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Madonna’s new video causing stir

By Robert Kahn - Newsday - | Oct 23, 2002

Newsday

Today’s Madonna/James Bond/religion pop quiz:

The video for her song in the upcoming Bond movie “Die Another Day” — is (choose one):

* A condemnation of capital punishment.

* A testament to the virtues of not having an ego.

* An affront to Jewish tradition.

“Madonna doesn’t like to explain her videos in great detail, but I think there are many messages there, and her intention in making this video was honorable,” says Liz Rosenberg, her longtime rep.

At intervals, the video features Madonna with Hebrew letters tattooed on her arm, wearing the leather straps associated with the Jewish tefillin and being electrocuted in a chair emblazoned with Hebrew markings.

“The Hebrew word on the electric chair, with a lamed, an alef and a vav, means ‘No,’ so the message seems to be, ‘Say no to capital punishment,’ ” says Ken Jacobson, associate national director of the Anti-Defamation League.

Rosenberg says Madonna told her the letters are a “sequence” in a spiritual tool called “the 72 Names of God.”

In Kabbalah teaching, each of the “72 Names of God” is comprised of a three-letter sequence, and each sequence “is a conduit that transmits various blends of energy and spiritual light into our physical world,” says Elisheva Kelman, a spokeswoman for the Kabbalah Center, where Madonna and husband Guy Ritchie study.

The lamed-alef-vav sequence, Kelman explains, “is about eliminating ego from your soul.”

But because Madonna is wearing leather straps associated with tefillin — traditionally worn only by male Jews — some worry she will be accused of not respecting Jewish culture.

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page C6.

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