Huss, All You Need is LAV by Boaz Huss

ARTICLES

T H E J E W I S H Q U A R T E R LY R E V I E W , Vol. 95, No. 4 (Fall 2005) 611–624

All You Need Is LAV: Madonna and Postmodern Kabbalah BOAZ HUSS

Siegmund Freud Analyze this Analyze this Analyze this I’m gonna break the cycle I’m gonna shake up the system I’m gonna destroy my ego I’m gonna close my body now I think I’ll find another way There’s so much more to know I guess I’ll die another day It’s not my time to go. Madonna, ‘‘Die Another Day’’ MADONNA

I N R EC E N T Y E AR S , Madonna has studied Kabbalah and employed kabbalistic and Jewish signifiers in various of her cultural productions, including her first children’s books. Her music video performance of the theme song from the James Bond film Die Another Day (2002) features several Jewish and kabbalistic images. The video shows the Hebrew letters LAV (lamed, aleph, vav) tattooed on Madonna’s arm as she is being A shorter version of this article, entitled ‘‘Madonna, die 72 Namen Gottes und eine postmoderne Kabbala,’’ was published in the catalogue book of the Jewish Museum of Berlin, 10 Ⳮ 5 ⳱ Gott, Die Macht Der Zeichen, ed. D. Tyradellis and M. S. Friedlander (Berlin, 2004), 279–94. I am grateful to Yoni Garb, Hanan Hever, Ada Rapoport Albert, and Chava Weissler, who read earlier versions of this paper and offered important suggestions. For more information on the video clip, see http://www.madonna-online.ch/m-online/welcome/welcome.htm The Jewish Quarterly Review (Fall 2005) Copyright 䉷 2005 Center for Advanced Judaic Studies. All rights reserved.

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tortured in a sinister prison, an allusion to the North Korean prison camp in which James Bond is held at the beginning of the film. The prison shots are intercut with a sequence of two battling Madonnas, one dressed in white, one in black, which also alludes to scenes from the movie: a fencing duel between Bond and his archenemy, Gustav Graves, in which Madonna plays the part of the fencing instructor, Verity, as well as the duel between the two Bond girls, the evil Miranda Frost and the American agent, Jinx. In the video clip, the fencing duel between the two Madonnas takes place in a hall scattered with artifacts related to previous James Bond films, which are destroyed during the duel, including a picture of James Bond/Pierce Brosnan, which is pierced by Madonna’s foil. During her struggle with her torturers in the prison sequence, just before she is tied to an electric chair, Madonna is seen hastily strapping her arm with tefillin. Toward the end of the video, following the defeat of the black Madonna by the white one, Madonna is miraculously saved from the electric chair. The letters LAV appear engraved on the empty electric chair (reminiscent of Andy Warhol’s famous 1963 Double Silver Disaster, an image of an unoccupied electric chair in Sing-Sing,1 while Madonna escapes down the prison corridor. A L L YO U N E E D I S L AV

The letters LAV that are tattooed on the arm of the tortured Madonna and appear on the empty electric chair can be read as a Hebrew transliteration of the English word ‘‘love.’’ Madonna is probably aware of that, and this may be one of the reasons she chose them. Yet the letters LAV are also, according to an ancient Jewish tradition presumably known to Madonna, one of the seventy-two sacred names of God. A tradition of God’s name of seventy-two letters is first documented in midrash Genesis Rabbah (chapter 44), in a saying attributed to the fourth-century sage R. Avin, according to which God redeemed the Israelites from Egypt with his seventy-two-letter name.2 This tradition is probably connected to the tradition of God’s names of twelve and twenty-four letters, mentioned in the Babylonian Talmud (bKidd 71a).3 The name of seventy-two letters is mentioned again by R. H . ai Gaon in the early eleventh century, who says that this name, whose letters are unknown, is 1. The picture, one of Warhol’s most controversial subjects, is on display at the Tate Modern in London. 2. Jehuda Theodor and Chanoch Albeck, Midrash Bereshit Rabba, Critical Edition with Notes and Commentary (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1976), 1.442. 3. Ludwig Blau, Das Altjuedische Zauberwesen (Budapest, 1898), 137–46.

