In the early 1950s, the internationally wandering rabbi, sociologist, and philosopher Jacob Taubes was pranked by his colleagues at Harvard. Taubes was known for playing with the limits of law and revolution, secular redemption and religious heresy, but especially for blurring the boundary between charismatic invention and fact. Aiming to uncover Taubes as a fraud, two professors asked him about the fictional medieval scholar Bertram of Hildesheim. To their surprise and glee, Taubes enthusiastically expounded on this topic until he was finally told that such a figure did not exist. Yet Taubes’s combination of various spiritual movements and philosophical questions to create the imagined Hildesheim was both inventive and impressive; shrugging the prank off, he continued his career unperturbed.
