This morning’s papers including The New York Daily News, are filled with articles about Madonna, Kabbalah, The Kabbalah Center, and how they are effecting her relationship with baseball star, Alex Rodriguez. Among the charges being made, is that Madonna is “brainwashing” A-Rod with her mystical beliefs.
What do we even mean by “brainwashing”? Too often, especially when it comes to religion, the term brainwashing is applied to any education with an outcome of which we don’t approve. I mean there is no evidence of her depriving him of sleep, threatening his family, etc. of which I am aware. Are you?
There is nothing even shocking about a story in which two people that become romantically involved end up sharing a spiritual path as well. Madonna and A-rod may actually be in love, and if so, it would hardly be the first time that one lover was drawn to the spiritual practice of the other — especially when its an ancient tradition that has brought meaning to lives of thousands of people over the last thousand or more years.
In fact, If we took away the gateway of romance, how many fewer Christians, Jews, Muslims would there be in the world? How many people who started their lives in one church, moved to another based on who was in the pews?

Also, the obsession with the Kabbalah Center as a cult makes no sense to me at all. In fact, that perception is nothing more than the byproduct of an alliance between “mainstream” religious leaders, who are jealous of the success of a competing religious institution, and a press that is fundamentally hostile to religion in general and the idea that people would shape their lives around it, in particular.
I give great credit to the Bergs and the rest of that crowd for their willingness to share pieces of Jewish tradition with the entire world, and to base their claim of its value not, on tradition, but because it actually helps the practitioner. In some ways, I wish that all faiths would use that as their measure. Can you imagine answering the question about why you are committed to a tradition with the words, “because I love it”, before you mentioned tradition or even God?
They are certainly guilty of over-simplification and of offering up a theology that sees rituals and prayers as tokens to be placed in a divine vending machine which dispenses endless bliss, but they are hardly the first religious group to do that! However, we all reap what we sow. The Kabbalah Center and its followers opened themselves up to the charge of fakery or being a cult by offering a version of Jewish mysticism that is often presented as magic tricks, the performance of which will bring the practitioner whatever they want, including love and sexual fulfillment.
A man leaving his wife for another woman is hardly news. This is mostly a case of a celebrity-obsessed culture caring more about the sex lives of two people because they are famous. Though I wonder what would happen of we all paid as much attention to the people in our own lives who face such struggles, rather than worrying so much about how Madonna, A-rod, and the Kabbalah Center, deal with theirs.