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derived from three biblical passages.4 Both traditions—the saving of the Israelites from Egypt and the derivation from three biblical verses—come together in Rashi’s commentary on the Babylonian Talmud, bSuk 45a. Rashi speaks about seventy-two names of God rather than of the name of seventy-two letters. He says that these names are derived from three successive verses in the book of Exodus (Ex 14.19–21), which describe the Israelites’ flight from the Egyptians and the parting of the Red Sea. Each of these verses contains, in Hebrew, seventy-two letters. The first of the seventy-two names of God is formed, according to Rashi, by combining the first letter of the first of these verses, the last letter of the second verse, and the first letter of the last verse. Thus, the first of the seventy-two names of God is VHV (vav, he, vav). The subsequent names are formed in the same way (i.e., second letter from the first verse, one before last [seventy-first] from second verse, second from third verse, etc.), forming seventy-two three-lettered names. The name LAV appears twice among the seventy-two names; it is the eleventh as well as the seventeenth name formed in such a way. The seventy-two names of God (many time referred to as the name of seventy-two letters, although containing actually 216 letters) became popular in medieval and early modern Jewish culture, especially among the Kabbalists. The seventy-two names are mentioned in the first known kabbalistic work, Sefer ha-bahir (sections 76–77)5, which was probably composed in late-twelfth-century Provence, and in various thirteenthcentury kabbalistic writings. A short treatise entitled ‘‘the Secret of the Name of seventy-two letters,’’ which belongs to the writings of the ‘‘Circle of Contemplation’’ (Hug ha- iyun), was written in this period.6 Various discussions of the seventy-two names are found in the Zohar, which associates them with the sefirot. According to the Zohar, the first seventytwo-lettered verse is derived from the sefirah of H . esed (Divine loving kindness), the second from Gevurah (Divine judgment), and the third from Tiferet (Divine mercy).7 The seventy-two names were used in this period in magical as well as mystical practices. R. Bahya ben Asher, the late-thirteenth-century Kabbalist from Saragossa, says in his Torah com4. Baruch M. Levin, Otsar ha-Geonim, Thesaurus of the Gaonic Responsa (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1931), vol. 4, part 2, 23. 5. Gerhard Scholem, Das Buch Bahir (Darmstadt, 1980), 78; Daniel Abrams, The Book Bahir, (Los Angeles, 1994), 165. 6. Mark Verman, The Books of Contemplation, Medieval Jewish Mystical Sources (Albany, N.Y., 1992), 52, 63, 162, 183. 7. See, for instance, the lengthy discussion in Zohar 2.51b–52a. See also 1.79b, 2.132b, 3.151a.

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mentary that the ‘‘Masters of Names’’ (Ba ale shemot), who know the right pronunciation of the seventy-two names, can use their power in order to achieve various goals (such as inducing love).8 R. Abraham Abulafia, who was active in the second half of the thirteenth century (traveling throughout the Mediterranean), uses the seventy-two names extensively in his meditative techniques.9 Thus, for instance, in his Sefer ha-h.eshek, he describes a fascinating mystical technique that involves guided visualization, in which one gives oneself instructions to pronounce the different components of the seventy-two names and then pronounces them, using a different voice: Hold your eyes to the sky and stretch your hands above, as in the priestly blessing . . . then, begin to recite. Say firstly: The beginning of the beginning (i.e., the first letter of the first verse) while breathing lengthily and calmly. Then, imagining that another person who is standing opposite you is speaking, say, in another voice, different from the one you used previously, not as lengthily, yet calmly, the first letter, which is ‘‘Vav.’’ After a while, instruct yourself again: ‘‘the end of the middle’’ (i.e., the last letter of the second verse), and recite: [the letter] ‘‘Heh.’’ Say further: ‘‘the beginning of the end’’ (i.e., the first letter of the third verse) and recite: [the letter] ‘‘Vav.’’10 The name of seventy-two letters plays an important role in the Lurianic Kabbalah. Yet, in the writings of R. Isaac Luria (ha- Ari) and his disciples, the name is usually derived from the numerical value of the letters of the ineffable name of God, and not from the three verses of Exodus (although this tradition is also mentioned in the Lurianic corpus). A lengthy discussion of the seventy-two names of God (as derived from the three verses) is found in Sefer Raziel, a collection of mystical and magical materials that was printed for the first time in Amsterdam in the early eighteenth century and has been reprinted many times since. The name of seventy-two letters (or some of the seventy-two names) appears also in Jewish amulets, but other divine names, such as the forty-two-letter name, are usually more prevalent. The traditions of the seventy-two names of God do not play an important role in most contemporary Jewish cultural forms (including mystical 8. Hayyim Dov Scheval, Rabenu Bahye Torah Commentary (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1982), 2:128. 9. Moshe Idel, The Mystical Experience in Abraham Abulafia (Albany, N. Y., 1988), 38. 10. Abraham Abulafia, Sefer ha-Heshek (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1999), 24–25.

