SFK Spirituality for Kids What is the agenda?
Posted by:
matilda
()
Date: March 26, 2009 07:38AM
It appears to be a charity [www.justgiving.com] connected to Kabbalah.
It is appearing in some UK schools and causing concern but advertises iteself well [www.thebiggive.org.uk]
Spirituality without religion?
It is appearing in some UK schools and causing concern but advertises iteself well [www.thebiggive.org.uk]
Spirituality without religion?
Re: SFK Spirituality for Kids What is the agenda?
Posted by:
rob
()
Date: March 26, 2009 10:22PM
The founder of SFK is Karen Berg, co-founder of the kabbalah center.
There is an article here on the rick ross site : "Spirituality For Kids : a kabbalah project supported by demi moore."
Both the websites of SFK and kabbalah.com use a very vague, general terminlogy.
There is an intervieuw with Karen Berg (bellaonline.com) where she uses a lot of newage language, but also very general.
I wonder about this fundraising group. No clear language either.
There is an article here on the rick ross site : "Spirituality For Kids : a kabbalah project supported by demi moore."
Both the websites of SFK and kabbalah.com use a very vague, general terminlogy.
There is an intervieuw with Karen Berg (bellaonline.com) where she uses a lot of newage language, but also very general.
I wonder about this fundraising group. No clear language either.
Re: SFK Spirituality for Kids What is the agenda?
Posted by:
matilda
()
Date: March 29, 2009 03:00AM
[www.jesus-is-savior.com]
Radar Magazine/June 20, 2005 | By Mim Udovitch
The Kabbalah Centre and its network of businesses, both nonprofit and commercial, are closely controlled by an intimate coterie that includes founders Philip and Karen Berg, their sons Yehuda and Michael, and a handful of consiglieri of unimpeachable loyalty. The leading light of the latter group, the most effective in the care and feeding of the Centre’s growing roster of celebrity members—and its biggest donors—is Madonna’s personal Kabbalah teacher, Eitan Yardeni. When she appeared on Dateline NBC in 2003, Yardeni was by her side spouting the Bergs’ credo that Kabbalah helps everyone to the limit of his or her potential to embrace its wisdom. Yardeni told Matt Lauer, with a straight face, that Madonna just happened to be among the one percent who really “gets it.”
Yardeni’s wife Sarah runs Madonna’s pet charitable project, Spirituality for Kids, a Kabbalah Centre subsidiary. Eitan, who has been with the Centre since he was a teenager (“He’s a rabbi now?” one member from the old days says. “Oh my God, he was a lackey for the Bergs. He was a shlepper.”), doesn’t confine his pastoral oversight to the actresses, agents, and realtors-to-the-stars to whom he ministers in the privacy of their homes. One former student from the Los Angeles Centre remembers Yardeni’s telling her to “let us know anyone who spends more than $100. Make a list and give it to the girl who coordinates the volunteers, so we can focus on them.”
The Centre denies giving celebrities preferential treatment. But someone observing Centre gatherings in L.A. and elsewhere around the world might find that hard to believe. Another student, who worked as a volunteer at the L.A. Centre, remembers being charged with helping Marla Maples find her place in the prayer book during services. On shabbat, after the traditional sabbath meal, a circle of men, all of them dressed in white, forms around a table, their arms linked. A group of women then forms a circle around the men, and they all sing and sway in tribute to the people seated at the table. The people at table, when they’re all in town at the same time, include Madonna, Guy Ritchie, Ashton Kutcher, and Demi Moore—and their hosts, Philip and Karen Berg. Sometimes Madonna, in a transport of spiritual ecstasy, will close her eyes and bang her fists on the table in time with the music.
For all the talk of Madonna, it was Sandra Bernhard who became the first star in the Bergs’ celebrity collection. Bernhard, who first wandered into the Los Angeles Kabbalah Centre around 10 years ago, was what you might call the Patient Zero of celebrity Kabbalah patronage. At the time, the Kabbalah Centre was already a steadily growing business, but it wasn’t yet an internationally known brand. In fact, it didn’t even have a meeting place of its own in Manhattan; when in New York, the Bergs’ followers still had to haul themselves out to Queens. And so might things have remained forever. Instead, enchanted by the power of Kabbalah, within a couple of years Bernhard had brought in her friends Roseanne Barr and Madonna, who were soon followed into the fold by Barbra Streisand, Elizabeth Taylor, Jeff Goldblum, Britney Spears, Marla Maples, Sarah Ferguson, Mick Jagger, Jerry Hall, Monica Lewinsky, Paris Hilton, and the former Posh Spice. Some, like Maples and Spears, became devoted students of the Centre’s watered-down, one-size-fits-all version of the mystical Jewish philosophy. Others, like Jagger and his ex-wife, quickly extracted themselves from its tentacles.
