Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism by Gershom Scholem 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 l...