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and kabbalistic ones), and most contemporary Jews are not aware of this tradition, or of the meaning of the letters LAV. Yet these names do feature extensively in the practices of one particular contemporary kabbalistic group—the Kabbalah Center, headed by R. Philip Berg. THE KABBALAH CENTER

R. Philip (Shraga) Berg and his wife Karen Berg established the Kabbalah Center in the early 1970s. Berg, who was born and raised in the United States, studied Kabbalah in Israel with R. Yehuda Zvi Brandwien (1903–69), the leader of a small Hasidic group (Haside Stratin), the head of the religious department of the Israeli Labor Federation (the Histadrut), and the chief disciple (and brother-in-law) of R. Yehuda Ashlag (1886–1954), the most important and innovative Kabbalist of the twentieth century. After the death of Brandwein, Berg declared himself his successor and established the Kabbalah Center in order to spread kabbalistic teachings. The Kabbalah Center expanded extensively over the last two decades and has become the largest contemporary kabbalistic movement. Berg published dozens of books and opened centers for the study and dissemination of Kabbalah first in Israel and the United states, and recently in other countries in North and South America and in Europe. One of the features of Kabbalah Center activities is the recruitment of celebrities, most famous among them Madonna (as well as Roseanne Barr, Sandra Bernhardt, and Britney Spears), which secures the media’s interest in the Kabbalah Center and contributes to the center’s expansion and fame. The teachings of the Kabbalah Center are based on R. Yehuda Ashlag’s innovative Kabbalah, as interpreted, modified, and simplified by Berg. Ashlag, who emigrated from Poland to Palestine in 1921, wrote extensive commentaries to the vast Lurianic corpus and to the Zohar (which he also translated into Hebrew), as well as several short treaties intended for the larger public. In his commentaries to the kabbalistic canon, Ashlag created a highly complex and innovative kabbalistic system, the central notion of which is that the Creator, who is defined as the infinite ‘‘will to bestow,’’ created through a complex and dialectical process of emanation a ‘‘will to receive’’ the benefits bestowed by him. Human beings stand at the end of the emanation process, yet, recognizing their situation (and being ashamed of it), human beings are able to change their nature and try to transform their egoistic will to receive into a divine-like will to bestow. Because human beings cannot change their nature completely, transformation is not accomplished by negating one’s will to receive but by learning to receive in order to give satisfaction to the Creator. As such

