'In the Grip of the Theologico-Political Predicament': Baroque and Weimar Marranism

Something both remarkable and strange in Jewish history took place in Germany in the early decades of the twentieth century. The German-Jewish ???generation of 1914??? -- a diverse group including, among many others, Ernst Bloch, Walter Benjamin, Franz Rosenzweig, Gershom Scholem, and Martin Buber -- took it upon themselves to renew Judaism by reinvigorating and reconfiguring its messianic traditions. This modern Jewish messianism is both remarkable and strange. The intellectual and artistic output of this generation of modern Jewish messianists is certainly remarkable by any measure. What makes it strange is the kinship it bears with the much earlier outbreak of Jewish messianic fervor in baroque-era Europe around the figure of Sabbatai Zevi. For a very fine collection of essays dealing with these baroque-era messianic movements and their historical interconnection, see Goldish, Matt and Richard Popkin, eds. Jewish Messianism in the Early Modern World (Dordrecht 2001. Perhaps the most relevant essay for my purposes in this paper is Matt Goldish, ???Patterns in Converso Messianism??? (pp. 41-64). This paper seeks to explore the strange kinship between baroque-era and Weimar messianism.published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe