Poetry. Jewish Studies. Bilingual Edition. Translated from the German by Richard Sieburth. Edited, Introduced, and Annotated by Steven M. Wasserstrom. One of the greatest scholars of the twentieth century, Gershom Scholem virtually created the subject of Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism as a serious area of study. His influence, however, has been felt far beyond the confines of the academy and to this day extends into the realm of literature and the arts. (Borges, for one, rhymed "Golem" with "Scholem.") Literature played a critical part in Scholem's own life, especially in his formative years, and he wrote poems from his teens on. This bilingual volume gathers together the best of them for the first time in any language. It contains dark, shockingly prescient political poems about Zionism and assimilation, parodies of German and Jewish philosophers, religious lyrics of a gnostic bent, and poems to other writers and friends such as Walter Benjamin, Hans Jonas, Ingeborg Bachmann, S. Y. Agnon, and others. "Abrupt, magisterial, quizzical, sometimes acidulous, and at moments poignantly wistful.... Scholem's verses return to an authentic Hasidic tradition of indicting God" Harold Bloom."