Free Republic

FOR the past 15 years, she has been Kabbalah’s most high profile and dedicated follower. But now Madonna has apparently ditched the controversial faith and taken up with Opus Dei – the secretive Catholic sect made famous in The Da Vinci Code. The singer is said to be intrigued by the organisation and spent Friday with priests from the centre’s London HQ. The move follows her alleged falling out with some Kabbalah leaders after reports that cash raised for her Malawi charity was squandered. Last night a source claimed: “She has invested so much into Kabbalah so she was devastated...

Voodoo Dialogue by Jonathan Mark, Associate Editor [...]There is Jewish-Christian dialogue; Jewish-Muslim dialogue; Jewish-Hindu dialogue; Jewish-Buddhist dialogue; rabbis have met with the pope, the Dalai Lama and imams, but Voodoo dialogue is the ecumenical stepchild. An informal round of phone calls to rabbis turned up nothing. Voodoo gets a laugh; to most Jews it’s a punchline. Even Clal-The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, an organization that, decades ago, was one of the pioneers in serious interfaith understanding, has yet to meet its first houngan, mambo or manbo (Voodoo priests). And yet, out on the street, there is more...

A song on Madonna's upcoming album dedicated to a Kabbalist rabbi is drawing criticism from other rabbis, the Israeli Maariv daily reported Sunday. The album, "Confessions on a Dance Floor," is to be released on Nov. 15 and features a track entitled "Isaac" about Yitzhak Luria, a 16th century Jewish mystic and Kabbalah scholar. Rabbis who oversee Luria's tomb and a seminary in the northern town of Safed are unimpressed with Madonna's musical tribute and see the inclusion of the song about Luria on the album as an attempt by the pop star to profit from his name. Rabbi Rafael...

Madonna, the former 'Material Girl,' has been promoted to the highest level the one can achieve without becoming an ordained minister according to the Kabbalah Church. The singer, who is a staunch follower of the mystical Jewish religion, was promoted to an upper category of Kabbalah followers in a ceremony conducted by founder Kabbalah Centre founder Rabbi Berg. 'Her teachers think that she has reached the pinnacle of spiritual understanding.' 'To Madonna, this is the best achivement of her life,' a source said. It was under Madge's influence that celebrities like Demi Moore and Britney Spears became attracted towards Kabbalah.

Esther, the pop artist formerly known as 'Madonna'Following in the footsteps of Hollywood divas Gwyneth Paltrow, Demi Moore and Winona Ryder, pop-star Madonna has remade herself at London's Kabbalah Centre, home of the trendy crash course in ancient Jewish gnosticism. In fact, the Queen of Pop has changed her name to Esther, she says, in order to rid herself of any 'negative energy.' Carrie Tomko examines what's behind this New Age sucker-religion--and what's not.Kabbalah, cabala, quabala, qabalah--those are some, but not necessarily all of the possible spellings of the new old religion that America pop-artist formerly known as Madonna has...

On several of the various threads on the general forum which concern Objectivism, which evidently excludes God in definition of objective moral truth, the discussion has turned to the concept of the soul and more specifically, the words used in Scripture to describe the soul and how it has been understood by Jews who first received the Word and studied it for so many centuries. I promised unspun that I would try to collect information on the various aspects and present it for Freeper discussion. Following is the first draft of that effort with a very rough organization, links...