Heinrich Graetz and the Kabbalah

The paper attempts a rehabilitation of Heinrich Graetz's important scholarship on Jewish mysticism. It argues that the ‘sin' of Graetz, and the reason why Gershom Scholem tried to almost completely suppress his contribution to Kabbalah research, was to be found in a deep theological conflict and not in the ‘correct' way of reading old manuscripts, or in scholarly debates about the authorship of Kabbalistic works. Although they both tried to revitalize Judaism, their respective philosophies of religion were worlds apart. A re-appreciation of Graetz's Kabbalah scholarship and his ambiguous relationship with Kabbalah itself must therefore begin with a true historical understanding of his thought, that is, with the true motives behind his historiography.