/wince

I was attracted to an article at the Beeb this morning about a group of rabbis who have taken to the air over Israeli to try to stop the spread of H1N1, and the whole article made me wince. As the article points out, these are rabbis who are steeped in Kabbalah, a rather intricate and complicated type of mystical study. Kabbalah is thoroughly misunderstood, even in Judaism, and I worry about how this clip will come across to folks who don't know much about either mainstream Judaism or about this form of study.

And then, as though I were not cringing enough, I read this line: "...Kabbalah, a form of Jewish mysticism which counts the singer Madonna among its devotees." Oy, vey. Kabbalah as practiced within Judaism is not the same as Kabbalah (c), a non-Jewish venture created by Philip Berg; to put the rabbis on that plane in the same boat with Madonna takes this article from merely cringe-worthy into a real double-head-clutcher.