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The Kabbalah Centre is a controversial California-based organization which claims to teach Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism). To its proponents, it is a spiritual organization which teaches the principles of the Kabbalah, as understood by its founder, Philip Berg. To its detractors, the Centre is an "opportunistic offshoot of the faith, with charismatic leaders who try to attract the rich and the vulnerable with the promise of health, wealth, and happiness." *

In the United States, Philip Berg (born Feivel Gruberger) and wife Karen Berg established the first U.S. Kabbalah Centre in Los Angeles in 1984. Karen and their sons Yehuda and Michael act as Directors and Spiritual Leaders of the organization. The organization claims to be a non-profit organization with over 50 branches worldwide, including major ones in Los Angeles, New York City, London and Toronto.

The Kabbalah Centre comprises Jewish and non-Jewish teachers and students. Usually, Jewish organizations distinguish it as non-Jewish and often consider participation by Jews in it a problem since classical Judaism discourages Jews from participating with non-Jews in religious rituals. *

Celebrity followers

The media has paid much attention to celebrity devotee Madonna who, joined by her husband Guy Ritchie, studies regularly with a personal Kabbalah Center rabbi, no longer gives concerts on Friday night (which is the onset of the Jewish Sabbath), wears the red string around her left wrist for protection and to ward off the "Evil Eye" (Ayin Hara), has introduced Jewish ritual objects such as tefilin ("phylacteries") into her videos and tithes regularly to the Kabbalah Centre. * Madonna was raised as a Catholic.

As of July, 2006 there is strong evidence that Madonna is leaving the Kabbalah Centre. One of the main reasons is that the Kabbalah Centre appears to be misreporting and mishandling the huge donations it receives from her and others.[http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,203104,00.html

Other celebrities that have been associated with the Centre include actress Demi Moore, Britney Spears, and Donna Karan. *

Britney has reportedly renounced her faith (and as a result lost her friendship with Madonna), following the birth of her son Sean Preston and the announcement of her second pregnancy. She commented that her baby was now her religion. She also left because the Kabbalah Centre kept asking her for large sums of money.

Lindsay Lohan has also recently been associated with the faith, wearing red string on her wrist. She is said to have formed a friendship with Madonna and reportedly has taken the name of Rose following her conversion from Catholicism.

Controversy

In October 2005, the head of the Kabbalah Centre in Tel Aviv, was arrested and charged with fraud for extorting $60,000 dollars from a woman dying of cancer. She was promised a cure if she gave the money. She died, leaving her family bankrupt. *

Kabbalah Centre representatives sell, for hundreds of pounds, bottles of "healing" spring water to cancer suffers. A leader of the group also caused controversy with a cavalier attitude towards the Holocaust. According to a BBC news article, Eliyahu Yardeni, a senior figure in the London Kabbalah Centre has been quoted as saying, "Just to tell you another thing about the six million Jews that were killed in the Holocaust: the question was that the Light was blocked. They didn't use Kabbalah." This claim caused international outrage, with one scholar calling the statement "obscene". *

According to the Los Angeles Task Force on Cults and Missionaries, in 1990 cancer sufferer Marilyn McLeod was visited by a "Rabbi" Yardeni of the Kabbalah Centre who persuaded her to purchase a complete hardcover set of the Zohar in Hebrew which she couldn't read , as well as a few other books about Jewish mysticism, for over $250 USD, along with advising her to change her name to something Hebrew. She received approximately one dozen audio tapes from the Centre, and told to scan the Zohar for its healing properties. McLeod died in January 1991.*

In Israel, authorities have refused to give the organization a certificate of proper management for three years running (as of 2005) because of accounting inadequacies. In Britain, the Charity Commissioners have criticised the centre's accounts for "significant shortcomings in transparency".*

References

External links

Kabbalah Centre | Kabala Centro | Centre de la Kabbale

Kabbalah | 1984 establishments | Charities based in the United States | Cults

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Kabbalah Centre".

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