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a transformation is achieved, the gap between human and divine nature diminishes and man achieves spiritual perfection. This process also has a social feature: the road to spiritual perfection is also the road to establishing a perfect, communist-like community, in which every individual contributes according to his capabilities (wishing to bestow upon others) and receives according to his needs (as everyone else in the community wishes to bestow upon him).11 In contrast to most traditional kabbalistic movements, Ashlag did not regard the Kabbalah as an esoteric doctrine. He claimed that a new era, in which the revelation of kabbalistic secrets was allowed, began in his day, and he attempted to disperse the Kabbalah to the contemporary Israeli secular public, both through his Hebrew translation of the Zohar and through a journal in which he presented his kabbalistic ideas in contemporary Hebrew, arguing for the scientific nature of Kabbalah and presenting it as the perfect form of socialism. Ashlag had meetings with several leaders of the Zionist Labor party, including David Ben Gurion, who wrote in a letter to R. Yehuda Brandwein: I had the privilege of meeting many times with R. Ashlag of blessed memory, a few years ago, in Tel Aviv. I had long conversations with him, about Kabbalah, as well as about Socialism. I was amazed that he adhered especially to Communism. He asked me several times if we will establish a communist regime after the foundation of the Jewish state.12 Following Ashlag’s own ideology of revealing and dispersing the Kabbalah (but taking it further than Ashlag probably ever imagined), R. Philip Berg presented (first, in English, later in Hebrew and other languages) the principles of Ashlag’s Kabbalah in a simplified and comprehensible manner, suited for Western (not necessarily Jewish) readership. From his first publications in the 1970s, Berg downplayed the socialist elements of Ashlag’s Kabbalah and integrated various elements from contemporary Western culture and New Age spirituality into his own version, connecting the revelation of the Kabbalah with the arrival of the new age of 11. For preliminary studies of R. Yehuda Ashlag’s writings and his kabbalistic system, see Abraham Bick (Shauli), ‘‘Between the Holy Ari and Karl Marx’’ (Hebrew), Hedim 110 (1980): 174–81; David Hansel, ‘‘The Origin in the Thought of Rabbi Yehuda Halevy Ashlag: Simsum of God or Simsum of the The World?’’ Kabbalah 7 (2002): 37–46. 12. Cited by Bick, ‘‘Between the Holy Ari and Karl Marx,’’ 174.

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Aquarius. Since the 1990s some of these elements, as well as some kabbalistic practices which did not play a central role in Ashlag’s Kabbalah (such as scanning the Zohar and the meditative use of the seventy-two names of God), have overshadowed the Ashlagian elements in the doctrines and practices of the Kabbalah Center. The seventy-two names of God—which were not central in the Kabbalah of R. Yehudah Ashlag—have played an increasingly important role in the activities of Kabbalah Center. Charts of the seventy-two names decorate the many worldwide branches of the Kabbalah Center and special sections dedicated to the significance of the seventy-two names as well as to the purchase of seventy-two names items (such as T-shirts carrying the letters LAV) appear in the Kabbalah Center gift shops and Internet site.13 Recently, Yehuda Berg, the son of R. Philip, published a book about the seventy-two names.14 According to the Web site of the Kabbalah Center: The shapes, sounds, sequences and vibrations of the seventy-two names radiate a wide range of energy forces. The light they emit purifies our hearts. Their spiritual influence cleanses destructive impulses from our natures. Their sacred energy removes rash and intolerant emotions fear, and anxiety from our beings.15 Each of the three-letter names has, according to the Kabbalah Center, a distinct purpose. The specific purpose of the name LAV is to destroy one’s ego (to change the egoistic will to receive into a divine-like will to bestow). This purpose is alluded to in the lyrics of Madonna’s ‘‘Die Another Day’’: ‘‘I’m gonna break the cycle, I’m gonna shake up the system, I’m gonna destroy my ego, I’m gonna close my body now.’’ POSTMODERN KABBALAH

The significance of the letters LAV, according to the teaching of the Kabbalah Center, enables us to read Madonna’s ‘‘Die Another Day’’ video clip as a Bergian kabbalistic text. The power of the seventy-two names of God saves Madonna, in the prison sequence, from the suffering and death caused by the external, evil powers of this world. Yet, as we learn from the dueling sequence and the lyrics of the song, the victory over the evil powers is contingent upon an internal victory, a destruction of the ego, 13. www.kabbalah.com/k/index.php/p⳱store/72names 14. Yehuda Berg, The 72 Names of God: Technology for the Soul (New York, 2003). 15. www.kabbalah.com/k/index.php/p⳱life/tools/72names

