november / december 2005:

the gospel of shmuley
He's counseled Michael Jackson, debated Larry Flynt, and penned a book called Kosher Sex. A prophetic pundit on cable news, an advocate for those in tragedy stricken areas, and now with his own reality show, some have dubbed Rabbi Shmuley Boteach the Jewish Al Sharpton. Meet the most jaw-dropping rabbi this side of the Mississippi.

Profile by Benyamin Cohen. Photos by Seth Olenick.


On a mid-September afternoon, we find Rabbi Shmuley Boteach among the Mormons of the northern foothills of Utah. It’s not a place one typically finds an Orthodox rabbi, but Shmuley is a most unorthodox Orthodox rabbi. In the days following Hurricane Katrina, the 38-year-old spiritual leader is standing, hands outstretched like Moses, alongside Mayor Rocky Anderson at the downtown Marriott in Salt Lake City. He’s there to address a mostly African American audience evacuated from Louisiana and relocated to temporary military barracks at Camp Williams in Utah.

On his daily radio broadcast, Boteach had encouraged the citizens of Salt Lake City to embrace their black brethren and integrate them into the city’s mostly white, conservative, middle-class enclaves in the long shadow of the Mormon Tabernacle. The notion, not surprisingly, got the shock jock Boteach fired from his show. The station, run by the Mormon Church-owned Bonneville International, apparently wasn’t enthused over the idea of a thousand displaced African-Americans moving into their own backyard.

Given his propensity for showing up anywhere in America where there’s a television camera nearby, some refer to Boteach as the Jewish Al Sharpton, complete with the fancy verbal footwork: “There seemed to be a visceral reaction to low income families moving to a wealthy white neighborhood,” Boteach tells me a week later from his home in Englewood, New Jersey. “I find racism in any form repulsive. It’s an abomination before God. It’s very sad that in the year 2005, there’s still so much bigotry.” There’s a pause and then comes the Shmuleyism. “If my daughter brought home a black Orthodox Jewish man, I’d feel honored.”

It’s easy to understand why Shmuley Boteach is controversial among Jews as well as Mormons. To many, he’s only Michael Jackson’s former spiritual guru. To others, the guy who penned the controversial 1999 book Kosher Sex (and its 2002 follow-up Kosher Adultery). He lectures around the world, writes two books a year, as well as a syndicated newspaper column. To some, he’s the rabbi who was embroiled in a public debate about morals with a Jewish Playboy cover girl. And now he’s the rabbi with his own television reality show.

Like Madonna, Britney, Bono and other celebrities he seems so obsessed with, he’s identified simply by the one-name moniker: Shmuley.

The Utah conflict was classic Shmuley: grandstanding at the expense of a hot button news story. After all, didn’t Shmuley bash Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ on the news? Didn’t he deride Britney Spears when she announced she was pregnant? Didn’t he defend (then later speak vilely of) Michael Jackson upon his child molestation accusations? “I know I did the right thing,” says Boteach of Salt Lake City. “I don’t regret my decision.”

Regrets? Not Shmuley. But what’s he really like, this devoted father of seven with another on the way? Is it all just slick packaging, the media painting him as the wild-eyed crazy Jew? To Shmuley, the answer is a resounding yes. Like Geraldo and Jerry Springer he believes he’s misunderstood.

IF HE IS, IT STARTED A LONG TIME AGO. Around the time of his bar mitzvah, when most boys are busy playing sports and videogames, Boteach experienced a seminal moment: He met Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the late Lubavitcher Rebbe. Boteach says he received a special blessing from him, a man many considered a saint, and a few nothing less than the Messiah. A year later, Shmuley enrolled in a rabbinical seminary in Los Angeles.

“From the time I was 16 years old, I promised myself I would be a defender of Judaism,” he explains with the cocksure confidence of a rabbinic maverick on a mission. “I really was looking for answers. How do we respond to evolution? How do we respond to biblical criticism? I was amazed at how few answers there were. It seemed that so much Jewish outreach was activity based, but very little of it was idea based. We’re supposed to be a light unto the nations.”

