September 24, 2004/Tishri 9 5765, Vol. 57, No. 4
The message, not the mediumEditorialWhat are we to make of the news that Madonna - or Esther, as the celebrity kabbalist has renamed herself - is spending the High Holidays in Israel? Is she a ray of light for Judaism, or is she just a Material Girl riding high on the crest of a new wave? The answer, improbably, is "both."Madonna has always been a creature of culture. She is an inventor only insofar as she reinvents herself; her main talent is as an interpreter. What she does best is intuit the zeitgeist early on. Like a "cool hunter" or an animal before an earthquake hits, she knows what's coming before we do. In the 1980s it was New York street culture, in the '90s it was gay club culture. Now, post millennium, it's motherhood and mysticism, of the Jewish variety. Madonna doesn't make it happen. She just rides the wave slightly ahead of the rest of us. As for those who follow her: Arthur Green, an expert on mysticism at Brandeis University who's quoted in the article on Page 10, says that seekers of kabbalah should not be dismissed merely as celebrity-worshiping consumers. "This is all part of a much broader search," Green points out. "Lots of Westerners have been seeking some deeper truth." Western Jews are no exception, apparently. A recent survey of Jewish professionals conducted by the University of Southern California's Center for Religion and Civic Culture found that the issues that traditional Jewish organizations respond to - anti-Semitism and the Holocaust - "are not issues that drive young Jews today." What issues do drive young Jews today, then? According to the survey, it's "a search for broad connections, community and spirituality." This isn't new. In the '60s young American Jews, like other young Americans (and the Beatles, for that matter), looked to the East for answers, to Hinduism and Buddhism and, yes, to cult-like spiritual organizations loosely affiliated with Eastern religions. Then as now, the search for a spiritual, mystical form of worship led young Jews in many directions. But rarely did it lead them back to Judaism, since the mystical branch of Judaism known as kabbalah was so little known or discussed in mainstream Jewish circles. If Madonna's fondness for kabbalah brings that subject into the mainstream, then young Jews can explore it, and perhaps find in it the connection to mysticism and spirituality that they're looking for. Madonna isn't the message: she's just the messenger. At the very least, her kabbalism may retrain the attention of younger American Jews in the direction of things Jewish. What they find there - and what they do with it - will be up to them. |
