Once upon a time, many centuries ago, one Rabbi Moshe ben Nahman Girondi left his home town of Girona and travelled to the big city of Barcelona, where he engaged in a now-famous public debate. A former fellow Jew who'd converted to Christianity and become the King's right-hand spiritual advisor wanted to "prove" that Judaism was the theologically inferior religion.
Spain was limbering up for the Inquisition, the audience was hostile, expecting to see a spectacular humiliation of the hated ethnic minority; everything was against the Rabbi, who is better known to future generations as Nachmanides. Yet a miracle happened and he won the debate.
Not enough of a miracle to prevent him from having to flee Spain soon after, in fear for his life, and ending his days in the Holy Land (on second thoughts, maybe a blessing in disguise ?). But a miracle nevertheless, of the David and Goliath type that makes Jews proud of their ability to triumph against the odds, to overcome adversity by the simple force of argument - and perhaps also a sprinkling of magic fairy dust from above.
Jump forward about seven and a half centuries. Instead of Spanish Christendom you have 21st-century Atheism and in place of Nachmanides, you have ... Rabbi "Shmuley" Boteach.
He started on the fame game in my home town of Oxford, where he arrived in the 1980s as an envoy from Lubavitch. For those who don't know, Lubavitch (also known as Chabad) is a Brooklyn-based global operation of orthodox Jews from the Chassidic school. The charismatic leader Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson (whose posthumous career as a potential Messiah is going strong) decided that post-Holocaust Jews needed to be killed with kindness (chesed) in equal measure to the deadly hatred that had engulfed so many of them in Europe. Thus, "outreach" was born, sending Lubavitch emissaries far and wide across the globe, in the hope of revitalising emaciated Jewish souls wherever they might be.
So far, so romantic. But the proudly independent Jewish community of Oxford was not exactly dying on its feet and crying out for help from Lubavitch. However, being pretty open and welcoming, the community and its one decent-sized synagogue showed itself happy enough to work alongside the new arrival. It could see the potential advantage for Jewish students at Oxford University in having more opportunities for Jewish involvement.
But this spirit of co-operation was not reciprocated by Boteach. Claiming the community wasn't "kosher" enough for his liking, he struck out alone. Things got particularly nasty when one of the Oxford Jewish Community elders was allegedly intimidated by a Lubavitcher, who "tried to run me over".
It wasn't long before Boteach's outsized ego could no longer be contained by the organisation that had got him to the UK and so he jettisoned it in favour of his new, one-man band called L'Chaim (which means "to life" in Hebrew and is what you say when having a drink, as in "cheers"!).
Some years later, while attempting to be Jewishly re-born in Jerusalem, I became friendly with a young guy who had been a student at Oxford and a volunteer at the L'Chaim Society. He had already fallen deeply out of love with his former boss and urged me to make journalistic use of his dossier "proving" Boteach's dodgy dealings and less than holy behaviour.
I never got round to doing so but one particular thing he said has stayed with me. My friend told me how every student at Oxford university - non-Jewish as well as Jewish - was given "free" membership of the society whether they asked for it or not - and of course most certainly did not.
Boteach did this, allegedly, because he was playing a numbers game: he wanted to be able to claim that his was the biggest society - or second biggest - at Oxford University, a claim which he keeps making to this day. The fact is that he and his society never had any official connection with the university, yet he continues to boast that he served as "Rabbi at Oxford University". Or is it Rabbi of Oxford University ? Whichever conjunction, the clear intention is to mislead you into thinking he had some official university-endorsed status.
Moreover, the great "kosher" rabbi was responsible for at least one religiously mixed marriage thanks to all the Jewish and non-Jewish mingling at L'Chaim. It should have been patently obvious right from the start that someone like Boteach has only one real religion: fame.
He, of course, would claim that he was only using publicity for a higher purpose, in accordance with Lubavitch leader Schneerson's edict: let orthodox Judaism harness the secular world for the greater glory of God. Isn't it better to "reach out" to the widest possible audience than to remain insular, isolated and, as the Holocaust proved so devastatingly, dangerously vulnerable ?
To paraphrase Little Britain: "yeah but no". Judaism believes that all forces in the world can be used for good or bad: ego makes people, especially males, strive for more, gets them up in the morning. But it is also, like fire, potentially destructive. Moses, the "greatest rabbi" was said to have dangerously high levels of ego and vanity but these were successfully sublimated into the greater good.
