February 19, 2010 | 11:52 am

Tiger Woods’ courageous confession

Posted by  Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Follow me on

Tiger Woods’ statement was a model of repentance and contrition. He admitted he had a problem. He said that words alone would not solve it, that he requires, and is receiving counseling. He admitted that celebrity and money had given him a sense of entitlement and had corrupted him. He said he had behaved selfishly and irresponsibly. He accepted that being a public figure meant private responsibility and that he had to model good behavior for the youth. And he looked the entire time like he meant it. It was that rarest of things, a sincere and unconditional statement of contrition and responsibility from a public figure for cheating on his wife. And more than just talking about changing, he told us what he is doing in order to be a better man.

Compare it to the nauseating drivel of a guy like Mark Sanford, the misguided Governor of South Carolina, who told the media, after he was caught cheating, that his mistress was his soulmate, or to President Clinton, who never admitted that his womanizing was a deep-seated problem that required counseling, and you can begin to appreciate how difficult it was for Tiger Woods to confess that his own philandering stemmed from a problem of his soul.

Noone wants to admit needing help. We don’t want to confess to that level of dependency. If a man cheats on his wife, he usually sees it as an aberration, something he shouldn’t have done and something he’ll work on not repeating. But it’s not a manifestation of an inner brokenness. He doesn’t need any counseling. He just needs to recommit to an ethical life.

In truth, men don’t cheat because they’re liars and thieves. The vast majority of men who are unfaithful would never shoplift or steal a car. Rather, men cheat because, as Tiger Woods accepted, they have a problem. They are broken on the inside – they feel insecure and unimportant – and think that having women desire them will compensate. It’s the age-old lie that conquest, especially of a sexual nature, will bring personal validation. As Woods said, after all the money and fame he had earned he thought that normal rules didn’t apply to him. He was Caesar, which is another way of saying that even after all the fame and money he still was insatiable for more. All the accolades, all the fans, the beautiful wife, the adorable kids, still could not make him feel full. All the money still didn’t make him feel rich. He remained a black hole of endless consumption.

But this man is on the way to real amends, I believe, because he recognizes he has a problem. The Talmud says there are three essential steps to repentance. The first is to admit you have a problem. The second is to confess it verbally and take full responsibility. And the third is to undertake corrective, righteous action that will undo or make better the error.

By that count it’s time for America to admit it has a problem, because there is a little Tiger in all of us, a insatiable thirst that has gripped the American soul and that cannot be quenched, whatever the level of consumption.

I just published a book called “The Blessing of Enough.” It’s the one blessing America doesn’t have. Even after we collapsed our economy through rampant greed we still refuse to admit we had a collective problem. We still cannot not accept that it’s not normal to be the richest country in the world and still feel like we never, ever have enough.

Our Wall Street bankers earn millions. And even after they receive the most putrid press, exposing their avarice and insatiable lust for more and more cash, all funded by tax-payer dollars, they still can’t stop paying themselves billions more in bonuses. This is a sickness that the patient refuses to acknowledge.

The feeling that enough is never enough, the curse of insatiability, was something I tried to impress upon Michael Jackson. I saw him punishing himself constantly. When I asked him if he was proud of Thriller, which had sold approximately 50 millions albums, he told me, Yes, but not really, because he had a post-it note on his mirror in the bathroom that said 100 million. So that was the man whom Michael saw in the mirror, never enough, always having to succeed more.

I believe that if Michael had realized the corrosive effect that fame and money were having on his life – how it had isolated him from friends and family, how it had given him too a sense of entitlement to cross healthy boundaries, and how it had enhanced his fear of becoming obscure and forgotten, a pain he turned to prescription drug medication to numb – he would be alive today. And the fact that Tiger Woods is honest enough to admit that fame and money can be incredibly corrosive means his marriage and his character have a fighting chance of healing, surviving, and flourishing.

Money and fame can be real blessings. With the former you can cure poverty, with the latter you can highlight noble causes. Instead, they are curses in America today. For all our money, we are the most unhappy nation in the world, consuming three quarters of the earth’s anti-depressants. And for all our celebrity’s fame, they can’t seem to stay married or keep themselves out of rehab.

America, we have a problem. It’s time for a confession of our own.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach’s newest book, The Blessing of Enough, has just been published. Follow him on Twitter @RabbiShmuley. www.shmuley.com

20 Comments — Leave your comment

Share this post: del.icio.us Digg Facebook Google Reddit StumbleUpon Technorati YahooMyWeb

February 16, 2010 | 11:26 am

Was Haiti Punished for Sin?

