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When she was just 18 years old, Debbie Haski-Leventhal escaped the entrenched lies and brainwashing of a dangerous cult. Originally based in Tel Aviv, Israel, Debbie became involved in the Kabbalah Centre after her mother, vulnerable after the loss of her ten-year-old son, looked to the charismatic institution for comfort. As the power and influence of the Kabbalah Centre grew, so did its control over Debbie’s life. She shares the backstory of this mystic religion, how it expanded to the United States, and, most importantly, how she escaped its clutches. Today, Debbie is a professor at Macquarie University and the author of Make it Meaningful: How to Find Purpose in Life and Work. She inspires others to be a force for good as she exposes the darkness of the Kabbalah Centre and celebrates the beauty of her now found freedom.
TAKEAWAYS
Modern Kabbalah, as it is known in mainstream circles, stems from ancient mystery philosophies
‘Rabbi’ Philip Berg - and the Berg family - is responsible for bringing Kabbalah to the United States
Until the Bergs streamlined Kabbalah, it was a ‘secret’ religion only accessible to men
The Bergs’ version of Kabbalah is a cult, designed to control others and enrich themselves
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You're listening to the Counter-Culture Mom Show.
Our kids are under fire every day, with the media and pop culture persuading them to give
up their faith and Christian values.
Stay tuned now as former Hollywood actress and pop culture expert Tina Griffin helps
you counter these messages and safely navigate today's pop culture chaos.
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A tragedy led Professor Debbie Haske 11 Falls family to join a cult at a Kabbalah Center,
where she grew up until she managed to escape at 19 under threat of an arranged marriage.
Higher education and volunteering transformed Debbie's life and she has since devoted her
entire career to studying the pro social behavior of individuals and companies.
Her biggest fear after leaving the cult was that her life would be meaningless.
Today Debbie is a Professor of Corporate Social Responsibility at Macquarie University
and author of six books and dozens of articles and a public speaker on purpose, impact and
meaning.
Her life mission is to create a ripple effect impact by inspiring people to be a force
for good in our world.
She is absolutely making a difference.
This is the Conor Coach Mom Show and your host Tina Griffin, FEMA this week.
This will be a jaw dropping home run episode on our Kabbalah series with Professor Debbie
Haske 11th fall from Macquarie University Debbie, you are a phenomenal.
Your life has massive meaning and we need to clone you immediately.
How you doing?
It's real.
I love that.
I'm like, do you speak all over the place as we're getting set up?
You're like, yeah, I speak all over, but I could do a little bit more.
I'm like, everybody right here right now, we are going to make sure that we flood her
website and I'm going to, I never do this right away and they get go.
People know that.
Debbie Haske 11th fall.com, we're going to have this link in the show notes.
I want her calendar booked to the point where her address is going to be some kind of
airline address.
Okay.
Get her busy people.
First of all, this is why you need to get busy.
When I was living in LA, Hollywood Hills, I met a lot of celebrities that would wear
that red Kabbalah bracelet and they would tell me about what they believed and I'm
like, how can people believe in that?
There's no way, but I went there as a Christian, so I understood, but a lot of people were
sucked into the Kabbalah cult deal and you're going to talk about it because you survived
and got out of it.
So there's not many people talking about this.
That's why you have to be book solid basically right here.
You've taught thousands of students about corporate social responsibility, sustainability
and social impact.
You're having a massive impact on this culture.
Why did your family join the cult and why did you leave it?
And you give us a little history and what in the world happened to you?
I'm three growing up in Israel and we just lost my brother.
So he was not even 10.
He was diagnosed with cancer when he was seven and he passed away.
So as you can imagine, it was devastated.
My first childhood memories are of my mother sitting on the floor crying and me trying
to make her happy.
Not so successfully.
And so for two years, she really tortured herself with questions that people often ask
after tragedy, such as why did it happen to me?
What did I do to deserve it?
And looking for answers and comfort, she stumbled upon the Kabbalah center.
There was a small ad in paper, come for a free lecture and she went in and back at the
time it was a tiny organization only in Tel Aviv with the Bergs.
So we used to call him the Rob, Rabbi Berg and his wife Karen and they've started something
that was supposed to be revolutionary because Kabbalah is the mysticism of Judaism that
until then was only allowed for men over 40 who musters all the scholarly working Judaism
to go and study.
And what the Bergs said, which was initially quite powerful, was we're going to open this
knowledge up to everyone.
So men, women, children, everyone is welcome to learn Kabbalah, initially great.
And so they got people to join and their version of Kabbalah is not the original version
of Kabbalah.
It's a bit of a mismatch between Kabbalah, some new age ideas, Buddhism, whatever.
So it was a bit of a mismatch with a lot of rituals, a lot of mysticism, a lot of spirituality,
I'm a bit better than others.
And so to speak about the red string, because I grew up from the very first days of the
center, I've seen how it changed.
And this is a great example of how the whole Kabbalah center came to be.
Okay, now you just said red string and that was a pretty show set up.
So just to preface what we're going to talk about here briefly, which I'm so glad you
are, everybody watch all four episodes this week as we dissect this far-fetched religion
and people have to be freed from it.
