Biography:

Shmuley Boteach (born November 19, 1966) Los Angeles, California, U.S. is an American Orthodox rabbi, radio and television host, and author. Rabbi Boteach is a resident of Englewood, New Jersey.

Education and early career:

Rabbi Boteach received his rabbinic ordination in 1988 from the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement in New York City, as a disciple of its leader, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson.

That same year he was sent as a Chabad-Lubavitch shliach (emissary) to become its representative at Oxford University in England, where he founded the L'Chaim Society on the campus, to encourage young Jewish students to participate in Jewish culture and religious events at the university. The rabbi used the student organization (which has since become independent) as a forum for debate with a prominent array of public figures and celebrities. The organization became the second largest student organization at Oxford in 1993, and the following year the group became an independent foundation and charity. However, Rabbi Boteach and the Chabad-Lubavitch organization in England did not agree on all issues regarding how to reach out to Jewish students at Oxford and the role of non-Jewish students; Newark mayor Cory Booker, a non-Jew, served as President of the organization for a period of time. After this disagreement, Rabbi Boteach returned to the United States.

Later career:

Rabbi Boteach achieved worldwide recognition from the publication of his international bestseller, Kosher Sex.

Besides branching into radio, Boteach has continued to stay active with L'Chaim. The group had strong connections with the "Heal the Kids" foundation, which Boteach co-founded with Michael Jackson. That charity is now defunct. The rabbi was a frequent guest on news programs during the height of Jackson's child molestation trial. Rabbi Boteach has since repudiated Jackson.

He frequently appears as a guest on television and radio programs, offering his wide-ranging viewpoints on politics, religion, society, and morality. His daily afternoon radio show hosted by Utah-based Bonneville Broadcasting, Passion, was cancelled after the rabbi invited Hurricane Katrina refugees to Utah.[citation needed]

Boteach now hosts his own series Shalom in the Home, a reality television program airing on Monday nights at 10:00 on TLC, where he facilitates family members to overcome their problems. The program debuted on April 10, 2006. A second season of the series debuted in 2007.

In an article in the Jerusalem Post on September 21, 2007, Boteach harshly criticized Columbia University for inviting Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak. In this article he mentioned his Iranian Jewish ancestry, and that his father had decided to visit Iran for the first time since his childhood.

Boteach's latest book is "The Broken American Male," to be released in January 2008.

Criticism:

Shmuley Boteach has been often criticized for the commercialization of his ideas and influence. This sentiment has arisen in part due to his large amount of exposure in the media, from commentary on Jewish holidays on VH1 to debating sex with Jewish Playboy magazine Playmate Lindsey Vuolo, etc., and his propensity to promote his latest book or other venture even while on programs other than his own.

Rabbi Boteach has also been criticized for making controversial remarks and unverified claims during heated televised debates with political and social leaders. This includes a debate concerning religion and scientific reason with Christopher Hitchens on January 30th, 2008, during which, supporters of Hitchens claim, he made personal attacks on Hitchens and during which he claimed that prominent paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould did not believe in evolution. Gould was a co-founder of punctuated equilibrium, and a noted and outspoken evolutionary biologist. In addition, Boteach has made several appearances on the political talk show Scarborough Country, during which he berated, spoke over, or cut-off speakers holding differing viewpoints, such as Jennifer Giroux and his former "friend" William A. Donohue (himself a very controversial figure) (December 8, 2004).

Boteach has also made controversial accusations against world leaders such as Jimmy Carter, Kofi Annan, and Jacques Chirac. On the WorldNetDaily, he posted an article on November 13, 2004 concerning Yasir Arafat's death, in which he asserted that:

1. Former United States president Jimmy Carter is "a man who has devoted his entire career to protecting tyrants, from Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il of North Korea, to Fidel Castro of Cuba", and that Carter "extended his infinite affection to Arafat" upon his death.
2. Kofi Annan, then United Nations Secretary, was "a man whose diplomatic career has been dedicated to friendship with tyrants and contempt for their victims..."
3. Boteach also claimed that because the French people were collaborationists in World War II (an extremely controversial claim in itself), that French president Jacques Chirac should be expected to have little decency. He stated: "...the French were the ones who decided to collaborate with Hitler in deporting their Jews to concentration camps, so not too much decency should be expected from that quarter either."
4. Boteach stated that Carter, Annan, and Chirac were an "Axis of Evil" and had "an irrational hatred of Israel that would normally be called anti-Semitism". He stated: "It is time that the world recognized these three despicable men: Kofi Annan, Jacques Chirac and Jimmy Carter as constituting a western "Axis of Evil", three leaders whose long careers have been devoted to apologizing for tyrants, propping up dictators, demonstrating contempt for their victims and, above all else, espousing an irrational hatred of Israel that would normally be called anti-Semitism."

However, Boteach later modified his remarks about Carter (but not Annan or Chirac) on the Jerusalem Post, stating that: "Jimmy Carter is not so much anti-Semite as anti-intellectual, not so much a Jew-hater as a boor. The real explanation behind his limitless hostility to Israel is a total lack of any moral understanding."

Break with Chabad:

Boteach still considers himself as a Chabadnik and a student of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. He was sent as the Lubavitch Shliach to Oxford by Schneerson in 1988. He was ordained by Chabad after studying at a Chabad yeshiva in Los Angeles and for three years at the Torat Emet Yeshiva in Jerusalem. Boteach recounts:

Three months after the Rebbe's death I was summoned from my station in Oxford to a meeting of the Chabad leadership in London, where I was told that I would have to rescind the membership of 5,000 non-Jewish students because too many in Anglo-Jewry complained that their participation diluted the Jewish character of our organization. I was crestfallen and resisted the order, leading ultimately to my official separation from the Chabad movement.

Boteach's official break with Chabad came in October 1994, after he had invited then-Prime Minister of Israel Yitzhak Rabin to speak, in the face of official Lubavitch opposition to Rabin's land for peace proposals.

Bibliography:

• Shmuley Boteach and Uri Geller. Confessions of a Psychic and a Rabbi. (Foreword by Deepak Chopra) Element Books Ltd (March 2000) ISBN 1862047243
• Boteach, Shmuley (January 2008). The Broken American Male: And How to Fix Him. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-0312379247.