While the rest of Israel swooned over visiting international pop star Madonna, a leading Jerusalem-based rabbi expressed disgust over the invasion of the Jewish state by the singer and a small entourage of Hollywood friends.

Madonna was joined in visiting Israel for the Rosh Hashanah holiday by movie star Demi Moore and her husband, actor Ashton Kutcher, Rosie O'Donnell and fashion designer Donna Karan, all of whom are practitioners of a cultish Hollywood-based version of Rabbinical Jewish mysticism, or Kabbala.

The director of a major Jerusalem-based Kabbala yeshiva told The Jerusalem Post that while he is unimpressed with the antics of Madonna and her friends, he is not surprised by their attraction to Kabbala.

“It is a known fact in Kabbala that impurity and evil are inherently attracted to sanctity. That's why people of Hollywood, a place of iniquity and lasciviousness, are naturally attracted to the holiness of Kabbala,” said the rabbi on condition of anonymity. “That's why someone like that lady - I don't even want to mention her name - is so attracted to the Kabbala.”

Despite not being Jewish, Madonna declared herself an “ambassador for Judaism” during a two-hour meeting with Israeli President Shimon Peres in Jerusalem.

The version of Kabbala practiced by Madonna and other Hollywood stars has been roundly rejected by mainstream Kabbala and Torah scholars and rabbis both in the US and Israel.