This is more than a biography of Gershom Scholem, the great humanist thinker and founder of modern Kabbalah.  This book not only traces Scholem’s life from Berlin to Israel, but also asks questions about the ideological and religious constructs in modern Jerusalem.  He looks for an ethical way forward, showing how a new pluralism might energise Jewish thought.  George Prochnik is an essayist, poet and fiction writer, a teacher of literature at the Hebrew University.  Here he blends history, philosophy and memoir, and inspires us to rediscover an important Jewish life.