FOR LAG B'OMER: Commentary Magazine has reprinted a long and fascinating 1980 article by Gershom Scholem:
How I Came to the Kabbalah. When he was about eighteen years old he couldn't find anyone who could teach him the Zohar. So he bought an edition of the Aramaic text and started reading it on his own. He became the twentieth century's most influential scholar of Jewish mysticism.
For PaleoJudaica posts on Scholem, see here and links.
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