Absorbing perfections : Kabbalah and interpretation / Moshe Idel ; foreword by Harold Bloom.

The world-absorbing text -- The God-absorbing text : black fire on white fire -- Text and interpretation infinities in Kabbalah -- The book that contains and maintains all -- Magical and magical-mystical arcanizations of canonical books -- Torah study and mystical experiences in Jewish mysticism -- Secrecy, binah, and derishah -- Semantics, constellation, and interpretation -- Radical forms of Jewish hermeneutics -- The symbolic mode in theosophical-theurgical Kabbalah -- Allegories, divine names, and experiences in ecstatic Kabbalah -- Tzerufei ʹotiyyot : mutability and accommodation of the Torah in Jewish mysticism -- Tradition, transmission, and techniques -- Concluding remarks -- Appendix 1. Pardes : the fourfold method of interpretation -- Appendix 2. Abraham Abulafia's Torah of blood and ink -- Appendix 3. R. Isaac of Acre's exegetical quandary -- Appendix 4. The exile of the Torah and the imprisonment of secrets -- Appendix 5. On oral Torah and multiple interpretations in Hasidism -- Appendix 6. "Book of God"/"book of law" in late-fifteenth-century Florence.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 619-645) and index.