A HIDDEN CAMERA visits the London Kabbalah Centre. The Telegraph has the story and it isn't pretty. Excerpt:

Having paid �860, I was next offered a trip to celebrate a Kabbalah religious festival in Israel. Rabbi Philip Berg, the leader of the Kabbalah Centre movement, would be present. I was presented with an invoice for $6,232 (�3,331); flights were to be extra.

Then I had a session with Rabbi Eliyahu Yardeni, a Kabbalah Centre teacher. He told me about the meaning of life and the secrets of the universe, and volunteered a staggering piece of information: "Just to tell you another thing about the six million Jews that were killed in the Holocaust. The question was that the Light was blocked. They didn't use Kabbalah."

It sounded as though he was blaming the Holocaust on its victims. Then he made a vitriolic attack on mainstream rabbis, labelling them the enemy of the Kabbalah Centre. I'm not Jewish, but his unprovoked rantings about Hitler's victims left me questioning his sanity.

My encounter with the Kabbalah people still makes me angry. On the one hand, I have experienced first-class surgery and care at the Royal Marsden Hospital which has, at the very least, extended my life. Yet that hospital is struggling to raise money for essential equipment that saves lives.

On the other hand, you've got the Kabbalah Centre, this wacky outfit, where, for �860, I bought a few bottles of water and some books I can't read. The Kabbalah Centre is attracting the weak and those who are most vulnerable. I know, because I've been through cancer.

And here's the Aramaic angle, which comes earlier in the article:

We talked about my cancer. [senior figure Chagai] Shouster was very careful to stress that he wasn't promising miracles, but he said there were tools that could help, including the water and the Zohar - the Kabbalah books in Aramaic and Hebrew.

[...]

"No, nothing is a gift, the water is not a gift, the Zohar is not a gift, as you know� There is the water cost. A case of 12 boxes costs �45 and the Zohar is �289. And the Shabbat meal is �26."

Shouster explained the importance of the Zohar books. No matter that they were written in Aramaic and, to me, indecipherable, I was told that I only had to run my fingers over the pages and scan the words for the "tools" to start working. Their tools, however, weren't cheap - the bill was �860, including dinner that night.

Whatever you make of the rest of the bill, the charge for the Aramaic Zohar is a rip-off, considering that you can download a good chunk of Matt's critical text for free. And you can get the whole Soncino Zohar in Aramaic and English for only $179.