L'ultimo miracolo

The preface traces the editorial and intellectual history of this fortunate book, published for the first time in German in 1970 and translated into Italian in 1986. It marks the beginning of a closer relationship between Gershom Scholem, who was born in Berlin but emigrated to Palestine already in 1923, with the Suhrkamp publishing house and with the German cultural industry. At the same time the letters between Scholem and Siegfried Unseld, patron of Suhrkamp, show that the whole enterprise was under the aegis of Martin Buber: for Unseld since he was looking for a "new Buber", after the death of the latter in 1965, and for Scholem, since he was trying with all is might to avoid to be confused with Scholem, given his very different political, religious and scientific standpoint. The preface uses unpublished materials and is designed to introduce the reader to the intricacies of this apparently very linear short introduction to Judaism in its principal theological features: God, Creation, Revelation-Tradition and Eschatology.