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February 25, 2005/Adar I 16 5765, Volume 57, No. 26
Seeing red over kabbalah craze
JORDANA ROTHSTEIN
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
NEW YORK - The owner of an online Judaica store is waging a campaign to reclaim one of the symbols of Jewish mysticism. Shlomo Perelman, the owner of Judaism.com, launched his campaign after such stars as Britney Spears, Madonna and Demi Moore began wearing a red string, a symbol of kabbalah. These celebrity icons talk about the string's power to ward off the evil eye or to fulfill personal wishes.
When Perelman sees a Hollywood icon wearing a red string on his or her wrist, he gets nervous. As he explains on his Web site, the string is an important part of Jewish tradition. The wearing of the red string, the site says, dates back hundreds of years and it cannot provide any of the magical promises these stars and other New Agers believe it offers.
According to Judaism.com, the red string is not a good luck charm. Instead it is meant to be "a reminder of (our matriarch) Rachel, so that we try and incorporate her traits into our lives. Only in doing so will our lives become better."
Some of Rachel's finer traits, according to Perelman's Web site, are her happiness for others' good fortune, her humility and her complete selflessness. According to midrashic tradition, Rachel willingly helped her sister Leah marry the man who was intended to be her own husband.
Eitan Fishbane, an assistant professor of Jewish religious thought at Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles, agrees that the red string's powers have been exaggerated. But he doesn't quite agree with Perelman on the red string's actual significance. The practice of wearing it is "associated with people in medieval times who believed in the healing power of magical objects. The tradition of the red string is associated more with folklore than with spirituality."
Whatever the traditional reason for wearing the red string, both Perelman and Fishbane can agree that its use in modern times is misunderstood.
Fishbane suggests that he would rather teach others about more spiritually fulfilling aspects of the kabbalah. For Perelman, the red string fad is just one example of a growing Jewish problem: "We are diluting our connection to Judaism by diverting it" to secular culture.
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