Lament mourning and the transmissibility of a tradition in the aftermath of destruction are
prominent themes in Jewish thought. The corpus of lament literature building upon and
transforming the biblical Book of Lamentations provides a unique lens for thinking about the
relationships between destruction and renewal mourning and remembrance loss and redemption
expression and the inexpressible. This anthology features four texts by Gershom Scholem on
lament translated here for the first time into English. The volume also includes original
essays by leading scholars which interpret Scholem's texts and situate them in relation to
other Weimar-era Jewish thinkers including Walter Benjamin Franz Rosenzweig Franz Kafka and
Paul Celan who drew on the textual traditions of lament to respond to the destruction and
upheavals of the early twentieth century. Also included are studies on the textual tradition of
lament in Judaism from biblical rabbinic and medieval lamentations to contemporary Yemenite
women's laments. This collection unified by its strong thematic focus on lament shows the
fruitfulness of studying contemporary and modern texts alongside the traditional textual
sources that informed them.
