Walter Benjamin and G. Scholem are two of the most important thinkers of this century. And in this book we can listen to their voices and thoughts. In my opinion the most interesting part of the book are the letters related to Franz Kafka. In fact, I think the way they understand and illustrate Kafka is still unsurpassed, and just for that is really worth to read this book.

This is an important text for those studying Kabbalah. It covers the most basic tenents from a historical point of view, while delving fairly deep into their concepts. What I really like about this book is that it covers the many different secular beliefs that abound today as well as where these different systems found their origins. After reading this book, I understand that much like Christianity, different Kabbalists have various beliefs and interpretations of the Bible. After reading the chapter on what the Kabbalist is looking for in a Tsaddik, or righteous one, I'm surprised that more of them are not Christians. As I was reading this text, I couldn't help but think of numerous N.T. scriptures that were nearly identical to their beliefs. Take a look at this book, I think you'll agree.

Gershom Scholem presents a clear and well-researched study on Kabbalah. The book is a fascinating read, and I could hardly put it aside until I finished it. After having been confronted with all kinds of occult and paganized ideas on Kabbalah, this book is very refreshing.

The chapter on Shi'ur Komah (measure of height) shows how the Transcendent God becomes personal and knowable. It also explains how the Kabbalists perceived man to be made in G-d's image. The language of Shi'ur Komah is very anthropomorphic, while G-d's absolute transcendental being is not compromised. The second chapter, about Sitra Ahra (Other Side), explains the various views of how evil arose and what it is. The role of human beings is discussed as is the role of the Sefiroth. In particular the role of the Sefirah Din and the influence of human beings on it are discussed at some length.
The third chapter explains the role of the hasid and the tsaddik. How the role that each played changed and how the tsaddik becomes related to the Sefirah Yesod, and it's function as the source of all souls. Also discussed is the harmony the tsaddik brings and his role in creation.
he fourth chapter deals with shekinah. Scholem shows that originally there was no specific feminine nature atributed to it. He goes on to show how the idea of femininity developed in Kabbalah, and how the Shekinah relates to G-d and human beings. Also discussed is the relationship of Shekinah and the Sefiroth. Very interesting was the explanation of how human actions influence Shekinah to become active instead of merely passive in certain Kabbalists.
The fifth chapter speaks of gilgul. It is a very fascinating chapter. Not just the origins of reincarnation in Judaism is discussed, but also the varied concepts of the soul that go along with it. Scholem shows how certain elements of Kabbalist gilgul are highly original and creative. Much attention is given to the 'soul-sparks' and their redemption. Also interresting was the idea that gilgul reflects the inner workings of the sefirothic world.
The final chapter explains the concept of tselem. Scholem traces it's historic origins to Neo-Platonist influence and early Iranian influence. He shows how these two were given a creative synthesis in Kabbalah and what role it plays in Kabbalist mysticism. Tselem is that which makes a person this person, and seeing ones tselem can activate propheticism. Tselem also has the role of a guardian angel of sorts.

Not being Jewish myself, but an Eastern Orthodox Christian, I must say that this book of Gershom scholem is very helpful in understanding Kabbalah as a Jewish, and not a pagan-occult, phenomenon. The book will assist a non-Jew in gaining a more sympathetic and above all a more correct understanding of Jewish Mysticism. As an Eastern Orthodox I must say that several times Kabbalah and our own Mysticial tradition come very near each other, even though they also widely diverge.

It is a must read for those misinformed by Dione Fortune's fables, and a must read for anyone interrested in Kabbalah.

I enjoy the material in this book by Herr Doktor Gershom Scholem (1897-1982). Despite the title, I did not find the concepts introduced in "On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead" at all basic. The concepts presented include (i) imageless worship of GOD, (ii) good and evil, (iii) the role of the mystic in a religious community, (iv) the personification and hypostasis of GOD's presence in the world, and (v) the uniqueness of our individual spirit (principium individuantis). These are concepts which Herr Doktor Scholem introduced in his landmark book, "Origins of the Kabbalah". Here they are recapitualated in greater detail. The basic conceptual and methodological problem presented in this book is summarised in the forward by Mr Joseph Dan, "an essentially Jungian approach and Kabbalistic approach to the subjects presented by Scholem in this book may converge and present a united front against the historical analysis written by the scholar" Each chapter contributed to my spiritual relationship. My favourite is the second chapter, "Good and Evil in the Kabbalah". One of the ideas I found interesting in this chapter was the idea that good and evil both originate in GOD's creation. "Evil, however one conceives of it, is thus regarded as an entity deliberately created by GOD." (p57). The second idea with which I found resonance was that, as someone interested in maintaining a spiritual commitment, my most important task is to cultivate, maintain and strengthen my contact with spiritual reality. (p69) For me, this is a remarkable book which helps me to grow spiritually. If you are interested in the historical development of "basic" concepts in the Kabbalah, or in contributing to your spiritual development, this book will be interesting to you.