Posted by  Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Last week I was honored to speak to the Jewish community of Venice at the Chabad House, which hosts thousands for Shabbos meals, and to the extremely warm and welcoming main community. Having just returned from Haiti, I addressed the issue of why a good G-d allows the innocent to suffer. I was amazed when an observant Jew approached me to say that the people of Haiti were not innocent, immersed as they are in idol-worship. ‘Surely you don’t mean to say that the morgue filled with the babies that I witnessed, the stench so bad that I was gagging, deserved to die? Or that the discarded bodies I saw being eaten by dogs deserved their fate?’ His response: The people of Haiti as a whole were punished. A similar sentiment had earlier been voiced by the Rev. Pat Robertson on The 700 Club.

I have always been puzzled as to why many religious people enjoy portraying G-d as executioner-in-chief and are always finding reasons to justify human suffering.

The holocaust produced two camps of Jews. Many decided that the Jews had been punished for intermarriage and wanting to be secular. But others had a much more Jewish response. They rejected any theological justification or self-blame and set to work even harder toward the creation of a Jewish state where Jews would find refuge and build an army to prevent another genocide. The appropriate response to death is always life. And the Jewish response to suffering is to demand that G-d put an end to it.

So many people search for a reason why people suffer. They want to redeem tragedy by giving it meaning. Suffering ennobles the spirit, they say. It makes you more mature. It helps you focus on what’s important in life.

I would argue that suffering has no purpose, no redeeming qualities, and any attempts to infuse it with rich significance are deeply misguided.

Of course suffering can lead ultimately to a positive outcome. The rich man who had contempt for the poor and suddenly loses his money can become more empathetic when he himself struggles. The arrogant executive who treats her subordinates like dirt can soften when she is told that she G-d forbid has breast cancer. But does it have to come about this way? Is suffering the only way to learn goodness?

Jewish values maintain that there is no good that comes from suffering that could not have come through a more blessed means. Some people win the lottery and are so humbled that they dedicate a huge portion to charity. A rock star like Bono becomes rich and famous and consecrates his celebrity to the relief of poverty. Yes, the holocaust led directly to the creation of the State of Israel. But there are plenty of nations who came into existence without being preceded by gas chambers.

Here is another way that Jewish values are so strongly distinguished from other values systems. Many religions believes that suffering is redemptive. In Christianity, the suffering servant, the crucified Christ, brings atonement for the sins of mankind through his own torment. The message: No suffering, no redemption. Someone has to die so that the sins of mankind are erased. Suffering is therefore extolled in the New Testament: “And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.” (Romans) Again, “If we are being afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation; if we are being consoled, it is for your consolation, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we are also suffering.” (Corinthians) Indeed, Paul even made suffering an obligation, encouraging the fledging Christians to “share in suffering like a good soldier of Christ Jesus.”

But Judaism, in prophesying a perfect Messianic future where there is no death or pain ultimately rejects the suffering-is-redemptive narrative. Suffering isn’t a blessing, it’s a curse. Jews are obligated to alleviate all human misery. Suffering leaves you bitter rather than blessed, scarred rather than humble. Few endure suffering without serious and lasting trauma. Suffering leads to a tortured spirit and a pessimistic outlook. It scars our psyches and creates a cynical consciousness, devoid and bereft of hope. Suffering causes us to dig out the insincerity in the hearts of our fellows and to be envious of other people’s happiness. If individuals do become better people as a result of their suffering, it is despite the fact that they suffered, not because of it. Ennoblement of character comes through triumph over suffering rather than its endurance.

Speak to a Holocaust survivor like Elie Wiesel and ask them what they gathered from their suffering, aside from loneliness, heartbreak, and outrage. To be sure, they also learned the value of life and the sublime quality of human companionship. Wiesel is an incredibly profound man. But these lessons, this depth, could easily have been learned through life-affirming experiences that do not leave all of one’s relatives as ash.

I believe that my parents’ divorce drove me to a deeper understanding of life and a greater embrace of religion. Yet, I know people who have led completely privileged lives and have far deeper philosophies of life and are even more devoted to their religion than me. And they have the advantage of not being bitter, cynical, or pessimistic the way I can sometimes be because of the pain of my early childhood.

