The Kabbalah Centre is a non-profit organization headquartered in Los Angeles, California, that provides courses on the Kabbalah online, and through its local centres and study groups. The modern-day presentation of Kabbalah was developed by its current leader, Philip Berg (a traditionally trained orthodox rabbi who had left the religious clergy and became an insurance salesman before learning Kabbalah) and his wife, Karen Berg. The Kabbalah Centre includes Jewish and non-Jewish teachers and students.
Kabbalistic tradition has long held that Kabbalah is so complicated and so easily misunderstood that students may only begin to approach it with a strong background in Jewish law and only after age 40, the age of wisdom according to the Mishnah. Some see the Centre as a perversion of Judaism's ancient and secretive mystic tradition.
As a religious not-for-profit organization, it is exempt from federal income taxes under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.
The Kabbalah Centre was founded in the United States in 1965 as The National Research Institute of Kabbalah by Philip Berg (born Feivel Gruberger) and Rav Yehuda Tzvi Brandwein. Brandwein in turn was the Dean of Yeshivah Kol Yehuda in Israel (a precursor of the US Kabbalah Centres) which was founded in 1922. After Brandwein's death, and after several years in Israel, Philip Berg and his wife Karen Berg, re-established the U.S. Kabbalah Centre in New York.