Speaking mainly in a historical sense, the author discusses many of the concepts that have developed in the study of Kabbalah. The concepts are not written about to be understood, only where they have developed. The author presents his material in a very objective way without any noticeable bias toward one system or another. Don't expect to walk away from this and be on the road to enlightenment. However, with that said, I do think it is important to the student of Kabbalah to understand the roots of the matter. This book does nicely in this respect. One should not start on the mystic road unless one knows who cleared the trees and laid the gravel.

As it's titel, this book is a must book for every freshman student in Kabbalah & Jewish Mysticism (although not easy to read).But not only for freshmen. As a Ph.D student,I need to use this book & the other musterpiece works of Prof. Scholem. Although many criticism was written about Scholem's views (mainly by Prof. Idel & Prof. Libbes), his books & his other works are & will remaine the masterworks of the Kabbalah study.

I learned a great deal from Herr Doktor Gershom Scholem (1897-1982) through his text, "On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism". Dr Bernard McGinn, Divinity School, University of Chicago, wrote in the introduction, "I believe that all students of mysticism should read Scholem, not only for his profound insights into the Jewish mystical tradition, but also to deepen their understanding of the dynamics of other mysticisms -- Christian, Islamic, and even those further afield." Professor Scholem presents an historical perspective with the full knowledge that there are other approaches. "From an historical point of view", he writes, "the sum of religious phenomena known as mysticism consists in the attempts of mystics to communicate their experiences to others." Within this context, this text explores broad sweeping topics in each chapter -- topics that deservedly have receieved attention by intelligent scholars for centuries. In the first chapter, "Religious Authority and Mysticism" Herr Doktor Scholem presents a thesis fundamental to his research, "there is no mysticism as such, but only the mysticism of particular religious systems, Christian, Islamic and Jewish mysticism, and so on". The mystic working within a religious system is, according to Scholem, at the same time both conservative and revolutionary. "Conservative" because the mystic tries to preserve the sources of traditional authority, and "revolutionary" because the mystic also may subsititue his own opinion for that prescribed by authority. In the second chapter, titled, "The Meaning of the TORAH in Jewish Mysticism", Scholem explains the dynamic relationship between the TORAH and the mystic. Scholem presents three fundamental principles on which the Kabbaslistic conceptions of the nature of the TORAH are based: (1) YWVH; (2) TORAH as oganism; (3) Infinite meaning of the divine word. As an example of the third, in addition to the the concept of written and oral TORAHs, the author of the "ZOHAR" speculates four levels of meaning: (1) literal (2) hermeneutic (3) allegorical and (4) mystical. The history of Judaism, Scholem explains in the third chapter, is a tension between the purity of the reality of GOD. The dynamic involved is clearly presented in the realization that the price of GOD's purity is the loss of her living reality. Scholem offers that the Book Bahir, a cornerstone of 12th century Kabbalistic thought, introduces myth into Judaism. Remarkably, it contends evil as an attribute of GOD. In a similar vein, the commentary on the Sefer Yetzirah by Judah ben Barzilai introduced speculative thinking to Jewish theosophy. The fourth chapter, "Tradition and New Creation in the Ritual of the Kabbalists" presents a solution to a problem faced by each new generation. Namely, how are the traditions passed on in a vital and meaningful medium. The Mishnal codified Jewish religious law and ritual for an agrarian community had survived for centuries. As the agrarian society diminished, the TORAH became obsolete and the natural rituals became less meaningful, historical rituals. The Spanish Kabbalists found a new ritual to express the old traditions. Scholem writes, "The rejuvenation of religion repeatedly finds its expression in a return to ancient images and symbols, even when these are 'spiritualized' and transformed into speculative constructions." R. Yanassan Gershom has already succinctly summarised the fifth chapter which deals with the concept of the Golem. I will take the liberty to direct you to his comments. If you are interested in historical issues of the Kabbalah, this is essential reading for you.

