ intensive discussions on language. Indeed, if Benjamin sought a concise source for many of the ideas that he presents in his essay, he would have had only to turn to Molitor to obtain a clear and sophisticated understanding of Jewish linguistic theory. In Scholem’s enthusiastic reference to Molitor’s work as “a true ideology of Zionism” he was to link himself in no uncertain terms to a conviction that Molitor shared: the notion of Hebrew as the di- introduction 11 vine language. It appears that Molitor and Scholem diverge at this point from Benjamin, who suggests in its place a theory of translation. Benjamin’s orientation to a philosophy of language, which is supported by some of the main elements of classical, Jewish linguistic speculation, was a great impetus for Scholem and his early research into the Kabbalah. He wanted, in fact, to write his doctoral dissertation in 1921 on linguistic mysticism based largely on his discussions with Benjamin. But after some initial scholarly research in the vast, unchartered waters of the history of the Kabbalah, he was forced to change course. After fifty years of a tireless quest, Scholem was finally able to return to his youthful pursuit in the 1973 essay “The Name of God and the Linguistic Theory of the Kabbalah.” This essay is the subject of the remaining sections in part 2. Perhaps the center of Scholem’s essay, and that which marks his attempt to apply the early political theology of language to the history of the Kabbalah, is the assertion that linguistic speculation is metaphysical speculation, seen here as reflection on the meaning and truth of the Torah. Consequently, a metaphysical approach to creation is also the starting point of Scholem’s study. The categories of his analysis begin, first of all, with the acoustic dimension of God’s pronunciation, that is, “Let there be light,” and light occurs. Here expression is viewed in much the same way that it was by Benjamin: substance is manifested in language and not through it, where language is more than simply a medium of expression. We see Scholem presenting a similar problem to that which we saw in Benjamin: how does a symbol express the inexpressible? Scholem links the “magic” of the symbol, in its ability to articulate the unpronounceable, to Benjamin’s “linguistic mysticism,” as he calls it, thereby paving the way for a broad study of mystical linguistics in terms first drawn up by Benjamin. In addition, Scholem establishes three points with which he seeks to define Jewish linguistic theory. First, that creation and revelation are linguistic expressions of God’s infinite nature that confront the profane in the limited form of a symbol. Second, the name of God is the metaphysical origin of language, from which everything else emerged. Third, the theory of the name is located in the magic of its expression in the profane and its link to the human word. These three stipulations mark the focus of Scholem’s analysis. The remaining chapter follows Scholem’s journey through the history of Jewish linguistic thought, seeking to expose the ways in which his methodology is indebted to the early linguistic theory. The idea of the creating word of God and His unpronounceable name returns in Scholem’s 12 introduction late essay to the paradox already posed by Benjamin, in which the name that God used to name Himself, the name with which He is addressed, is no longer expressible or pronounceable. It is a name that creates meaning but is itself meaningless. For Scholem this paradox typifies the power of the divine. He draws a distinction between the unpronounceable name and God’s creating word, providing the groundwork for the discussion of the hidden, divine combinations of the letters of a creating language. Postbiblical linguistic thinking in Judaism abounds in the possibilities of discovering elements of this creating language, even if only in the limited sense of a symbol. If the Torah acted as the blueprint for the story of creation, which one of the earliest commentaries on Genesis, Bereshit Rabbah, suggests, then the discovery of this language must consist of deciphering a code concealed in the words of the Torah. Naturally, we encounter a problem with the physical aspects of creation when viewing words as the building blocks of the world, as Benjamin’s notion of the spirit or breath of God comes into focus. The letters themselves, the smallest particles of the word, turn to figurative atoms under a linguistic microscope. Their combinations, as the book Sefer Yetzirah proposes, is the key to their power. This tradition, continuing in medieval Spain, Scholem pursues in the writings of Nachmanides, Moses de Leon and Joseph Gikatilla, medieval thinkers who are speculative grammarians of the divine name, searching for the structure and meaning of the divine in symbolic form. Scholem introduces figures such as Isaac the Blind from Provence and contrasts him to Schlegel’s proposal that philosophers are grammarians of reason. But unlike philologists, who view the written form as a secondary or mediated representation of true language, the Kabbalists see the written as the “true representation” of its secrets, says Scholem, situating Benjamin chiefly among them. In Scholem’s essay we witness a transition from early rabbinic thought to medieval microlinguistic speculation where the metaphysics of language are based on the secret dimensions of its atomic parts. Scholem considers the contributions