Dressing entirely in white is normal practice on a five-block stretch of Robertson Boulevard in West Los Angeles. Western men and women, garbed in white from their turbans to their Keds, traverse the busy streets surrounding the Sikh Temple. Further north, you have to wait until Friday afternoon to see white-clad young men in yarmulkes gathering outside the Kabbalah Learning Centre greeting each other with hugs, the spaces around them filled with women and children wearing multi-colored garments. Beyond this city street, one hears of the popularity of Kabbalah in the tabloids, as celebrities such as Madonna claim Kabbalah as their new "religion." How have the obscure and offensive ideas of medieval Jewish mysticism, expressed in doctrines like the demonic power of women's menstrual blood or the soulless bodies of Gentiles, been made palatable for so many from all stripes of life?