The 50-year-old singer - whose divorce from Guy Ritchie was granted last week - has so far failed in her attempts to get her rumoured boyfriend Alex to share her interest in Kabbalah, a mystical off-shoot of Judaism.

A source at New York's Kabbalah Centre, where baseball star Alex had been attending private classes with spiritual leader Eitan Yardeni, said: "He hasn't even finished Kabbalah 1 (the introduction to the study of Kabbalah) and the majority of the time he has spent with Yardeni so far was for counselling, not study."

Madonna - whose bid to get Guy interested in the religion failed after he branded it "weird" and "hokum" - is now said to be considering whether to proceed in her relationship with Alex.

The source added to MSNBC.com: "This is certainly off-putting to Madonna. She did drag Guy into Kabbalah, she's doing the same now with Alex. But he's bored. He's basically a Kabbalah school dropout."