This book analyzes three of the amazing group of Eranos scholars who gathered annually in Ascona, Switzerland to explore new horizons in overt revolt against the petrified academic stance in view of everything that doesn't carry the benediction of natural sciences. These three scholars are Gerschom Scholem, the foremost scholar of Jewish mysticism and Kabalah, Henry Corbin, a leading specialist in Iranian Sufism and Shiism/Ismailism and Mircea Eliade, a generalist researcher of world religions and mythologies. What distinguishes all these men from the typical academic stance is the way they all inverted the assumptions of cold and disinterested schoarship, into whose purview mysticism does not enter but as a phenomenon peripheral to orthodox religions, by placing mysticism in the very core of their scholarship. This inversion also demarcates their anti-academic stance. These three men were especially remarkable in that their scholarship, especially in the case of Corbin and Scholem as exemplified in their translation or recuperation of inaccessible or difficult texts, towered by the standards of traditional academia, as such flying on its face downtreading its pride. The book is not long enough to treat every aspect of the lives of these men, which task has been done individually for each. The primary objective here is to thematize the common denominators that molded the perspectives of these men, who also were close friends that saw themselves as brothers in arms against materialism, social sciences, almost all the ingrained presumptions of modern mentality, modernism, the myth of eternal progress, and the modern academia as presiding over the theology ensouling this essentially soulless fallen state. Some common denominators are Heidegger's existential phenomenology, various Western esoteric currents, especially German romanticism as in Hamann, and Martinism, Rene Guenon's traditionalism, and his Italian disciple Julius Evola, coincidentia oppositorum as shaping their worldview, antinomianism of an almost Kierkegaardian type, the rise of Schelling against Kant in Jewish Weimar thought as giving the impetus to the intellectual currents of the time, and maybe most importantly an accurate understanding of "symbol", which should by no means be confused with allegory, and which denotes a revelation of an irreducible Ur-phenomenon in a form particular to a subject. The experience of the symbol is inextricably entwined with reintegration and totalization of being, which marks the essence of their esotericism. The book can be regarded as a good introduction to how to understand the interrelationships and influences between these great men and their time, since one should not forget that Eranos is a product of the aura surrounding the world war, even though these men were blatantly opposed to a notion of rectilinear temporality. The indices and bibliographies provide invaluable information for further study.

Steven Wasserstrom's brilliant and fascinating book is a marvellous study of three of the most brilliant and fascinating twentieth-century scholars of religion. All too often, readers are unaware of the human, idiosyncratic elements that inevitably shape the perspective of writers in various fields of the humanities. Dr. Wasserstrom gives us an objective view of these elements, and brings a new sense of depth to the background that contributed to the interests and, ultimately, to the published work of Corbin, Eliade, and Scholem.

In this famous book, the historian Gershom Scholem goes through the history of Shabtai Zevi: the man who, in the seventeenth century, convinced the majority of world Jewry that he was the messiah and then converted to Islam to save his own life. The story is fascinating, and Scholem probably knows more about it than almost anybody else in the world. Although the book is a "historical" book, not really intended for casual reading, it is stirring in parts and not that hard to get through. Scholem has definite opinions about Shabtai -- e.g. how great a part Kabbalah played in the movement, whether he really believed in himself as the messiah -- that not all historians would agree with. Still, this is a worthwhile book.

How often does a scholar write a text that is uniformly considered definitive? Rarely. However, Scholem's work on Sabbatai Sevi is exactly that. So important is this text, that all other examinations before have fallen away and are no longer studied and almost all that came after are derivative. A brilliant scholar, the author goes to great depths, examining both the historical and philosophical underpinnings of Judaism's largest Messianic movement since Jesus.

The author rejects the traditional explanation that followers of Sevi were attracted to him because of the deprivation experienced by some Jews of the period. As Scholem points out, even wealthy communities of Jews in Amsterdam and Greece found him irresistible. Patterns of the growth of the movement are given great attention and are fascinating.

Many people are put off by the length of this work (almost 1000 pages of prose). However, the field is so vast, that a shorter book would not have done it justice. While somewhat esoteric, Sabbati Sevi provides a powerful window into a period of Jewish history given too little study.

