It happened to Madonna, it’s happening to A-Rod, and for a while it even happened to Britney. One reaches the pinnacle of fame, fortune, and truly fabulous muscle tone, and what’s left?

Judaism.

Okay, so it happens to be the most esoteric expression of Judaism since the goose-shaped chopped liver: Kabbalah, a practice many American Jews will never even encounter.

What does Kabbalah have to offer our superstars, and why should we care? What do those superstars have to offer each other, and why do we care? And why did Guy Ritchie, aka Mr. Madonna, dress his kids in Yankee gear over the weekend?

I will attempt to answer all of the above … starting with Mr. Ritchie.

Slapped into the red-hot center of rumors that his wife just might be putting the “yum” in Yom Kippur with baseball great Alex Rodriguez, Mr. Ritchie took his sons out for a very public stroll in their pint-size Yankee regalia on Saturday.

This was not only one of the classiest things a guy could do, it also showed the kind of rocklike faith most of us hope to get from, well, religion. Mr. Ritchie was blazing with faith in his wife and the universe: Things are what they are and I accept them. Amen.

God bless him, he was even showing faith in the Yankees.

By contrast, earthly torment has been swirling around everyone else in the story. Mrs. Rodriguez — Cynthia — filed for divorce from A-Rod yesterday on the basis of long-term infidelity. There was the busty blonde stripper (is there any other kind?) last year. But more recently, her lawyers suggested, there was something between A-Rod and Madonna that just wasn’t kosher.

Certainly the tabloids noted Madonna’s presence in A-Rod’s seats at a Yankees game, and A-Rod’s presence at a Madonna concert. Also observed was that they now share a manger. (As does Lenny Kravitz. It’s a manager-a-trois!) Us Magazine reported A-Rod arriving later than a rain-delayed 9th inning at Madonna’s apartment building. And Mrs. Rodriguez says she found a letter from her husband to the Material Girl calling her his “soul mate.”

It’s enough to drive you to Paris 10 weeks after the birth of your daughter, which is exactly where Mrs. Rodriguez went.

Meanwhile, Madonna has adamantly denied any romance with the randy religion-seeker and reiterated that her home life is a happy one. Nonetheless, divorce rumors are swirling around her, too. Is she tired of Guy, who can’t make a decent movie? Or is Guy tired of his wife, who had to go and make an album called “Hard Candy”? For someone who’s supposedly constantly reinventing herself, “hard-bodied, sex-obsessed pop singer” does not sound like a Madonna we’ve never seen before.

So what was left for the two stars of our story: arguably the best baseball player in America and arguably our most famous female singer?

According to Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, author of “Kosher Sex” and arguably at the pinnacle of his profession (okay, it’s not a huge pool: rabbis to the stars), Kabbalah offers a radical new re-appreciation of life.

“Celebrities have become addicted to the red-carpet lifestyle, a life lived on mountain peaks, a constant adrenaline rush,” he said. “After a while, their appreciation for the everyday banalities of life wanes. Along comes Kabbalah and says, ‘These giant fireworks that you seek out everyday — there’s no need for them, because in everyday existence there are hidden sparks.'” Kabbalah, Rabbi Boteach said, “takes the ordinary and makes it extraordinary.”

That’s heady stuff, even when it’s watered down and bracelet-festooned and served up in what Beliefnet blogger Rabbi Brad Hirschfield calls a “vast oversimplification” of the mystical tradition — one that turns “prayers and rituals that have been around for centuries [into] tokens that can be used in a divine vending machine that will guarantee you everlasting bliss.”

He’s not so keen on the Kabbalah Centre. Others are more forgiving.

“You should judge people favorably,” a teacher at the Soho Synagogue, Chabad Rabbi Mendel Jacobson, said. “I’m sure they’re looking for something,” he said of A-Rod and Madonna. Trying to connect to the divine is nothing to sneeze at.

But trying to connect to each other? That has people more puzzled.

“The guy is shirking his fatherly duties to hang out with a woman who receives AARP Magazine and takes Centrum Silver,” a Baltimore writer, Dan Collins, said (sounding like he could use a little Kabbalah tune-up himself).

His point, however, was echoed by a lot of guys I spoke to: Madonna is still in great shape, yes. Amazing. Talented. But sexy?

A-Rod, meanwhile, has his own cross to bear. He’s a future Hall of Famer who has yet to win a World Series. He’s beloved and scorned by New York, often at the same time. He’s a great Yankee. But Jeter he’s not.

If nothing else, it sounds like the singer and the slugger would have a lot to talk about. And it sounds like Kabbalah has a lot to say, too.

lskenazy@yahoo.com