“Modern man lives in a private world of his own, enclosed within himself, and modern symbolism is not objective: it is private; it does not obligate. The symbols of the kabbalists, on the other hand, did not speak only to the private individual - they displayed a symbolic dimension to the whole world.
The question is whether in the reality in which today’s secular person lives, this dimension will be revealed again.
I was strongly criticized when I dared to say that Walt Whitman’s writings contain something like this. Walt Whitman revealed in an utterly naturalistic world what kabbalists and other mystics revealed in their world.
Today we are living in an altogether different time. Technology is proceeding - leaping - forward with great strides, but the problem remains.
If humanity should ever lose the feeling that there is mystery - a secret - in the world, then it’s all over with us.”
Gershom Scholem, 1976
On Jews and Judaism in Crisis: Selected Essays
