Moshe Idel is Max Cooper Professor of Jewish Thought Emeritus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Senior Researcher at the Shalom Hartman Institute. He is the winner of many awards and prizes, including the EMET Prize, given by the Prime Minister of Israel; the Israel Prize for Jewish Thought; the Gershom Scholem Prize for research in Kabbalah, given by the Israeli Academy for Sciences and Humanities; and the National Jewish Book Award. Among his many books are Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic, Absorbing Perfections: Kabbalah and Interpretation, and Kabbalah and Eros.

• PrefaceIntroductionI. INTELLECTUAL CONCEPTUALIZATIONS OF JUDAISM1. Arnaldo Momigliano and Gershom Scholem on Jewish History and Tradition2. Eric Voegelin's Israel and Revelation3. George Steiner: A Prophet of AbstractionII. SCHOLEM'S CONCEPTUALIZATIONS OF KABBALAH4. The Function of Symbols in Gershom Scholem5. Hieroglyphs, Mysteries, Keys: Scholem Between Molitor and Kafka6. Subversive Catalysts: Gnosticism and Messianism in Scholem's View of Jewish MysticismIII. KABBALAH IN SOME TWENTIETH-CENTURY THINKERS7. Franz Rosenzweig and Kabbalah8. Abraham Abulafia, Gershom Scholem, and Walter Benjamin on Language9. Jacques Derrida and Kabbalistic Sources10. Paul Celan's "Psalm": A Revelation Toward NaughtIV. UNDERSTANDING HASIDISM11. Martin Buber and Gershom Scholem on Hasidism12. Abraham Heschel on Mysticism and Hasidism13. White Letters: From R. Levi Isaac of Berdichev to Postmodern HermeneuticsList of Abbreviations and SourcesNotesIndex

"Questing for my rabbi I have gone from Buber through Scholem to Idel. I abide with Moshe Idel. He is not only a scholar of Scholem's magnitude but a guide for the perplexed like myself. I believe he will yet show us the way to the authentic Jewish culture still available to us in this waning time."-Harold Bloom"A brilliant and often illuminating exposition and critique of the role that Jewish mysticism has played in much of twentieth-century Western thought. Idel uncovers the many ways in which external sources, rather than traditional texts and practices, have informed accounts of Jewish mysticism."-Jewish Review of Books