When I lived in LA, I was telling you when we were setting up that I remember a bunch
of celebrities wearing this red bracelet on set.
I don't know if it was string or rubber bands, something.
I just remember being thin red and a lot of people will be playing with it or like touching
it around their wrist while we're shooting movies.
And I'm like, what in the world is going on?
What does that mean?
So that's the red string you're referring to.
Can you tell everybody what that means, why people wear it, and what we actually gives
us a symbol of who we got to go after to teach truth to?
Exactly.
So in the beginning, part of the rituals that we had, we used to go in different parts
of Israel and go to different graveyards and cemeteries.
And we had all these different rituals with the four fathers of Judaism or whatever.
So one of the rituals we had was to go to Rachel Stoom in Bethlehem, take these red string
and kind of circle it around the tomb seven times, believing that once we do that, that
red string becomes very powerful in protecting you against the evil eye.
And it was given to everyone for free.
The reason why I'm telling you this is because changes happen over the years that kind of
when the Kabbalah sent a mood from a small organization aiming to educate people about
Kabbalah to a powerful mechanism to make the birds reach, it has changed.
So over the years, I've seen that we stopped going to Rachel Stoom.
Actually, it was really dangerous at the time after the first in Defada was very dangerous
to go to Bethlehem.
And what they've done is they just took the red string, which was just a red string.
And then they were selling it.
Each little piece was 25 bucks.
Oh my gosh, imagine you go to the arts and craft shop.
You get ready on, you cut it to pieces, and then you sell it for 25 bucks.
And this, my friend, is the essence of what happened to the Kabbalah Center.
It became very commercial, very powerful, a great way for them to make tons of money,
to people's vulnerability, and you know, people come there because someone in their family
seek, they want a red string, they think it will protect them, it's just a piece of
red yarn.
That's what I was thinking too, and I first saw them with what they were wearing.
But they really believe who wear it, that it has massive power and protection.
People will put it really if anything.
And it also then became a symbol that you are a member of this circle, that you are a member
of the cult.
So it was an easy way to identify the members of the Kabbalah Center, like you saw, you
know, with Madonna and the Mimur and Gwyneth Blackburn, and a lot of celebrities were wearing
these red string, either to protect themselves from the evil eye, whatever that means, or
they wanted to show their affiliation with the sentel, usually both.
Yep, so well said, thank you for dissecting that.
I always had questions about that.
And then I was afraid to step foot in, whatever meeting they were going to have, thinking
I might not come out because at that point I was already reading enough about sacrifice
and adrenaline chrome and all this stuff 25 years ago.
I'm like, you know what?
I don't want to be like victim number 5,473 for the week.
So your mom was devastated with your son's passing, totally understandable.
She sees this add into paper to join the Kabbalah Center that was at that time smaller there
in Israel.
Where is the Kabbalah Center today?
Where is their main headquarters located?
So as I said, it was a humble organization in the first few years, a few hundred members,
but it started growing substantially.
When I was about 12, so say six or seven years after we've joined, it started growing.
At that time the Bergs moved to New York, they took with them seven guys, and that was
coined the Hevre, the guys.
And what they started doing is Bergs wrote a lot of books.
I don't want to call him Rabbi Bergs because there was a lot of actually media releases saying
he's not even a rabbi, he's not a doctor, he used to call himself Dr. Rabbi Bergs, not
a doctor, not a rabbi.
So I'm just going to call him Bergs.
So Bergs wrote several books, and the guys, the Hevre, took those books, went around
in New York and started selling them a little bit like Jehovah Witnesses.
So you go, you knock on people's door and you try to sell them.
In addition, there was a big set of the Zohar, which is really the essence of Kabbalah.
It's a set, I think, of 24 books, and they said it was very powerful because Burgundy's
sons would bless the books, which was not true.
They would bless each set of books.
But if you buy them, it would be like starting miracles in your life.
We were told that the sets of books were sold to different countries around the world and
they helped to stop wars.
When you want to believe anything, you believe anything.
Yes.
And so then they started this in New York and then they started getting more people first
from Israel, to New York, growing the Hevre, which was free labor.
If people were not making any money, they were staying in a house provided to them by
the Kabbalah Center.
They had no ability to leave if they wanted to.
So they were started to build these communes of people, the Hevre, going around doing
what they call plowing and that means selling lots and lots of books.
In addition, there were the courses, there were merchandise, there were all these things
that they were selling.
And we lived with them between when I was 12 and 14, I had like three houses in New
York, you know, humble normal houses.
When I came back at 16, they were living in a mansion.
And then later they moved to Los Angeles and it just became like a huge, very wealthy
organization that you know of today.
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You talked about rituals in the first couple of minutes of this episode.
Can you explain what rituals you saw heard about new happen of people that were involved
with this cult?
Rituals are very common methods to differentiate between the insiders of a cult and the outsiders.
They have all these rituals that for outsiders make no sense whatsoever.
These include just a random list.
Diving in the sea of Galilei naked, 200 people to purify for your sins, rolling in the
snow naked, slaughtering chickens that were circled around your head so that the chicken
will die and you would go to life.
