The Kabbalah Center (KC), which includes Madonna, Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher, Roseanne and other celebrity members, has marketed another product that may soon catch on as a practical replacement for its often touted “Red String.”
The “authentic Red String from Jerusalem” is now embedded in a resin bracelet.
Potential buyers are being told the bracelet “is meant to show devotion to the mystical practice and to offer protection from negative energy” says Deidre Woollard at Luxist.
However, the new wrist wear/ware will be sold for twice the price of the old model. The regular “Red String” is $26.00, but those that want the new “bangle” will need to cough up sixty bucks.
This is yet one more product to add to the ever-growing list of retail merchandise marketed by the KC that includes candles, incense, soap, bath oil, an energy drink and of course that very special “Kabbalah Water.”
Mr. and Mrs. Philip Berg and their two sons Yehuda and Michael run the KC and it seems like they never stop coming up with new things for the faithful to buy.
Get ready to see the Hollywood celebs flashing their nifty new Berg bracelets soon. The bangles come in an assortment of resin colors, making them potentially a “mystical” match like other accessories such as shoes or a purse. Think of it, color coordinated celebrity outfits that can purportedly “repel negative energy.”
Meanwhile Madonna has unwittingly helped to promote someone else’s products. A woman that owns a house in Israel, reportedly sought by the former “Material Girl,” has managed to milk that story to help the US launch of her line of skin care products reports Israel 21 c.org.
Shiri Havkin, owner of “Havkin Herbal Cosmetics,” previously “grabbed international headlines” over a phone call from Madonna’s representative hoping to buy her house for a KC project. Now the savvy entrepreneur wants everyone to know that like the KC she has something to sell too. “The dry, clean, crisp mountain air and pure water of the region are ‘special ingredients’ in the Havkin line of 100% natural skin care products” the businesswoman claims.
Well, Shiri may be shilling, but at least she’s not trying to tell the public there’s something “mystical” or supernatural about her water.
Maybe Madonna should go for Havkin’s line?
Shiri says that her “skin care products…enrich as well as heal” and includes a “moisturizing facial oil, a natural serum, for tired, worn out skin.” The 47-year-old diva might do better buying what Havkin has to sell rather than the KC. And maybe the Israeli will throw in her house? That is, if the star is willing to pay twice the market price as Havkin has told the press.
Perhaps that wouldn’t bother Madonna given what she has already bought from the Bergs.
Does Madonna spend her days hawking these bangles out of her home? No? Then, why is her picture (or rather a low resolution JPG of the only bad photos you can find) and her name plastered on this and every article possible as if she is the one responsible?
Deliberately using unrepresentative photographs, guilt by association, name dropping…it’s more National Enquirer than serious journalism. It is telling that Mariah Carey’s photograph is selected to make her look good, while you have deliberately chosen poor quality shots for the people who are to be “judged”.