c. 2007 Religion News Service
(UNDATED) The international Kabbalah Centre has drawn high-profile praise and ire. Pop stars like Madonna have darkened the center’s doors in Los Angeles, but some traditional Jews say the center peddles New Age snake oil.
“Kabbalah and the Spiritual Quest,” by Jody Myers, a professor of religion at California State University, Northridge, contends that adherents’ practices closely mimic those of Orthodox Jews, and that the center’s teachings are generally in line with traditional kabbalistic tenets.
Popularized during the late Middle Ages, Kabbalah is doctrine of Jewish mysticism that promises insights into God’s mind through contemplating the hidden meanings of the Hebrew words and letters of the Torah. Myers talked to RNS recently about her new book. This interview has been edited for length.
Q: What motivated you to write the book?
A: People tell me, “This group is scary and they’re awful.” But they didn’t look that awful. They looked strange, but they didn’t look that awful. I thought, why not go look at it?
Q: Who warned you to stay away, and why?
A: My rabbi warned me. He said that he had counseled members of his synagogue who had been given weird teachings by (the center) or (that) it had disrupted their family life. I had a couple of women friends who told me it hastened the end of their marriage when their husbands got involved in the Kabbalah Centre. And other Jewish studies academics had said, “Oh, that’s just pop kabbalah, just nonsense. Not worth your time.”
Q: What was the most surprising thing you discovered about the Kabbalah Centre?
A: There were a lot of surprising things. It’s a complex group. There is a more devoted inner circle that is very similar to Orthodox Judaism. I also found surprising how deeply connected the ideas are to normative, traditional kabbalah. I thought more of it would be invented, brand new. But really, in fact, it is part of authentic kabbalistic tradition.
Q: The Kabbalah Centre has received a lot of bad press over the years. Is some of that deserved?
A: Yes. I think that some of it deserved. The Kabbalah Centre may not be new in the sense that they have brand new ideas, but new in the sense that they’re filled with converts _ people who have discovered this great thing. And converts tend to be zealous. They tend not to respect other peoples’ boundaries. They sometimes talk in ways that are offensive. (They say) “I have the word from God.” So they have been quite aggressive.
And because it’s a new religious movement with converts, they may not know that much. You might be talking to someone who is really not very well educated. They’re a new convert, they don’t really know. They won’t give a sophisticated, deep response.
Q: Why has the Kabbalah Centre been so successful?
A: It’s a different point of view than a lot of the conventional religions. It’s a different view of God. It’s a different view of evil.They have a point of view that some people really like. They do know how to pull people in through the door. So in that sense, they may have good marketing.
Another reason is the community and the point of view are remarkably tolerant, pluralistic and accepting of the reality that some people want to have very intensive minute-by-minute religious observance, and some people want to have it occasionally. They’ve (also) managed to get the word out, sometimes totally by accident, by having Madonna, on her own initiative, talk about this group. So it’s free publicity.
Q: Do you expect rabbis and the Jewish establishment to take you to task for treating the Kabbalah Centre as evenhandedly as you have?
A: When I’ve had a chance to speak to rabbis, and I’ve done it at my own synagogue, where my own rabbis had warned me against (the center), and I explained what’s it’s about, they’re surprised. They realize they really hadn’t known enough about the group. But still, there are different versions of what God is like and what God expects of people. So on some level, I don’t expect (the two sides) to suddenly love each other. They’re different points of view.
Q: How the does the center speak to or reflect overall developments in religion over the past 25 years?
A: It’s an excellent example of a larger phenomenon that we see in the West, which is that people are combining elements from different traditions, and their religious practices are more hybridized _ a little bit from here, a little bit from there.
In some Catholic churches, for example, they’re doing meditation now. They may be able to trace that back to medieval Catholicism, but really, it’s coming up now because of the influence of Buddhist and Hindu meditation. What the Kabbalah Centre does is to accentuate elements that are from medieval kabbalah. In terms of the way it reflects the larger society, it’s this hybridized type of religious practice, globalized in the sense that it’s not just the local community, but it has connections to different parts of the continent and the world.
A photo of Jody Myers is available via https://religionnews.com
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