Madonna to promote Kabbalah in Malawi · 2007-04-21 12:11
Madonna arrived in Malawi on Monday morning with her 10-year-old daughter Lourdes and David Banda, the Malawian boy she wishes to adopt.
Daily Mail newspaper assumes that Madonna does not plan to adopt again, but her aim is more complex – and more disturbing.
Last year the singer set up a charity, Raising Malawi, to help the nation’s orphans. Her partner in the project was Michael Berg, the son of Philip Berg, rabbi and Dean of the Kabbalah Centre in America.
For the past six months, construction has been under way on her Raising Malawi orphan care centre at Mphandula, 30 miles outside the capital Lilongwe, which will provide day care for up to 4,000 children. On Thursday, Madonna officially opened the site at a “handing over of the keys” ceremony.
She is also providing funding for several other orphanages. Her charity is providing food, medical supplies, exercise books and other provisions for children at these centres.
What is not widely known in Malawi, however, is that in return for their financial support, Madonna and Michael Berg have instructed staff to teach Kabbalah to the orphans in their care.
Many children in the orphanages she is supporting are already being tutored in Kabbalah.
Madonna also has plans, says Daily Mail , for orphans to make those red string Kabbalah bracelets that celebrities like to wear to make them think they are spiritual people.
The idea is for the bracelets to go on sale in branches of H&M, with which Madonna recently launched a fashion range, and give the profits back to Malawi. This scheme gives some idea how completely Kabbalah is entwined with Madonna’s charity work.
As a generation of children grow up with Kabbalah, Malawi could, in effect, become Mother Madonna’s very own state, the newspaper says.
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