Cultural zionism between Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem -

Abstract

A significant component of the Hebrew-speaking culture in British Mandate Palestine was built from the contributions of the children of Christmas (Weihnachten) Jews. Christmas Jews is the fin de siècle popular term used for depicting middle-upper class Jews who, through a process of secularization, intellectual achievement and economic success, integrated as German citizens. This research investigates the motivations voiced by this generation regarding the issues of Hebrew language and migration to Palestine. As a case study, I examined the debate between two prominent Berlin intellectuals - Walter Benjamin and Gerhard Gershom Scholem on the questions of Judaism, Zionism and Hebrew language. The first author embraced his German-French experience, revolutionizing nineteenth century European criticism; the second author moved to Jerusalem at an early age, eventually becoming one of the founding fathers of the Hebrew University and the first academic to publish in Modern Hebrew language. As intellectuals, both Scholem and Benjamin had two individual paths of reflection. Their correspondences on matters of Hebrew, Judaism and cultural Zionism highlight some of the tensions of their generation. What is suggested, after an analysis of their arguments, is that the need for a unifying identity beyond religious practice was one of the main motivations behind the recovery of Hebrew and its modern use. Scholem espoused cultural Zionism as the return to a mythical Hebrew-speaking community of Jews, while Benjamin discarded the option of coming to terms with Judaism and abandoned the study of Hebrew when he found it in contradiction with his intellectual project as a critic of German literature.