On Sunday, Madonna shared Instagram photos of her twin daughters, whom she adopted from a Malawian orphanage in 2017, celebrating their ‘bat mitzahs’.
Though the pop star is not Jewish herself and was brought up Roman Catholic, she has a longstanding relationship with Judaism and expressed heartfelt support for Israel on social media following Hamas’ October 7 attack.
On her Instagram stories on Sunday, the twins Stella and Estere were pictured sitting front row with their mother and stood at the bimah watching a man leyn from the Torah.
The twins, who were adopted by Madonna when they were five, are the youngest of her children. She has six in total, two of whom are biological – her daughter Lourdes, 27, whom she had with ex-partner Carlos Leon, and her son Rocco, 24, whose father is ex-husband Guy Ritchie.
In 2006, Madonna adopted her son David, 18, from an orphanage in Lilongwe, Malawi, when she was still with Ritchie. After their divorce in 2009, as a single mother, she adopted her daughter Mercy, 18, from an orphanage in Blantyre, Malawi.
David attended his sisters’ celebrations and featured in his mother’s Instagram stories doing the hugbah.
Though David did not have a bar mitzah, Madonna and ex-husband Ritchie reunited in 2013 for the ‘bar mitzvah’ of their son Rocco at the Kabbalah Centre in New York.
The pop star’s keen interest in Jewish mysticism has led her to sustain a decades-long relationship with the centre since the 1990s.
She has visited Israel many times over the past two decades and posted a lengthy statement on Instagram to her 19 million followers in the wake of Hamas’ October 7 attack.
She wrote: “We live in a World Ravaged by Hate. My heart goes out to Israel. To Families and Homes that have been destroyed. To children who are lost. To Innocent Victims who have Been Killed. To All who are Suffering or who will suffer from this conflict.”
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