of the Iyyun circle to linguistic speculation in the Kabbalah, followed by a theory of a historical Torah that reveals a new meaning in every age. He then seeks to expose the metaphysical orientation of Jacob Ha-Kohen of the thirteenth century and Israel Sarug of the seventeenth century, linking them implicitly to Benjamin’s speculations of a paradisiacal language. Scholem returns here to the question whether Hebrew itself was the divine language, enabling a distinction between the views of the Kabbalists and Benjamin. introduction 13 The microlinguistic theory of the thirteenth-century Kabbalist Abraham Abulafia and his “science of prophecy” takes on a central role in Scholem’s essay. We see here how Abulafia shares Benjamin’s conception of linguistic intelligence, which the former perceives not only in Hebrew as the divine language but also in every translated language. The divine name and the pursuit of knowledge remains at the core of the analysis, as well as a theory of linguistic magic. In short, we are able to detect quite a few of Benjamin’s categories in Scholem’s portrayal of Abulafia. The final section of part 2 reviews Scholem’s own conclusions concerning a Judaic philosophy of language, drawing on the early categories in the late research and suggesting a linguistic tradition to which Benjamin belongs. Part 3 concerns the idea of justice, the third dimension of this early political theology. By the very suggestion that justice is the substance of redemption, it can no longer be viewed as part of the profane. Thus the very first proposal in Scholem’s and Benjamin’s conception is the necessity to ascribe justice to the realm of the divine and construct in its place a notion of judgment in the profane. In a redemptive conception of justice we discover early references imbued with new meaning. The judging word, which we encountered in Benjamin’s linguistic theory in part 2, is explored here in great detail, along with notions of the mystical origins of law, fate, and responsibility. The relationship between character and fate initially encountered in the first section on messianism is here coupled with the problem of the origins of evil. I begin this chapter with a comparison of Kierkegaard’s notion of responsibility to that of Benjamin’s, seeking to explain how the origins of evil in the first encounter with sin undergoes a radical reinterpretation in Benjamin’s metaphysics of Genesis. Similar to Kierkegaard, a new ethics is proposed on the basis of the actions of the individual and not on original sin. Yet rather than an original sin transferred to individual sin, Benjamin seeks to overturn the notion of sin altogether, substituting it its place a redemptive pursuit of responsibility. In contrast to the universalization of suffering proposed by Kierkegaard, Benjamin seeks the universalization of the Jew. Ideas of distributive justice, virtue, and the material and spiritual restitution in the just state are the categories that emerge from the early discussions with Scholem concerning a Judaic conception of justice. Scholem’s journals again play an important role in reconstructing the early debate as well as presenting us with a hitherto unknown text by Benjamin entitled “Notes to a Study on the Category of Justice,” presented here in 14 introduction English for the first time. In addition to exploring terms that belong to a restitutio in integrum of the 1921 fragment, these notes also constitute a precursor to the concept of justice in his “Critique of Violence.” Benjamin differentiates ethical, worldly activity once again from the category of justice, focusing here on the difference between the terms mishpat and tzedek, which he formulates in Hebrew script. One of Scholem’s manuscripts from the archive in Jerusalem entitled “Thesen über den Begriff der Gerechtigkeit” (Theses on the Concept of Justice) appears to be a direct commentary on Benjamin’s notes on justice, with the first few theses attempting to pinpoint the sources of Benjamin’s text. Scholem reflects on the idea of distributive justice and comes to the conclusion that it must point to something beyond the mere universalization of goods, be it material goods or “the highest good.” Echoing Benjamin’s terminology, he attempts to distinguish justice from virtue, moving to a discussion of the morphology of the word tzedek from a perspective enriched by the categories of the divine and profane. Violence is then the focus of his inquiry into virtue and righteousness. In another of the newly released archival manuscripts presented here in English for the first time, Scholem seeks to contextualize the discussion on justice in the language of the prophets, drawing on the story of Jonah as well as the groundwork of divine justice in prophecy as a whole. Once again, the distinction between justice and judgment takes center stage through the terms mishpat and tzedek. The postponement of judgment in the story of Jonah—more specifically, the postponement of the execution of judgment—is suggested as an indicator of the meaning of divine justice as a whole. If justice in Jonah’s prophecy is exhibited in the postponement of the execution of judgment, then justice on earth would be the permanent suspension of the Last Judgment, Scholem concludes. Here, he introduces the concept of the tzadik, the righteous figure, who represents the “being of justice.” The concept of justice in the early political theology draws on the