Escaping Kabbalah cult, professor finds purpose in corporate ethics

MIRIAM COSIC meets Sydney academic DEBBIE HASKI-LEVENTHAL, who has channelled the lessons from her distressing childhood into a book designed to help others forge a meaningful life.

Mention Kabbalah to people who aren't Jewish and celebrities such as Madonna and Demi Moore spring to mind. The Kabbalah Centre in New York became famous after Madonna joined, bringing other non-Jewish and female followers with her. A red string worn around the wrist soon became a fashionable accessory.

For Debbie Haski-Leventhal, now a professor at Macquarie University in Sydney, the name has a very different connotation. It conjures an inescapable cult, with all the demeaning and imprisoning conditions that cults usually have.

Haski-Leventhal grew up in Israel in a family that wore its religion lightly until it suffered the worst that can befall a family. When Haski-Leventhal's mother Ziva was pregnant with her, her brother was diagnosed with cancer. Ziva was devastated and lost interest in both her pregnancy and her newborn. When Haski-Leventhal was three years old, her brother died and the family was bereft.

"Growing up with a grieving family is frighteningly dreadful," she writes in her new book, Make it Meaningful. Her mother was a mess but embarked on a search for answers in her blighted world. She saw an ad for the Kabbalah Centre, then a tiny organisation founded by Philip Berg in Tel Aviv to bring enlightenment to a wider audience. It only had a few visitors and he spent time helping Ziva. She eventually joined the group, bringing her reluctant husband with her.

"I remember the day my mother told us we were now religious. We had been what is often referred to in Israel as "traditionalist" up to this point - meaning my parents used to celebrate the Jewish holidays, such as Yom Kippur and Passover, but not much else. Then when I was five, we suddenly had a whole new set of rules that had to be kept."