Judaism a la Madonna

June 22--So on the one hand, she wears a Jewish star, says she attends synagogue, performs with a version of the prayer accessory known as tefillin and with Hebrew letters flashing across a screen, and has let it be known that she won't have concerts on the Jewish Sabbath.

On the other hand, Madonna is not Jewish. And her name is the least of the problem, although she appears to be addressing that issue as well. In an ABC interview broadcast Friday night, she said she had taken on the Hebrew name Esther. But Liz Rosenberg, her spokeswoman, denied that she was dropping the name Madonna. "Sometimes people have their secret name, a dream name," said Rosenberg, adding: "If someone calls her Esther she wouldn't turn around."

Given this apparent contradiction, what then, Talmudic dialectic aside, is one to make of Madonna and her infatuation with Judaism, which is on brassy display in her traveling show, the "Re-Invention" world tour?

For one thing, Madonna is just the latest in a great tradition of stars who have been beguiled by Judaism. For Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe, marriage may have been the motive, to Eddie Fisher and Arthur Miller, respectively. But for Sammy Davis Jr. it was not. In the case of Madonna, who was born Roman Catholic, her fascination with Jewish images flows mostly out of her attraction to something that she calls Kabbalah but that many dismiss as a distillation of New Age notions about the genuine Kabbalah.

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