  A second component that accompanies Scholem's dialectic of myth, rationalism, and mysticism is his theory of esotericism. Committed to the notion that social and cultural change are driven by ideas more than events, Scholem adds that the ideas that often have the most profound impact are esoteric ones that are suppressed yet surface when certain historical conditions arise. This serves as one of his main criticisms of Wissenschaft des Judentums, that is, that the presentation of Judaism without its esoteric components is not only bad history but misunderstands the main forces that drive change in Jewish life and ideas. One scholar termed this Scholem's “counter-history.” For Scholem Judaism's ostensible anchor, tradition, is always in danger of undermining itself because it contains the seeds of its own demise in the form of esotericism, mysticism, and myth. As history unfolds, it often adjusts and survives its own inner challenge but other times, as in Sabbateanism, it does so only by a combination of draconian means (this often backfires) or by exercising its own elasticity to absorb the heretical and thereby make it normative.