How many kabbalists

In traditional cabalistic schools, the 72 Hebrew names of God form the basis for arduous meditations and ascetic practices.

In the mechanistic world of the Kabbalah Centre, though, merely glancing at the letters is said to infuse a devotee with their healing and invigorating power. Similarly, the Centre insists that scanning the text of the Zohar, the seminal 13th century cabalistic commentary on the Bible, offers divine protection.

Perhaps this is how Madonna chose her Hebrew name Esther -- said to have been derived from the word for star. But that faith focuses on the immortal soul, not the transient body.

With its body-centered theology, the Centre co-opts spirituality for its opposite intent. We live in a remarkable era, in which the spiritual riches of various faiths, once restricted to their own believers, are now accessible to outsiders.

Arguably for the first time in history, we can study and even experience something of the devotional life of another faith. With its openness to non-Jews, the Centre could have performed an important role in this process of spiritual exchange. I haven't looked back since," he told Vargas. There are no Kabbalah Centres near Ellis' home, so he stays connected by listening to their tapes. He said Kabbalah has created spiritual and financial miracles for him.

The Bergs have brought this ancient wisdom out of the dark ages and mass-marketed it, hawking must-have accessories like red strings and Kabbalah water, which the Centre aggressively sells and claims will protect followers from "negative energy. But rabbis like Yitzchok Adlerstein, a professor of law and ethics at Loyola University in Los Angeles, question some of the practices of the Kabbalah newcomers -- like Britney Spears, who tattooed one of God's 72 names in Hebrew on her neck.

The Bergs insist their writings are a direct interpretation of the Zohar, an ancient text, dense and complex, that contains a mystical discussion of what God is. We don't teach anything that's ours. We don't claim to be teachers. We don't even care if anyone respects us or not.

Our job is to bring content to people, content that wasn't there before. Nothing we do comes from our brain," said Yehuda Berg, one of the couple's sons, who runs the Kabbalah Centres with his mother and brother, Michael Berg.

Indeed, the Kabbalah Centres' approach to the Zohar is a far cry from the rigorous intellectual pursuit of Jewish scholars. The Bergs teach that merely to have the Zohar in your possession offers one protective powers, a claim scholars say is ridiculous. Ellis has spent thousands of dollars buying complete sets of the Zohar for his home, office and family.

The repercussions reached the Bergs' two sons, who were students at an orthodox yeshiva in New York. Their teachers told them to abandon their father, according to a former member who at the time was close? The rabbis' denunciation might have been fatal to a more traditional Jewish organization.

But the Kabbalah Centre taught that the closer a person drew to the light -- God -- the more the forces of darkness would target him.

Followers saw the criticism as proof that the Bergs were on the right spiritual path. They hailed them as prophets. Members of the chevre, the center's religious order, discussed the intense level of spiritual development one would need just to be Karen's assistant and lined up to eat Philip's leftovers as a way to show their devotion, former members said.

The center's synagogues around the world had special chairs for the Bergs' exclusive use, even though they might visit only once a year. It became standard practice to address the Bergs in the third person. A large painting at the Toronto branch showed Philip in what struck one visitor as a classic Christian pose: Jesus leaning against a rock. An inner circle of very wealthy donors -- the "close people" as they were known at the center -- gave hundreds of thousands and sometimes millions of dollars in tax-deductible tithes and donations.

Big donors were rewarded with seats at the Bergs' table at Sabbath meal, invitations to intimate prayer services and personal conversations. Those who grumbled were chastised by officials or other students. Adored inside their organization, the Bergs continued to be vilified outside. Rabbis in Israel, Philadelphia and Queens condemned them publicly. At a religious conference in Johannesburg, South Africa, an orthodox rabbi gave a speech criticizing the center's practices and Philip's "scandalous" personal life, an allusion to the breakup of his first marriage.

The center responded with a defamation suit, which it later dropped. The Bergs were spending more time in Los Angeles, running the center from a converted year-old Spanish-style church on Robertson Boulevard. The location, which became the center's world headquarters in , was near the heart of the city's orthodox community, but more significant was its proximity to Westside neighborhoods the entertainment industry calls home.

The first celebrity drawn to the Kabbalah Centre was Sandra Bernhard, who began studying in Bernhard was a raunchy stand-up comic who'd posed nude for Playboy. She dove into kabbalah classes with a charismatic Israeli teacher, Eitan Yardeni. In the Bergs' decades of challenging tradition, the center had remained fundamentally Jewish.

The conflict with the orthodox establishment had always turned on whether kabbalah study was permissible for certain Jews -- women and men without yeshiva training. Gentiles were never even a consideration, and were a rare and generally unwelcome presence, according to former members. Gentiles at Sabbath services were expected to stay in the back and not participate.

That changed with the arrival of Bernhard's diverse circle. Gentiles flocked to an introductory course she arranged in Manhattan. It was difficult for some former disciples to square the ecumenical approach with the Kabbalah Centre they had known. Jeremy Langford, an early follower who left the center in over concerns about its authenticity, said reports about gentile celebrities attending classes confirmed his belief that the Bergs were teaching "pop, light, quasi New Age, ersatz kabbalah.

Nothing garnered bigger headlines for the center than the arrival of Madonna. She enrolled at the L. To the surprise of her detractors, Madonna stuck with her studies. She attended Sabbath services, had one-on-one study sessions with Yardeni, enrolled her daughter in the center's Sunday school and chose a Hebrew name, Esther.

The Kabbalah Centre suddenly had cachet among the rich and famous, and through them entree to a wider audience. Yardeni was at ease with big names and egos, and the Bergs tapped him as their Hollywood emissary. He had once worked as a door-to-door chevre and had a humility and directness that the powerful and well-connected found refreshing.

He said one-on-one tutoring with Yardeni taught him "to take the high road and to understand there is a greater power than you. Yardeni held exclusive sessions at Westside mansions. Producer Christine Peters hosted one that drew entertainment figures that included her then-boyfriend, Viacom Executive Chairman Sumner Redstone.

She said Yardeni would begin by reading from the Zohar and the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, in Hebrew and English. He would relate stories about Moses and other biblical figures to daily life. Topics included how to achieve lasting fulfillment, how to transform oneself "in the light of God" and how to refrain from gossip.

Yardeni's teachings about finding meaning beyond the material had a special appeal to those in her circle, said Ladd, who was raised a Mormon. This building on Robertson Boulevard near the heart of Los Angeles' orthodox Jewish community is the headquarters of the Kabbalah Centre's empire. The heightened profile of kabbalah meant enormous growth, but precisely how much is difficult to say. The parent organization, Kabbalah Centre International, was granted tax-exempt status as a church in and stopped filing returns.

The center's revenue sources include fees for classes and sales of merchandise such as candles, red-string bracelets that the center says will ward off evil, and bottled water long touted as having healing powers. Soliciting donations remained a focus of the Bergs and other ranking leaders.

A prominent filmmaker said that after a few lessons with Yardeni, he received an unannounced visit from another official.