Boteach has never got anywhere near to sublimating his ego. The very idea is laughable. he's first and foremost a salesman.
It wasn't long before his questionable "society" was spreading it's wings to London and - of course - Cambridge. Boteach even managed to get a cringing "fly-on-the-wall" documentary all about (you guessed it) himself broadcast on Channel 4. One watched it and saw someone desperate to be a big time celebrity. A Madonna. Rabbi Madonna. But minus her mediocre talent and with an even more grating, screechy voice. All this was long before the chassidic look became a pop star's fashion statement, thanks to Matisyahu.
Questions were growing, however, over L'Chaim's financial and tax dealings. This beneficent "charity" seemed to be keeping the rabbi and his large family in very rude health, with beautiful houses in both Oxford and London and allegations of one too many luxury holidays taken. If you look at this website there's some interesting research into the subject.
Then one fine day, with more of a whimper than a bang, the great transatlantic transplant suddenly vanished from British shores, returning in glory (he claimed) to his native US, where a new chapter of even greater fame beckoned. There were radio and TV talk shows, books like Kosher Sex and those ubiquitous newspaper articles, all conferring respectability and gravitas. He could now spin things to make it appear that his time as a UK expat was simply a warm-up act for the main event, back in the US of A.
Constantly chasing greater highs from the oxygen of publicity, he soon leapt into bed with Michael Jackson. "America's Rabbi" was suddenly best buddies with the damaged and diminished "king of pop", to whom he came bearing deep concern as a "spiritual advisor". The purest, most selfless of motives, as ever.
The website link above shows that there are in fact serious questions to be answered regarding Boteach's financial dealings with a "charity" he set up as part of the Michael Jackson gravy train.
In more recent years, he leapt aboard the atheism bandwagon, debating the new Big Fish, Christopher Hitchens. Writing in the wake of Hitchens' death, Boteach did his usual routine of pretending he'd been close friends with the celeb in question. And he generously informed the reader of Hitchens' discovery "that he was Jewish only when his mother revealed it to him in his twenties".
Only Boteach could make such a sloppy and elementary error. He couldn't even be bothered to Google it and "remind" himself that in fact his great friend Hitchens had been 38 when he discovered his Jewishness, long after his mother's death.
There is no doubt much more to say about this self-styled superstar rabbi - I haven't even mentioned his semi-literate and unproof-read books: if God is in the details, he's certainly nowhere to be found in the sloppy, slapdash and often recycled words penned by Boteach.
To end where I began: when it comes to Jewish wise men - hachamim, sages - and you look at the story of a Nachmanides side by side with that of a "Shmuley", all you can conclude is: "How are the mighty fallen !" Judaism deserved to win the day before. Now, hijacked by people like Boteach, you'd think God was on the side of the atheists.
PS: Someone just asked me what prompted me to write this post now ? I'm not entirely sure but it may have been Boteach's article in the Jerusalem Post in which he did his usual thing of, simultaneously, puffing himself up, patronizing British Jews and writing something as laughably exaggerated as this: "At Limmud [a major Jewish conference over the Christmas period] I was peppered by journalists asking whether I was a candidate for British chief rabbi and the strange speculation reached a fever pitch when The Jerusalem Post published a long feature on the conference’s third day exploring that possibility."
PPS: Someone else, himself a rabbi and an expat Brit now living in the US, says Boteach is not taken very seriously over there. He adds that Jews should be entitled to their own snake oil salesmen, joining the merry throng of non-Jewish snake oil salesmen. Yes, I suppose they should. It just makes it that bit harder to be a "light unto the nations".
PPPS: Have just watched Boteach talking about his new book, Kosher Jesus, in this video - skip past the sycophantic intro by someone else. I suppose I should tone down my criticisms slightly. The guy has some interesting things to say; he might often be ridiculous and irritating; he was clearly damaged emotionally by a messy parental divorce and has a bunch of "issues" to resolve; his self-promotion has often been out of control, he is a fame-junkie whose wisdom and judgement, therefore, will always be questionable ... but maybe this blog post was itself a bit over the top, a rather explosive attempt to redress the balance after years of watching him "get away with it" ? A character like this needs to be held more accountable but I can't pretend he's public enemy number one.
