Spokeswoman of the faith: Madonna leaves the Kabbalah Center Kabbalah is over. It was over before Daphne Merkin's two-year-researched, impeccably well written report on the Kabbalah Center last week in the Times. It was over before the JCC in Manhattan started offering a "Day of Kabbalah" and independent teachers like me put up websites like learnkabbalah.com and kosmic-kabbalah.com. It was over, I think, the moment red strings became a sign of spiritual consumerism, rather than spiritual search.

Here's the point. Real spirituality messes you up. It transforms the ego, beats your inner swords into plowshares, and disrupts your sense of priorities. Fake spirituality, on the other hand, builds you up. It caters to what you want, rather than challenges what you think you want. It tells you that, yes, you can have everything you desire -- and all that desire is just fine.

As a spiritual salesman myself -- did I mention learnkabbalah.com? -- I've wrestled for years with the clear opposition between truth and advertising. I know how to fill a room; I've done it many times, and I have gotten good enough at it that I can produce a real spiritual experience in workshops, auditoriums, even bars. (Did it most recently last week in Boston, at a music dive called the Middle East.) I also know what sells: sex, drugs, and mystery. I know how to market myself, my work, and my message.

But I also know that the true spiritual power of my teaching is in inverse proportion to how easy it is to advertise. Because the unadvertisable truth is, if you really want to study Kabbalah, you have to be prepared to give something up. And not just anything, but your sense of self, your priorities, even the ways that you love.

Of course, none of that will happen at the first few classes, at which I'll explain the concept of the sefirot and teach you something about meditation, or reincarnation, or whatever. Most likely, that'll be all you'll come for anyway, and you'll leave refreshed, inspired, informed -- and fundamentally unchanged. Baruch hashem. But if you start doing the real work, whether with the tools of Kabbalah or meditation or energy or a host of other spiritual technologies, you'll see that this "you" you wanted to make happy, enlarge, and empower -- is a mirage.

So yesterday: A kabbalah bracelet plus hamsa The Kabbalah Center, it seems, has made an institutional choice to stay on the side of sales. They've got a great racket going, charging $25 for a $1 bracelet (free on the streets of Jerusalem), and $1000 for a $250 set of the Zohar. Why mess it up? They provide a product that people want. Hell, if 150,000 people visited learnkabbalah.com every month (did I mention the website yet?), I probably wouldn't tinker with the formula either.

I give the Center the benefit of the doubt. Associates tell me that Michael Berg is a sincere learner, and a true scholar. And there is no question that the Kabbalah Center has brought more people to Kabbalah than any other institution in history -- a feat they couldn't have accomplished with a more scholarly, or pious, approach. So, if you believe that Kabbalah will bring about redemption, all that salesmanship is in the service of the highest good. And I think it's possible that many at the Center do believe that.

But when sales is the goal, it's hard not to be craven. I cringed when I read Merkin's account of talking about her mother's death with the Bergs, because here was a real emotional-spiritual moment, played out in the context of the marketplace. If only Merkin would've visited (or mentioned) one of the many real neo-Kabbalists out there today, an Ohad Ezrachi or David Ingber, a Tirzah Firestone or a Jill Hammer, someone who both knows her stuff and knows the human heart. Someone who's not in it for the money.

Again, I'm not claiming that Michael (or even Yehuda) Berg has such low motives. I have no idea, and have good reason to think otherwise. But visiting the Kabbalah Center for spiritual advice is like visiting McDonald's for a salad. Sure, it's on the menu, but there are deeper, heartier, and more sincere options away from the strip malls. Reading Merkin's article, I felt sad that she didn't know any better.

The spiritual seekers I know have, at this point, all gotten over the novelty of Kabbalah. I don't teach "Kabbalah 101" anymore myself, although I do regularly use Kabbalistic language and imagery in my work. Kabbalah itself is not, of course, "over" -- it's thriving in both traditional and radical contexts, and incorporating new voices (of women, non-Westerners, heretics) at an astonishing rate. But the gee-whiz phase is over, yesterday's news like the Da Vinci Code or Rudy Giuliani.