distinction between the divine and profane, situating the idea of justice solely in the realm of the former. Prophecy, in this respect, is an attempt to articulate the terms of a divine conception of justice. And yet this distinction immediately calls into question the demands of justice in the profane world. Indeed, the culmination of the First World War disrupts the decisive political nihilism that Scholem and Benjamin had constructed during their isolated existence in Muri, Switzerland. In this period of critical reflection on introduction 15 practical politics a debate ensued on the meaning and importance of the Bolshevik revolution. Scholem’s thoughts from the period are preserved in a handwritten manuscript from 1918 bearing the title “The Bolshevik Revolution,” presented here in English. In his late recollections of the debate he writes that he defended the principle of revolutionary dictatorship, if this meant the dictatorship of the impoverished and not necessarily the proletariat.20 Scholem’s sympathies, according to his late reflections, lay with the social revolutionaries against the Bolsheviks. Yet in this early manuscript Scholem was more inclined to entertain the messianic qualities of a Bolshevik movement that imparted a “magic” to its ranks in the notion of a “dictatorship of poverty” and linked to the messianic idea. But as a historical force promising future justice, Scholem already suggests in 1918, Bolshevism proves unable to judge its own actions in the present. The dictatorship of poverty, he writes, is constituted to end in blood. The idea of the justified use of violence becomes one of the key components of this political theology, and, with the preceding debate on divine and prophetic justice in mind, we can now turn our attention to one of the most celebrated essays among Benjamin’s early writings, the “Critique of Violence” of 1921. In many ways it presents itself as the most political of the early pieces, making explicit claims with regard to the question of justified violence in the hands of the state, the police, and the judicial system in contrast to the counterinstitutions of strikes and antiwar pacifism. However, the proposals with which Benjamin concludes his critique have little to do with practical political activity. In one sense we see him defending the anarchist-pacifist challenge to the monopoly of state violence. The true basis of violence, he argues, is divine violence, which God manifests in the world. He defines here the worldly counterforce to an arbitrary or “mythical” violence as a “politics of pure means.” By this Benjamin points to the friendly exchange between individuals as a basis for a new politics, itself formed from a “culture of the heart.” What begins with a rather political thesis turns to theological speculation on divine violence and a messianic community of freely acting individuals. The “Critique of Violence” also seems to have had a considerable impact on Scholem, as the latter part of his “Theses on the Concept of Justice” reveals. Scholem here seeks to bring together his analysis of justice in the form of divine postponement with several of Benjamin’s ideas. In the last section of the final chapter on justice, we turn to the impact of the early political theology on the mature Scholem, moving into the late 16 introduction 1950s to consider what effect these early speculations on justice may have had on Scholem’s later conception of the righteous figure. In the manuscript on Jonah and in the “Theses on the Concept of Justice” we witnessed a growing interest in the role of the worldly just, focusing on the linguistic relationship between justice, charity, and righteousness. This takes its cue from the focus on virtue, mishpat, and the righteous individual in Benjamin’s “Notes to a Study on the Category of Justice” and “Critique of Violence,” presenting many of the categories again with renewed vigor in an essay for the Eranos Jahrbuch in 1958 on “The Teachings on the ‘Just’ in Jewish Mysticism.” Here Scholem divides the figure of righteousness into three types, through which many of the early categories are expressed. These are the righteous, the pious, and the scholar—tzadik, Chasid, and talmid chakham. The final few pages explore Scholem’s personal link to the meaning embedded in names and the anarchic, collectivist, even comical eruption of justice in the world in the form of the righteous figure. It is clear, from the perspective established in this chapter, that the characteristics Scholem finds in the righteous are also those of the Messiah. The focus of this study can be summarized as an attempt to reconstruct the early discussion of the authors in the framework of an intellectual partnership, seeking to emphasize the mutual effect that each had on the other regarding the body of ideas I have termed a political theology. It is also a study of the lasting influence that this early political and theological speculation was to have on Scholem. Many new materials are presented here for the first time in English, including parts of Scholem’s journals and letters, unpublished material from the Scholem Archive in Jerusalem, as well as untranslated early texts by Benjamin. Should this study make a contribution to the understanding of the foundations of Scholem’s pioneering research into Jewish mysticism and messianism, or the Judaic and theological underpinnings of Benjamin’s thought, the author would be most gratified.