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Background:

Jewish children start Hebrew school at the age of three, traditionally. For the next several years, they study Torah and they learn how to live a Jewish life. At twelve, the girls become bat mitzvah (daughter of the commandments), and a year later the boys become bar mitzvah (son of the commandments). Thereafter, they are responsible for living by the commandments and are responsible, themselves, if they break the commandments -- before that time, their parents were responsible for the children's mistakes. Also at that age, the new b'nei mitzvah (children of commandments) begin to study Talmud, the Oral Tradition that has been written down so that it is transmittable throughout the world, since we no longer live solely within the land of Israel.

No earlier than the age of forty, a man MAY be approached by a master of Kabbalah, and offered the chance to study with him. This will only happen if the man is known to the master, known to be knowledgeable in Torah and Talmud, a religiously observant person, a person of extreme compassion and integrity. And the master will never charge a fee for the teaching, though he may suggest that if the student is able, he contribute to the kollel, the local study group, so that they can afford more books and study materials.

Kabbalah is not for the faint of heart. It is an intense, rigorous, in-depth study. If you think basic Judaism is complicated, you're right, but it's nothing to compare with Kabbalah.

That stuff Madonna is learning, bless her heart, is not real Kabbalah. It's a faint shadow of Judaism thrown over, basically, pop culture. I detest this kind of thing, because her teachers are not only selling her a product that isn't what they say it is, but they're also doing it in the name of Judaism and making all of us look bad, as if the traditions of 3,800 years can be distilled into a couple of sound bites and some red yarn for our wrists.

All I can do is refer to my previous post: You won't find the books of Kabbalah or their source books in book stores. They're hand-written, and they're shared with those who have achieved lives of scholarship and piety in the eyes of a master of kabbalah. What you'll find in book stores or online will be the same stuff that Madonna has fallen for -- mass-produced drivel with vaguely Jewish-seeming window dressing.

Yeah. Zohar, Tanya, and Ari. The mass production of those was a bit of a mistake, I feel.

Look, it's like music. You can, with patience and work, learn to play only ONE piece of music on the piano. Even a complicated piece, a master-work, can be learned with diligence, without other piano playing experience. You can learn it without taking a single class in music history, aural skills, music theory, music analysis, or even any classes or lessons in basic keyboard technique, let alone advanced keyboard technique. It'll take you a while, and you won't actually know what you're doing, but you can do it in a couple months.

But if you really want to know enough to play that piece REALLY WELL, you'll start at the beginning. You'll learn your basic scales and arpeggi, music theory, aural skills including solfeggio, music history, fingering exercises designed to strengthen and add flexibility, accuracy, quickness. The process will take you many years longer. However, by the time you do reach that masterwork, a few things will happen: You'll be able to learn it much faster; you'll feel more confidence when you play it; you'll understand the piece on a much deeper level; and because of all those things, your audience will connect more deeply with the piece and with you as a performer.

How much more complicated, deep, and worthy of study is Torah!