Philip Berg dies; controversial rabbi with celebrity followers Rabbi Berg, known to his followers as the Rav, died Sept. 16, the center announced on its Web site. The Kabbalah Centre, headquartered in Los Angeles and run in recent years by his wife and their sons, said he was 86; public records indicate he was 84. A spokesman said he did not have any information about where Rabbi Berg, who lived in Beverly Hills, died or the immediate cause of his death. He had been in ill health since suffering a stroke in 2004. He was buried Tuesday in the Israeli city of Safed, a historic center of kabbalah study, Israeli media reported. Shraga Feivel Gruberger was born in Brooklyn on Aug. 20, 1929, according to public records. The Kabbalah Centre gives his year of birth as 1927. He grew up in a devout Orthodox Jewish family, began studying the Torah at age 3 and was ordained as a rabbi in his early 20s. He soon grew disillusioned with religious life, changed his name and took a job selling policies for New York Life Insurance Co. He made enough money to provide for his first wife and eight children, buy nice cigars and drive a Cadillac. But, he later wrote, he felt a spiritual thirst quenched only when he traveled to Israel and met Yehuda Brandwein, a kabbalah scholar. "He was, as I came to learn, uniquely gifted in his ability to draw back those who had become alienated," Rabbi Berg recalled in his book "Education of a Kabbalist." A Hebrew word meaning "received" or "tradition," kabbalah holds that the Torah contains hidden lessons about the meaning of life. Followers believe those teachings were revealed to Moses and then passed down orally until the 13th century, when they were published in a series of books known as the Zohar. Kabbalah was considered so challenging that even rigorously trained Orthodox scholars had to reach age 40 before they could begin studying it. Back in New York, Rabbi Berg began holding kabbalah classes in his insurance office. He and his wife divorced, and he married Karen Mulnick, his secular, street-smart former secretary. She pushed him to expand his student base, including Jewish men without religious education, and then Jewish women. After a stint in Israel in the 1970s, the couple set up the Kabbalah Centre in Queens. Rabbi Berg's impassioned teaching style, in which he illustrated the struggles of biblical figures through aspects of modern, made it a success. By the late 1980s, the Bergs had established branches around the world. Many followers treated the couple like deities, vying to eat Rabbi Berg's table scraps and addressing Karen Berg in the third person. Outside the center, controversy dogged Rabbi Berg. Brandwein's family disavowed any connection to him, and Rabbi Berg was sued for plagiarizing another kabbalah scholar. Orthodox leaders publicly condemned him as a fraud. The center's fortunes changed dramatically in 1996 when Madonna - who was raised Catholic - enrolled in a class. Jewish celebrities, including Roseanne Barr and Sandra Bernhard, were already studying there, but the pop star's interest made the Bergs more open to gentiles and drew increased attention from people in the entertainment industry. Gwyneth Paltrow, Ashton Kutcher, Elizabeth Taylor, Britney Spears and Demi Moore soon followed Madonna, and Rabbi Berg's center became internationally known. The center, a nonprofit religious organization, raked in money through merchandise sales and cash donations. Its assets are now believed to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The Bergs enjoyed a lifestyle of private jets, designer clothes and gambling trips. Rabbi Berg was at a Las Vegas hotel in 2004 when he suffered a stroke that left him unable to speak clearly or walk. Karen Berg and the couple's sons, Yehuda and Michael, took over operation of the center, and their stewardship has been accompanied by questions about its finances. The IRS and federal prosecutors in New York opened a tax-evasion investigation in 2010. Madonna subsequently removed her African charity from the center's control. The current status of the federal investigation is not known.