Madonna Will Bring Up Boy In The Kabbalah Faith

The boy Madonna is seeking to adopt will be brought up with the teachings of the controversial mystic religion Kabbalah, the pop star has confirmed. David Banda has already been seen wearing a red Kabbalah string bracelet on his wrist and Madonna, 48, revealed that he would study the scriptures in which she places her faith. “I believe in Jesus and I study the Kabbalah, so I don’t see why he can’t too,” she said in an American television interview.

The singer and her film director husband Guy Ritchie are part of a growing band of celebrities who have joined the Jewish religion. Her decision to adopt a Malawian child coincided with the creation about 10 months ago of her Raising Malawi foundation in partnership with Michael Berg, founder of the Kabbalah Centre in Los Angeles.

The disclosure that 13-month-old David will be raised in a religion described by some as a money-making cult will only add to the furore surrounding Madonna’s attempts to adopt the boy. She has been accused of using her wealth to bypass local laws restricting overseas adoptions.

David’s father, Yohane Banda, a peasant farmer who gave the boy up for adoption at five weeks after his wife died, has claimed that the pop star jumped ahead of an American woman who previously adopted three children from the orphanage and was arranging for her brother to adopt David. “She sent him pictures of my son and said he was going to come and collect him,” said Mr Banda. “We were waiting for them both to come back to the village but Madonna took him first. If these Americans had adopted him on one would have ever caused this fuss and I could be living my life as normal.”

Madonna has used high-profile television interviews on both sides of the Atlantic to hit back at her critics. In one she revealed that she had offered Mr Banda financial assistance so he could keep his son in Malawi but he refused.

“When I met him I said, ‘I would be happy to bring him back to your village and help you financially raise him’ and he said ‘No’. And there was a lot of translation situations and I couldn’t really understand that decision. When he said ‘no’, that was my sign that it was my responsibility to look after David.”

In an interview on BBC’s Newsnight with Kirsty Wark, Madonna said she felt “connected” to David when she saw him on a documentary she had commissioned about the huge number of children in Malawian orphanages.

Answering the critics who said she had bent the rules to bring David to England, she said: “I wasn’t given any special treatment. In fact I haven’t legally adopted David. I’ve been given interim adoption, which means I’m a foster parent.”