Gershom Scholem e la qabbalah cristiana

The postface, while presenting to a larger audience, the three essays contained in the volume, reconstructs in detail the history of the encounter between Gershom Scholem and Christian Kabbalah, from the early years of the First World War until his last conference, in Berlin, in 1981. The ideological entanglements of Scholem's attitude towards Christian Kabbalah are described and critically examined. The identification of Christian Kabbalah, an intellectual phenomenon going back to the end of the Middle Ages, with German right-wing ideology, felt, if not thematized explicitly by Scholem, is verified historically, explaining why Scholem, although always very much under the influence of Christian Kabbalists, such as Reuchlin and Franz Joseph Molitor, tried for a very long time to distance himself from this intellectual movement and trying to offer good reasons as to why, in the last decades of his life, Scholem changed his attitude and came to recognize his debt towards the Christian Kabbalists.