Madonna and her boyfriend Jesus are in the Holy Land. They came for the last stop of Madonna’s “Sticky and Sweet Tour” and Queen Esther as she’s been affectionately dubbed here (a reference to the Hebrew name she goes by in her Kabbalah crowd) has been embraced by an Israel hungry for a little celebrity power.

She’s turned into something of Israel’s new best friend, wrapping herself in an Israeli flag on stage, dining at a trendy Tel Aviv restaurant with Tzipi Livni, opposition leader in the Knesset, and touring holy sites. She even met Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and lit Sabbath candles with his wife Sara.

Her visit also managed to overshadow breaking news of the indictment of former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for a sweeping list of corruption charges. The indictment makes him the first Israeli leader to ever face criminal charges and possible jail time.

But a news-weary Israeli public that often feels isolated by the sting of foreign criticism and a growing chorus of calls for cultural, economic and educational boycotts seemed to prefer focusing on the loving attentions of their favorite visiting icon.

And she delivered, kicking things off by calling Israel “the energy center of the world” during her opening concert Tuesday.

And she also told the crowd of 50,000 people (some paying as much as $400 a ticket at Tel Aviv’s Yarkon Park) that it had been far too long since her last concert in Israel sixteen years ago.

“I shouldn’t have stayed so long away,” she told the adoring masses.

“Every time I come here, I get so supercharged with energy,” she said. “I truly believe that Israel is the energy center of the world. And I also believe that if we can all live together in harmony in this place, then we can live in peace all over the world.”

Through her involvement with the Los Angeles-based Kabbalah Center which promotes what is criticized as a popular, New Age-y version of the teachings of Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, she has developed a bond with Israel.

Karen Berg, the co-founder of the Kabbalah Center, told The Jersualem Post that Madonna’s studies of the subject have transformed her.

Madonna has been here several times now on what have been described as private pilgrimages. This time she’s brought along her four children and 22-year-old boyfriend named Jesus Luz, a Brazilian model.

So far she’s visited the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City, considered the holiest site in Judaism and traveled north to the town of Tsfat, the original center of Kabbalah learning, to pray and recite psalms at the grave of Rabbi Issac Luria, a prominent mystic. She also travelled to neighboring Jordan to see the ancient ruins of Petra.

In a biting column on the Royal Highness of Pop’s visit Marina Hyde of the Guardian writes, “Then there was another heavily body-guarded visit to the Western Wall, which Lost in Showbiz heard described this week as “Kabbalah’s most sacred site”. Incorrect! Kabbalah’s most sacred site is in fact a private bank in Beverly Hills. But then, it was a week of misunderstandings, as actual Kabbalists - by which I mean the Jewish elders who study something different to the spiritual pyramid scheme dreamed up by Madonna’s former insurance salesman guru - once again felt they could have done without her presence, and revived their broiges with her in various media interviews.”

And those “actual Kabbalists” did their best to get Madonna to cover up while trodding about the Holy Land.

Rabbi Shaul Eliyahu, the rabbi of Safed, wrote her a letter, in which he told her exposing a woman’s body “may raise the lust instead of raising the love - and that’s a shame.”

But alas — at least on stage —  it was all skin-tight black bodysuits and fish-net stockings.

Up next for Israeli music audiences a very different (and presumably more modestly dressed) act: Leonard Cohen.

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