Kabbalah Society
The Kabbalah Society is a New York-based organisation founded to promote what it states is the Toledano Tradition of Kabbalah, initially researched, and now taught by Warren Kenton. Currently, it is also taught by a number of tutors worldwide.
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. Its website is home to a number of online articles and it is now publishing books under its own imprint, the Kabbalah Society.
Aims
It organises conferences, often combined with visits abroad to centres of kabbalistic interest, and has a number of tutors and groups worldwide, including Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, England, Germany, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Portugal, Scotland, South Africa, Sweden, Spain and the USA. The teaching of Toledano Kabbalah is led by the Director of Tutors, author and teacher of Kabbalah, Z'ev ben Shimon Halevi.
While the 15 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given over the years at conferences organised by the Kabbalah Society, of which Halevi is a founder member, remain unpublished, though various tutors and students of the Toledano Tradition have produced books. A number of articles can be viewed on the website of the society.
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:
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. Convivencia