If a book is going to be 1000 pages, it had better have something awfully important to say. Luckily, this tome is an engrossing, heavily detailed account of Sabbatai Sevi, whose influence on Jewish history is usually underestimated. Scholem is the perfect author to write this book: he is the foremost expert on Kabbalah, which was a major influence on the movement. There are times when I felt the book was a little TOO heavy on detail; the book seemed to be dancing the line between dissertation and readable history book. I am glad it erred on the side of too much information, however, and Scholem's writing style (which can sometimes be awfully dense) is quite readable.

I strongly recommend this book. I recommend it to Jews who want to know about their history. I recommend it to Christians, since the parallels between Sevi and Jesus are many and deep. Lastly, I recommend it to anyone who has an eye for the tragic, who is prepared to read how human frailty can bring about great acheivements and the noblest of intentions can nearly destroy a people.

The book Kaballah by Gershom Scholem is certainly an extensive, and complete (to my knowledge) examination of the kaballah, however, it contains some major drawbacks that prevent it from recieving my full recommendation.

As a high school junior doing an independent study on religion, I chose this book from the recommendations that said that it was a good overview, a good book for a beginner. I found, however, that this praise was highly misleading.

The book is divided into sections: history, basic ideas, topics, and personalities. Each of these sections are subdivided into chapters, each a few pages long.

Many of these chapters are interesting, but they lack full explaination of the ideas included. Often, there was just a list of facts and opposing viewpoints, and when i found a sentence that was interesting, Scholem would immediately move on to another source, another name, another viewpoint. Pages would go by before the point of the chapter could be discerned, and even then, was often revealed only vaguely. The hebrew transliterations were also difficult to navigate, for after the english translation was given once, it was as though the reader was simply expected to know it. The chapters often consisted of page after page of other books to look at, other authors to read.

As a general overview for a beginner, Kaballah certainly does not qualify. I later learned that the book was written as an encyclopedia, a reference book for scholars. For someone who already had a knowledge of the Kaballah and its ideas, as well as a knowledge of hebrew, Kaballah is most likely a much more interesting and useful book to own. As for someone beginning their studies into this esoteric and mysterious branch of judaism, a more simple, fact based book would serve a much more useful purpose.

This book is an essential component of any would-be library of Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, or Jewish history.

The topic of Kabbalah studies has recently been overloaded by a spate of publications that vary in scholarship and accessibility from the arcane to the truly pathetic. Scholem's book, while slightly older, is definitely a cure for all of the smarmy new-age occultism that threatens to turn the study of the Kabbalah into a subject on par with palm reading or UFO abductions.

Scholem is a first-class scholar, and what he provides here is a thorough history of ideas that surround the Kabbalah. He treats the subject with all of the respect that the best religious scholars would give to a subject, and he's extremely well-versed in the materials upon which he comments. He guides the reader through the history, development, and transition of the Kabbalah through European intellectual history, and through the changes in the Jewish tradition. For that reason, it's as much an interesting story of the history of Judaic thought as it is an investigation into 'mysticism'.

Scholem is consistenly clear in his terminology, precise in his historical references, and honest in his accounts. He provides excellent bibliographies to help the read get at some of the essential issues and personages.

This isn't a 'how-to' book on Kabbalist 'magick' as so frequently appears on the shelves of esoteric bookshops. This is a critical work that is written in strict academic style, yet is highly readable, challenging, and very thorough. It's the sort of book that, if you read it, you'll know more about the topic than %99 of the people out there currently babbling about it. It does a genuine service to affirm the proper importance of Jewish theology and Jewish spiritual traditions in the world of scholarship. And, to be honest, I'd highly recommend it students of religious studies, to the current crop of occultists who're looking for the genuine article when it comes to the Kabbalah, and for those who're keen on studying theological enquiry.

Especially nice, I thought, are the glossary at the back and the second section of the book, which is a collection of 'topics' which are read much like large encyclopedia articles. One can look up 'evil' and see the theodicy of the Kabbalah; or you can find 'Torah' and see a discussion of Kabbalistic midrash (commentary).

I've read lots of rubbish with the word 'Kabbalah' on the cover. This book made me forget about all of that.

Read it - and get the heart and root of a glorious endeavour of human communication with God.

I have learned a great deal from KABALLAH. It is a cross-section of the research of Herr Doktor Gershom Scholem. Each topic is given a concise explanation, including personalities and bibliographic references. When I first read this book, I found the explanations a bit terse. The density of information was overwhelming. Now, that I am more familiar with the work of Professor Scholem, I find this text to be an excellent review. If you are interested in the research of Professor Scholem or in the Kabbalah's historical development, this will be interesting to you.