“In a 1942 letter, the first to Arendt after she made her way to New York, Scholem sets the stage for their correspondence to contain more than matters of historical or intellectual interest. He writes, “And don’t disdain writing to me about your daily goings-on. The world has become so torn apart that each and every detailed report from a different country is cause for great joy, especially when it comes from you.” In her response, Arendt echoes and advances Scholem’s sentiment. ‘It is a real comfort,’ she writes, “to still be hearing from friends. Such letters are like minutely thin, strong threads. We’d like to convince ourselves that these threads are able to hold together what remains of our world.” She ends this letter with the request that Scholem should ‘be certain to write, and in detail,’ and with a re-invocation of the analogy of letters to threads. ‘Until we see each other again,’ she writes, ‘we don’t want these thin threads to tear.’

The story of The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem is the story of these threads stretching, holding strong — and ultimately tearing. Perhaps this was, and always is, inevitable.” — Nathan Goldman, Los Angeles Review of Books

“The very things that Arendt and Scholem had in common…turned out to be responsible for the ultimate rupture of their friendship.” — Adam Kirsch, New York Review of Books