Of course, one star sets the gold standard in her ability to garner press and to influence—or contribute—millions. Within the Kabbalah Centre, Madonna is still what she was to the world at large in the decade prior to her first encounter with Kabbalah in 1997: a woman whose every move is followed as if the fate of humanity depended on it. In addition their relationship with the Yardenis, the singer and her husband are also close friends with Michael Berg and his wife Monica—Michael hung out and gave advice on the set of Guy Ritchie’s most recent movie, Revolver, which has had trouble finding a distributor. (Rumor has it that the screenplay was originally too Kabbalistic and had to be rewritten. A copy obtained by Radar does feature Centre-istic profundities—“Just ’cause you can’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t there,” muses one character—strewn throughout, but it is not significantly less coherent than Ritchie’s previous work.)
There were plans to use Madonna’s Reinvention tour to launch Kabbalah Water as a supermarket product, like Aquafina and Dasani. “Get that feeling / Of Kabbalah healing,” went one proposed jingle.
Those close to Mrs. Ritchie are at a loss to explain or even describe the extent of her willing dependence on the Bergs. The family was not at her 2000 wedding, but starting in 2001 people who knew her began to see a change. “She basically stopped having her normal friendships with people who didn’t study,” according to one. Sources say the Ritchies have been encouraged to give their son Rocco a little brother or sister for the sake of their marriage. At the afterparty following the first show of Madonna’s Reinvention tour, one witness recalls, “Christina Aguilera and all these other people were walking around and, you know, partying, and there’s Madonna, sitting with these elderly Jews worshiping her while she’s worshiping them.” In the 2003 interview with Lauer, the singer attributed the failure of her and Ritchie’s film Swept Away to there having been “a lot of evil eye” on her family—Kabbalahspeak for envy. She also told Lauer that any reservations her previously agnostic husband had had about Kabbalah had been overcome by its scientific aspects. (The website for the Oroz Research Centre (oroz.org), registered to Kabbalah Centre International, boasts that its “23rd century” products do everything from enabling “better drug penetration” to eliminating radioactive waste, and has to be seen to be believed.)
At services, Madonna is protected from the potential envy of other Kabbalists by a screen behind which she sits in a special chair next to Karen Berg. All these blessings come at a price. As an internal Centre marketing memo states, “the source of money is God.” And it’s clear that for the Bergs God frequently takes a detour through Madonna. So far, according to an insider, she has in the last four years given the Centre approximately $18 million.
Until 2001 the singer’s private charitable foundation, Ray of Light, made numerous small donations to a range of charities, from the Helen Keller Services for the Blind to St. Michael Catholic Church in Pontiac, Michigan. Then something changed. Perhaps it was the trauma of 9/11: In 2001, for the first time Ray of Light made a single donation larger than $26,000. One, for $600,000, was to the New York Police and Fire Widows & Children’s Benefit Fund. Another, for $500,000, was to Kabbalah Centre International. In 2002, Ray of Light gave $2,101,657 to 14 worthy institutions—$1,994,157 of it to the Kabbalah Centre. Similarly, in 2003, of the $1,269,529 the foundation dispersed to 13 charities, $1,171,230 went to the Kabbalah Centre.
Another way Madonna has helped the Centre increase its legitimacy and appeal is through the Spirituality for Kids Foundation, her pet project. SFK emphasizes its outreach program: free self-improvement classes for what the tax documents refer to as the “millions of children…being raised in high-crime, poverty-stricken communities.” In fact, SFK also pays for the Centre’s private elementary school and a variety of other services. (Like Philip Berg—who was born Shraga Feivel Gruberger—Spirituality for Kids began life with a more ethnic name: the Kabbalah Children’s Academy.) All the proceeds of Madonna’s children’s books, with their Kabbalah-centric narratives—go to SFK as well. (Sales and merchandising of English Roses, the first of them, sent an estimated $5 million into Centre coffers. The fifth in the series, the appropriately named Lotsa de Casha, was published this month.)
The Centre, through its crisis management PR firm, Sitrick and Company, first told Radar that since SFK’s inception approximately 10,000 children had participated in one of the SFK outreach programs. After Radar pointed out that SFK’s 2003 tax filings had reported only about 150 participants in Los Angeles in that year, terms and figures got fuzzier. Carnivals and other special events attracted as many as 500 children at a time, the Centre said; in another e-mail the Centre said that it had only started keeping records recently. Whatever the case, outreach kids are provided with free transportation and a nutritious meal as well as lessons in life skills. In 2003 (the last year for which figures are available), SFK spent $813,092 on program services: $440,332 of it on salaries and wages, and a scandalously low $1,985 on its scholarship fund.
“If the damn FDA would just let me put on the label that the water cures cancer, like it does, I wouldn’t need marketing,” Philip Berg complained.
According to reports, the millions Madonna has given the Centre include a $5 million donation to build the London Centre and a house for Eitan Yardeni. (Through her publicist, Liz Rosenberg, Madonna has denied giving money to Kabbalah Centre International for any specific purpose.) At each stop of the Reinvention tour, Kabbalah merchandise was sold alongside concert T-shirts. And the business ties may go even deeper. There were plans to use the tour as a launching pad for the marketing of Kabbalah Water, repackaged for the mass-market consumer, alongside Aquafina and Dasani (“Kabbalah: Fused Water for Body and Soul”) on supermarket shelves. One proposed marketing mock-up, the “Madonna” model, even includes a jingle (“Get that feeling/Of Kabbalah healing…”). The singer, along with Rocawear’s Alex Bize, were to be equity partners in this project, which dead-ended before the tour, much to Philip Berg’s frustration. “If the damn FDA would just let me put that the water cures cancer on the label, I wouldn’t need marketing,” he told one source. (Berg told another student Radar interviewed that Kabbalah Water had cured AIDS. A third was present at a shabbat lecture in New York during which a scientist from the Miami Centre told the congregation that drinking it had cured the case of SARS she had contracted during her recent travels in Asia.)
