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And Slimuley

Can hungry-for-fame Rabbi Shmuley Boteach
bring- Judaism to the masses, or is he simply
"master of the Jewish sound bite?"

D

SUSAN JOSEPHS
New York Jewish Week

wring a cross-country
tour to promote his
best-selling Kosher Sex,
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach
was booked on the Los Angeles-
based Dr. Susan Block Show.
When he arrived on the set of the
cable television program, the volup-
tuous sex therapist greeted him in
one of her usual leather and lingerie
get-ups. Racy photographs graced
the studio walls.
"It was like a sex museum. We
were flabbergasted," he recalls. "My
brother was with me and he said if I
go on, then I'm finished."
The rabbi thought fast and said,
"Look, Susie, I don't want to offend
you, but I'll do your show if we're
not in front of the pictures and you
put on something modest."
Block understood the situation
perfectly. She donned a bathrobe
and sent out for kosher wine.
"We said brachas together on the
wine," Rabbi Boteach recalls. "The
true test of this is when I see some-
one on the street and they say,
`Rabbi, I saw you on that show and
you really helped me.'"
Welcome to the life and times of
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach. At age 33,

he has authored 11 books, fathered
six children, built the second largest
student organization at Oxford
University, moved his operation to
New York and become a public fig-
ure people seem to either love or
loathe. In the mass media, he has
achieved distinction as a maverick, a
controversial figure and above all, as
that "sex rabbi."
Bringing together the potent mix
of sex, celebrity, spirituality and
media savvy, Shmuley Boteach
might very well have his finger on
the zeitgeist of a new millennium,
where religion has become a chic
pop culture phenomenon.
After a decade in England, he
relocated this fall to a midtown New
York office he shares with Michael
Steinhardt's Jewish Life Network.
His name continues to make head-
lines and raise eyebrows for a variety
of activities. These include taking
Michael Jackson to shul; appearing
on The Howard Stern Show; counsel-
ing David Nederlander, the man
whose ex-wife just married Jerry
Seinfeld; and winning the Preacher
of the Year award.
"I am a jumble of contradic-
tions," the rabbi concedes. "I strug-
gle between abnegation of self and
promotion of self. My life effort has
been to bring synthesis.

s

OF THE

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AUTHOR OF

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KOSHER SEX

"When people say I can be an
egotist, self-centered or a showman
— guilty as charged. I represent one
thing, the mainstreaming of
Judaism, and this frightens people,"
he says.

Potent Preacher

As he speaks, its not difficult to
understand how Rabbi Boteach won
the Times of London-sponsored
Preacher of the Year contest. He's
exceptionally articulate, filled with
original theories, expert at anecdotal
storytelling and disarmingly self-crit-
ical.
If you're in his good graces, he

can be thoroughly charming.
If you're not, his piercing
blue eyes and accusatory
rhetoric can be discomfort-
ing.
Rabbi Boteach believes he
has enemies in the Orthodox
Jewish community, particu-
larly in England, whose dis-
like of his flashy style is so
strong that they would go to
great lengths to seek to dis-
credit him. That's why, he
believes, he was banned from
speaking in Orthodox syna-
gogues in England and why,
despite extensive coverage in
the general American media, he feels
he has been burned in the Jewish
press.
"I'm tired of the Jewish commu-
nity," he says. "This is the first gen-
eration of Jews that are mean to each
other. That's why I work outside of
it."
Like his best-selling Kosher Sec,
Rabbi Boteach's Dating Secrets of the
Ten Commandments, published this
month by Doubleday, targets a mass
audience. His new Web site similarly
reaches out to both Jews and non-
Jews as it offers a matchmaking ser-
vice that will be your guarantee of
love in Y2K" When his parents

••••' 71,Pir

'X\ 1 . ,

• \

6/9
2000

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