Rabbi Berg's Kiddie Control

File under: Satscams

Up until now, we weren't interested in Rabbi Philip S. Berg and the Kabbalah Centre outside the sizzling reports of famous devotees finding more quakery with which to treat their terminal insecurity. But this article in the Village Voice has alerted us to the fact there's another "divine" being on the loose in the world, and he bears the mark of the dollar sign. Your dollars sign.

Sure, another spiritual pyramid scam. No big deal. Those grow like weeds. But then we read this:

Once, [a devotee] brought their grade-school daughter to meet the Rav. "When she came home she said, 'Mommy, you should see his soul,'" Waterman, in her early 40s, recalls. "I asked her what she was talking about. She told me Rabbi Berg had a beautiful soul. It was very eerie. I said to her father, 'Children don't see souls. I don't want her near there again.'"

What is especially hideous and disconcerting is that this will play right into the heads of the Berg-afflicted: 'Of course she saw his soul! Kids are pure and can see the Rav's purity too!' Oy vey!

The Rav's mystical powers over children portend the arrival of a whole new avenue in devotee collection. We can see him now, holding children hostage in his bliss-giving light, beckoning to their parents with a serene countenance, right hand raised in that universal gesture–'where's the loot?' Parents, helpless to resist, reach for their wallets and get their red string, now Bergified into stupidity"The Light" and a life of co-dependencejoyous living in another satscam.