And I think that's a good thing. By now, anyone who's sincerely interested in Kabbalah has a bevy of courses, books, and teachers to choose from -- all of which are way better than the Kabbalah Center's fast-food spirituality -- and can do the serious work of kabbalah ("receiving") the truth of infinite being (ein sof). Meanwhile, those who want something quick and off the shelf will find the teachers they deserve.

And the twain will never, I think, meet.

Sad stories: The Holocaust isn't cheery Apropos of Sarkozy’s insistence that every French child learn about a kid who died in the Holocaust, the New York Times takes a look at various methods of teaching ten-year-olds about genocide and concludes that there’s no humane way to do it. Well, right? 

11:52 am: NYT's "City Room" blog mentions a new "Jewish Landmarks Map" of New York City.

12:34 pm: Some guy named "Yehuda" attacks the map, wringing his hands in his opener -- "Is this what’s important to Jews?!" -- and insisting that "Judaism is not about food, guilt, and self-hatred."

That's an entire 42-minute lapse! Back in the day, it wouldn't take longer than 3 minutes for a furious fundie to decry Jewish perfidy over a map! Is it distraction over the High Holy Days, or are the defenders of the faith slipping? (For what it's worth, my rejoinder to Yehuda is at #6.)

But Yehuda's not the only one having conniptions over cartography. My favorite thus far -- and there will be dozens more -- is Herbert at #16: "While I am Jewish, I resent and object to 'The map was produced with city funds.' The city has no business using public funds to support ethic pride."

And there's more. Oh, so much more, like mental manna pouring forth from every Jew with an opinion on a map! If the Noah Feldman piece prompted a soul-searching debate about reunion photos and intermarriage, what might the codification of "Jewish Landmarks" do? Expect an Editorial and three Op-Eds in The Jewish Week by next Thursday.

Let us all give thanks this New Year to The New York Times, which has once again given us a platform to argue over what it means to be a Jew.

The New York Times, proud of its centuries-long tradition of reporting on "trends" years after their expiration dates, was contemplating what to cover in July 2007. The up-and-coming Lower East Side? Nah, better wait five years. The East Coast-West Coast hip hop rivalry? That could be good. How about that new personal computing trend of using so-called "floppy disks" to store kilobytes of information from the computer? Genius!

But in the end, the Paper of Record bought a ticket abroad to see what life was like for Jews in post-Jewish Eastern Europe. Thus it came up with a piece on Krakow's Festival of Jewish Culture, citing a phenomenon as "beginning" when it's been happening for almost two decades. The article could easily have been written in 1995. In fact, it sort of was.

Here's The New York Times, July 12, 2007:

KRAKOW, Poland — There is a curious thing happening in this old country, scarred by Nazi death camps, raked by pogroms and blanketed by numbing Soviet sterility: Jewish culture is beginning to flourish again.

"Jewish style" restaurants are serving up platters of pirogis, klezmer bands are playing plaintive Oriental melodies, derelict synagogues are gradually being restored. Every June, a festival of Jewish culture here draws thousands of people to sing Jewish songs and dance Jewish dances. The only thing missing, really, are Jews.

... with relatively few Jews, Jewish culture in Poland is being embraced and promoted by the young and the fashionable.

..."You cannot have genocide and then have people live as if everything is normal," said Konstanty Gebert, founder of a Polish-Jewish monthly, Midrasz. "It's like when you lose a limb. Poland is suffering from Jewish phantom pain."

Here's The International Herald Tribune, July 17, 1995:

... Throughout the festival week, the old Jewish quarter, Kazimierz, and other parts of the city were the scene of concerts, theatrical performances, exhibitions, films, street happenings and workshops rooted in Jewish heritage.

... The irony of staging a Jewish festival for a predominantly non-Jewish audience, in what essentially is a Jewish ghost town, has been apparent from the beginning.

