We were all so busy being mesmerized with every aspect of Madonna’s questionable outfit for the Met Gala on Monday, that no one noticed Brahim Zaibat’s choice of accessory: miniature Israeli and Palestinian Authority flags.
Statement of tolerance, or weird Kabbalah practice? Who knows.
The 25-year-old dancer and the 54-year-old diva have been dating for two years. In February, Zaibat signed with modeling agency IMG, and hit the runway for New York Fashion Week.
Speaking of the Emmys, Mayim Bialik may have been freaking out before the ceremony, but she sure looked great in her flowing red gown that matched her long flowing coiffure. It’s too bad she didn’t win for best supporting actress in a comedy series, but at least she got a nice profile in the New York Times last week.
And speaking of photo shoots, here ) is a smoking hot one of Rashida Jones in Flaunt Magazine.
Vanessa Redgrave, who denounced “Zionist hoodlums” in her 1977 Oscar speech, will play a Holocaust survivor in the off-Broadway production of “The Revisionist,” a new play by “The Social Network” star Jesse Eisenberg.
People Magazine’s fashion editors named Gwyneth Paltrow the world’s best dressed woman for 2012.
Imagine bar mitzvah season in the year 1992: a time of frilly dresses, balloon arches and Paul Rudd emceeing in Doc Martens and a yellow tuxedo. Now cut to Shaun Sperling’s bar mitzvah.
With Madonna’s face embroidered onto the back of his white button down, Sperling strutted out onto his bar-mitzvah’s wood paneled dance floor — with his fingers snapping and his tie flung over his shoulder. What followed was a nearly six-minute dance routine to Madonna’s “Vogue” — replete with twirls, shimmying, waving arms, and, of course, voguing.
The video-taped performance, which was released on the internet earlier this week, has gone viral — accruing more than 57,000 hits in the past few days. New York magazine’s Vulture listed it in their top viral videos of the week.
Did Madonna “express herself” too much?
The BBC reports that France’s right-wing National Front party is suing the superstar “after an image at the US singer’s Paris concert showed party leader Marine Le Pen with a swastika imposed on her face.”
The image, in a video accompanying the song Nobody Knows Me, was followed by another resembling Adolf Hitler as Madonna was performing at the Stade de France in a Paris suburb on Saturday. National Front vice-president Florian Philippot told the BBC the party could not accept “such an odious comparison… This is just another provocation in Madonna’s world tour so that people will talk about her. Marine Le Pen will defend not only her own honor but her supporters’ and the millions of National Front voters.” Philippot said a lawsuit would be filed this week.
At Madonna’s Tel Aviv concert on May 31, the pop queen went one provocative image too far. According to the Telegraph, a photomontage displayed behind the singer as she performed “Nobody Knows Me” showed a photo of France’s National Front leader Marine Le Pen with a swastika etched on her forehead, dissolving into a portrait that resembled Adolph Hitler. Le Pen didn’t take the implication lightly: The French politician is threatening a lawsuit against Madonna if she repeats the gambit at her upcoming concert in Paris in July.
Though the photo only appeared onscreen for a second, sandwiched between images of Madonna’s face morphing into other politicians like Sarah Palin and China’s Hu Jintao, right-wing leader Le Pen responded furiously. “We understand how old singers who need to get people talking about them go to extremes,” Le Pen told The Daily Mail.
France’s far-right National Front is considering a lawsuit against Madonna over a video she used during her concert in Israel on Thursday night. The clip showed party leader Marine Le Pen with a swastika on her forehead.
While she performed the song “Nobody Knows Me” in Ramat Gan Stadium, Madonna showed a video in which her face was collaged with a number of well-known personalities. The face of Marine Le Pen appeared for a few seconds with a swastika affixed to her forehead before dissolving into a composite character resembling Adolf Hitler.
The concert, which opened Madonna’s 65-city MDNA world tour, received mixed reviews from the international press, which provided extensive coverage - around 80 foreign journalists were here for the performance.
“For a show that was originally billed as a ‘Concert for Peace,’ the opening night of Madonna’s world tour in Tel Aviv, Israel, featured a disproportionate amount of violence,” the critic from The Hollywood Reporter wrote, citing the guns and religious imagery used during the first part of the concert.
For more go to Haaretz.com
Madonna’s upcoming concert in Tel Aviv, or the Iranian nuclear crisis: Which is more important? The answer is obvious to some of the Queen of Pop’s Israeli fans.