Once one of the most outspoken and independent-minded women in the world, Madonna now goes on television mouthing the Bergs’ simplistic creed, part of which is that you have to be outspoken and independent-minded to grasp it. According to one student, the Bergs have told their most precious acolyte that she is the reincarnation of the biblical Queen Esther, who saved the Jews from the evil vizier Haman. And if the Bergs can work this kind of transformation, how surprising is it that they can turn water into gold?
SOURCE
SFK is paty of the Berg's network..
Radar Magazine/June 20, 2005 | By Mim Udovitch
The Kabbalah Centre and its network of businesses, both nonprofit and commercial, are closely controlled by an intimate coterie that includes founders Philip and Karen Berg, their sons Yehuda and Michael, and a handful of consiglieri of unimpeachable loyalty. The leading light of the latter group, the most effective in the care and feeding of the Centre’s growing roster of celebrity members—and its biggest donors—is Madonna’s personal Kabbalah teacher, Eitan Yardeni. When she appeared on Dateline NBC in 2003, Yardeni was by her side spouting the Bergs’ credo that Kabbalah helps everyone to the limit of his or her potential to embrace its wisdom. Yardeni told Matt Lauer, with a straight face, that Madonna just happened to be among the one percent who really “gets it.”
Yardeni’s wife Sarah runs Madonna’s pet charitable project, Spirituality for Kids, a Kabbalah Centre subsidiary. Eitan, who has been with the Centre since he was a teenager (“He’s a rabbi now?” one member from the old days says. “Oh my God, he was a lackey for the Bergs. He was a shlepper.”), doesn’t confine his pastoral oversight to the actresses, agents, and realtors-to-the-stars to whom he ministers in the privacy of their homes. One former student from the Los Angeles Centre remembers Yardeni’s telling her to “let us know anyone who spends more than $100. Make a list and give it to the girl who coordinates the volunteers, so we can focus on them.”
The Centre denies giving celebrities preferential treatment. But someone observing Centre gatherings in L.A. and elsewhere around the world might find that hard to believe. Another student, who worked as a volunteer at the L.A. Centre, remembers being charged with helping Marla Maples find her place in the prayer book during services. On shabbat, after the traditional sabbath meal, a circle of men, all of them dressed in white, forms around a table, their arms linked. A group of women then forms a circle around the men, and they all sing and sway in tribute to the people seated at the table. The people at table, when they’re all in town at the same time, include Madonna, Guy Ritchie, Ashton Kutcher, and Demi Moore—and their hosts, Philip and Karen Berg. Sometimes Madonna, in a transport of spiritual ecstasy, will close her eyes and bang her fists on the table in time with the music.
For all the talk of Madonna, it was Sandra Bernhard who became the first star in the Bergs’ celebrity collection. Bernhard, who first wandered into the Los Angeles Kabbalah Centre around 10 years ago, was what you might call the Patient Zero of celebrity Kabbalah patronage. At the time, the Kabbalah Centre was already a steadily growing business, but it wasn’t yet an internationally known brand. In fact, it didn’t even have a meeting place of its own in Manhattan; when in New York, the Bergs’ followers still had to haul themselves out to Queens. And so might things have remained forever. Instead, enchanted by the power of Kabbalah, within a couple of years Bernhard had brought in her friends Roseanne Barr and Madonna, who were soon followed into the fold by Barbra Streisand, Elizabeth Taylor, Jeff Goldblum, Britney Spears, Marla Maples, Sarah Ferguson, Mick Jagger, Jerry Hall, Monica Lewinsky, Paris Hilton, and the former Posh Spice. Some, like Maples and Spears, became devoted students of the Centre’s watered-down, one-size-fits-all version of the mystical Jewish philosophy. Others, like Jagger and his ex-wife, quickly extracted themselves from its tentacles.
Of course, one star sets the gold standard in her ability to garner press and to influence—or contribute—millions. Within the Kabbalah Centre, Madonna is still what she was to the world at large in the decade prior to her first encounter with Kabbalah in 1997: a woman whose every move is followed as if the fate of humanity depended on it. In addition their relationship with the Yardenis, the singer and her husband are also close friends with Michael Berg and his wife Monica—Michael hung out and gave advice on the set of Guy Ritchie’s most recent movie, Revolver, which has had trouble finding a distributor. (Rumor has it that the screenplay was originally too Kabbalistic and had to be rewritten. A copy obtained by Radar does feature Centre-istic profundities—“Just ’cause you can’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t there,” muses one character—strewn throughout, but it is not significantly less coherent than Ritchie’s previous work.)
There were plans to use Madonna’s Reinvention tour to launch Kabbalah Water as a supermarket product, like Aquafina and Dasani. “Get that feeling / Of Kabbalah healing,” went one proposed jingle.
