Word: hardoon
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...space in midtown Manhattan, is peppered with actors, musicians, some designers for DKNY and others at home among racks of classy outfits destined for sale at Barney's or Bergdorf Goodman. Even the speaker looks swank, in perfectly coordinated suit and tie and black velvet yarmulke. But Rabbi Abraham Hardoon is not here to talk pret-a-porter; he is discoursing on the ancient esoteric Jewish tradition of Kabbalah...
...Hardoon's topic--tonight and every Thursday, to packed classes--is how to align oneself with "the Light," the never-ending mystical emanation of the Unknowable God, Ein Sof. That he addresses this publicly at all is remarkable, since Kabbalah was a tightly guarded secret for centuries. The extent of change in that status, however, is revealed in a boast: "Someone came to me and asked, 'Is it true that Madonna studies Kabbalah?'" Hardoon says. He allows a Billy Crystal-esque pause. "Oh, you heard about that?" Laughter...
...heard. Madonna threw a Kabbalah cocktail party. Roseanne compares Kabbalah--favorably--to quantum physics. Elizabeth Taylor, Barbra Streisand and actress Sandra Bernhard study it. And Hardoon's Kabbalah Learning Center, the controversial organization that attracts many of the stars, is just the largest and most flamboyant of hundreds of courses in Kabbalah and related Jewish mysticism in places as diverse as Sudbury, Mass., and Boca Raton, Fla. Academic involvement in the discipline has multiplied, as have tangential pop artifacts like the best-selling Bible Code and an X-Files episode about a golem, the Jewish proto-Frankenstein monster. Publishers...
...story, denying that she hurt Matthew. With a smile often threatening to break out on her face, she showed no sign of anger or malice that might support a murder charge. "I don't think any of us really believed this was a murder case per se," said Laurence Hardoon, former head of the child-abuse prosecution unit in Middlesex County. "It would have been different if she had dropped him from a three-story building or stabbed a knife into him. But shaking--that's a real gray area...