Madge Ruffles Rabbis Again

It’s unlikely Madonna could even put foot on Israeli soil without ruffling the feathers of a few rabbis, although her recent visit hasn’t sparked anything similar to the controversy in 2004.

On that occasion she managed the remarkable feat of uniting both sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict. They banded together in protest of her five-day pilgrimage to study Kabbalah, shortly after she’d taken up her new-found mystic religion.

Even before she arrived, Palestinians were accusing her of ignoring their suffering and Orthodox Jews labeled her religiously insensitive.

This time, apart from meeting Israeli President Shimon Peres, she’s carried out a similar controversial schedule and visited sites that are sacred to Kabbalists.

But this time there’s only been a murmur of protest, some of it coming from Kabbalah rabbis who’ve criticised the attention being brought to the religion by a non-Jewish celebrity who was brought up with Catholicism.