Gershom Sholem on poetic longing for a new synthesis

I am reading the delightful Lamentations of Youth: The Diaries of Gershom Scholem, 1913-1919. November 17, 1914:

"I'm reading the Bible. There is no book in this entire world I read more. Each time it hits me with something fresh. This is the reason I nearly always return to the same passages. My favorites are the Second Isaiah; the beginning of Isaiah; the Torah; and some passages from the prophets, such as Jeremiah etc. But the Second Isaiah hovers above them all. I'd like to call him the prophet of our renewed Judaism. His enormous personal religiosity and these wonderful images serve as a symbol for us all. Is there anything that approaches the beauty of the passage "Who is he who comes from Edom?" or of the two final chapters (Isaiah 65:17)? "Behold, I will create a new heaven and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind."

This is the most beautiful saying in the entire Book of Isaiah. It contains the entire future of coming generations and all their promises. I'm finding that I get much more out of the Bible than any Orthodox Jew. The reason for this must be—as Buber says—because I understand and honor it as a subject, rather than an object, of religiosity. To take the Bible as an object would be terrible! By contrast, true pleasure and beauty is to allow the personality and the people's extraordinary fullness of God to work on you. Where can you find a book of such longing? I'm hoping to find one in Lao-tzu, if in a very different way. And what's so wonderful about Zaratustra? The other books I know by Nietzsche, 'The Anti-Christ, the book on Wagner, and the Untimely Meditations, failed to make the slightest impression on me. Yet Zarathustra is in fact a new Bible, regardless of what one thinks about the ideas it propounds. To write something like it is my ideal. That's it! But who can write a Zarathustra of the Jews or a Hilligenlei of a modern Jew (in the deep sense of the word)? For the last six months I've done nothing but try to get a total perspective on the different kinds of. This is the reason I traded the Agudah for Buber and why I'm now checking out Tolstoy and the like. I've even looked into Mauthner, whose Critique of Language contains a great deal of religious longing for something new, not-yet-experienced, and not-yet-heard-of, a longing for, shall I say, a new synthesis. This is also the reason why someday I'll have to take up philosophy seriously, just as I'll need to read up on Romanticism and above all Novalis. Peter Hille called him the "Goethe of the soul," and Karl Joel can't say enough about him. All of this gives me grounds for ascribing to Goethe the quality of longing. But in general I'm going to need a much wider and freer perspective.

This evening I'll study Gemara Schir with Bleichrode. I'm eager to know what he'll say when he finds out I'm no longer Orthodox. Still, I'm going with a good conscience, and not because of religion but to learn the Talmud thoroughly. And whoever wishes to do so has to go to the Orthodox. Strack also studied with Israel Hildesheimer. I go as a friend of the Talmud, not a spy or an enemy, otherwise I'd certainly never listen and engage in a discussion of the "firstborn who fell into a hole" (Beza, section 3). I have one year behind me, and 27 folio pages! Yes, this business is far from easy, even if I've learned a great deal from Bleichrode. If only all my friends had my energy in penetrating Jewish literature instead of allowing others to fritter away their time. If you want a thing done, do it yourself. If I had the energy I'd write this diary in Hebrew. I will write in the language of our forefathers."