When I served for eleven years as Rabbi at Oxford University I noticed that the college students I knew who were raised in homes in which their parents gave them huge amounts of love and attention were the most healthy and balanced of all. They were usually also the best students. Those who were demeaned by their parents could also be positive and loving, but a Herculean effort was first needed to undo the scarring inflicted upon them by parental neglect. Whatever good we as individuals, or the world in general, receives from suffering can be brought about in a painless, joyful manner. And it behooves people of faith especially to once-and-for-all cease justifying the death of innocents and instead rush to comfort and aid the survivors.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach’s new book on Jewish values, Renewal: A Guide to the Values-Filled Life, will be published in April by Basic Books. His trip to Haiti can be viewed at www.shmuley.com.

16 Comments — Leave your comment

January 19, 2010 | 7:29 pm

Focus on Divorce, Not Gays, to Fix the Family

Posted by  Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

The Jewish community has an opportunity to lead the country in a true values renewal by shifting the focus away from the obsession over gay marriage and onto marital decline and divorce.

Whatever your views on gay marriage — whether you are a supporter who believes that gays should have the same rights as heterosexuals or whether you are more religiously inclined and object to gay marriage on biblical grounds – one thing is for sure: this has absolutely nothing to do with rescuing the institution of marriage.

We straight people don’t need help from gays in destroying marriage, having done an admirable job of it ourselves, thank you very much. And the reason that marriages continue to decline in the United States is that rather than ever discussing how we can shore up this most vital of all social institutions, we have instead chosen to focus on a convenient scapegoat: gays.

The facts are straightforward. Not even 10 percent of the American population is gay, but more than 50 percent of all marriages end in divorce. And this was happening years before gays came out in significant number, let alone demanded the right to marry. In fact, the only men who seem to still want to get married in America are gays. While they are petitioning the United States Supreme Court to tie the knot, the straight guys are breaking into a rash and running to the hills every time their live-in girlfriends of five years push for a ring on their finger.

The real cause of marital breakdown in our time is the redefinition of success to encompass only the professional and almost never the personal sphere. We Americans are an ambitious lot. We want to succeed in everything we do. What we fear most in this country is being a failure, a loser. But being a winner has come to mean having money, power and being famous. In Hollywood, you can be on your fourth marriage and have all your kids in rehab, but as long as people are still paying 10 bucks to see your movies, you’re a success. On Wall Street, you can be a 30-something trader who takes the American taxpayer to the cleaners and pursues a life of endless womanizing, all fueled by gargantuan, government-facilitated bonuses, but as long as you still drive a Ferrari and live in that $25 million Hampton estate, you’ll be invited to every cocktail party around. 

Who, then, has a real incentive to be a good man? We are all encouraged today to have a career rather than a calling, a focus on our own ambition rather than a cultivation of gifts for the benefit of others. And success is defined not by the quality of your relationships but by the quantity in your bank accounts.

Marital decay these days begins with the easy hook-up culture of teen-hood, where young people are trained to see the opposite sex as a commodity to be exploited; it reaches dizzying heights with the positively rancid culture of male womanizing and female drunkenness that has become so common on American university campuses. In essence, young men and women learn how to master business and how to write a legal brief, but the only thing they learn about selfless love is that it is subordinate to selfish sexual pleasure and is an old-fashioned idea strangely out of place in a culture where you are always No. 1.

And, living in a disposable society, as soon as marriage hits a snag or two, it is so much easier to discard the institution than work to save the relationship.

Donald Trump summed it up best when he said of his current marriage that it’s happy because, unlike his previous attempts, this one requires no work. The poor man works at the office, where the real success is found. Why would he want to work at home? And who says that any woman is worth the effort? 

Now, are we really going to blame all this rot on gays? And if we stopped gay men and women from even having civil unions, would the astronomical American divorce rate suddenly drop?

Here is where Jewish values and a Jewish voice can come to the rescue. As many of our Christian evangelical brothers and sisters have largely led the California effort on behalf of Proposition 8 and have, for 20 years, identified opposition to gay marriage as the foremost American family value, how many rabbis — even the most Orthodox — have followed suit? How many Jewish leaders have given sermons saying that gays rather than divorce are the real culprit behind the disintegration of the American family?

While the Torah’s teachings on homosexuality are clear, the Jewish community has wisely told gay men and women to come to synagogue, keep a kosher home, honor the Sabbath, affix a mezuzah and come to classes on Judaism as clear equals to everyone else. Even if we cannot agree with the lifestyle choices of every member of our community, we do not make this a laser-like focus to the exclusion of overall Jewish responsibility, inclusion and commitment.