Those close to Mrs. Ritchie are at a loss to explain or even describe the extent of her willing dependence on the Bergs. The family was not at her 2000 wedding, but starting in 2001 people who knew her began to see a change. “She basically stopped having her normal friendships with people who didn’t study,” according to one. Sources say the Ritchies have been encouraged to give their son Rocco a little brother or sister for the sake of their marriage. At the afterparty following the first show of Madonna’s Reinvention tour, one witness recalls, “Christina Aguilera and all these other people were walking around and, you know, partying, and there’s Madonna, sitting with these elderly Jews worshiping her while she’s worshiping them.” In the 2003 interview with Lauer, the singer attributed the failure of her and Ritchie’s film Swept Away to there having been “a lot of evil eye” on her family—Kabbalahspeak for envy. She also told Lauer that any reservations her previously agnostic husband had had about Kabbalah had been overcome by its scientific aspects. (The website for the Oroz Research Centre (oroz.org), registered to Kabbalah Centre International, boasts that its “23rd century” products do everything from enabling “better drug penetration” to eliminating radioactive waste, and has to be seen to be believed.)
At services, Madonna is protected from the potential envy of other Kabbalists by a screen behind which she sits in a special chair next to Karen Berg. All these blessings come at a price. As an internal Centre marketing memo states, “the source of money is God.” And it’s clear that for the Bergs God frequently takes a detour through Madonna. So far, according to an insider, she has in the last four years given the Centre approximately $18 million.
Until 2001 the singer’s private charitable foundation, Ray of Light, made numerous small donations to a range of charities, from the Helen Keller Services for the Blind to St. Michael Catholic Church in Pontiac, Michigan. Then something changed. Perhaps it was the trauma of 9/11: In 2001, for the first time Ray of Light made a single donation larger than $26,000. One, for $600,000, was to the New York Police and Fire Widows & Children’s Benefit Fund. Another, for $500,000, was to Kabbalah Centre International. In 2002, Ray of Light gave $2,101,657 to 14 worthy institutions—$1,994,157 of it to the Kabbalah Centre. Similarly, in 2003, of the $1,269,529 the foundation dispersed to 13 charities, $1,171,230 went to the Kabbalah Centre.
Another way Madonna has helped the Centre increase its legitimacy and appeal is through the Spirituality for Kids Foundation, her pet project. SFK emphasizes its outreach program: free self-improvement classes for what the tax documents refer to as the “millions of children…being raised in high-crime, poverty-stricken communities.” In fact, SFK also pays for the Centre’s private elementary school and a variety of other services. (Like Philip Berg—who was born Shraga Feivel Gruberger—Spirituality for Kids began life with a more ethnic name: the Kabbalah Children’s Academy.) All the proceeds of Madonna’s children’s books, with their Kabbalah-centric narratives—go to SFK as well. (Sales and merchandising of English Roses, the first of them, sent an estimated $5 million into Centre coffers. The fifth in the series, the appropriately named Lotsa de Casha, was published this month.)
The Centre, through its crisis management PR firm, Sitrick and Company, first told Radar that since SFK’s inception approximately 10,000 children had participated in one of the SFK outreach programs. After Radar pointed out that SFK’s 2003 tax filings had reported only about 150 participants in Los Angeles in that year, terms and figures got fuzzier. Carnivals and other special events attracted as many as 500 children at a time, the Centre said; in another e-mail the Centre said that it had only started keeping records recently. Whatever the case, outreach kids are provided with free transportation and a nutritious meal as well as lessons in life skills. In 2003 (the last year for which figures are available), SFK spent $813,092 on program services: $440,332 of it on salaries and wages, and a scandalously low $1,985 on its scholarship fund.
“If the damn FDA would just let me put on the label that the water cures cancer, like it does, I wouldn’t need marketing,” Philip Berg complained.
According to reports, the millions Madonna has given the Centre include a $5 million donation to build the London Centre and a house for Eitan Yardeni. (Through her publicist, Liz Rosenberg, Madonna has denied giving money to Kabbalah Centre International for any specific purpose.) At each stop of the Reinvention tour, Kabbalah merchandise was sold alongside concert T-shirts. And the business ties may go even deeper. There were plans to use the tour as a launching pad for the marketing of Kabbalah Water, repackaged for the mass-market consumer, alongside Aquafina and Dasani (“Kabbalah: Fused Water for Body and Soul”) on supermarket shelves. One proposed marketing mock-up, the “Madonna” model, even includes a jingle (“Get that feeling/Of Kabbalah healing…”). The singer, along with Rocawear’s Alex Bize, were to be equity partners in this project, which dead-ended before the tour, much to Philip Berg’s frustration. “If the damn FDA would just let me put that the water cures cancer on the label, I wouldn’t need marketing,” he told one source. (Berg told another student Radar interviewed that Kabbalah Water had cured AIDS. A third was present at a shabbat lecture in New York during which a scientist from the Miami Centre told the congregation that drinking it had cured the case of SARS she had contracted during her recent travels in Asia.)
