Overview

Prochnik creates a nonfiction Bildungsroman of one of the twentieth century's most important humanist thinkers, while also telling an intimate story of his own youth, marriage and spiritual quest in Jerusalem. In Stranger in a Strange Land, Prochnik revisits the life and work of Gershom Scholem, whose once prominent reputation, as a Freud-like interpreter of the inner world of the Cosmos, has been in eclipse in the United States. He vividly conjures Scholem's upbringing in Berlin, and compellingly brings to life Scholem's transformative friendship with Walter Benjamin, the critic and philosopher. In doing so, he reveals how Scholem's frustration with the bourgeois ideology of Germany during the First World War led him to discover Judaism, Kabbalah, and finally Zionism, as potent counter-forces to Europe's suicidal nationalism. a Prochnik's own years in the Holy Land in the 1990s brings him to question the stereotypical intellectual and theological constructs of Jerusalem, and to rediscover the city as a physical place, rife with the unruliness and fecundity of nature. Prochnik ultimately suggests that a new form of ecological pluralism must now inherit the historically energizing role once played by Kabbalah and Zionism in Jewish thought.

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9781590517765

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Praise for <i>Stranger in a Strange Land</i> What a wonderful book this is: gripping, illuminating, beautifully constructed, and full of the communicative energy that comes from things long in gestation but written with fire and speed. It does so many things so well the portrait of Scholem himself, the account of his work, the study of friendship that comes about through the sustained presence of Walter Benjamin, the evocations of Jerusalem and New York, above all the paralleling of Prochnik s own story with Scholem s. The extraordinary affinities between author and subject give the book an emotional intensity that complements its erudition and lends power to its final, audacious, inspiring claim on the reader s capacity for hope. James Lasdun, author of <i>The Fall Guy</i> In his previous book, George Prochnik gave us a moving portrait of Stefan Zweig, the Viennese Jew who wrote tenderly of the world of yesterday the liberal Europe that collapsed with apocalyptic consequences in the 1930s and killed himself in his Brazilian exile rather than die in its flames. In his powerful new book, Prochnik offers us a portrait of a Berlin Jew, fifteen years Zweig s junior, who made a very different choice: to renounce the dream of a liberal Europe and remake himself, and his people, in Palestine. Gerhard Scholem, who would become the famous scholar of the Kabbalah Gershom Scholem, upheld a cultural version of Zionism, and spoke of the need for Arab Jewish coexistence; yet over time he accommodated himself to the often brutal practices of the Jewish state, which turned Palestinians into strangers in their own land. In the late 1980s, as Palestinians in the Occupied Territories launched their first Intifada, Prochnik, an American Jew from the suburbs, settled in Jerusalem with his family, inspired by Scholem s vision of a renewed Jewish cultural vitality, only to discover that this vision lay in ruins, no match for the muscular, expansionist Zionism with which it had made a marriage of convenience. In<i>Stranger in a Strange Land</i>, Prochnik writes of Scholem s dream and of his own with a rare and affecting combination of authority and vulnerability. This is a deeply felt work of critique and elegy, a probing examination of the subject of our time: the temptations, and the dangers, of belonging. Adam Shatz, contributing editor at the <i>London Review of Books</i> Prochnik s book presents anuneasy political mystical tour through Scholem s writing and his own Jerusalem, now lost forever. What makes it a unique and brilliant contribution to current debates about Palestine is that in his reading of Scholem, Prochnik findssimultaneouslyboth the echoes of the forces messianic, national, and colonial that keep tearing the region apart, and also the kernel ofsomething precious to be salvaged. From the abyss of our despair, Prochnik manages to do what so few others can: imaginea future of living together. Eyal Weizman, author of<i>Hollow Land: Israel s Architecture of Occupation</i>and director of the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London George Prochnik is a great practitioner of the art of auto-nonfiction, the writing of intellectual history in which a past life is quickened again by the keen presence of the author. Yet Prochnik never obtrudes; rather, his beautiful sentences guide us, gently but surely, through both the often-complex thinking of his subjects and the often-traumatic events of their lives. As in his biography of the mercurial Stefan Zweig, alienation is foregrounded in this account of the scholarly Gershom Scholem (who inscribed it in his adopted name, Gershom, meaning stranger in a strange land ). But loss is lightened here by the Scholemian conviction that the Kabbalah, the mystical tradition of biblical interpretation of which he was the world expert, offers not only a key to the broken past but also a call to its healing. If the Kabbalah appeared to Scholem as an allegory of Jewish exile, Zionism was his way to bring this wandering to an end. As a young man Prochnik was fired by similar hopes, and in what he describes elsewhere as a shadow-arc of his subject, he too emigrated to Jerusalem only, like Scholem, to be disillusioned by the state politics he encountered there. Yet even that loss is lightened somewhat, for Prochnik came to discover what Scholem had also learned: how we are then mandated to live responsibly, inside history. That ethical invitation is heard in every sentence of this inspiring book. Hal Foster, author of <i>Bad New Days: Art, Criticism, Emergency</i> Reading this utterly absorbing book, I felt like the stranger in the title, led by the hand through the complementary landscapes of two lives: Gershom Scholem s and the author s. Moving between them with deftness and artistry, Prochnik holds the reader s attention at every turn. In the process, he casts new light on Kabbalah and develops a critique of Zionism that is as thought-provoking as any I have read. Brian Klug, author of <i>Being Jewish and Doing Justice: Bringing Argument to Life</i>

