by Carl Swanson

Surrounded by pillows and lanterns on the Moroccan-style set of her most recent one-woman show, "I'm Still Here Damn It!," which played on Broadway last winter and then toured the country through the summer, she told stories full of displeasure and longing in a bratty deadpan, trying somehow to heal the world by pointing out its hypocrisies. Having rigorously dieted and exercised, Bernhard wore an impractical but fashionable see-through dress. She spoke of Madonna, Courtney Love and Manolo Blahnik shoes. Her celebrity-filled world might seem an odd place to search out a moral universe. But in the end, when she sings a conflicted and passionate "Midnight Train to Georgia," you forgive her for thinking that anybody would find it shocking that, say, a famous model like Naomi Campbell (whom Bernhard lashes relentlessly) is a bit self-involved. After all, Bernhard's sharing her life with us, and her life just happens to consist of famous people, as does her Judaism.

For the last few years, Sandra Bernhard has been one of the leading celebrity proponents of Kabbalah, the increasingly popular mystic tradition developed from the Zohar, an esoteric 13th-century work written by Spanish Jew Moses de Leon. Jewish tradition has taught that only those who are thoroughly grounded in basic Jewish texts should attempt to study Kabbalah. But seven hundred years later, Bernhard has gotten Madonna and Roseanne Barr into it.

Bernhard's Brazilian personal trainer introduced her to Kabbalah about four years ago through the Kabbalah Learning Center in Los Angeles, and she now believes in it passionately. "There is no real understanding for why you're Jewish without Kabbalah," says Bernhard. "There just isn't."

In her hometown of Scottsdale, Ariz. -- where she became a bat mitzvah -- Sandra Bernhard was raised in the Conservative tradition. "But my family didn't really adhere," she says in her hotel room before performing her show in Minneapolis. "We didn't keep kosher. It was more cultural. Although I did go to Hebrew school. I was more into it than my parents were."

Bernhard blames her parents' minimal observance in part on the "small towns" in which she was raised, which lacked coherent Jewish communities. "It just wasn't where they were at," she says. After she moved to Los Angeles and started performing, she continued to celebrate the High Holy Days and Passover, often with her family.

Bernhard launched her career playing Jerry Lewis's maniacal stalker in "The King of Comedy" (1983). The neediness, passion and desire for fame in that character remains a part of her on-stage persona today. It is a persona that she honed in clubs. Her act slowly became a hybrid of storytelling, one-liners and singing. Funny just wasn't enough for her.

In 1990, she released "Without You, I'm Nothing," a film based on her stage show. In the movie, while cheesy "patriotic" drum-and-fife music plays, Bernhard talks about "the romance of being Gentile," of being named "Happy" and having a brother named "Chip." A multiracial group of Christmas carolers appears wearing Freddy Kreuger knife-gloves, then the camera cuts to an outdoor scene of a black girl reading a book about Kabbalah in front of a kosher butcher. It is an incoherent scene that doesn't really add up to much, but her Jewish identity is clearly evident.

While "Without You, I'm Nothing" can be confusing at times, Bernhard makes one thing very clear: "Because I've been exposed to so many different kinds of people, I don't ever think of myself as a cliche Jewish performer," she says. "I grew up around non-Jews, and all my friends were non-Jews. I've traveled extensively and, in many ways, I think that influences my work as much as anything else. What doesn't inform my work is Jewish neuroses, the dark, angry, self-deprecating, neurotic side of being Jewish. That was not present in the way I was raised. What does [inform my work] are the better, more positive aspects of Judaism ¾ the warmth and the exposure to certain intellectual levels and a certain confidence in myself."

It's interesting to compare the swirl of personae present in "Without You" to how she sticks to playing herself in "I'm Still Here." In the new show, there's a lot of talk of renewal and healing; it doesn't leave the kind of loose ends that the earlier one did. She clearly has a better sense of where she stands now. And that's in part because of Kabbalah.

"I was always very committed to being Jewish," Bernhard says. "I never got into alternative forms of spirituality or philosophies, but I always felt like there was something lacking spiritually in my Judaism. That's why I was so fulfilled and happy to find the availability of Kabbalah. It's where spirituality begins. It makes all the practices and traditions of day-to-day life make sense. There's a spiritual basis for everything. Traditions are not just rules and robotic behavior although many people get fooled into thinking that."

But Bernhard is careful to distinguish between her strenuous Kabbalah studies and becoming more religiously observant. "That's where the mistake is often made," she said. "Kabbalah is not about religiosity. It's about spirituality. The religious traditions are all tools to change consciousness. The Torah is the road map. The Zohar is the deeper meaning and the explanation." Religiosity alone, she thinks, "means being completely numb and detached from spirituality."