Once one of the most outspoken and independent-minded women in the world, Madonna now goes on television mouthing the Bergs’ simplistic creed, part of which is that you have to be outspoken and independent-minded to grasp it. According to one student, the Bergs have told their most precious acolyte that she is the reincarnation of the biblical Queen Esther, who saved the Jews from the evil vizier Haman. And if the Bergs can work this kind of transformation, how surprising is it that they can turn water into gold?
SOURCE
SFK is paty of the Berg's network..
Re: SFK Spirituality for Kids What is the agenda?
Posted by:
matilda
()
Date: April 01, 2009 06:01AM
Is Madonna's new book a "cult's" hook?
Madonna's new book The English Roses may be little more than the latest installment of her never-ending story regarding the recruitment of members for the so-called "Kabbalah Centre" led by Philip Berg.
Only this time the star seems to have her sights set on kids.
On a recent Oprah show the 20th Century pop icon talked about her pet project the "Spirituality for Kids Foundation" (SFKF), which appears to be another proselytizing ploy hatched by the Kabbalah Centre.
Madonna is prominently quoted on the main page of the SFKF website and her book is its publicity hook.
The singer has said, "I only wish I had been exposed to understanding the laws of the universe when I was kid. I could have saved myself a lot of pain and suffering."
This is an allusion to the beliefs of Berg and his followers, now being marketed for children.
Berg's "laws of the universe" are spoon-fed to kids within a curriculum in three stages. Each successive level a bit more demanding and complex than the previous one.
Level One is the "Rules of the Game of Life," Level Two "The Spiritual Detective: Finding the Clues Within," and finally Level Three "The Art of Problem Solving."
It is at Level Two that things start getting a bit bizarre.
At this stage children are taught "nothing in the world is random and that everything is the result of some prior action, thought, feeling or belief…life is fair."
But is it "fair" that some children are born with disabilities, or victimized through incest? Are rape victims somehow chosen as "the result of some prior action"? What about deaths due to random tragedies such as a plane or car crash?
And are the victims of 9-11and their families evidence of how "life is fair"?
Does Madonna actually believe that all "pain and suffering" can be avoided by knowing the supposed "laws of the universe"?
The Kabbalah Centre's Level Two: lesson four claims, "They are responsible for the people and situations that are in their lives…What they put out into the world comes back to them."
How would the Holocaust fit within this explanation? Was the murder of millions by the Nazis somehow the result of what their victims "put out into the world"?
No. And this doesn't sound like the premise for a good story to tell children either.
However, this philosophy does apparently represent the core of Philip Berg's teachings, which is now at the center of Madonna's universe.
The rest of Berg's lessons largely deal with the power of the light, discuss colors and assorted mumbo jumbo that sounds like hockus pockus in a world based upon magic.
Maybe Madonna should have written a book about little witches working spells instead of The English Roses? This theme might have been better received than the critically panned and reportedly boring book she has just launched.
Oops, another Londoner JK Rowling with her Harry Potter series has already done that. Besides Madonna wants us to take her fantasy seriously.
Despite the pretty title and tears shed on Oprah there is something a little sinister about Madonna's latest effort as a writer. It seems that Philip Berg is pulling the strings for Madonna's recent public performances and the aging diva has become little more than his "puppet," according to London's Daily Express.
The singer's book appears to be one more orchestrated and carefully planned promotional effort staged by the Kabbalah Centre that revolves around Philip Berg's lesson plan for the world.
This is clear by visiting the SFKF website, which promotes Madonna's new book alongside Mrs. Berg's audio tape titled "Spiritual Parenthood" and announcements about related events staged at the Kabbalah Centres.
SFKF targets "at risk" children and their parents, seemingly preying upon those most vulnerable within society.
And of course parents are encouraged to join in and participate.
As Madonna's career continues to slow down the aging diva seems to feel her quest for greater spirituality is gaining momentum. She recently explained, "This is really important to me because it defines almost everything I am."
Who would have thought that the tough street-wise waif of the 1980s that scorned convention, mocked popular culture and dominated her "boy toys" would end up like this.
The Material Girl doesn't even seem to do her own material, but instead appears to work from a script given to her by an older man some say is her master.
[Posted by Rick Ross at 09:37 AM][Link]
...
[www.cultnews.com]
Madonna's new book The English Roses may be little more than the latest installment of her never-ending story regarding the recruitment of members for the so-called "Kabbalah Centre" led by Philip Berg.
Only this time the star seems to have her sights set on kids.
On a recent Oprah show the 20th Century pop icon talked about her pet project the "Spirituality for Kids Foundation" (SFKF), which appears to be another proselytizing ploy hatched by the Kabbalah Centre.
Madonna is prominently quoted on the main page of the SFKF website and her book is its publicity hook.
The singer has said, "I only wish I had been exposed to understanding the laws of the universe when I was kid. I could have saved myself a lot of pain and suffering."
This is an allusion to the beliefs of Berg and his followers, now being marketed for children.
Berg's "laws of the universe" are spoon-fed to kids within a curriculum in three stages. Each successive level a bit more demanding and complex than the previous one.
Level One is the "Rules of the Game of Life," Level Two "The Spiritual Detective: Finding the Clues Within," and finally Level Three "The Art of Problem Solving."
It is at Level Two that things start getting a bit bizarre.