... In addition, chic new Jewish style restaurants, cafes, bookstores, and galleries have been opened. There is a new Jewish Culture Center, and a local travel agency specializes in tours of sites related to Steven Spielberg's movie "Schindler's List," which was shot in Krakow.

...fascination with the Jewish world destroyed by the Holocaust has grown among many non-Jews in the region.

New Jewish museums, study programs and seminars abound, and Jewish books proliferate even in countries where few Jews remain.

... It's as if the vacuum created by the Holocaust physically demands to be filled — whether or not there are Jews to fill it.

Next up, The Times plans to send a reporter to Afghanistan to report on the growing use of "Mujahideen" to combat Soviet troops.

The following is a modified excerpt from Is it Good for the Jews: The Crisis of America's Israel Lobby, published by Random House, Inc. It has been adapted for Jewcy by author Stephen Suleyman Schwartz. He was seventeen, sensitive, with brooding eyes, and wept easily; little more than five feet tall, slender and dark, but handsome. He felt alone, angry, and confused, and outrage overwhelmed him. He was a Jew. And he had a gun. Herschel Feibel Grynszpan was born in Hannover, Germany, but held Polish nationality. By 1938, he had lived through three years of chaos. The Nazis were in power, and he was not allowed to become an apprentice nor otherwise gain employment. He wanted to go to Palestine but found no way to get there. Finally, he went to Belgium, then crossed the border to France without authorization. He was a refugee, an illegal immigrant, non-Christian, ...

Middle: How the world sees Cool MomPerhaps I jumped the gun when I said that everyone ought to have children. I hadn't seen this tidbit yet; I'd forgotten all about the unspeakable tragedy of babies having babies. No, not that one: I'm referring to those utterly clueless adult children who let their creepy homonculi order them around like so many video-game-addicted Napoleons.

Hasn't everyone been brought up to speed on the fact that today's children are more narcissistic than ever? Remember, it's only a few steps on the DSM-IV from "spoiled brat" to "violent sociopath." (N.B.: Maybe. I haven't read it.)

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Jane Austen Not Hot Enough For This Guy: Charles McGrathThe article about Jane Austen in yesterday’s Week In Review -- “Pretty Words, Jane; Would That You Were, Too” (Better title: “She’s An Okay Writer, But Damn! She Was, Like, Not That Hot”) -- really took the idiot cake. But granted, I’m one of those nutty idealists who think that sexism (and racism and whatnot) are Not Allowed Anymore.

The gist: nobody knows what Austen looked like, and there’s speculation that she -- wait for it -- might not have been attractive. “What if,” Charlees McGrath muses, “she became a writer in part because she didn’t have the looks to land a husband”!? One of the only images thought to be trustworthy -- a sketch by Austen’s sister -- showcases “a rather plain woman on the wrong side of 30 in a spinsterish cap, with what may even be a hint of a scowl.” Dude, can you believe anyone would ever read a book by a woman on the wrong side of 30? If a chick has the temerity to age, the least she can do is smile, right?

Are the physical assets of a female literary icon really and truly worthy of discussion in the paper of record, in an article by no less than the editor of the Book Review?  What’s next? Is Michiko going to break it to us that Wordsworth might have had a small dick? No, of course not: we don’t necessarily demand hotness of our male geniunses.

Halfway through the piece, Mr. McGrath acknowledges that “as long as we have her books, does it matter, really, what Austen looked like?” And then he promptly resumes fretting about her fugliness, calling her a “sourpuss”.

Best of all is McGrath’s implication that he’s only retroactively concerned for her, since “Austen lived in an age when a woman’s physical attractiveness was, next to her fortune, her greatest asset.”

Oh, those quaint, bygone times! Riiiiight: just flip on over to the front page story about the ridiculous hoops young female overachievers feel compelled to jump through these days, wherein 17-year-old Kat Jiang (who got a perfect 2400 on her SATs, BTW!) observes: “It’s out of style to admit it, but it is more important to be hot than smart.” How heartwrenchingly en pointe, young Ms. Jiang.