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the victory of the white Madonna (the divine light, the will to bestow) over the black Madonna (the evil side, the will to receive, the ego). This victory can be achieved through the power of the letters LAV. But this is only part of the video’s polysemic nature. Fredric Jameson declared video the ‘‘art form par excellence of late Capitalism’’16 and Madonna has aptly been called by Georges-Claude Guilbert a ‘‘Postmodern Myth.’’17 Accordingly, ‘‘Die Another Day’’ should be read as a postmodern metatext, and its kabbalistic themes as part of a postmodern bricolage. Thus, the concluding scene of ‘‘Die Another Day,’’ which depicts an empty electric chair on which the Hebrew letters LAV are engraved, simultaneously pays tribute to Berg’s kabbalistic teachings and to Andy Warhol’s (‘‘king of the postmodern’’)18 Double Silver Disaster. Madonna deconstructs James Bond in the video clip by destroying Bond’s artifacts and piercing his (i.e., Pierce Brosnan’s) picture in the dueling scene. Madonna’s video is a simulacrum, that is, a simulation of simulations, with no attempt to ground them in reality.19 Madonna simulates James Bond in the prison sequence, as well as all the other main protagonists of the film in the dueling sequence, which refers also, as has been pointed out above, to Madonna’s role in the film (Verity!). These simulations, as well as the allusions to Andy Warhol and to her own role in the movie, are typical postmodern self-references, in which Madonna reminds us that although her role in the movie in a minor one, she is the still the real star. A similar use of a kabbalistic theme with a postmodern self-reference appears in Madonna’s first children’s book, The English Roses (which can also can be read as Bergian kabbalistic text). The protagonist, a beautiful girl who seems to have a perfect life but is discovered to be motherless, lonely, and loaded with housework—alluding to Madonna’s own childhood—is called Binah. Binah, which means ‘‘understanding’’ in Hebrew, is the name of the third kabbalistic sefirah, which is also referred to as Imma, mother. Indeed, according to the kabbalistic myth, Binah is a Mother of God of sorts, a veritable kabbalistic Madonna! 16. Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism (London and New York, 1993), 76. 17. Georges-Claude Guilbert, Madonna as Postmodern Myth (Jefferson, N. C., 2002). Guilbert observes that almost all the academics who study Madonna call her postmodern (p. 25) and cites Daniel Harris‘s declaration that ‘‘Postmodernism is Madonna’’ (195, n. 123). 18. On Andy Warhol as Madonna’s ‘‘virtual postmodern father,’’ see Guilbert, Madonna as Postmodern Myth, 68–70. 19. Jean Baudrillard, ‘‘The Procession of Simulacra,’’ Simulacra and Simulation (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1994), 1–42.

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Madonna’s recent choice of a Hebrew name, Esther, which combines Bergian kabbalistic themes and typical postmodern self-referentiality, is probably dependent on Berg’s notion that queen Esther saved the Jewish people, by the power of the divine name KHT (kaf, he, taf), the eighth of the seventy-two names of God. According to book of Esther, after hearing of Ahasuerus’s decree against the Jews, Esther sent her eunuch, Hatach, to Mordecai (Est 4.5–11). The Talmud (bMeg 16a) relates that Hatach was none other than the prophet Daniel. In a homily to Purim, Berg asks why Daniel was called Hatach and explains that this name was used by Esther as a code word, in order to inform Mordecai of the power of the name KHT, which has the same letters as Hatach (he, taf, kaf): ‘‘Only by the power of the combination ‘KHT,’ which Esther passed on to Mordecai, through Daniel, was it possible to defeat and annul the power of Satan and his emissaries.’’20 Madonna’s choice of name evokes not only Esther’s role as a disseminator of the power of the seventy-two names of God (according to Berg) but also, the more common etymologies of the name Esther: namely, the Babylonian promiscuous mother goddess Ishtar, and the Persian word for ‘‘star.’’ Thus, again, Madonna’s cultural production—in this case, a much-publicized choice of name—refers simultaneously to her role as a Kabbalah disseminator and as postmodern goddess. The integration of Jewish and kabbalistic symbols in the video clip and in the children’s book, as well as the choice of the Hebrew name Esther, refer to Berg’s kabbalistic teaching as well as to Madonna’s role as a postmodern myth. This self-referentiality may cast some irony on Madonna’s declaration of destructing her ego; or, on the other hand, it may illustrate how difficult such a task is. The combination of pop culture signifiers (Madonna, Bond, Warhol) and religious signifiers (Madonna, teffilin, LAV, Binah, Esther/Ishtar) blur, in a postmodern fashion, the traditional boundaries between elite and mass culture,21 between Judaism and Christianity, and between religion and entertainment. The dissolving of the traditional, modernist oppositions between high and low culture, different religious traditions, spirituality and show business characterizes not only Madonna’s video but also the teaching of Madonna’s mentors at the Kabbalah Center. Not 20. S. Berg, H.alonot ba-zman, (Hebrew; Tel Aviv, 1999), 2:54. The tradition that Hatach refers to the name KHT appears in Nathan Shapira’s Megaleh Amukot, (Hebrew; Furth 1691), 67a. 21. On the effacement of these boundaries as a characteristic of postmodernism, see Jameson, Postmodernism, 2.