At this stage children are taught "nothing in the world is random and that everything is the result of some prior action, thought, feeling or belief…life is fair."
But is it "fair" that some children are born with disabilities, or victimized through incest? Are rape victims somehow chosen as "the result of some prior action"? What about deaths due to random tragedies such as a plane or car crash?
And are the victims of 9-11and their families evidence of how "life is fair"?
Does Madonna actually believe that all "pain and suffering" can be avoided by knowing the supposed "laws of the universe"?
The Kabbalah Centre's Level Two: lesson four claims, "They are responsible for the people and situations that are in their lives…What they put out into the world comes back to them."
How would the Holocaust fit within this explanation? Was the murder of millions by the Nazis somehow the result of what their victims "put out into the world"?
No. And this doesn't sound like the premise for a good story to tell children either.
However, this philosophy does apparently represent the core of Philip Berg's teachings, which is now at the center of Madonna's universe.
The rest of Berg's lessons largely deal with the power of the light, discuss colors and assorted mumbo jumbo that sounds like hockus pockus in a world based upon magic.
Maybe Madonna should have written a book about little witches working spells instead of The English Roses? This theme might have been better received than the critically panned and reportedly boring book she has just launched.
Oops, another Londoner JK Rowling with her Harry Potter series has already done that. Besides Madonna wants us to take her fantasy seriously.
Despite the pretty title and tears shed on Oprah there is something a little sinister about Madonna's latest effort as a writer. It seems that Philip Berg is pulling the strings for Madonna's recent public performances and the aging diva has become little more than his "puppet," according to London's Daily Express.
The singer's book appears to be one more orchestrated and carefully planned promotional effort staged by the Kabbalah Centre that revolves around Philip Berg's lesson plan for the world.
This is clear by visiting the SFKF website, which promotes Madonna's new book alongside Mrs. Berg's audio tape titled "Spiritual Parenthood" and announcements about related events staged at the Kabbalah Centres.
SFKF targets "at risk" children and their parents, seemingly preying upon those most vulnerable within society.
And of course parents are encouraged to join in and participate.
As Madonna's career continues to slow down the aging diva seems to feel her quest for greater spirituality is gaining momentum. She recently explained, "This is really important to me because it defines almost everything I am."
Who would have thought that the tough street-wise waif of the 1980s that scorned convention, mocked popular culture and dominated her "boy toys" would end up like this.
The Material Girl doesn't even seem to do her own material, but instead appears to work from a script given to her by an older man some say is her master.
[Posted by Rick Ross at 09:37 AM][Link]
...
[www.cultnews.com]
Re: SFK Spirituality for Kids What is the agenda?
Posted by:
matilda
()
Date: April 01, 2009 06:52AM
[www.ivolunteer.org.il]
SFK: Spirituality for Kids
One of SFK's projects is creating “Peace in the Middle East” by teaching children to reframe their view of others in the world.
06/03/07
SFK is creating “Peace in the Middle East” by teaching children that we are all connected and that diplomacy is a result of getting to know each other and understanding our differences.
In areas like the Middle East, children are raised with limiting beliefs that cause hatred and separation between people of different cultures and religions. These limiting belief systems perpetuate the crisis of violence and division that affect innocent children.
But, these beliefs are not truths. They are only limitations in our minds that prevent us from truly connecting with others in positive and meaningful ways.
SFK children throughout the war-torn areas of the Middle East are brought together for programs, events and a summer camp experience to learn to reframe their view of others in the world, helping children to experience other children whom they have been raised to hate.
SFK’s “Kids Creating Peace” offers spiritual programs to all children, including Muslim, Jews, Christians and Druze from the most challenged and critical areas.
SFK also teaches this powerful curriculum to parents, educators and other adults of all backgrounds.
SFK is an international organization whoes goal is to stop the suffering and chaos in the lives of children around the world by giving them tools that help children transform the belief systems that limit their ability to realize their true potential and change their destiny.
For more information: [www.spiritualityforkids.org]
I find this part interesting
In areas like the Middle East, children are raised with limiting beliefs that cause hatred and separation between people of different cultures and religions. These limiting belief systems perpetuate the crisis of violence and division that affect innocent children.
But, these beliefs are not truths. They are only limitations in our minds that prevent us from truly connecting with others in positive and meaningful ways.
These comments are very extreme for an organisation that claims it is not religious.
This site is a giveaway
It views the 3 monotheistic religions with contempt as limiting beliefs, even as lies that cause hatred, violence nd division.... and it promotes SFK as the truth, the magic pearl that can bring peace on earth by preparing and grooming the youth to accept Berg''s distortion of Kabbalah.
SFK claims that it is already promoting peace in the middle east.....and has the answers to all of the world's problems.
Educationalists in the UK and elsewhere need to wake up to this group's covert agenda.
SFK: Spirituality for Kids
One of SFK's projects is creating “Peace in the Middle East” by teaching children to reframe their view of others in the world.
06/03/07
SFK is creating “Peace in the Middle East” by teaching children that we are all connected and that diplomacy is a result of getting to know each other and understanding our differences.
In areas like the Middle East, children are raised with limiting beliefs that cause hatred and separation between people of different cultures and religions. These limiting belief systems perpetuate the crisis of violence and division that affect innocent children.