Sitting underneath the full moon with your hands opened so Berk can look into whether
you're going to leave or die in the next year.
Just the list goes on and on and on, staying all night in a cave with Candles to study
the Zohar and so it was just really, really killer.
For people, I remember doing things like standing underneath the full moon in the street, people
looking at us like we're crazy and my thought at the time was they're probably really jealous
of us because we are the enlightened ones.
Our life is meaningful whereas their life is meaningless and which is how my fear to leave
the cult was created.
Manipulation, unbelievable.
There's so much I want to say about what you just said.
I have to dissect, you got out of the cult at what age and how did you get out?
At 18 and a half after living in a community in Tel Aviv with, I don't know, 12 women in
one apartment in Tel Aviv during the Kharishah, during the plowing, selling the books, Karen
said I can go to Paris and if I do well there, she has someone in mind for me because she
was able, so they said, to look into people's souls and find your soulmate.
So at the time she would go, Tina, you marry this guy, Josh and you just did it because
obviously she could see into your soul and so she said to me, you're going to Paris and
if you do well, which means to bring a lot of money, we're going to marry you, which was
my dream.
I wanted to have a wedding in the Kabbalah center.
So I'm going to Paris.
We're living 14 people in one tiny apartment in some weird neighborhood in Paris.
It was not as glamorous, three of us girls were sleeping in the same room.
One of us had to sleep underneath the bed because there was not enough room.
Our passports were taken.
I had no money.
I was not able to leave if I wanted to.
In a way, today as a professor of corporate social responsibility, these are the characteristics
of modern slavery.
That's back.
I was there for a few months.
I was trying to sell the books.
It was hell.
It was very difficult.
I also saw these young women who just got married and had a baby and how miserable they
were.
They were locked in the apartment all day, had to clean and cook for everyone.
They were not happy.
So this is not the dream wedding that I had.
It was like starting to look like a nightmare and at some point, I'm hurting my back and
I can't go out and sell books and bring in holy money.
So Karen sends me back to Israel, no marriage for you.
Lucky me.
I was able to escape.
I was able to get out, no more communes, no more selling the books.
But as I said, I was really scared.
I thought that my life is going to be meaningless.
They brainwashed us that people outside the cold leave this life of hedonism, pleasure,
sex, food and drinks and they have nothing to even lay for.
And that was my biggest fear.
And yeah, it makes complete sense.
Now it's Karen, one of the founders.
Yeah.
So Philip and Karen Berg, they were the birds.
They started the Kabbalah center.
Unreal.
Are they still alive today?
Both of them are dead.
They had two sons, Yehuda and Michael.
Yehuda was accused for sexual assault and he ended up stepping down and now Michael leads
the whole thing.
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Debbie, we know that God has a plan and purpose for your life.
You are absolutely doing your calling, you're warning people out there about cults, activities,
how you can get out of it, you get out of that cult.
Can you give everybody a one-two punch on how you actually got out of this Kabbalah cults?
So there is a physical leaving, right?
Because you have to actually get out of the community.
But then there is the mental leaving that you say, okay, I don't want to subscribe to
these beliefs anymore and that's what I did because I realized that some of the things
I believed in, some of my dogmas were wrong and I was like, I'm going through a meaning
search and I'm going to look for answers on my own.
So that was even more difficult and very scary.
But as part of my meaning search, I went to university and I studied philosophy so I can
ask all the big questions and as part of that, I volunteered with a kid and that changed
my life because for the first time ever, I realized what it feels like to make a real difference.
And so I volunteered in this project, became the coordinator, the vice managerialist,
and I did a master's degree in offer profit management and a PhD on volunteering, dedicating
my life to helping others find purpose and meaning.
Everybody out there, you have to definitely get your hands on this phenomenal read, make
it meaningful, how to find purpose in life and work, right here on Amazon, check it out,
her life story.
Last but not least, we have to get you into speak, grab your goods, resources and so much
more.
The website is Debbie Haske 11thall.com, it's Debbie H-A-S-K-I-L-E-V-E-N-T-H-A-L.com, check
it out everybody, tons of resources, excellent information, find out more about her story.
You rock what an insight to someone that left this cabala cult.
I knew it was a cult in L.A. 25 years ago, you just added gas to the flame, it's all I
got to say.
I'm only regret I got is that you and I didn't cross past two decades ago, but we did
today for this time and place and purpose.
Get out there, watch all four episodes and blast this out to the masses, it's important
we get this critical information out there so we know and discern what the lies are from
the truth and we can lead people the right direction.
Debbie, keep up the excellent work, I hope that you get a lot of speaking engagements
here in 2026 and beyond, go get them, girl.
Thank you so much, I had a blast.
Thanks for joining us for the Counter Culture Mom Show with your host, Tina Griffin.
For over two decades, Tina has traveled the globe exposing how pop culture is glamorizing
harmful behaviors without showing the consequences and how these messages are wreaking havoc on
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The Counter Culture Mom Show with Tina Griffin

The Counter Culture Mom Show with Tina Griffin

The Counter Culture Mom Show with Tina Griffin