This book, while follows the history of a theme, namely, Jewish mysticism, it is in fact divided to lectures each focusing on a specific movement or writer. Therefore I'll instead comment on some of the theoretical foundations of this work.
To begin with, Scholem conceptualizes religious belief as having historical stages. According to him, belief begins as direct and animistic - the natural world is conceived as living and natural phenomena as the manifestations of divine forces. In this stage, the relationship to that which is holy is direct, as it exists literally around us. The second stage according to him was the development of monotheism and "naive religion" which he seems to have a most favorable view - this religion has a fundamental gap between humans and the divine, and rules that must be followed. The third stage is the collapse of the naive religion as the believers search for hidden meanings behind the laws, and closer connection and understanding with God - Scholem believes this stage is in a sense a return to the first in many ways, with its increasing emphasis on the direct relationship to divinity as well as that he compared common pantheistic tendencies with animism, as both grant personhood to what's around us. I personally find this typology to be somewhat arbitrary and surely it can't truly be viewed as a historical rule. I think it also interprets the lack of substantial existing mystical documents dating from earlier time periods as a "naive period" of simple, straightforward religious belief, while it is very likely that mystical interpretations were simply lost since.
I do think however that his definitions of the religious, philosophical, mystical, and magical and the distinguishing features between them is a useful one. As well as, subsequently, his characterization of Christianity as an early movement of Jewish mysticism (based on his definition of their alternate non-straightforward reading of the biblical text, looking for signs relating to Jesus in the Old Testament for example, and a focus on things such as the mystery of the trinity, and the pride in the absurdity of a God being also man, and the messiah being crucified) - I think this is a very interesting perspective.
Anyway, which movements and writers does he follow? He starts with the Merkabah mystics, and their mystical journeys and meditation meant to get them to perceive the Merkabah - throne of God. Then he covers Hassidei Ashkenaz, and their likely influence from Christian monastics as they gave much emphasis to a somewhat monastic existence though in a manner still differing from the monastics by still existing within the Jewish community.
Then we move to the Kabbalah - he covers the practical Kabbalah of Abraham Abulafia - that viewed the Bible, through a mystical lens, as the mystical true name of God - and that through meditating upon the letters of the Hebrew Alphabet and their combination, one gets closer to God and gains secret knowledge. I must note that I was happily surprised by how reading this enabled me to understand parts of "Foucault's Pendulum" that references Abulafia but I digress. Then there's the Zohar - which is considered by this point a canonical work attributed to an ancient rabbi (though isn't in fact ancient) and its borderline pantheistic conception of divinity and all of reality as stemming from emanations of a certain impossible-to-understand Ein Sof. Lurianic Kabbalah however was what truly popularized it, with some astounding concepts like Tzimtzum, Breaking of the Vessels, and the Primordial Man. It also elavated Judaism from a tribal sort of religion, with a historical view (namely, of a messiah arriving and ending the exile of the Jews, also the conception of the exile as a divine punishment) and into the universal - the physical exile is due to a transcendent exile - sparks of divinity and mixed together with evil, and must, through adherence to the Torah, be assembled together to achieve Tikkun - the correction of the world, the disorder and disharmony that resulted from the breaking of the vessels.
This mystical view of Judaism and the mission of the Jews however contributed to a disaster for Judaism - Sabbatai Zevi was seen by many as the messiah - and his struggling with manic episodes even created a mystical split between "lower, literal, Torah" and "higher, mystical, Torah" in which outwardly paradoxical or immoral actions gain mystical significance, culminating in Zevi's apostasy and conversion to Islam. This was understood by his adherents as being like the biblical Job - that the messiah must suffer, through doing some evil acts in order to assemble divine sparks still yet hidden deep within the realm of Qlippoth - evil - and that only he could do such a thing. This antinomniaism was unprecedented in the history of Judaism. Scholem furthermore theorizes as well that perhaps the experience of crypto-Jews from the Iberian peninsular allowed for the perception of even outward apostasy as a heroic act of a sort, in a way many must have felt, it's almost like the messiah shared with their hardships.
Perhaps in order to defend Jewish mysticism a little bit - Scholem does not stop with this disastrous culmination of centuries of Jewish mysticism that became apostasy but concludes by discussing Jewish Hassidism.
Ultimately, I found this to be an interesting read however I do admit I would've enjoyed a more detailed observation of Sabbatianism, which I think as a historical description, unless one is already familiar with the history, isn't sufficient or expansive enough.
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