“My Program Is Still Broader Than the Sea”: Gershom Scholem’s Letters to Abraham Joshua Heschel, 1940–1953

Abstract

This study makes available for the first time five previously unknown letters from Gershom Scholem to Abraham Joshua Heschel, sent between 1940 and 1953. A contextualizing introduction precedes a transcription and annotated English translation of the original Hebrew letters. The letters printed here, along with two more from Heschel to Scholem that remain unpublished due to copyright issues, trace an arc of scholarly interaction that begins with gestures toward overlapping historical interest and ends with the silent acknowledgment of a methodological and more broadly intellectual distance.