I first learned about Gershom Scholem when I read Thomas Sparr’s excellent portrait of German Jerusalem: The Remarkable Life of a German-Jewish Neighborhood in the Holy City.  (If you’re interested in how modern Jerusalem came about and the group of German intellectuals who made the neighborhood of Rehavia their home, I highly recommend that book.)

Gershom Scholem was not an ardent political Zionist, and he grew up in a rather assimilated and well established Jewish family in Berlin.