Originally published in the Jewish Quarterly, 30.1-2 (109/10) (1982), pp. 17-19. It was almost 30 years ago that I first met Gershom Scholem. I was at the time Minister of the New West End Synagogue where Scholem gave a lecture with the intriguing title, ‘The Historical Baal Shem Tov’. Before Scholem’s scholarly analysis, attitudes towards the…