Founder
Gershom Scholem (1897–1982), born Gerhard Scholem in Berlin, was a German-Israeli philosopher and historian widely regarded as the founder of modern academic study of Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah. Rejecting his assimilated family’s secularism, he pioneered scholarly research into Kabbalah, emigrating to Palestine in 1923 and joining the Hebrew University of Jerusalem faculty. A founder of the Leo Baeck Institute, he shaped its mission to document and preserve German-Jewish cultural heritage destroyed by the Nazis.
For more information, please read our recent snapshot, Life and Death (Mask) of Gershom Scholem.