My parents divorced when I was 8. I feel the pain of every divorced man and woman, which Judaism, unlike Catholicism, allows because, though we always try to save a marriage, the institution is not a prison. I know that the men and women who divorce are good people, loving parents, and would have wished the marriage to have continued. But they are immersed in a culture where the lie of professional achievement being more important than personal success is beamed at them from every broadcast medium 24 hours a day.

But more than the parents, my heart goes out to children of divorce, who are deeply affected by the turbulence of two parents who no longer love each other. And if we really cared about the American family, we would cease talking about gays and instead push a measure through Congress making marital counseling tax-deductible, so that families who are hard-pressed can get the help they need to try and keep the family intact. 

Together we can show our children that love is not fiction, but something tangible and real.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is the author of more than 20 books on relationships, the most recent being the national best-seller, ‘The Kosher Sutra,’ which has just been released by HarperOne in paperback. www.shmuley.com

2 Comments — Leave your comment

January 5, 2010 | 1:34 pm

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach Responds to Congressman Steve Rothman’s Attack

Posted by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Why Our Congressman is Wrong About the Libyan Mission in Englewood

Has Congressman Steve Rothman forgotten whom he works for?

In a January 4th press release he spends three full pages attacking me and defending the “rights” of the Libyan Ambassador to the United Nations, Abdurrahman Mohamed Shalgham, to reside next door to me in the New Jersey suburb of Englewood. Rothman bases this opinion on agreements between the Libyans and the State department in 1982 – agreements brokered by none other than… Steve Rothman.

Is my Congressman seriously suggesting that I have to abide by a 27-year-old deal that was struck behind close doors and without the consent of the people of Englewood? Does he seriously believe that the honest, hard-working residents of this city, who came out so forcefully to oppose Kaddafi moving in last September, want to see his Ambassador move in with his Libyan security force and intelligence personnel? Will he really defend the right of an envoy of a terror-sponsoring government to live in our midst, spending millions of dollars on his home while refusing for more than a quarter of a century to pay even one dollar in taxes? And would he have me tolerate a neighbor who cut down my trees and removed my fence but has refused to respond to a single call?

Congressman, it’s time to stop living in the past. In the 27 years since you made this arrangement quite a lot has transpired, including a little thing called 9/11. The representatives of terror-sponsoring states have no business living away from the United Nations and here in New Jersey.

Shalgham is the same Ambassador who recently disgraced the UN Security Council by spontaneously bringing in a slide show that showed Israeli soldiers purportedly mutilating Palestinian civilians. He runs a mission that last year trivialized the holocaust and created a grotesque blood libel against Israel by comparing Gaza to a concentration camp. He is the foremost representative of a government that just threw a Mardi Gras-style celebration on international TV honoring the cold-blooded Lockerbie bomber, and is the personal representative of a terror-funding dictator who has bombed American servicemen and said in October that the Palestinians should be given nuclear weapons.

Is it fair that Congressman Rothman would inflict this man upon me and my nine children? Is the Congressman serious when he tells the press, “I hope everyone will be appropriately good neighbors”? Is he not aware that the Libyan property also abuts one of New Jersey’s leading Jewish day schools, Moriah? Why would he push his 1982 agreement with the Libyans on hundreds of unsuspecting Jewish children from our neighborhood who, along with my children, are now at risk? Perhaps Congressman Rothman ought to amend the agreement so that the homeless Libyan Ambassador can move next door to him.

Rothman’s statement that I, and presumably Moriah, always knew that the Libyans lived next door is a travesty of the facts. As everyone who resides in Englewood knows, the property was a derelict, communal eyesore for years. Being vacant, no one feared it. But now that the Libyans have, over the last few months, deployed an army of workers to upgrade the property to palatial standards, tried to move Kaddafi in, and moved in its Ambassador as a permanent resident, you bet we’re concerned. I now have the Libyan flag flying ten feet from my property and can shortly look forward to my children negotiating with Libyan security personnel every time they hit a baseball over the fence.

Earth to Congressman Rothman, you represent the concerned citizens of Englewood, not the oil-rich dictatorship of Libya. Kaddafi’s stolen billions have given him plenty of people to defend him. But we the residents of Englewood have only you and our other elected officials. Please try and remember that you’re not in Tripoli but among the constituents of New Jersey’s ninth district which sent you to Washington to fight for our interests.

