Madonna to celebrate
holiday in Israel

Plus: Is McCartney’s wife the real diva?

Frank Micelotta / Getty Images file

Madonna and 4,000 of her closest friends will celebrate the Jewish New Year in Tel Aviv.

By Jeannette Walls

msnbc.com

updated 2:37 a.m. ET July 15, 2004

Madonna has turned into a very observant Jewish girl.

The lapsed Catholic — who has embraced Kabbalah — is traveling to Tel Aviv with her hubby and children in mid-September, where she and 4,000 other followers of the controversial sect of Judaism plan to celebrate Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, says a source.

“It will be a three-day pilgrimage, headed by the Rav [Philip Berg, head of the Kabbalah Centre],” says an insider. “The faithful will be staying at three hotels. Madonna has booked one hotel where she and her friends and family will stay.” Another insider says that the event will be “filled with dignitaries” and “star-studded” and will likely include “major celebrity Kabbalahists” — possibly Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher.

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Madonna’s rep wasn’t available for comment at press time.

Political temperature may be rising in Korea
IMAGE: Michael Moore
Peter Kramer / Getty Images
There’s talk that “Fahrenheit 911” may sway U.S. voters — and now it’s being used in an attempt to affect politics overseas, as well.

Michael Moore’s controversial documentary is getting a special screening on July 19 by Korea’s Democratic Liberal Party in hopes that it will heat up the anti-war movement there. South Korea recently announced that it plans to send additional troops to Iraq — which has angered some, including the DLP, which has argued that the war was based on “slipshod intelligence.”

“By showing the movie that proves the absurdity of Iraq war provoked by Washington, we want to accelerate the anti-dispatch movement in the country through cultural means,” DLP spokesman Kim Sung-hee told the Korea Times.

Notes from all over
IMAGE: Parker-Bowles
Former other woman Camilla Parker-Bowles is speaking at the House of Lords, according to Hello! magazine. . . . Comedian Margaret Cho chides feminists on her Web site for not being nicer to substance-abusing rock widow Courtney Love. . . . Paul McCartney reportedly went ballistic because someone left lilies in his dressing room and he thought they were using up his oxygen. The former Beatles supposedly also demands that all floral arrangements “must also be as full at the bottom as they are at the top, and he doesn’t like tree trunks, so indoor trees are forbidden,” according to the London Mirror. But a source who knows the singer says, “If those demands are true, they must be coming from his wife [Heather Mills] because Paul himself is incredibly down-to-earth.”