{"product_id":"9781590517772","title":"Stranger in a Strange Land: Searching for Gershom Scholem and Jerusalem","description":"\u003cb\u003eTaking his lead from his subject, Gershom Scholem—the 20th century thinker who cracked open Jewish theology and history with a radical reading of Kabbalah—Prochnik combines biography and memoir to counter our contemporary political crisis with an original and urgent reimagining of the future of Israel.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eStranger in a Strange Land\u003c\/i\u003e, Prochnik  revisits the life and work of Gershom Scholem, whose once prominent  reputation, as a Freud-like interpreter of the inner world of the  Cosmos, has been in eclipse in the United States. He vividly conjures  Scholem’s upbringing in Berlin, and compellingly brings to life  Scholem’s transformative friendship with Walter Benjamin, the critic and  philosopher. In doing so, he reveals how Scholem’s frustration with the  bourgeois ideology of Germany during the First World War led him to  discover Judaism, Kabbalah, and finally Zionism, as potent  counter-forces to Europe’s suicidal nationalism. \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Prochnik’s own years in the Holy Land in the 1990s brings him to question the  stereotypical intellectual and theological constructs of Jerusalem, and  to rediscover the city as a physical place, rife with the unruliness and  fecundity of nature. Prochnik ultimately suggests that a new form of  ecological pluralism must now inherit the historically energizing role  once played by Kabbalah and Zionism in Jewish thought.","brand":"Other Press, LLC","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47138006597872,"sku":"9781590517772","price":15.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781590517772_p0.jpg?v=1763809912","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781590517772","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}