In the mid-1990s, following other pop stars and celebrities, Madonna (Madonna Louise Ciccone, b. 1958) started to study at the Kabbalah Center, the largest contemporary Kabbalistic movement. The Kabbalah Center was established in the late 1960s by Philip Berg (1927-2013) and some other followers of the teaching of Yehuda Ashlag (1885-1954). Ashlag, who was born in Warsaw, Poland, and immigrated to Palestine in 1922, developed an innovative doctrine of modern Kabbalah (which he termed “altruistic communism”) that integrated concepts and theories of sixteenth-century Lurianic Kabbalah with modern, socialist ideas. According to Ashlag’s Kabbalah, the divine creator is an infinite, altruistic will to bestow on others, while created beings are essentially an egoistic will to receive. Human beings, born with the will to receive, may change their nature into a will to bestow, and thus overcome their egoism and become divine. Such a transformation, according to Ashlag, can only be achieved in a communist community, in which every person is able to give to others, while his own needs are taken care of by his companions. The way to reach the perfect society and the perfection of the individual is, according to Ashlag, the dissemination of Kabbalah.

Philip Berg, who was born to a Jewish Orthodox family in the United States, studied Kabbalah with two of Ashlag's disciples, Yehuda Brandwein (1903-1969) and Levi Krakovski (1891-1966). Berg developed and reinterpreted the teaching of Ashlag in the spirit of the American culture of the later twentieth century. He downplayed the socialist ideas of Ashlag, added doctrines and rituals taken from other Kabbalistic schools, and integrated them with New Age concepts and practices. Developing the universalistic stance of Ashlag's Kabbalah, he opened the Kabbalah Center to non-Jews too. Gradually, the Kabbalah Center became the largest contemporary Kabbalistic movement.

Madonna, the most famous disciple of the Kabbalah Center, integrated Kabbalistic themes and ideas in her songs, performances, video-clips, and children's books. Her song and video-clip “Die Another Day” (2002), which were produced as a promo for the James Bond film of the same title, presented Ashlag's ideas (as interpreted in the Kabbalah Center) concerning the overcoming of one's ego and the conquering of suffering and death through the power of the divine name of 72 letters.