Talk:Philip Berg
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What a scam huh? Any more dirt on this guy out there? -max rspct 19:17, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
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[edit] His thoughts
The listing of what this guy might be thinking is way too long and segmented. It needs to be summarized in a coherent fashion. PhatJew 18:54, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Cleanup needed
This appears to be mostly a promotional piece for Berg and the Kabbalah Centre, which has been pretty well proven to be a scam. [1]. This article needs to have all the extra wording stripped out, to make it more encyclopedic, and less of an advertisement. --Elonka 18:02, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
- The acadamic study of religion shows an aboriginal shaman can demonstrate both fraud and piety simultaneously, tricking adherents to generate awe. This surprising combination of motives may also be true of various "modern" mystics. Describing the Kabbalah Centre as a "scam", implies that Berg disbelieves his own Kabbalah, which seems unlikely. When criticizing Berg, the article must focus on specific accusations made by relevant critics based on specific events, and less time reading Berg's mind. The American legal philosophy of "innocent until proven guilty" can apply here too. Of course, Berg can be criticized, like any group leader can be, but the criticism needs to be more fair and less mob-rule in tone. --Haldrik 21:17, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
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- A 'cleanup' may be understood as 'the act of cleaning' something; and 'to clean something' is to rid it from dirt, dust, stains and bad smells. In the Wikipedia:cleanup article, this refers to articles with problems (ungrammatical, poorly formatted, not ordered, confusing, etc.) The Wikipedia:Cleanup resources article provides no resources, it's only a huge collection of tags. But the issue here is as follows: in its current state, this article is nowhere found to be guilty of any grammatical, formatting, ordering, or unclear text defects. On the contrary, I find it clearly written, informative and useful. Perhaps the remarks by Elonka are no longer valid, and so the cleanup tag should be removed. May I do so? --AVM 23:17, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] POV
Funny that this guy seems to be a POV magnet. I'm cleaning up some of the undocumented / POV claims to make the article more consice. Ex: "Phillip Berg is the leading stockholder of the worldwide Kabbalah Centre organization" Correct me if I am wrong, but I though that as a non-profit (with some corporate holdings) they do not have stockholders. If anyone finds evidence to the contrary, please correct me. --Lhooq 23:06, 17 August 2006
Depends on how they incorporated and if they legitimately have 501(c)3 status.
Yeah there is way too much POV and strange information in this article. Masterhomer 
06:44, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
It appears to be a straightforward press release from the Kabbalah Centre. On that basis, and in the absence of any addition/editing to make it remotely NPOV, it should simply be deleted, should it not?--Peter Owen 11:42, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Vandalism
A user at IP 128.42.64.251has repeatedly deleated portions of the bio, and all references besides the official Kabbalah Center website without contributing new information. I'm attempting to restore the article to it's previous revisions. lhooq 11:12, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Lawsuits
The page claims (claimed - I removed the unsourced reference) that the Kabbalah Centre initiates lawsuits; however, in the book "Education of a Kabbalist" by Phillip Berg, Rav Berg explains that he avoids lawsuits as advised by his teacher, Rabbi Brandwein.
[edit] Undeniable merit (despite all criticisms)
In any case, liar or sage, fake rabbi or honest, venerable scholar, Philip Berg possibly has a fair amount of true merit at attempting the unprecedented, huge task of making available to the general public such a vast, complex, often concealed, arcane, and greatly debated body of tradition, mysticism, dogma, religious and esoteric knowledge and wisdom, as is the Kabbalah. --AVM 03:10, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Neutrality
Some parts of this article seem to be biased against him or even for him. For example, "Berg is a popularizer of Kabbalah and draws on various aspects of popular culture for examples to explain the often cryptic texts of Kabbalah. He sees pop phenomena, like all things, as genuine revelations of the "light" the presence of God." uses emotive language that almost seems to attempt to diminish what he teaches as being mere pop-culture Kabbalah or a fad, as it is so often criticized as being. The "Miraculous claims" section is entirely false. HE personally does no selling, and by naming this section such, it implies that he himself purports to be able to perform miracles. But then talks about The Zohar instead, but makes no mention of any quotations or actions he has said or done to be able to heal personally.
Also, all the references (in the references section) are from critics and cult watches, none are from anything from his writings or The Kabbalah Centre itself.
Caol.Kailash 20:14, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Citations
This article severely lacks proper citations. There's bits and pieces and it seems disjointed in its attempts to cite.
Caol.Kailash 20:14, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Jewish?
Saying this cult has anything to do with Judaism or even Kabbalah is a stretch at best. Proxy User (talk) 15:49, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