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surprisingly, Madonna’s chosen form of Kabbalah is postmodern. Similar to many other contemporary cultural phenomena, which are usually referred to as New Religious Movements, New Age, or even cults, the Kabbalah Center expresses a form of postmodern spirituality.22 I prefer the phrase ‘‘postmodern spirituality’’ to ‘‘postmodern religion,’’ not only because of the Kabbalah Center’s insistence that Kabbalah is not a religion but also because postmodern spirituality indeed defies the modernist conception of religion and dissolves the distinctions that construct this conception.23 The practices of the Kabbalah Center express several of the major characteristics of postmodern culture. The writings, courses, Web site, and gift shops of the center offer an amalgam of elements taken from Kabbalah, philosophy, science, movies, television, and pop culture. Similar to Madonna’s own blurring of boundaries between religion and entertainment, the Kabbalah Center effaces these distinctions by integrating Madonna into its practices. The English Roses is featured in the Kabbalah Center stores and on its spirituality-for-kids Web site. The seventy-two names of God, especially the name LAV, have become much more central in the Kabbalah Center since the appearance of ‘‘Die Another Day.’’ The discussion of the name LAV in Yehuda Berg’s The Seventy-Two Names of God references Madonna’s kabbalistic James Bondian video text: the illustration for the name LAV is of a ball and chain and the title is ‘‘Great escape: we’re in prison and we don’t even know it.’’24 The Kabbalah Center’s manner of presenting kabbalistic themes integrated with other cultural and religious signifiers should be understood as a typical postmodern pastiche, which reshuffles and reconstructs previous cultural elements. As Jameson observed, the supreme formal feature of postmodernism is ‘‘the emergence of a new kind of depthlessness, a new kind of superficiality in the most literal sense.’’25 The emphasized and extrovert exotericism of the Kabbalah Center is not only a develop22. ‘‘New Age is postmodern, in its way,’’ observes Guilbert in his discussion of Madonna’s New Age phase (Madonna as Postmodern Myth, 171). On the postmodern, self-parodying and self-deconstructing pastiche of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, see Hugh B. Urban, ‘‘The Cult of Ecstasy: Tantrism, the New Age, and the Spiritual Logic of Late Capitalism,’’ History of Religions 39 (2000): 288 (I am indebted to Yoni Garb for turning my attention to this study). 23. Yet I should emphasize that I do not intend to pose ‘‘spirituality’’ as any universal, essential phenomenon that has a preference over the notion of ‘‘religion.’’ 24. Yehuda Berg, The 72 Names of God, 82. 25. Jameson, Postmodernism, 9.

