all about Madonna

from Madonnalicious.com : On ABC in the US last night just before midnight a videotaped message from Madonna was played. Dick Clark, the popular U.S. personality who has hosted New Year’s Eve for 32 years, suffered a stroke last month. Clark, of course, might be the first person to introduce the U.S. population to Madonna on his show American Bandstand in 1983 when Madonna announced I want to conquer the world. Regis Philbin, who was stepping in for Clark for New Year’s, said he had a VERY special message for the hospitalized Dick Clark. Madonna filmed the message in London whilst recording The Early Show interview. Cut to Madonna’s message:
Dick, I hope you’re feeling better. We love you, we need you, we miss you, and get well soon. I’d like to wish you, and everyone watching tonight, a Happy New Year.

Who’s that girl lazily tapping away on her computer keyboard?
The platinum blonde Barbie doll look-alike is none other than Queen of Pop Madonna in the latest Versace ad campaign. Devout Kabbalah convert Madge, 46, halted the shoot with celebrity snapper Mario Testino for half an hour to meditate and pray for a period of good fortune. And it seems to have paid off.
She will pocket a reported $10.5million for the campaign and will receive free Versace clothes for two years.
Ads are a lucrative sideline for Madonna. She has banked millions from deals with Gap, Pepsi and Max Factor.
Seems like the Material Girl has never been more in vogue!
source : sundaymail.co.uk

Much negative press has surrounded the pop star Madonna’s embrace of the Kabbalah, an esoteric Jewish mystical practice dating back to medieval Spain. Prominent scholars of Jewish mysticism claim that as a Christian she has no business studying the Kabbalah, which traditionally is reserved for married Orthodox Jewish men over 40 who have parented at least one male and one female child.
Except for being married and having parented a son and a daughter, Madonna meets none of the other criteria for becoming a Kabbalist. I suggest that it is less because she is a Christian than it is because she is a woman that Madonna’s Kabbalah is being pilloried.
Interestingly, all the scholars interviewed on the subject have been men. Rabbis, mostly. This is not to say that there aren’t any female scholars or rabbis who practice and teach the Kabbalah, but their opinions about this important spiritual phenomenon have been largely ignored by the media. Indeed, I suspect that this is part of a general religious backlash against the women’s movement, as evidenced most recently by the pope’s denunciation of feminism as a “heresy” and the reelection of a Christian fundamentalist to the US presidency.
Given the enormous surge of interest in women’s spirituality, one can hardly be surprised that male religious leaders are bristling at the scriptural interpretations of feminist theologians, not to mention more widely read pop culture icons like Dan Brown, whose bestselling novel, “The DaVinci Code,” has generated global fascination with an ancient form of goddess worship purportedly banished from mainstream Judaism and Christianity.
In this context, Madonna’s Kabbalah is not an isolated phenomenon but part of a widespread trend in the feminist revitalizing of Western religion.
Put another way, one could say that Madonna has injected an obscure, ailing form of patriarchal Jewish mysticism with a much needed dose of woman’s chutzpah. Why is this so threatening to the religious establishment? Could it be because Madonna celebrates her sexuality and the pleasure of her body so openly? Or that, like the prophetess Miriam and her band of Israelite women, Madonna worships so joyfully, with song and dance rather than with weeping? Or could it be that Madonna is challenging the Kabbalists’ patriarchal image of the ideal woman as chaste, humble, and modest?
Although Jewish mystics agree that the feminine “Shekhinah” provides the major entry to the experience of God, the Kabbalah has been closed to women for so long that many of today’s Jewish feminists are abandoning the teachings of their male forebears and adapting traditional mystical practices in radical new ways for women. Role-breaker Aviva Cantor, for example, resurrects the legendary Lilith, Adam’s first wife, banished by Yahweh from Eden for refusing to assume the missionary position in sex. Perhaps even more shocking than her demand for sexual equality, is the modern Lilith’s invasion of sacred spaces that for centuries have been closed to “unclean women.”
The practice of Kabbalah is especially problematic for men because it regards the Torah as the embodied “Shekhinah,” the female aspect of the male Yahweh, and Kabbalistic meditations are dedicated to uniting the divine couple. Reenacting the ancient sacred marriage of the goddess and her consort, male Kabbalists visualize the sacred Hebrew letters of the Torah in the form of a mating couple when making love to their wives. Yet, while human female partners are indispensable to this practice of “cleaving to God,” these meditations have never been open to women for fear they might reassert Lilith’s confident demand “to be on top.”
Clearly, Kabbalists like Madonna are changing all that.
By Perle Besserman
source : madonnanation/boston.com

Madonna’s successful marriage to film-maker Guy Ritchie is down to their devotion to studying the Kabbalah – according to close friend Vinnie Jones.
ock, stock and two smoking barrels and Snatch, credits the couple’s intense interest in the mystical branch of Judaism as being responsible for the strong four-year marriage.
The former soccer star says, “I think their religion is keeping them together.
“I think the Kabbalah side of it is helping them.”
source : contactmusic

Neil Sean of Sky News reports that Madonna recently bought a Fifties-style jukebox to use at her parties from London’s fashionable department store Selfridges.
source : popdirt

Madonna and Elvis Presley have been joined by the Red Hot Chili Peppers in a list of the 100 most successful recording artists of all time. The band are the only new entrants in this year’s list in The Guinness British Hit Singles and Albums book, which ranks artists according to how many weeks they have spent in the UK singles and albums charts.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers came in at number 97 and Spandau Ballet dropped out but Elvis still tops the list.
British Hit Singles and Albums editor David Roberts said: “It’s very rare to get new acts breaking into the Top 100.”
TOP10 : 1 Elvis Presley (2463), 2 Cliff Richard (1972), 3 Beatles (1742), 4 Queen (1725), 5 Madonna (1653), 6 Elton John (1615), 7 The Shadows (1578), 8 Michael Jackson (1477), 9 David Bowie (1459), 10 U2 (1402)
source : eveningtimes.co.uk

from Madonna.nu : We have learned that the Versace pictures will be featured in upcoming segments on Entertainment Tonight and Access Hollywood in the next coming week or so. Also, the ads will be featured first in Vanity Fair magazine.

Madonna is the #2 Most Popular Female Celebrity searched on Google in November !
source : google