Since the publication of Margaret Chatterjee's Gandhi and His Jewish Friends, 1992, the relationships between Gandhi, Blavatsky, Theosophy, Jewish Theosophists, and the Jewish people have become a fruitful area of historical research thanks to the work of people such as Boaz Huss, Isaac Lubelsky, and Shimon Lev.
Theosophy and Gandhi: How Mahatma learned from occult
group
Mehmet Hasan Bulut
Feb 23, 2022
the Sanat Kumara business is neo-theosophy, very different from Blavatsky, some other uncertain bits, but overall, not bad
'was taught this passive resistance method by his close
Jewish friend Henry Solomon Leon Polak, who was also a member of the
Theosophical Society'.
Gandhi’s View on Judaism and Zionism in Light of
an Interreligious Theology
Gandhi’s Jewish friends Herman Kallenbach, Sonya Schlesin (1888–1956),
Henry Salomon Leon Polak (1882–1959), Lewis Walter Ritch (1868–1952) and
Gabriel Isaac (1874–1914) were all universalists and theosophists. They
were unfamiliar with the post-Biblical tradition, expressed in multiple
ways, including philosophy, mysticism, rituals, laws and customs. Yet,
since they had their own remembrance of oppression, persecution and
racism, they could easily identify with Gandhi and the Indians in racist
South Africa. Not as the wider Jewish community, these individuals
courageously decided that they could not longer be onlookers. They
became engaged and stood up for the rights of the Indian minority, in
the name of universal, ethical brotherhood. Although they lacked a
Jewish education, they expressed their Judaism by engaging themselves in
the struggle of Indians against discrimination.
Gabriel
Isaac, Gandhi’s forgotten lieutenant
Shimon Lev
January 28, 2020
Most of these Jews were theosophists and Gandhi
understood that his best recruiting ground for European followers was the
Johannesburg Lodge of the Theosophical Society the mourners came from different communities, which reflected the life of
Isaac. There were Jews, among them his brother, M. Isaac, and Gandhi’s
Jewish supporters, Polak, Schlesin and others. There were many Indians
from the different sections of the Indian communities – Hindus and
Muslims, as well as people from the small Chinese communities. They were
theosophists, businessmen, making for a very unusual funeral scene in
South Africa at that time.
To the best of my knowledge, Isaac was the only European to sacrifice
his life for the sake of Gandhi and the Indian Satyagraha struggle in
South Africa.
Imagining the East: The Early Theosophical Society
(Oxford,
2020)
14 Mark
Bevir Theosophy, Cultural
Nationalism, and Home Rule The third section briefly shows how this cultural nationalism
transformed Congress in the years immediately surrounding Gandhi’s
return from South Africa. It is argued that Theosophy was one strand
feeding into cultural nationalism, as Theosophy introduced important and
largely novel themes to cultural nationalism, including a principled
commitment to non-violence and an alternative to liberal subjectivities.
15 Michael
Bergunder Experiments with
Theosophical Truth: Gandhi, Esotericism, and Global Religious History This chapter argues that there is strong textual evidence to suggest
that M. K. Gandhi’s notion of Hinduism, his specific view of
Christianity, and his general belief that all religions refer to the
same truth were shaped by the ideas of the Theosophical Society. Furthermore, it is argued that the impact of
esotericism on global religious history, from the nineteenth to the
early twentieth centuries, needs to be investigated with more academic
rigor.
The Polaks and Mahatma Gandhi: A Unique Relationship
Prabha Ravi Shankar 2019
What kind of a
relationship did they have with Gandhi, especially after the latter
became the chief leader of the Indian National Congress with a unique
political ideology of his own? What kind of humanitarian work was
undertaken by Polak after his return to England? What was their
contribution to the Indian national movement and Gandhi's leadership in
particulars. Answer to these and similar questions have been attempted
by Dr. Prabha Ravi Shankar in what is perhaps the first detailed study
of the Polaks and their association with Gandhi.
Henry Polak:
The Cosmopolitan Life of a Jewish Theosophist, Friend of India and
Anti-racist Campaigner
Jane Haggis,
Clare Midgley, Margaret Allen & Fiona Paisley
Cosmopolitan Lives on the Cusp of Empire pp 37–61 2017
Henry Polak (1882–1959), a British-born lawyer, journalist and editor of Indian Opinion,
campaigned with Mohandas Gandhi against restrictions on South African
Indians and against the indentured labour system. Founder of the Indian
Overseas Association in 1920, he worked with Indians across the diaspora
against racism and discriminations. Most in tune with Indian political
liberals, he worked with them for Indian independence. His life of
border-crossings and his affective cosmopolitanism were inspired by his
spiritual cosmopolitanism. His reading across cosmopolitan thought zones
saw his embrace of Theosophy and universal equality. He drew strong
links between Theosophical beliefs and the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights.
Soulmates: The Story of Mahatma Gandhi and
Hermann Kallenbach
Shimon Lev Indian & Lithuania - A Personal Bond, pp. 37-52, 2017 But
this story also involves Leo Tolstoy, the prophet of non-violence, who was among the main critics of Western civilization. It
involves Hindus, Christians, Jews, Muslims, alongside with staunch Tolstoians and Theosophists as
well as white
racism.
It also
involves
two ancient Asian nations on the process of a national revival, struggling
for freedom in the age of the collapse of imperialism. But it also contains the most catastrophic event of the 20th
century – World War II and the
Holocaust. Gandhi on one hand, Hitler on the other – probably the two most famous figures of their time, but what a
difference! And in-between there was
Kallenbach, who was on the one hand a believer in non-violence, as a disciple of Gandhi, but on the other hand, shared the fears of
the fate of his Jewish brothers in Europe, and particularly tried at the very last
moment in 1939 to rescue his brother
Simon Kallenbach’s family, as well as his other relatives, from the Nazi-occupied Klaipėda (Memel) in Western Lithuania.
Pamphlets on Reincarnation: A Unique Set of Articles in the Scholem Collection Note the symbols that appear on the cover of the lower pamphlet seen in
the image above. These in fact form the emblem of the Theosophical
Society, which features a Star of David, an Egyptian Ankh, an Ouroborous
(a serpent swallowing its tail), a Hindu Aum and even a swastika, which
of course was an ancient Hindu religious symbol long before the Nazis
expropriated it. Below the emblem is the society’s motto: “There is no
religion higher than truth”.
https://blog.nli.org.il/en/scholem-reincarnation/
In
Search of Jewish Theosophists
Boaz Huss FOTA Newsletter Issue VI July
2, 2016
Actually, the foundation of the group in Basra was stimulated by the foundation of a Jewish section of the Theosophical Society, named “The Association of Hebrew Theosophists”. The Association was founded at the end of 1925, during the jubilee conference of the Theosophical Society in Adyar. I later found out that the Association of Hebrew Theosophists founded branches in India, England, Holland, and the United States. The American branch published a Journal, The Jewish Theosophist. To my surprise and delight, I found some of the copies of this rare journal in Scholem’s library.