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ment of Ashlag’s claim that kabbalistic secrets can be revealed in our age; it is also an expression of a postmodern rejection of modernist fundamental depth models.26 The rejection of the esoteric/exoteric dichotomy is typical of New Age culture, which adopted many themes from late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century esoteric movements—except their esotericism! Jameson observed that what replaces the various depth models is a ‘‘conception of practices, discourses and textual play.’’27 Indeed, the Kabbalah Center, like other postmodern spiritual movements, shows greater interest in practice than in doctrine. The Kabbalah Center’s emphasis on kabbalistic meditative and healing practices and the downplaying of Luria and Ashlag’s comprehensive kabbalistic myths (as well as the dispensing of Ashlag’s communist ideas) reflects the postmodern rejection of grand narratives. The interest in practice, rather than in belief, which is typical to other contemporary spiritual movements, reflects Jean-Francois Lyotard’s observation that in the postmodern age grand narratives are no longer the driving force behind the acquisition of knowledge.28 As Lyotard suggests, the question asked today in these contexts is no longer ‘‘Is it true?’’ but rather ‘‘What use is it?’’29 The Kabbalah Center offers answers to questions of that kind. The theme of destroying the ego, which is central to the teachings of the Kabbalah Center and featured in Madonna’s video, is not only an elaboration of Ashlag’s kabbalistic doctrines but also a rejection of the modernist notion of the ego and an expression of a new, postmodern construction of the subject. Madonna expresses this rejection explicitly when she provocatively asks Freud, in her song, to analyze her intentions to destruct her ego (referring, tongue in cheek, to the movie Analyze This).30 The Kabbalah Center, similar to many other New Age movements, posits instead of the modern, Freudian ego the notion of a divine, spiritual ‘‘self.’’31 Fredric Jameson has argued in ‘‘Postmodernism and the Cultural 26. Jameson, Postmodernism, 12. 27. Ibid. 28. On neo-Tantrism rejection of traditional metanarratives, see Urban, ‘‘The Cult of Ecstasy,’’ 298. 29. Jean-Franc¸ois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Minneapolis, Minn., 1991), 51. 30. I am indebted to Yoni Garb for this observation. 31. Paul Hellas, The New Age Movement: The Celebration of the Self and the Sacralization of Modernity (Oxford, 1996), 169.

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Logic of Late Capitalism,’’32 that postmodern culture is an expression of late global ( yet American) multinational capitalism. According to Jameson, ‘‘aesthetic production today has become integrated into commodity production generally.’’33 Similarly, today, spiritual production is integrated into global capitalism’s commodity production, and the Kabbalah Center, as well as many other postmodern spiritual movements, is a part of the ‘‘cultural logic of late capitalism.’’ As Hugh B. Urban observes, New Age has become a highly marketable phenomenon: ‘‘in recent years, there has been a growing movement within the New Age toward a sanctification of material prosperity, financial success and capitalism itself.’’34 Likewise, as expressed, for instance, in Berg’s course in ‘‘Kabbalah and Business,’’ the Kabbalah Center affirms capitalistic values (in sharp contrast to Ashalg’s Kabbalah). Similar to other contemporary postmodern spiritual movements, the Kabbalah Center is a global business enterprise that markets its kabbalistic services and products very successfully. The Kabbalah Center targets a well-to-do audience, offering its services and products for a considerable price and making the most of the advertising and marketing possibilities of late capitalism’s technology and communication systems, especially the World Wide Web.35 As a cultural phenomenon, the Kabbalah Center challenges modernist discursive frameworks, especially the distinction between the ‘‘religious’’ and the ‘‘secular.’’36 The Kabbalah Center deconstructs the major distinctions that undergird a modern conception of religion. The major modernist binarism between religious and secular cannot be easily applied to the cultural productions of the Kabbalah Center, nor is belief—a defining characteristic of the modern concept of religion—37central to its practices. Distinct, mutually exclusive religions (Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, etc.) are38 again challenged by the Kabbalah Center’s insistence 32. Pages 1–54 of Postmodernism; the essay was first published in New Left Review 146 (1984). 33. Jameson, Postmodernism, 4 34. Urban, ‘‘The Cult of Ecstasy,’’ 277. On the fit between contemporary versions of Tantrism, especially that of Bhgwan Shree Rajneesh, and the conditions of late-twentieth-century capitalism, see ibid., 268–304. 35. On New Age Movements’ capitalization of the Internet, see Urban, ‘‘The Cult of Ecstasy,’’ 291–93. 36. Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion (Baltimore and London, 1993), 36; Richard King, Orientalism and Religion, Postcolonial Theory, India and the ‘‘Mystic East’’ (London and New York, 1999), 41–44. 37. Asad, Genealogies of Religion, 40–41; Jonathan Z, Smith, ‘‘Religion, Religions, Religious,’’ Critical Terms for Religious Studies, ed. M. C. Taylor (Chicago, 1998), 271. 38. Smith, ‘‘Religion, Religions, Religious,’’ 278–80.

