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Missing me already: how I survived the Bond Street charm offensive
I thought I was visiting the Kabbalah Centre for the first time. But the staff seemed to think otherwise.
As I entered the Georgian mansion off Bond Street, beaming officials greeted me like a regular. “Oh, it’s you! How are you today?”
This familiarity momentarily disorientated me. But then I overheard the same greeting extended to the visitor behind me, and I realised it was a Kabbalah technique: no visitor is a total stranger, just a devotee who hasn’t yet been initiated.
The centre is going out of its way to welcome new recruits. Visiting on its open day, I was escorted upstairs to have my palm read. A cheery young man held my hand and looked deep into my eyes. “Enough crying, schmying,” he said. “Your life is going to change. I can see it here on your hand. Your life changes because of something positive you do when you are … how old are you?”
“Twenty-four.”
“That’s it! Your life is going to change when you are 24. Your life will change today.”
My destiny, he made it clear, was a 10-week Power of Kabbalah induction course – priced £120 and payable by direct debit.
However, unlike Jerry Hall (who complained Kabbalah wanted 10 per cent of her income), I was never asked for any more money – apart from $4,424 (£2,500) to attend Passover in Hollywood.
I was invited to Kabbalah weekend social events and meditation sessions, although I was not pressurised to commit myself to more than one evening class a week.
The classes were held in an elegant blue drawing room by Rabbi Chaim Solomon. His teaching took the form of lectures that were more rhetorical than intellectually engaging: “Whose life are you living? Your parent? Sister? Brother? Girlfriend/boyfriend’s life? The life of the person sitting next to you?”
The crashing conclusion to this verbiage? “No, you are living your life.”
The emphasis was more on good behaviour as a route to personal fulfilment rather than an end itself, but there were lots of platitudes, such as, “Take responsibility. Check your anger”.
The cult’s teaching implies that success is usually deserved. Perhaps this is why it is so popular with the privileged. Many Kabbalists seemed conspicuously affluent; a tall blonde lady appearing in the lobby in Gucci sunglasses to pick up her regular consignment of Kabbalah Water; a stockbroker called Belinda with a squeaky voice and a rabbit fur jacket; a suited businessman noting Chaim’s words on his BlackBerry handheld. Yet for all their worldly appearance, they seemed deeply taken in by the mysticism.
Caroline, a high-achieving estate agent, fervently advised me to buy a copy of the Zorah. I declined, saying I couldn’t understand the words. “It doesn’t matter!” she said. “You still get energy from looking at the letters!”
I left when I had seen enough to cover my assignment. But two months later the tenaciously evangelist Kabbalists are still telephoning me, leaving warm, friendly messages asking if I’m OK.
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