Scholem’s Dobrushka: The Political Career of a Frankist

The article deals with Gershom Scholem’s interest in the historical figure of Moses Dobrushka (also known as Thomas von Schönfeld, and, in his last days, as Junius Frey), a central European Frankist, who first converted to Christianity and then to Jacobinism, embracing revolutionary ideals in Paris. The reasons for this interest, it is argued, were not merely scientific, but firmly rooted in Scholem’s construction of Zionism’s negative political theology.