He says Schneerson also recognized his potential and sent the then 22-year-old to serve as spiritual leader to the students at Oxford University in London. It was there that Shmuley created the L’Chaim Society, where he played host to and debated an eclectic group of some of the world’s leading thinkers, statesmen, and entertainers including Mikhail Gorbachev, Professor Stephen Hawking, Shimon Peres, Deepak Chopra, Elie Wiesel, Boy George, Simon Wiesenthal, and even Michael Jackson.

The Chabad movement, of which Shmuley was associated with, was none too pleased with his flair for the dramatic. His lavish lecture series were attracting more non-Jews than Jews and they felt he needed to be reigned in. The breaking point came in 1994 after Shmuley invited Yitzhak Rabin to speak at Oxford. The Lubavitcher Rebbe had just died, and the Chabad rabbis in England strongly opposed the visit on the grounds that Rabin’s land-for-peace position contradicted the Rebbe’s teachings. Despite his massive fundraising base, the movement severed ties with Shmuley.

A free agent no longer shackled to a higher institutional authority, Shmuley took the opportunity and ran with it. He continued to make waves, breaking down barriers of what people expected from a rabbi, no less an Orthodox one. In 1998, armed with a healthy dose of chutzpah, the rebel rabbi entered the Preacher of the Year Contest, becoming the first Jew to reach the final rounds. (He took second place; the next year he won.)

All the while he continued publishing prolifically — columns for local papers, mystical works, and a two volume 922-page set called Moses of Oxford which weighs in at more than 10 pounds. Much of what Shmuley was writing was sexually charged, and his no-holds barred approach shocked many in the Jewish community. In 1999 he published Kosher Sex (some of which was excerpted in Playboy), the first book to have a rabbi discuss different sexual positions, bedroom toys, and being, um, master of one’s domain.

London was no longer big enough for the growing celebrity cult of Shmuley. He moved his family to America where he set up shop in New York — debating ethics with pornographer Larry Flynt, chaperoning Michael Jackson to an Upper West Side synagogue, and playing matchmaker for Roseanne’s daughter.

The surprising success of Kosher Sex (Jay Leno famously gave a copy to Dennis Rodman) led to more books — Dating Secrets of the Ten Commandments, Why Can’t I Fall in Love?, and Kosher Adultery. Among the lonely hearts of New York’s overwhelming Jewish singles scene, Shmuley was dubbed the love prophet. He lectured regularly and hosted singles cruises off the coast of Alaska for the lovelorn. The Washington Post called him “Dr. Ruth with a yarmulke.”

His habit of sidling up to celebrities landed him in the gossip pages. His famous punim and propensity to incite controversy made him the perfect pundit to have on the growing number of cable news shows where he would pontificate about the latest in pop culture.

On Britney Spears: “Her whole career has been a moral abomination. The feminist movement made a huge mistake when they said that becoming masturbatory material for men is somehow liberating for women.”

On the Passion of the Christ: “In this insulting film, Mel Gibson virtually ignores the entire life of Jesus, preferring instead to tell us that what made Jesus special was not that he lived righteously and meekly, but that he died bloodily.”

On Michael Jackson (who Shmuley counseled, befriended, and hosted in his home for Shabbat meals): “I tried to use Jewish ideas and values to rehabilitate a man that had a lot to contribute. He had a microphone to the world and his life was disintegrating. He was idolizing himself. The first message of Judaism is there’s only one god — and it’s not you.”

His focus on sex and celebrities has led many in the Jewish community to brush Shmuley off as a punch line to a late-night joke. When asked about his detractors, the rabbi shrugs. “I’m an exponent of Judaism, plain and simple. That’s all I’ve ever wanted to be.” In the background, a bark. It’s Boteach’s four-year-old Maltese named Marshmellow, a gift to his kids from Michael Jackson. “I go on TV and comment on culture and show people that Judaism is a force to be reckoned with. My objective is to get Jewish ideas into the mainstream.”

Ironically, Shmuley himself isn’t too fond of the rich and famous. “I find the whole idea of celebrity distasteful.” Yes, this coming from a guy who’s now shopping around a book proposal based on 30 hours of taped conversations called Inside the Soul of Michael Jackson.