Finally, it would behoove our Congressman to be more gracious toward his brave constituents in giving them their due credit for having pushed Kaddafi out. The movement to bar Kaddafi from our city garnered international headlines precisely because of the broad coalition that came together to keep him out. Everyone from our Mayor to local Rabbis and pastors to ordinary citizens to our Congressman to our Senators and Governor created such a public furor in the media and in public demonstrations outside the Libyan mission that its government had no choice but to capitulate to the will of the people. This was a victory of the people. It is my fervent hope that Englewood’s noble citizens continue the fight against Kaddafi’s personal Ambassador even if our elected officials do not.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is the founder of This World: The Values Network, which works to heal families in need and bring values to the media and culture. He is the author of many books including his most recent ‘The Blessing of Enough: Rejecting Material Greed, Embracing Spiritual Hunger.’ www.shmuley.com

1 Comments — Leave your comment

December 22, 2009 | 2:37 pm

Kaddafi Back in My Backyard

Posted by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Like many people these days, I am a busy man. But that did not stop me from taking off several weeks of my professional life to fight Muammar Kaddafi’s plan to take up residence directly next door to me this past August and September. Together with my friend and Mayor, Michael Wildes, and the support of the entire Englewood, New Jersey, community, we pushed Kaddafi out. Sad to say, it was a pyrrhic victory. Last month, with great stealth and with the cooperation of the State Department, our otherwise brilliant police force, and the silent acquiescence of our elected leaders, his Ambassador to the United Nations, Abdurrahman Mohamed Shalgham, moved in and took up residence as my immediate next door neighbor. Every time my kids hit a baseball a bit too far, it goes into Libyan territory and on to the lawn of a man who last week disgraced the UN Security Council by showing a gruesome slide show featuring images of mutilated Palestinians with Israeli soldiers as the culprits. His condemnation of Israel in Gaza made no mention of the thousands of Hamas rockets that had been fired without provocation at Israeli children.

These are the same Libyans who in August welcomed a mass murderer – Abdelbeset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber – with great fanfare into Tripoli (Megrahi, who was released by Scottish authorities on humanitarian grounds because he only had three months to live, is miraculously still alive.). They are the same Libyans whose leader called in October for the Palestinians to be given nuclear weapons. And they are the same Libyans who have shown our city undisguised contempt by refusing over a quarter century to pay even a single dollar in taxes and who cut down my fence and trees that separate my property from theirs without so much as a courtesy phone call, thereby forcing me to sue them in Federal court.

From the age of sixteen all I ever wanted to be was a Rabbi, someone who brings healing to broken lives and values to a needy culture. But for the first time in my life I find myself contemplating a run for elective office. The reason is simple. The Talmud declares, “In a place where there are no men stand up and become one.” The fact that our elected officials allow the representative of state-sponsors of terrorism to live in our community is scandalous. When I read that my own Congressman and friend Steve Rothman, who fought so hard against Kaddafi, had now told the New Jersey Jewish Standard that an agreement had been reached 25 years ago allowing the Ambassador to take up residence and that therefore “I hope everyone will be appropriately good neighbors,” I was beside myself. Is he seriously asking me to borrow a cup of sugar from a man whose government murdered American servicemen while they danced at a disco?

Without sounding paranoid it’s time that we in the Jewish community face some facts. Across the globe it’s open season on the Jews. Few of us would have believed that a country like Britain that gave the world parliamentary democracy would be guilty of attempting to ban Israeli professors from academic conferences, would have a magistrate issue an arrest warrant against Israel’s former foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, would require a label on products from the West Bank as being made by Jewish settlers, and would have its Supreme Court dictate to the Jewish community who its members are.

Then came the news, reported in the New York Times, that Pope Benedict XVI is moving ahead with plans to canonize Piux XII, the man known as Hitler’s Pope who made a Concordat with the Fuhrer and who, as the world’s foremost spiritual figure refused even once to condemn the holocaust. This is the same infallible leader who on 16 October, 1943, watched quite literally as more than a thousand Jews of Rome were rounded up in trucks, within 300 feet of the his Vatican Window, to be deported to Auschwitz where they were gassed within a few days. Even then the Holy Father remained utterly silent. The Church’s allegations that Pius helped Jews in secret is as cowardly as Pius’s actions. When it comes to stopping abortion the Church blasts its global megaphone. But when it came to saving Jews it could only be done when noone was looking? Many righteous Catholics saved Jews in plane sight and were martyred for their courage. But Pius, who even after the war ordered the mass kidnapping of hundreds of thousands of Jewish children by refusing to hand them back to their rightful Jewish guardians, disgraced a great world religion.