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that Kabbalah is open to all denominations and by its most famous disciple: a Catholic (but not virgin) Madonna. This challenge to modernist presuppositions is probably one of the reasons for the antagonistic reactions of the media and Jewish studies scholars to the practices of the Kabbalah Center. While Jewish Orthodox objections to the Kabbalah Center are directed mostly against its transgression and disregard of Jewish traditional practices,39 the media and academia accuse the Kabbalah Center of charlatanism, superficiality, and commercialism (i.e., of being postmodern), as well as of brainwashing and abuse of power40 —accusations that resemble the crusade against other contemporary spiritual movements.41 The postmodern features of the Kabbalah Center that stimulate such negative reactions are undoubtedly the reason for the center’s growing popularity and success. The Kabbalah Center is a significant contemporary cultural phenomenon; it deserves to be studied rather than sneered at.42 Gershom Scholem, the founder of modern Kabbalah scholarship, concluded his 1941 classic Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism by observing that the story of Jewish mysticism had not ended: The story is not ended, it has not yet become history, and the secret life it holds can break out tomorrow in you or in me. Under what aspects this invisible stream of Jewish mysticism will come again to the surface, we cannot tell.43 39. See R. Yosef Ovadiah’s decree against the Kabbalah Center in She elot utshuvot yeh.ave de ah (Hebrew; Jerusalem 1984), 4:47. See also Yeshivat Bnei N‘vi‘im Online, www.koshertorah.com. 40. See, for instance, the collection of articles about the Kabbalah Center found in the Ross Institute’s anti-cult Web site at www.rickross.com/groups/kab balah, as well as the interviews with Professor Yoseph Dan in Ma ariv, February 14, 1986 (in Hebrew), and Professor Moshe Idel, in Ba-mah.ane April 27, 1989 (in Hebrew). 41. See Irving Hexham and Karla Poewe, ‘‘The Great Anti-Cult Crusade’’ in New Religions as Global Cultures (Boulder, Colo., 1997), 1–25. 42. A few scholars have indeed turned their attention to the study of the Kabbalah Center. Ira Robinson discussed the Kabbalah Center in his paper ‘‘Kabbalah and Orthodoxy: Some Twentieth-Century Interpretations,’’ presented at the American Academy of Religion in 1987. Jody Myers presented some of her research on the Kabbalah Center in papers presented in the 1999 and 2002 Annual Conference of the Association for Jewish Studies. I am grateful to professors Robinson and Myers for sharing with me their unpublished papers. 43. Gershom G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York, 1974), 350.

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Notwithstanding the misleading essentialist metaphor of the stream, Scholem’s prophecy is fulfilled today in a fashion undoubtedly unimagined by him.44 Jewish mystical practices, doctrines, and themes, like the seventy-two names of God, have indeed resurfaced today, in a new, postmodernist guise, receiving unprecedented circulation and popularity through cultural agents such as Madonna and the Kabbalah Center.

44. See Yoni Garb, ‘‘The Understandable Renaissance of Jewish Mysticism in Our Time: Innovation versus Conservatism in the Thought of Yoseph Ahituv,’’ Jewish Culture in the Eye of the Storm, Yoseph Ahituv Festschrit, ed. A. Sagi and N. Ilan, (Hebrew; Ein Zurim, 2002), 172–99.

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