Spain was limbering up for the Inquisition, the audience was hostile, expecting to see a spectacular humiliation of the hated ethnic minority; everything was against the Rabbi, who is better known to future generations as Nachmanides. Yet a miracle happened and he won the debate.
Not enough of a miracle to prevent him from having to flee Spain soon after, in fear for his life, and ending his days in the Holy Land (on second thoughts, maybe a blessing in disguise ?). But a miracle nevertheless, of the David and Goliath type that makes Jews proud of their ability to triumph against the odds, to overcome adversity by the simple force of argument - and perhaps also a sprinkling of magic fairy dust from above.
Jump forward about seven and a half centuries. Instead of Spanish Christendom you have 21st-century Atheism and in place of Nachmanides, you have ... Rabbi "Shmuley" Boteach.
He started on the fame game in my home town of Oxford, where he arrived in the 1980s as an envoy from Lubavitch. For those who don't know, Lubavitch (also known as Chabad) is a Brooklyn-based global operation of orthodox Jews from the Chassidic school. The charismatic leader Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson (whose posthumous career as a potential Messiah is going strong) decided that post-Holocaust Jews needed to be killed with kindness (chesed) in equal measure to the deadly hatred that had engulfed so many of them in Europe. Thus, "outreach" was born, sending Lubavitch emissaries far and wide across the globe, in the hope of revitalising emaciated Jewish souls wherever they might be.
So far, so romantic. But the proudly independent Jewish community of Oxford was not exactly dying on its feet and crying out for help from Lubavitch. However, being pretty open and welcoming, the community and its one decent-sized synagogue showed itself happy enough to work alongside the new arrival. It could see the potential advantage for Jewish students at Oxford University in having more opportunities for Jewish involvement.
But this spirit of co-operation was not reciprocated by Boteach. Claiming the community wasn't "kosher" enough for his liking, he struck out alone. Things got particularly nasty when one of the Oxford Jewish Community elders was allegedly intimidated by a Lubavitcher, who "tried to run me over".
It wasn't long before Boteach's outsized ego could no longer be contained by the organisation that had got him to the UK and so he jettisoned it in favour of his new, one-man band called L'Chaim (which means "to life" in Hebrew and is what you say when having a drink, as in "cheers"!).
Some years later, while attempting to be Jewishly re-born in Jerusalem, I became friendly with a young guy who had been a student at Oxford and a volunteer at the L'Chaim Society. He had already fallen deeply out of love with his former boss and urged me to make journalistic use of his dossier "proving" Boteach's dodgy dealings and less than holy behaviour.
I never got round to doing so but one particular thing he said has stayed with me. My friend told me how every student at Oxford university - non-Jewish as well as Jewish - was given "free" membership of the society whether they asked for it or not - and of course most certainly did not.
Boteach did this, allegedly, because he was playing a numbers game: he wanted to be able to claim that his was the biggest society - or second biggest - at Oxford University, a claim which he keeps making to this day. The fact is that he and his society never had any official connection with the university, yet he continues to boast that he served as "Rabbi at Oxford University". Or is it Rabbi of Oxford University ? Whichever conjunction, the clear intention is to mislead you into thinking he had some official university-endorsed status.
Moreover, the great "kosher" rabbi was responsible for at least one religiously mixed marriage thanks to all the Jewish and non-Jewish mingling at L'Chaim. It should have been patently obvious right from the start that someone like Boteach has only one real religion: fame.
He, of course, would claim that he was only using publicity for a higher purpose, in accordance with Lubavitch leader Schneerson's edict: let orthodox Judaism harness the secular world for the greater glory of God. Isn't it better to "reach out" to the widest possible audience than to remain insular, isolated and, as the Holocaust proved so devastatingly, dangerously vulnerable ?
To paraphrase Little Britain: "yeah but no". Judaism believes that all forces in the world can be used for good or bad: ego makes people, especially males, strive for more, gets them up in the morning. But it is also, like fire, potentially destructive. Moses, the "greatest rabbi" was said to have dangerously high levels of ego and vanity but these were successfully sublimated into the greater good.
Boteach has never got anywhere near to sublimating his ego. The very idea is laughable. he's first and foremost a salesman.