Confident that they have their priorities straight and that their cause is just, Madonna fans are pleading with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to hold off on striking Iran until after the singer’s concert has taken place at the Ramat Gan Stadium on May 29. And just like any other protest group, they have set up a Facebook page — this one replete with a photo of Bibi posing with Madge, likely taken on one of her recent visits to the Holy Land). It’s called, “Bibi, No War with Iran until after Madonna’s performance on May 29.” Not too snappy a title, but they do get their point across.
The Super Bowl halftime show was just the start. All of us are going to be seeing a lot more of Madonna this year, but Israelis are going to be the first to see — and hear — her.
Following the release of her new album, “MDNA” on March 26, Madge will kick off a world tour in Tel Aviv. Her many Israeli fans will have to scramble for tickets for her May 31 performance at the Ramat Gan Stadium, where she is expected to sing both new and old songs in characteristic spectacular style. This will be the Material Girl’s fourth concert in Israel, following one in 1993 and two in 2010.
Before the Kabbalah Centre had one material girl, it had another. Long before Madonna started wearing a red string bracelet and visiting Israel, there was Karen Berg, the avaricious wife of Rabbi Philip Berg, the Centre’s founding rabbi.
In a series of articles, the Los Angeles Times is exposing the dark underside of what many consider to be more of a celebrity cult than a legitimate religious institution. Former followers of the Bergs are now speaking out against them, and the IRS is investigating their lavish lifestyle and finances.
It’s been a big week for John Galliano: first he got a shout-out from Madonna, and now he’s featured on a new t-shirt.
The satirical shirt, on sale in Italy, features the Hitler-loving former fashion designer as an Orthodox Jew, replete with sidecurls and a hat. Intended in jest, the item has reportedly offended some customers at Milan’s La Rinascente department store, who felt that the shirt mocked Jews rather than Galliano.
Madonna brought Kabbalah to the masses, but New York magazine still wonders whether her new movie might have a “Jewish problem.”
Last week, the singer attended the Venice Film Festival premiere of “W.E.,” her second effort as a director. Early reviews were mostly abysmal, but the film’s quality is only part of the story.
Co-written Madonna, the movie apparently offers a fawning vision of Wallis Simpson, the American divorcee who famously inspired England’s King Edward VIII to give up the throne. The movie ignores the pair’s friendly relationship with Hitler, which included a visit to his Berchtesgaden retreat in 1937, well after the nature of his regime became clear.
Is kabbalah losing its most famous student?
No one can say for sure, but reports are spreading that Madonna is considering a switch to Opus Dei, the conservative Catholic sect arguably most famous for protesting its own vilification in “The Da Vinci Code.”
The rumors suggest that Madonna sought out the group in reaction to recent embarrassments involving her charity, which collapsed amid reports of major monetary waste and mismanagement. The singer co-founded the organization, Raising Malawi, with Michael Berg, a friend and mentor from the Kabbalah Centre, the object of her religious devotion for the past 15 years.
Because sharing is caring, here’s a picture of Madonna dressed as Charlie Chaplin for Purim this weekend in New York City.
L’Chaim.
Hebrew seems to be the language of love for Guy Ritchie and girlfriend Jacqui Ainsley. According to Hello magazine, the ex-Mr. Madonna and Ainsley speak to each other in Hebrew when they are out in public and want to keep their conversation private.
Ritchie is already fluent in Hebrew (at least he got something out of his marriage to Kabbalah-following Madge). But Ainsley told Hello! she’s been studying the language every day. “Initially it was difficult as the characters are so vastly dissimilar to English characters and there are two alphabets to contend with. I believe you can learn anything you want if you are determined — one hour a day can go a long way,” she said. To that we say: Tov meod!
Better get out your book plates, Madonna. Model Naomi Campbell wants to borrow your copy of the Zohar.
According to this JTA report, the hot-tempered supermodel has taken up study of the mystical Jewish tradition in order to calm her emotions.
Supermodel Naomi Campbell, who two year ago compared Kabbalah to Alcoholics Anonymous, has done a 180 and gotten on the wagon. The star was sighted having secret meetings with with Eitan Yardeni, the Kabbalah leader who first got Madonna hooked, at the Kabbalah Centre in Manhattan, according to the New York Post.
In 2008, reports surfaced that Campbell had said, “Kabbalah is not a religion, it’s a program.” “I don’t like to get hooked on things like that,” she said. Clearly she has seen the light.
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