The Anointed: A Screenplay Based on the Novel

The Anointed is set in Spain in the turbulent year 1492, just as the Muslim kingdom of Granada is yielding to the Christian Reconquista of King Ferdinand and Isabella—shortly before Columbus sets sail in search of the New World and the Jews are expelled from Spain—and as the Jewish converts to Christianity, or Conversos, face one of the blackest periods in human history under the Spanish Inquisition. In the ancient walled town of Zeona, a small group of Jews, Christians and Muslims have come together to study the underlying unity of all being with Don Immanuel, a secret kabbalist and retired court astrologer to the king and queen of Spain. But they couldn’t have chosen a more dangerous moment to form such a fellowship, for the Inquisition has just arrived in Zeona with a mission to root out such heretics. The battle between good and evil is thus seen in the unfolding events which present a test of integrity for everyone involved in this drama. In this wonderful screenplay, based on his beloved novel of the same name, Z’ev ben Shimon Halevi, a highly regarded teacher of Kabbalah in the Toledano Tradition, weaves subtle mystical themes into a drama in which the “Anointed,” the hidden Messiah of the time, fulfils his destiny at a critical point in history. Readers of the novel will find new insight into both the characters (themselves based on the kabbalistic Tree of Life) and the context from the screenplay, which gives us a beautiful vision of how Halevi himself thinks the story should be presented visually.

Z’ev ben Shimon Halevi is the Hebrew name of Warren Kenton, a teacher of kabbalah of Spanish Sefardic ancestry, who wishes to translate kabbalah into a modern form that anyone may pursue.