Kabbalah Society
The Kabbalah Society is a London-based organisation that was founded in the early 1970s to promote what is known as the Toledano Tradition of Kabbalah, initially researched and first taught by Z'ev ben Shimon Halevi. Currently, it is also taught by a number of tutors worldwide to their respective Kabbalah groups.[1]
Organization
An organization without bricks and mortar and relying on voluntary membership, the society encourages serious study into the antecedents of the Toledano Tradition of Kabbalah and of present-day practice.[2] Its website is home to a number of online articles and it is now publishing books under its own imprint, the Kabbalah Society, with help from the Bet El Trust.
Aims
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It organises conferences, often combined with visits abroad to centres of kabbalistic interest and has a number of tutors and groups worldwide, including, among others, those groups in Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, England, Germany, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Portugal, Scotland, South Africa, Sweden, Spain and the USA. The teaching of Toledano Kabbalah was led by the Director of Tutors, author and teacher of Kabbalah, Z'ev ben Shimon Halevi. Since his death in September, 2020, the Society is now under new direction.
While the 16 books written by Halevi form the contemporary basis of the Toledano Tradition, tutors also pursue their own interests, introducing compatible elements of those into their teaching and group leadership.
Papers given over the years at conferences organised by the Kabbalah Society, of which Halevi was a founder member, remain unpublished, though various tutors and students of the Toledano Tradition have produced books. A number of free articles can be viewed on the website of the Kabbalah Society. Among them, written by various members of the Society, are papers on "The Vision of Ibn Gabriol – The poet-philosopher’s poem ‘Love,'" "The Work of Unification and Devekut in the Writings of Moshe Chaim Luzatto," "The Three Cultures of Spain," "Kabbalah, Time and Evolution" and an "Introduction to Kabbalah" by Halevi.[3]
As well as emphasising the ecumenism that prevailed during Spain's Golden Age (see also, Golden Age of Islam), a further aim of the Society is to promote, in modern form, the ideas of those kabbalists of the 10th-12th centuries living and working in Spain and Provence, among them, Isaac the Blind, Azriel of Gerona and Nachmanides:
"This line of Kabbalah follows the Toledano Tradition dating back to medieval Spain where the three branches of the Abrahamic revelation met in a civilised cosmopolitan atmosphere, not unlike our own epoch. Here the Kabbalah brought together an esoteric fusion of religion and philosophy. In our time we relate its ancient theories and practices to contemporary psychology, science and art."[4]
Further reading
Dan, Joseph, Jewish Mysticism and Jewish Ethics, pub. J. Aronson Inc., 2nd edition, 1977
Gerzon, Gila, Kabbalah: Gates of Knowledge, pub. Aur Tiferet, 2020
Glick, Thomas, Convivencia: Jews, Muslims, and Christians in Medieval Spain, pub. George Braziller, Reissue edition, 2007
Halevi, Z'ev ben Shimon, A Kabbalistic Universe Paperback, pub. Bet El Trust, revised edition, 20 April 2016
Scholem, Gershom, Origins of the Kabbalah, pub. Princeton Paperbacks, 1991
Scholem, Gershom, ha-Qabbalah be-Gerona, ed. J. Ben-Shlomo, pub. Jerusalem, 1964