That Madonna article would annoy people. From a reader:

To say that Kaballah is a Jewish mystical tradition predating organized religion is a contradiction in terms and a completely stupid thing to say.
Hinduism, and its offshoot, Zoroastrianism (which became the Persian religion of Greek history and Jewish scripture), both go back to at least 2000 BCE. Sumerian/Assyrian and Egyptian religions are at least as old. Judaism itself — in a historical, not a religious sense — is a synthesis of these traditions from about 1000 BCE, just as Christianity is a synthesis of Judaism and Greek philosophy. Kaballah, like Hermeticism, and scores of Western mystical movements, comprises those elements that were left out of the Jewish and Christian syntheses.