Talk:Philip Berg

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Untitled

What a scam huh? Any more dirt on this guy out there? -max rspct 19:17, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

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)

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)

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 Perhaps the remarks by Elonka are no longer valid, and so the cleanup tag should be removed.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)

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)

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)

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.

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)

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)

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)

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)

Disambig?

It seems this person pops up when you search Philip Berg, but there's now another Philip J. Berg in PA who's becoming relevant due to his lawsuit re: the Obama campaign - apparently he also once ran for governor there and was active in the Democratic establishment? See http://www.obamacrimes.com - note that this guy seems like a wacko, but he's definitely not the same as Philip S. Berg, in many, many ways. TheWGP (talk) 23:47, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

So, yeah, maybe we should disambiguate. This guy has been all over conservative talk radio with his conspiracy theories. 204.52.215.107 (talk) 20:10, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Still an online pamphlet

As of the 30th of August, 2008, much of this page still reads like a promotional pamphlet. It seems that any changes that have been made or will be made to its biased nature will be removed by Rabbi Berg's adherents.

BLP and cites

According to WP:BLP, biographies for living persons are especially required to have cites. According to this policy, I removed the following section, which has had no sourced for 2 years. 212.67.168.234 (talk) 12:18, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Criticism

Critics of Rabbi Berg express concerns about his Kabbalistic pedigree, claims of special authority, adaptations to pop culture, business practices and high-pressure social tactics. In addition, it is claimed that no originality appears to be advanced in his work. His sole contribution is to popularise some basic concepts.

Credentials

Philip Berg claims to have a doctorate, and many of his books are listed as being by "Dr." Berg. However, in different interviews he has offered different explanations of what type of Ph.D. he earned. He claimed to have a Ph.D. in comparative religion, at another time he claimed to have a Ph.D. in jurisprudence (in biblical law), and later claimed that his Ph.D. was given as part of receiving semicha, traditional rabbinic ordination. , but Semicha programs - especially Israeli Orthodox ones - are never given together with a PhD. He has never shown his Ph.D. to investigative reporters, and refuses to name the organization that gave him the Ph.D. Much of his kabbalistic knowledge and teaching is allegedly derived from his Orthodox background, but neither he nor the Kabbalah Centre are known to be affiliated to, or recognized by any Orthodox rabbinical organizations.

Berg used to call his center "Yeshiva Kol Yehuda," and claimed that it was affiliated with a genuine Orthodox Jewish yeshiva, Yeshiva Kol Yehuda, in Jerusalem, Israel. The yeshiva in Israel was founded in 1922 by Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag, and later led by Rabbi Yehuda Tzvi Brandwein. Berg claimed to be a student of Rabbi Brandwein, and alleges that he received rabbinical ordination at this yeshiva. However, investigative journalists have interviewed this yeshiva. They deny any relationship between his group and theirs. They also deny Berg received rabbinical ordination there, but confirm he studied Kabbalah with Brandwein.

Quoting unsourced rubbish

This article seems to contain original research from beginning to end and the majority of the sources quoted are from the works of the originator of this cult and as such are not worthy of being taken at face value. This is a disgraceful article and not worthy of inclusion, in its present form, in a respected encyclopaedia such as Wiki. Manxwoman (talk) 10:37, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

• I agree that much of the deleted material about Berg's philosophy was excessive and promotional and was appropriately deleted. On the other hand we must also avoid letting this article go too far the other way; for example, the multiple paragraphs sourced to the the Telegraph obituary [2] were excessively POV in their attacks on Berg, especially since they seemed to speak in the voice of Wikipedia rather than attributing the negative claims. In addition, this material appeared to be more or less copied from the text of the Telegraph article, which violates Wikipedia's practices regarding close copying. --Arxiloxos (talk) 23:39, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Cancer curing water

Is there nothing to be said about the peddling of water that supposedly cured cancer? Nothing? Really? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.132.221.67 (talk) 15:33, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

• See Kabbalah Centre where that is mentioned. This article is a biographical article about Berg; there's no need to duplicate every Kabbalah Centre controversy in both places. --Arxiloxos (talk) 21:34, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Works by his sons

I don't see why it is necessary to detail books of his sons? There is already a seperate article on Yehuda Berg which can detail his publications there. J H Azriel (talk) 14:36, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• Rav-Berg.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 18:08, 1 May 2020 (UTC)