Praise for <i>Stranger in a Strange Land</i> George Prochnik blends history, philosophy, and memoir with exemplary panache in this fascinating account of an intellectual and spiritual journey. But he never loses sight of the essential questions: How are we to live? And in what kind of world? --Pankaj Mishra, author of <i>Age of Anger: A History of the Present</i> What a wonderful book this is: gripping, illuminating, beautifully constructed, and full of the communicative energy that comes from things long in gestation but written with fire and speed. It does so many things so well--the portrait of Scholem himself, the account of his work, the study of friendship that comes about through the sustained presence of Walter Benjamin, the evocations of Jerusalem and New York, above all the paralleling of Prochnik's own story with Scholem's. The extraordinary affinities between author and subject give the book an emotional intensity that complements its erudition and lends power to its final, audacious, inspiring claim on the reader's capacity for hope. --James Lasdun, author of <i>The Fall Guy</i> In his previous book, George Prochnik gave us a moving portrait of Stefan Zweig, the Viennese Jew who wrote tenderly of the 'world of yesterday'--the liberal Europe that collapsed with apocalyptic consequences in the 1930s--and killed himself in his Brazilian exile rather than die in its flames. In his powerful new book, Prochnik offers us a portrait of a Berlin Jew, fifteen years Zweig's junior, who made a very different choice: to renounce the dream of a liberal Europe and remake himself, and his people, in Palestine. Gerhard Scholem, who would become the famous scholar of the Kabbalah Gershom Scholem, upheld a cultural version of Zionism, and spoke of the need for Arab-Jewish coexistence; yet over time he accommodated himself to the often brutal practices of the Jewish state, which turned Palestinians into strangers in their own land. In the late 1980s, as Palestinians in the Occupied Territories launched their first Intifada, Prochnik, an American Jew from the suburbs, settled in Jerusalem with his family, inspired by Scholem's vision of a renewed Jewish cultural vitality, only to discover that this vision lay in ruins, no match for the muscular, expansionist Zionism with which it had made a marriage of convenience. In<i> Stranger in a Strange Land</i>, Prochnik writes of Scholem's dream--and of his own--with a rare and affecting combination of authority and vulnerability. This is a deeply felt work of critique and elegy, a probing examination of the subject of our time: the temptations, and the dangers, of belonging. --Adam Shatz, contributing editor at the <i>London Review of Books</i> Prochnik's book presents an uneasy political-mystical tour through Scholem's writing and his own Jerusalem, now lost forever. What makes it a unique and brilliant contribution to current debates about Palestine is that in his reading of Scholem, Prochnik finds simultaneously both the echoes of the forces--messianic, national, and colonial--that keep tearing the region apart, and also the kernel of something precious to be salvaged. From the abyss of our despair, Prochnik manages to do what so few others can: imagine a future of living together. --Eyal Weizman, author of <i>Hollow Land: Israel's Architecture of Occupation </i>and director of the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London George Prochnik is a great practitioner of the art of auto-nonfiction, the writing of intellectual history in which a past life is quickened again by the keen presence of the author. Yet Prochnik never obtrudes; rather, his beautiful sentences guide us, gently but surely, through both the often-complex thinking of his subjects and the often-traumatic events of their lives. As in his biography of the mercurial Stefan Zweig, alienation is foregrounded in this account of the scholarly Gershom Scholem (who inscribed it in his adopted name, Gershom, meaning stranger in a strange land ). But loss is lightened here by the Scholemian conviction that the Kabbalah, the mystical tradition of biblical interpretation of which he was the world expert, offers not only a key to the broken past but also a call to its healing. If the Kabbalah appeared to Scholem as an allegory of Jewish exile, Zionism was his way to bring this wandering to an end. As a young man Prochnik was fired by similar hopes, and in what he describes elsewhere as a 'shadow-arc' of his subject, he too emigrated to Jerusalem--only, like Scholem, to be disillusioned by the state politics he encountered there. Yet even that loss is lightened somewhat, for Prochnik came to discover what Scholem had also learned: how we are then mandated to 'live responsibly, inside history.' That ethical invitation is heard in every sentence of this inspiring book. --Hal Foster, author of <i>Bad New Days: Art, Criticism, Emergency</i> Reading this utterly absorbing book, I felt like the stranger in the title, led by the hand through the complementary landscapes of two lives: Gershom Scholem's and the author's. Moving between them with deftness and artistry, Prochnik holds the reader's attention at every turn. In the process, he casts new light on Kabbalah and develops a critique of Zionism that is as thought-provoking as any I have read. --Brian Klug, author of <i>Being Jewish and Doing Justice: Bringing Argument to Life</i>

Author Information

George Prochnik's most recent book, The Impossible Exile- Stefan Zweig at the End of the World,areceived the National Jewish Book Award for Biography/Memoir in 2014 and was shortlisted for the Wingate Prize in the UK. Prochnik is also the author of In Pursuit of Silence- Listening for Meaning in a World of Noise (2010), and Putnam Camp- Sigmund Freud, James Jackson Putnam and the Purpose of American Psychology (2006). He has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, Bookforumaand theaLA Review of Books, and is editor-at-large for Cabinet magazine.a

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