BUT, SPEND SOME TIME WITH BOTEACH. To Shmuley, the comparison to Reverend Sharpton couldn’t be further from the truth. “Al Sharpton is a rabble rouser. He protests race infractions. Where do I run around screaming anti-Semitism? I just don’t think in those terms.”

Boteach does, however, admit to wanting to “promote Judaism in the marketplace of ideas.” Yes, he spends about half his waking hours in this country’s airports, criss-crossing our nation and showing up at controversial hotspots to give his point of view. But ask him and Shmuley will tell you that his greatest joy comes from family. “I really lead a very simple life. I attend no social events and I’m home every night with my children.”

Children are indeed important. After all, he’s attempting to give his brood what he never had. The youngest of five siblings, an eight-year-old Shmuley suffered as he watched his parents go through a bitter divorce. After the breakup, his father, who was in and out of business ventures, settled into real estate. His mother worked a string of jobs (many at the same time) including a bank teller, just to make ends meet. The divorce, Shmuley admits, is the reason he has devoted so much of his adult life to helping those in dysfunctional marriages and relationships. “Since my parents divorced,” he says, “I wanted to be the marriage missionary who used the pain of his own parents divorce to help other families of the same fate.”

It’s why Shmuley has now teamed up with The Learning Channel to create a new reality show called Shalom in the Home. The premise, somewhat humorous, is really quite simple: Shmuley and his camera crew live with a dysfunctional family for an entire week and help them repair their relationships. “The brokenness of the American family is our greatest national challenge,” he says. “Not oil prices or terror.”

As always, Shmuley says this is just another way to bring Jewish precepts into the public’s eye. “My techniques are firmly based on Jewish principles of family and marriage.” When asked if it’s like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Boteach responds, “Queer Eye is about helping a guy wax his eyebrows. My show is a moral makeover.”

The show, which has had an intense and grueling shooting schedule for the last few months, is expected to debut in early 2006. “It’s like working with a rocket ship that has a little beard on top of it,” says Ronnie Krensel, Shmuley’s reality show producer.

Ever the multi-tasker Boteach is also working on other projects. In conjunction with his new focus on family life, he’s just about finished with a book called The Parent as Camp Counselor. And together with Jewish media magnate Howard Jonas, Boteach is working on an ambitious project: To get world leaders to write books about the idea or quality that most eluded them during their lifetimes. The first is by Natan Sharansky and is called The Case for Compromise. With all this work, it’s no wonder that Shmuley goes to physical therapy three days a week to mend a broken wrist.

SHMULEY IS A WALKING CONTRADICTION. Just look at him. His designer duds clash with his rough and scraggly beard. His apparent obsession with pop culture doesn’t jive with what we think of as an Orthodox rabbi.

He’ll tell you that his philosophy on life is not as complex. His motivations, he says, all stem from one tenet. “I believe we have to make the world more Jewish,” he explains. “Why is it accepted that we live in a Christian world? Because of numbers? That’s an absurd reason.”

And, to his credit, his tactics seem to be working. While other spiritual leaders have been writing about how to achieve peace in the Middle East, Shmuley has written about Madonna’s ridiculous fascination with Kabbalah. While other rabbis have pontificated about lofty topics like why bad things happen to good people, Shmuley has pontificated on Britney’s Spears’ influence on teenage girls. And while some pundits deal with ho-hum topics like the war in Iraq, Shmuley has kept us entertained with his off-the-cuff remarks about the Academy Awards.

Shmuley is a man of the people. A rabbi who finds a way to make a connection. In other words, he’s a rabbi that speaks to us on our level, not from high aloft an ivory tower. He’s a rabbi that unabashedly, and with open arms, embraces the best and worst of pop culture. Janet Jackson. Kinsey. Santa Claus. Michael Moore. Joe Millionaire. All of it.

So he’s not just Michael Jackson’s rabbi. He’s got more depth than Sharpton. And, at the end of the day, even the Mormons will tell you: Shmuley is just Shmuley. And he’s fine with that.



If you'd like to comment on this article, email us a Letter to the Editor.