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 kab-

balistic and Jewish signifiers in various of her cultural productions, in-
cluding 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 let-
ters 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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612 JQR 95.4 (2005)

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 Ameri-
can agent, Jinx. In the video clip, the fencing duel between the two Ma-
donnas takes place in a hall scattered with artifacts related to previous
James Bond films, which are destroyed during the duel, including a pic-
ture 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 translit-
eration 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 Israe-
lites from Egypt with his seventy-two-letter name.2 This tradition is prob-
ably 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 elev-
enth 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 Edi-
tion with Notes and Commentary (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1976), 1.442.
3. Ludwig Blau, Das Altjuedische Zauberwesen (Budapest, 1898), 137–46.

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 ALL YOU NEED IS LAV—HUSS 613

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 subse-
quent 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 thirteenth-
century 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 asso-
ciates them with the sefirot. According to the Zohar, the first seventy-
two-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 com-

4. Baruch M. Levin, Otsar ha-Geonim, Thesaurus of the Gaonic Responsa (He-

brew; 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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614 JQR 95.4 (2005)

mentary that the ‘‘Masters of Names’’ (Baale 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 through-
out the Mediterranean), uses the seventy-two names extensively in his
meditative techniques.9 Thus, for instance, in his Sefer ha-h.eshek, he de-
scribes a fascinating mystical technique that involves guided visualiza-
tion, 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 disci-
ples, 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 impor-
tant role in most contemporary Jewish cultural forms (including mystical

8. Hayyim Dov Scheval, Rabenu Bahye Torah Commentary (Hebrew; Jerusa-

lem, 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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 ALL YOU NEED IS LAV—HUSS 615

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 Kabba-
lah 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 Hista-
drut), and the chief disciple (and brother-in-law) of R. Yehuda Ashlag
(1886–1954), the most important and innovative Kabbalist of the twenti-
eth century. After the death of Brandwein, Berg declared himself his
successor and established the Kabbalah Center in order to spread kabbal-
istic 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 dissemi-
nation 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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616 JQR 95.4 (2005)

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 establish-
ing a perfect, communist-like community, in which every individual con-
tributes 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 con-
temporary 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 Brand-
wein:

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 Kabba-

lah (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, connect-
ing 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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 ALL YOU NEED IS LAV—HUSS 617

Aquarius. Since the 1990s some of these elements, as well as some kabbal-
istic 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 doc-
trines and practices of the Kabbalah Center.
The seventy-two names of God—which were not central in the Kabba-
lah of R. Yehudah Ashlag—have played an increasingly important role in
the activities of Kabbalah Center. Charts of the seventy-two names deco-
rate 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 puri-
fies 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 An-
other 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 Kab-
balah 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 Ma-
donna has aptly been called by Georges-Claude Guilbert a ‘‘Postmodern
Myth.’’17 Accordingly, ‘‘Die Another Day’’ should be read as a postmod-
ern metatext, and its kabbalistic themes as part of a postmodern brico-
lage.
Thus, the concluding scene of ‘‘Die Another Day,’’ which depicts an
empty electric chair on which the Hebrew letters LAV are engraved, si-
multaneously 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. Ma-
donna’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 child-
hood—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 ‘‘Postmodern-
ism 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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 ALL YOU NEED IS LAV—HUSS 619

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 hear-
ing of Ahasuerus’s decree against the Jews, Esther sent her eunuch, Ha-
tach, 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 dissemi-
nator 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 Madon-
na’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 reli-
gion and entertainment. The dissolving of the traditional, modernist op-
positions 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 Amu-
kot, (Hebrew; Furth 1691), 67a.
21. On the effacement of these boundaries as a characteristic of postmodern-
ism, 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 re-
ferred to as New Religious Movements, New Age, or even cults, the Kab-
balah Center expresses a form of postmodern spirituality.22 I prefer the
phrase ‘‘postmodern spirituality’’ to ‘‘postmodern religion,’’ not only be-
cause of the Kabbalah Center’s insistence that Kabbalah is not a religion
but also because postmodern spirituality indeed defies the modernist con-
ception of religion and dissolves the distinctions that construct this con-
ception.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. Simi-
lar to Madonna’s own blurring of boundaries between religion and enter-
tainment, 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 il-
lustration 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 inte-
grated with other cultural and religious signifiers should be understood
as a typical postmodern pastiche, which reshuffles and reconstructs pre-
vious cultural elements. As Jameson observed, the supreme formal fea-
ture 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 develop-

22. ‘‘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 post-
modern, self-parodying and self-deconstructing pastiche of Bhagwan Shree Raj-
neesh, 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 ‘‘reli-
gion.’’
24. Yehuda Berg, The 72 Names of God, 82.
25. Jameson, Postmodernism, 9.

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 ALL YOU NEED IS LAV—HUSS 621

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 fundamen-
tal depth models.26 The rejection of the esoteric/exoteric dichotomy is
typical of New Age culture, which adopted many themes from late nine-
teenth- and early twentieth-century esoteric movements—except their es-
otericism!
Jameson observed that what replaces the various depth models is a
‘‘conception of practices, discourses and textual play.’’27 Indeed, the Kab-
balah 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 dis-
pensing 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-Fran-
cois 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 move-
ments, 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-François 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 Sacrali-
zation of Modernity (Oxford, 1996), 169.

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622 JQR 95.4 (2005)

Logic of Late Capitalism,’’32 that postmodern culture is an expression of

late global ( yet American) multinational capitalism. According to Jame-
son, ‘‘aesthetic production today has become integrated into commodity
production generally.’’33 Similarly, today, spiritual production is inte-
grated 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 sancti-
fication 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 con-
trast 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 communi-
cation 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 distinc-
tions that undergird a modern conception of religion. The major modern-
ist 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, Bud-
dhist, etc.) are38 again challenged by the Kabbalah Center’s insistence

32. Pages 1–54 of Postmodernism; the essay was first published in New Left Re-
view 146 (1984).
33. Jameson, Postmodernism, 4
34. Urban, ‘‘The Cult of Ecstasy,’’ 277. On the fit between contemporary ver-
sions 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; Rich-
ard 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, Reli-
gions, Religious,’’ Critical Terms for Religious Studies, ed. M. C. Taylor (Chicago,
1998), 271.
38. Smith, ‘‘Religion, Religions, Religious,’’ 278–80.

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 ALL YOU NEED IS LAV—HUSS 623

that Kabbalah is open to all denominations and by its most famous disci-
ple: a Catholic (but not virgin) Madonna.
This challenge to modernist presuppositions is probably one of the rea-
sons for the antagonistic reactions of the media and Jewish studies schol-
ars to the practices of the Kabbalah Center. While Jewish Orthodox
objections to the Kabbalah Center are directed mostly against its trans-
gression 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 contempo-
rary 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 Sheelot u-
tshuvot yeh.ave deah (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 Maariv, 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 Kab-
balah Center. Ira Robinson discussed the Kabbalah Center in his paper ‘‘Kabba-
lah and Orthodoxy: Some Twentieth-Century Interpretations,’’ presented at the
American Academy of Religion in 1987. Jody Myers presented some of her re-
search 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 unimag-
ined by him.44 Jewish mystical practices, doctrines, and themes, like the
seventy-two names of God, have indeed resurfaced today, in a new, post-
modernist 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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