Thank goodness for the antidote of this sensible op-ed, at least. (And yes, I know you gotta be a quicker response-draw on This Here Internets.)

Leni: A Freakish Force Of NatureWaiting 2.5 hours in line at the RMV has its advantages. One of these is that it forces me to get through an entire New Yorker and learn more about Phil Collins or Leni Riefenstahl than I'd ever want to know. Riefenstahl is more alluring in a historical context, but the ambiguity of Collins' sexuality makes him intirguing in an Elton John I was married before so I'm most likely bi way.

So what's the big hoopla about Steven Bach's new 400-page expose of Leni? For one, its subject. Without a doubt, Riefenstahl is one of the most compelling figures of the 20th Century. Her influential dalliances with Hitler, fascism, film, art, and Aryan perfection played against a relatively humble upbringing and partly Jewish genetic pool (her mother was half Jewish) allow for a more serious psychological exploration of Riefenstahl and her motives.

Either way, Leni is presented as calculated, cold, and manipulative. But her ambition, misguided as it was and unsurpassed even by the aggressive male circles she found herself in, inspires. Above all, Bach envisions Leni as the ultimate survivor. Even in the several decades following WWII, Riefenstahl claimed that she knew nothing of Jewish atrocities during the Holocaust. She was never an apologist. And she had, as it so happened, a whole lot of time on her side.

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Green Refuse?Toilets have been on my mind a lot lately. Last week I temped a job at Harvard University and noticed that the toilet had two levers for the flush, one for the big jobs and the other for smaller, more discreet ones. Unfortunately, I flushed multiple times defeating its purpose because I had no idea what the symbols actually meant. I had seen this type of contraption in Israel (where water is scarce), but never before in the U.S. so I made note of it.

Then the other night, I heard Jay Leno poke fun at the use of compost toilets, the energy-saving, environmentally green alternative to toilet paper. And suddenly these toilets are turning up everywhere. There's even an entire site dedicated to it. Friday, as I waited 2.5 hours at the DMV to renew my driver's license, I then read an article about celebrities practicing green living solutions (Earth Day is next month already after all). About the time I read about Pierce Brosnan and his wife owning one of these composters, I thought back to Leno's apropos joke about a hose and a hair dryer being equally as effective as one of these $1600 machines. Moreover, can't celebrities afford to hire people to wipe their own asses?

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The Phallic Gesture Did Not Go Unnoticed Into The NightNew York Times Restaurant critic Frank Bruni may be on Chodorow's "Most Wanted" list (ironic, when you think about it) and subsequently banned from all 29 of his establishments for poor restaurant reviews, but that hasn't stopped Bruni from serving up more deliciously subversive takes on Chodorow venues, namely The Hotel Gansevoort's unappealing brunch offerings.

Bruni recently went undercover in NYC hotels to unearth all that's grimy and sublime in the realm of food.

Beware: These reviews aren't of the high-end luxury living magazine material. Oh, wait. Who are we kidding? This is The New York Times! There's nothing too counter-culture here.

Gridskipper had a suggestion to make Bruni's hotel jaunt a bit juicier. That is, than last week's Village Voice interview on steaks.

By far though, the most fun of the Bruni report, (other than this stunningly helpful graphic) is a new sport we call, "Bruni For the Straight Guy" wherein one seeks out the gayest double entendre from the tastemaker's repertoire.

Option A:

But the stranger in my room at the London NYC hotel on a recent night had my full attention, because he was doing something I wasn't at all accustomed to. He was crawling across the floor and under the coffee table.

Option B:

The food will arrive at the most inopportune moment, e.g., when you've just decided to try on the odd leopard-print robe hanging in the bathroom at the Muse Hotel in Midtown.

We're going to go with Option A which seems lifted straight out of a Craigslist Casual Encounters post, albeit a delicious well-written well-poached one.

I'd opt for Option B. It's got that bold element of reality wrapped up in fiction with a twist of the absurd. Tart, but well worth the intake.