Sunday, May 14, 2017

Another review of Prochnik, Stranger in a Strange Land

BOOK REVIEW: Book World: Looking for the man who took the Kabbalah mainstream. Stranger in a Strange Land: Searching for Gershom Scholem and Jerusalem (Randy Rosenthal, Washington Post, rpt. Edwardsville Intelligencer). The earlier review by Alan Newhouse (noted here) concentrated more on Prochnik, the biographer. This one concentrates more on the subject of the biography, Gershom Scholem, and on Scholem's friend Walter Benjamin. The essays of Benjamin led Prochnik to Scholem's writings.