Thursday, October 27, 2005

Want to drink some Kabbalah?

Forget about Red Bull. If you want to be trendy (the Madonna/Britney/Demi way), your beverage of choice must be Kabbalah Energy Drink.
It's a heady combination of medieval Jewish mysticism, a fizzy strawberry-flavored drink loaded with vitamins and a splash of holy water – so how can you say no?
Follow the hip, the curious and the thirsty crowd and fork out $2 for a can of sweetened, carbonated, caffeinated, vitamin-charged water to which some Canadian mountain spring water blessed by a rabbi is added.
Believe it or not, the US distributor XL Beverage is located in (hold on to your seat) Bethlehem.
“I would not think there would be any actual spiritual benefit to drink this. The true teachings of Kabbalah have nothing to do with energy drinks,” deadpanned one Kabbalah scholar.
I bet that in order to get the maximum benefits, the soft drink producer will tell you that it can only be consumed while wearing one of the red Kabbalah strings (at $ 26 a piece) around your wrist.
Who came up with this New Age energy drink brainchild?
Darin Ezra, the director of Kabbalah Enterprises in Los Angeles, is the beverage distributor. He was approached by the Kabbalah Center in Los Angeles to distribute their bottled Kabbalah water, another trendy product (
Madonna has been known to drink it).
Ezra saw the huge amount of synergy between the Kabbalah brand, energy drinks and the kind of consumers interested in both - namely, the 18- to 35-year-old set.
Kabbalah Energy Drink's success has snowballed ever since Ezra tested the market by sending out 10,000 cans in January 2005 to stores in west Los Angeles.
Energy drinks, which also cross over into what the industry calls the ''New Age'' drink category, generally contain high caffeine and sugar content, as well as loads of vitamins, such as taurine, an amino acid, and B vitamins. ''I think one reason the category is so successful is, that the products actually work,'' Hemphill says.
Healthy? I don’t think so – the Kabbalah Energy Drink contains a warning:
“consume responsibly. Limit to 24 ounces per 24-hour period. Not recommended for children, pregnant women or people sensitive to caffeine.”
And it's not Kosher for Passover. Mmm, I wonder how that happened? May be because marketing-savvy Ezra plans to launch Kabbalah cookies and Kabbalah cereal?
Before asking
Tempo when it will be available in Israel, I strongly suggest that you try a great beverage that has been around for a few hundred years: coffee. The caffeine and sugar content is optional.
It will give you the same buzz without the chemicals – trust me. Coffeelah, anyone?

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