But, these beliefs are not truths. They are only limitations in our minds that prevent us from truly connecting with others in positive and meaningful ways.
SFK children throughout the war-torn areas of the Middle East are brought together for programs, events and a summer camp experience to learn to reframe their view of others in the world, helping children to experience other children whom they have been raised to hate.
SFK’s “Kids Creating Peace” offers spiritual programs to all children, including Muslim, Jews, Christians and Druze from the most challenged and critical areas.
SFK also teaches this powerful curriculum to parents, educators and other adults of all backgrounds.
SFK is an international organization whoes goal is to stop the suffering and chaos in the lives of children around the world by giving them tools that help children transform the belief systems that limit their ability to realize their true potential and change their destiny.
For more information: [www.spiritualityforkids.org]
I find this part interesting
In areas like the Middle East, children are raised with limiting beliefs that cause hatred and separation between people of different cultures and religions. These limiting belief systems perpetuate the crisis of violence and division that affect innocent children.
But, these beliefs are not truths. They are only limitations in our minds that prevent us from truly connecting with others in positive and meaningful ways.
These comments are very extreme for an organisation that claims it is not religious.
This site is a giveaway
It views the 3 monotheistic religions with contempt as limiting beliefs, even as lies that cause hatred, violence nd division.... and it promotes SFK as the truth, the magic pearl that can bring peace on earth by preparing and grooming the youth to accept Berg''s distortion of Kabbalah.
SFK claims that it is already promoting peace in the middle east.....and has the answers to all of the world's problems.
Educationalists in the UK and elsewhere need to wake up to this group's covert agenda.
Re: SFK Spirituality for Kids What is the agenda?
Posted by:
matilda
()
Date: April 07, 2009 01:42AM
Madonna's Kabbalah Scam?
Do All Celebrities Become Religious Vehicles?
[www.queerty.com]
madonna-1.jpg
Actors, singers, diplomats and various celebrities will turn out in full force February 9th for the Gucci-hosted "A Night to Benefit Raising Malawi and UNICEF." Held at New York's UN headquarters, the event will rake dough for Madonna and Kabbalah-guru Michael Berg's non-profit, Raising Malawi. Fox News' Roger Friedman, however, claims the two are up to no good:
…Neither Gucci nor UNICEF is aware — even though it's been noted here many times — that Raising Malawi is merely a front for Philip Berg's Kabbalah Center of Los Angeles. In fact, before anyone writes a check: Raising Malawi is also still not a registered charity. All of its forms, filings and press releases direct back to the Kabbalah Center.
…
Berg’s son Michael started Raising Malawi under the pretext of helping orphans in that impoverished country. But after Madonna helped herself to one, David Banda, Berg and the rest of the Kabbalah/Raising Malawi team went to work on their real cause: indoctrinating unsuspecting Malawi orphans into their brand of mysticism.
Raising Malawi uses the "Spirituality for Kids" program, which Friedman likens to Kabbalah "curriculum".
Jan 9, 2008 · 6 views (beta) · Link · 6 Responses
Do All Celebrities Become Religious Vehicles?
[www.queerty.com]
madonna-1.jpg
Actors, singers, diplomats and various celebrities will turn out in full force February 9th for the Gucci-hosted "A Night to Benefit Raising Malawi and UNICEF." Held at New York's UN headquarters, the event will rake dough for Madonna and Kabbalah-guru Michael Berg's non-profit, Raising Malawi. Fox News' Roger Friedman, however, claims the two are up to no good:
…Neither Gucci nor UNICEF is aware — even though it's been noted here many times — that Raising Malawi is merely a front for Philip Berg's Kabbalah Center of Los Angeles. In fact, before anyone writes a check: Raising Malawi is also still not a registered charity. All of its forms, filings and press releases direct back to the Kabbalah Center.
…
Berg’s son Michael started Raising Malawi under the pretext of helping orphans in that impoverished country. But after Madonna helped herself to one, David Banda, Berg and the rest of the Kabbalah/Raising Malawi team went to work on their real cause: indoctrinating unsuspecting Malawi orphans into their brand of mysticism.
Raising Malawi uses the "Spirituality for Kids" program, which Friedman likens to Kabbalah "curriculum".
Jan 9, 2008 · 6 views (beta) · Link · 6 Responses
Re: SFK Spirituality for Kids What is the agenda?
Posted by:
The Groundhoggy One
()
Date: April 08, 2009 11:28PM
This is why I really hate these celebrity Kabbalah groups. What they are espousing is a perversion of true Kabbalah, which almost no one can understand. It takes years of study to even begin to understand real Kabbalah.
About what this SFK is teaching kids: The "life is fair" thing is a twisted version of the Kabbalistic principle that God never gives a person something that s/he can't handle. It's not that life is fair, it's that life is bearable. Big difference. Also, the statement about how "what people put out into the world comes back to them" is a Kabbalistic principle, but it refers to the World to Come, not to this world. Again, big difference.
Basically what I'm trying to say is that Kabbalah in its pure form is not a cult, and trying to debunk the stereotype that these organizations are creating for Kabbalah.