It wasn't long before his questionable "society" was spreading it's wings to London and - of course - Cambridge. Boteach even managed to get a cringing "fly-on-the-wall" documentary all about (you guessed it) himself broadcast on Channel 4. One watched it and saw someone desperate to be a big time celebrity. A Madonna. Rabbi Madonna. But minus her mediocre talent and with an even more grating, screechy voice. All this was long before the chassidic look became a pop star's fashion statement, thanks to Matisyahu.
Questions were growing, however, over L'Chaim's financial and tax dealings. This beneficent "charity" seemed to be keeping the rabbi and his large family in very rude health, with beautiful houses in both Oxford and London and allegations of one too many luxury holidays taken. If you look at this website there's some interesting research into the subject.
Then one fine day, with more of a whimper than a bang, the great transatlantic transplant suddenly vanished from British shores, returning in glory (he claimed) to his native US, where a new chapter of even greater fame beckoned. There were radio and TV talk shows, books like Kosher Sex and those ubiquitous newspaper articles, all conferring respectability and gravitas. He could now spin things to make it appear that his time as a UK expat was simply a warm-up act for the main event, back in the US of A.
Constantly chasing greater highs from the oxygen of publicity, he soon leapt into bed with Michael Jackson. "America's Rabbi" was suddenly best buddies with the damaged and diminished "king of pop", to whom he came bearing deep concern as a "spiritual advisor". The purest, most selfless of motives, as ever.
The website link above shows that there are in fact serious questions to be answered regarding Boteach's financial dealings with a "charity" he set up as part of the Michael Jackson gravy train.
In more recent years, he leapt aboard the atheism bandwagon, debating the new Big Fish, Christopher Hitchens. Writing in the wake of Hitchens' death, Boteach did his usual routine of pretending he'd been close friends with the celeb in question. And he generously informed the reader of Hitchens' discovery "that he was Jewish only when his mother revealed it to him in his twenties".
Only Boteach could make such a sloppy and elementary error. He couldn't even be bothered to Google it and "remind" himself that in fact his great friend Hitchens had been 38 when he discovered his Jewishness, long after his mother's death.
There is no doubt much more to say about this self-styled superstar rabbi - I haven't even mentioned his semi-literate and unproof-read books: if God is in the details, he's certainly nowhere to be found in the sloppy, slapdash and often recycled words penned by Boteach.
To end where I began: when it comes to Jewish wise men - hachamim, sages - and you look at the story of a Nachmanides side by side with that of a "Shmuley", all you can conclude is: "How are the mighty fallen !" Judaism deserved to win the day before. Now, hijacked by people like Boteach, you'd think God was on the side of the atheists.
PS: Someone just asked me what prompted me to write this post now ? I'm not entirely sure but it may have been Boteach's article in the Jerusalem Post in which he did his usual thing of, simultaneously, puffing himself up, patronizing British Jews and writing something as laughably exaggerated as this: "At Limmud [a major Jewish conference over the Christmas period] I was peppered by journalists asking whether I was a candidate for British chief rabbi and the strange speculation reached a fever pitch when The Jerusalem Post published a long feature on the conference’s third day exploring that possibility."
PPS: Someone else, himself a rabbi and an expat Brit now living in the US, says Boteach is not taken very seriously over there. He adds that Jews should be entitled to their own snake oil salesmen, joining the merry throng of non-Jewish snake oil salesmen. Yes, I suppose they should. It just makes it that bit harder to be a "light unto the nations".
PPPS: Have just watched Boteach talking about his new book, Kosher Jesus, in this video - skip past the sycophantic intro by someone else. I suppose I should tone down my criticisms slightly. The guy has some interesting things to say; he might often be ridiculous and irritating; he was clearly damaged emotionally by a messy parental divorce and has a bunch of "issues" to resolve; his self-promotion has often been out of control, he is a fame-junkie whose wisdom and judgement, therefore, will always be questionable ... but maybe this blog post was itself a bit over the top, a rather explosive attempt to redress the balance after years of watching him "get away with it" ? A character like this needs to be held more accountable but I can't pretend he's public enemy number one.
Boteach was a rabbi in oxford. i think he was subsequently disowned by the Lubavitcher movement?
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