Standing By Your Sex-Hobbyist -Man; Because It's Your Fault Too?

WHEN THE MATERIAL GIRL MET AYN SOF

Five years ago my friend, Sue, finally convinced me (after a couple years of cajoling) to give the New York Kabbalah Center a chance. I went to classes once a week for a month in the heat of July in Manhattan.

It was a very good experience. I liked the Rabbi teaching the basics of Kabbalah. But most people there were looking for a quick fix to their problems. I was already exploring Kabbalah through books and I was still under the impression that Judaism was a closed door to me.

I've had many deep, spiritually engaging (often confusing) experiences throughout the years. I was pretty much deep into Gnosticism, which I still have high regard for. I'd investigated evangelical Christianity, Buddhism and while I found Judaism fascinating, no one had ever taken the time to give me anything more than the more cursory look into it. I was also still struggling with my abusive marriage and was wide open with pain, vulnerable enough to try to find something to fill the void in my soul. And in retrospect, I wasn't in any position to make any rational or healthy choices. Kabbalah however, gave me hope that there was more to life than the pain I was drowning in.

One of my grandfathers was a rabid Anti-Semite. He forbid his daughter (my mother) from dating a young Jewish doctor when she learned they were getting serious. He and their family were devout Catholics. My grandmother knew there was some "Jewishness" in our background but the family was closed mouthed about it. A lot of the knowledge either died with the older members of my family or was burned down during the Polish Pogroms. I grew up in a small town that was very Christian. I didn't meet a Jew until I went to college. Surprise, they didn't have horns or look much different than anyone else I knew. But still it was a distant thing. And the Jews I met were quite clear that I wasn't an MOT.

An acquaintance found out I was going to the Kabbalah Center and posited to me that I needed the Torah learning to truly appreciate Kabbalism. They helped identify a place for me to study. I was sick of the inner hypocrisy I felt about Catholicism. I knew I was only going because I was brought up that way and felt "comfortable." (or was it LAZY?) One thing led to another and now I am here. I needed to do something to fed my withered soul. At least the Kabbalah Center was a step in the right direction, when I was blindly taking so many unhealthy ones the rest of the time. It took time and being abused and exploited further but slowly I have started the climb up. I now look to Torah as something solid and unchanging in my life which has been so tainted by abuse and being lied to.

I'm still not sure what to make of Madonna's involvement in Kabbalah. I have serious issues with the Kabbalah Centers and their marketing of Kabbalah as the answer to life's problems. That includes their "charged" Kabbalah Water. I know Madonna's still Catholic and that she gets a great deal out of her spiritual involvement with the Kabbalah Center. If what's she's doing is helping more Jews come back to their Judaism... I'd have to agree with this author that its a good thing. That the end may just justify the means.

'Thank G-d for Madonna'
By Romina Ruiz-Goiriena

Madonna, Demi Moore and Britney Spears popularized Kabbalah, making it a fashion trend among Hollywood stars and singers. But for rabbis in Safed, the birthplace and beating heart of Kabbalah, it is a route to lure Jews back to their religion.

Tucked away from the mystical city's main streets, the Ascent of Safed hostel and education center recently organized a four-day conference offering "hands-on" Kabbalah workshops.

The participants - along with thousands of devoted pilgrims - flocked at midnight to the gravesite of the father of Kabbalah, Rabbi Isaac Luria (known as the Holy Ari). They were there to commemorate his death and "absorb the energy of this supernatural place."

"Safed is conducive to spirituality," says James Alexander, a 28-year-old "English Jew of liberal tendency," who has been backpacking around Israel and the territories for the last ten days, hoping to experience all it has to offer.

Ascent has a numinous allure, with its hundred-year old stones, hidden caves and interior gardens.

"Here, Chassidut [defined by the center as Kabbalah for the non-mystic] merges the literalist with the symbolic and has changed my perception of Orthodoxy," Alexander says.

Shira Schwartz, of the Chai Center in Los Angeles and a scholar in residence at Ascent, associates the growing interest in Kabbalah with the quest for spiritual values in a globalized world dominated by materialism. "Jews are hungry, they are searching and looking for a connection to G-d," she notes.

There is no doubt for Shira's husband, Rabbi Shlomo Schwartz, a Kabbalist for 40 years, that celebrities have made this mystical practice famous. "Thank G-d for Madonna-Esther or whatever her name is, for putting Kabbalah on the front page," he says.

Dressed in shorts, a black T-shirt emblazoned with the face of reggae singer Matisyahu, tziziot, and kippa with his long white beard, Rabbi Schwartz admits that sometimes, "You have to take advantage of what G-d puts in your way."

After all, "people are not listening to rabbis, they are watching Madonna on MTV."

His wife agrees. "Kabbalah is now a street word," she says.

But gratitude for the recent fame of Kabbalah has a downside. They both warn that many centers are not staying true to the teachings and are just spreading money-making "flaflalogy" in a cult-like manner.

"Ascent is about teaching real Kabbalah," Shira Schwartz insists.

Zalman Rothschild, one of the Ascent counselors, says that the center opens its doors to travelers from around the world who are interested in learning, but aims to "spread Judaism and Chassidic philosophy."

To many of those attending the conference, Ascent of Safed is responding to a void in the Jewish world by bringing together people of different places and different origins.

"I had a traditional Jewish education in South Africa, but I've always been interested in Kabbalah, for me it has further depth and meaning than traditional Orthodoxy," says 34-year-old David Skolni.

Madonna may have given Kabbalah its 15 minutes of fame, but for Sheree Sharkan, 31, visiting from Chicago, "there is a lot in Kabbalah that speaks to people from different backgrounds. Our generation seems to be searching for meanings, purposes, and answers."

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