by Carl Swanson

The Zohar is the 24-volume text of Kabbalah, and adherents are encouraged to carry a volume around with them in the original Aramaic, even if they can't actually read it. The tradition's supposed magical aspects, along with the expensive self-help-style seminars it has engendered, have caused some people to criticize the Kabbalah movement.

Some Jews have expressed concern for different reasons: "The new popularity of Kabbalah shows that people are searching for deeper meaning," said Dovid Brownstein, a Hasidic Jew who was raised on practical Kabbalistic wisdom. "And this is wonderful, as long as the 'fad' aspect of it doesn't dilute the tradition's real meaning."

Still, what may appear to the cynic to be an incredibly complex mystical tradition boiled down to easily-digestible portions for the spiritually troubled on the go, seems to have had a profound impact on Bernhard and other famous adherents including Barbra Streisand, Courtney Love, Jeff Goldblum, Laura Dern, Donna Karan, Sandy Galin and Isaac Mizrahi.

Thousands have newly embraced Kabbalah Jews and non-Jews are packing the more than 29 new Kabbalah meeting places that opened around the country in the last year. But there are many more who haven't bought in.

To Bernhard, those who dismiss the tradition are afraid , "afraid of making changes and letting go of bad behavior," she says. "Once people know they can't be hateful anymore, they're going to have to let go of it. And that hatefulness is protecting a lot of people."

Letting go is what Sandra Bernhard has done. Though she still steps on stage to slay the stupid and the banal, it's with a new self-containment. "It's not about blame anymore," she says. "It's part of my connection with the light. Letting go is something you have to go through to learn, to evolve. When you start to understand the tikkun [repairing] process, making your corrections, everything falls into place.

"Even something as boring as going to get your passport renewed. You suddenly realize that everything's connected; wherever you are, you need to be there, and wherever you aren't, you don't need to be there. It's all very connected, and it's very deep. When you realize that, you start to shed all the insecurities and fears, anger and hatred."

Before Kabbalah, she said, "I would never have had a kid." Bernhard, who gave birth last year, has refused to say who the father is, and has been raising the girl with the help of a nanny, who has a separate apartment on the floor below hers in Manhattan. Cecily and the nanny are with her in Minneapolis during our interview, and they live together in her house in Los Angeles when they're not in New York City.

Cecily is being raised with her mother's beliefs. "During my pregnancy, she heard the Torah reading," Bernhard said. "She felt it. It's all part of her DNA. We go to Shabbat every weekend. She'll probably go to nursery school [at the Kabbalah Learning Center]."

Bernhard says the Kabbalah Learning Center in Los Angeles has been tolerant of her lesbianism. "They do believe you meet your soul mate," she said. "Every relationship you have is really with the light."

Which doesn't mean it's easy. "They've been forced to accept alternative lifestyles," she said of the predominately heterosexual population of the Center. "This is part of their tikkun. They've had to change as well."

With all her newfound inner peace, it seems strange for Bernhard to continue her carping and skewering on stage. But to her, it makes perfect sense. "Being passionate about something is often mistaken for having anger," she explains. "I think it's important to call people on their hypocrisy and dishonesty- it's part of spirituality." So she's not going to let the tranquil aspects of Kabbalah stand in the way of her criticizing supermodels. They're connected.

"It's really about changing the consciousness of the world, you know," she says. "That's what all the prayers and meditations are about, changing the consciousness of people." Or at the very least, changing the consciousness of one person -- herself.