Fanatics of Nihilism

The Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality, by Gershom Scholem. New York: Schocken Books. 376 pp.

At the core of every religion is the problem of making sense out of injustice, imperfection, disorder, and human limitation. The answers provided to these questions, and the meanings thereby attached to human actions, have had profound historical consequences. Almost always, the religious solution has been a sort of denial of this imperfect world—the world is seen as anteroom or stage, and men’s conduct in it interpreted in the light of another, purer reality. It is this other, more harmonious reality that provides meaning and in its terms the thwarted potentialities of this world ...