Post by ForgottenOne on Sept 19, 2013 17:08:49 GMT -5
Madonna and Kabbalah: has 'the Light' finally gone out?
- Madge was absent from Philip Berg's funeral this week. Was it because she wouldn't be the headline act – or something more profound?
All things must pass, according to my £289 copy of Kabbalah's holy book, but has there been a cooling between the faux-Jewish set and its most famous devotee? Lost in Showbiz is moved to ask after Madonna was nowhere to be seen in photos taken at this week's funeral of its founder, the erstwhile insurance salesman Philip Berg.
On one level, the singer's absence might be expected. With the obvious exception of their own sendoffs, a funeral is an event at which attendees are merely on the bill, as opposed to headlining. And it may very well be that Madonna simply declined to part of an ensemble piece. Or maybe she couldn't join the likes of Ashton Kutcher in managing to get to Israel to see Berg entombed in the huge mausoleum that had been purpose-built for him.
On another, this is the man who brought her into the sect, and at whose Shabat table she was given a VIP place whenever she was in town. This is the man for whom she lobbied Downing Street, claiming that Kabbalah water had removed all radioactivity from a lake in the Chernobyl exclusion zone, and was the answer to the global problem of nuclear waste. This is the man whose wife she reportedly took pride of place next to at Kabbalah services, and whose merchandise – $26 bit of red string, anyone? – she allowed to be sold alongside her own on world tours. A stroke confined him to a wheelchair some years ago, but this is the man whose guidance she continued to seek even after his wife and sons took the reins of the Kabbalah Center.
Who knows, perhaps Madonna's absence from the Rav's funeral forms a companion piece with the 2011 document that shows how she cut all Kabbalah's ties with her charity, Raising Malawi, following the damning audit that revealed $3.8m had been spent on a project that was never realised.
Either way, it is to be hoped she will take the earliest interview opportunity to put the confusion to bed. Is madam still seeing what Kabbalah calls "the Light", or has she seen the other kind of light? Inquiring minds want to know.