About what this SFK is teaching kids: The "life is fair" thing is a twisted version of the Kabbalistic principle that God never gives a person something that s/he can't handle. It's not that life is fair, it's that life is bearable. Big difference. Also, the statement about how "what people put out into the world comes back to them" is a Kabbalistic principle, but it refers to the World to Come, not to this world. Again, big difference.
Basically what I'm trying to say is that Kabbalah in its pure form is not a cult, and trying to debunk the stereotype that these organizations are creating for Kabbalah.
Re: SFK Spirituality for Kids What is the agenda?
Posted by:
matilda
()
Date: April 09, 2009 04:06AM
This article from Steve Hassan bears your sentiments Groundhoggy one.
Article from
[www.freedomofmind.com]
pasted below.
MEDIA ALERT MEDIA ALERT
THE KABBALAH LEARNING CENTRE IS THE LATEST POP CULTURE
HOWEVER, MOST ARE UNAWARE THAT IT’S A DESTRUCTIVE CULT
America’s Leading Cult Expert Steven Alan Hassan Warns the Public that The Kabbalah Learning Centre is Different from the Teachings of Kabbalah
WHAT?
Steven Alan Hassan, internationally renowned cult expert, licensed mental health counselor and founder of The Freedom of the Mind Resource Center warns us that The Kabbalah Learning Centre is really a destructive cult in disguise. Hassan, who is Jewish and belongs to a Temple that teaches Kabbalah warns us that the actions of the Kabbalah Learning Centre have little in common with traditional or even responsible Jewish renewal Kabbalah teachers.
WHO?
Hassan says, there is something deceptive and sinister that’s drawing celebrities like: Madonna, Mick Jagger, Barbra Streisand, Courtney Love, Elizabeth Taylor, Jeff Goldblum, Laura Dern, Diane Ladd and Sandra Bernhard to The Kabbalah Learning Centre, which was founded by Rabbi Phillip Berg (his real name is Feivel Gruberger and he is a former insurance salesman).
WHERE?
The Kabbalah Learning Centre, which is headquartered in Los Angeles and New York has branches in Israel, South America, Canada, Mexico and France. Kabbalah, the mystical Jewish tradition dating back centuries is different from what’s being taught at The Kabbalah Learning Center.
WHY?
Why the concern? Well, mainstream rabbis have criticized the center, which makes outrageous claims, extracts large amounts of money from followers, and is marketing a pop version of the Kabbalah. A number of disenchanted spouses, family members and former members have accused the center of using high-pressure mind control tactics to manipulate members into a cultish dependency. During the past year, Hassan has counseled a young woman who was a staff member at The Kabbalah Learning Centre and involved for three years.
WHEN?
Recruitment can take place in numerous ways. People are much more vulnerable to being unduly influenced when they are undergoing great stress, crisis or transition. From high school students to grandparents, no one is safe unless they are fully informed, and Hassan says the best way to protect oneself is to assume high standard of personal responsibility.
Article from
[www.freedomofmind.com]
pasted below.
MEDIA ALERT MEDIA ALERT
THE KABBALAH LEARNING CENTRE IS THE LATEST POP CULTURE
HOWEVER, MOST ARE UNAWARE THAT IT’S A DESTRUCTIVE CULT
America’s Leading Cult Expert Steven Alan Hassan Warns the Public that The Kabbalah Learning Centre is Different from the Teachings of Kabbalah
WHAT?
Steven Alan Hassan, internationally renowned cult expert, licensed mental health counselor and founder of The Freedom of the Mind Resource Center warns us that The Kabbalah Learning Centre is really a destructive cult in disguise. Hassan, who is Jewish and belongs to a Temple that teaches Kabbalah warns us that the actions of the Kabbalah Learning Centre have little in common with traditional or even responsible Jewish renewal Kabbalah teachers.
WHO?
Hassan says, there is something deceptive and sinister that’s drawing celebrities like: Madonna, Mick Jagger, Barbra Streisand, Courtney Love, Elizabeth Taylor, Jeff Goldblum, Laura Dern, Diane Ladd and Sandra Bernhard to The Kabbalah Learning Centre, which was founded by Rabbi Phillip Berg (his real name is Feivel Gruberger and he is a former insurance salesman).
WHERE?
The Kabbalah Learning Centre, which is headquartered in Los Angeles and New York has branches in Israel, South America, Canada, Mexico and France. Kabbalah, the mystical Jewish tradition dating back centuries is different from what’s being taught at The Kabbalah Learning Center.
WHY?
Why the concern? Well, mainstream rabbis have criticized the center, which makes outrageous claims, extracts large amounts of money from followers, and is marketing a pop version of the Kabbalah. A number of disenchanted spouses, family members and former members have accused the center of using high-pressure mind control tactics to manipulate members into a cultish dependency. During the past year, Hassan has counseled a young woman who was a staff member at The Kabbalah Learning Centre and involved for three years.
WHEN?
Recruitment can take place in numerous ways. People are much more vulnerable to being unduly influenced when they are undergoing great stress, crisis or transition. From high school students to grandparents, no one is safe unless they are fully informed, and Hassan says the best way to protect oneself is to assume high standard of personal responsibility.
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