Here in the United States we have had to contend with the Obama Administration’s canard that Israeli settlements, rather than Palestinian terrorism and Arab political oppression, are the main obstacles to Middle East peace. And it’s more than a little disappointing that the Netanyahu government has endorsed this fraud by instituting a ten month freeze on settlements, thereby unjustly identifying some of Israel’s most patriotic citizens as its most intransigent.

Why is all this happening? Some would say that antipathy toward Jews is a law of physics. I disagree. It is happening because we allow it. Can anyone imagine the same British Supreme Court dictating to the Anglo-Islamic community whom a Muslim is? President Obama received nearly eighty percent of the Jewish vote. When you have numbers that overwhelming, you can be forgiven if you take the constituency for granted.

Our community must make its voice heard. We are a powerful global economic market and we must seriously consider boycotting the products of countries whose shameful behavior mistreats Jews. Britain is out of control and a serious conversation about whether or not to vacation there or buy its products should now occur. And our community must make it clear to our Catholic brothers and sisters that calling a man who lost his voice while six million Jews died a saint will irreparably harm Catholic-Jewish relations.

More committed Jews must begin considering running for office. Rather than merely relying on friends to represent us, we must also begin representing ourselves. I wish to remain a Rabbi who informs and influences politics from the outside. But if Kaddafi’s envoy remains my next-door neighbor with the tacit blessing of my elected leaders, I will do my best to unseat them by every legal means necessary.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is the founder of This World: The Values Network. His most recent book is ‘The Blessing of Enough’ and ‘The Michael Jackson Tapes.’ Follow him on Twitter (RabbiShmuley) and on his website Shmuley.com.

0 Comments — Leave your comment

December 14, 2009 | 6:47 pm

Why Men Cheat and How to Stop Them

Posted by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

On a recent debate about marital infidelity on CNN a fellow panelist was adamant that Tiger Wood’s unfaithfulness was both predictable and unpreventable. ‘As a famous guy you meet a lot of beautiful women. You feel attracted to them, they feel attracted to you, and you end up in bed. It’s not more complicated than that and there’s no way to stop it.’ Men cheat. Get used to it. Case closed.

Such shallow drivel has been the level of discourse ever since the story broke that Woods may have had enough mistresses to staff a female softball team. Firstly, if there is no way to guarantee male faithfulness, why are we all scandalized by Tiger’s behavior? And second, a whole parade of powerful men – Eliot Spitzer, John Ensign, Mark Sanford, John Edwards – are destroying themselves and their families with acts of infidelity. And we can’t come with any cause other powerful men have a sense of entitlement?
What impedes any deep understanding of infidelity is the public’s natural assumption that husbands have affairs for sex. In fact, the vast majority of husband’s affairs have no physical component. They are cyber affairs that take place over the internet. They are conducted over the phone and are never consummated. And even when they do get physical it is often very bad and unsatisfying sex, as Monica Lewinsky shared in the Starr Report and as a multitude of JFK’s mistresses alleged as well.

In truth, men have affairs not for physical reasons but for emotional ones. They cheat not out of a sense of confidence but out of a state of brokenness. Not out of a sense of how desirable they are but out of a sense of what failures they are. And this is especially true of men like Tiger Woods and Bill Clinton who live in a hyper-competitive environments where they realize that they are only special to the extent that they keep on winning. Men like these are particularly broken, living as they do just one failure away from obscurity. They know that their value as human beings rests entirely in other people’s hands. And they live in permanent and painful insecurity. They constantly question their self-worth and they turn to women both to feel desirable and sexy and to comfort them from their pain.

Yes, I know. Men like Tiger Woods appear to the public as cool-as-a-cucumber. But beneath the calm veneer is a man who has been trained to believe that his value as a human being rests entirely on a never-ending game of human one-upmanship. Those who have made their names in sports and politics live with unimaginable insecurity. And rather than deal with these insecurities in a healthy way by having deep emotional conversations with their wives about their fears, it is easier to simply paper them over by turning to strangers who make them feel special. The attention of other women brings a momentary silencing of the inner demons who constantly taunt them with whispers of their own insignificance. And the more prized the woman is by other men, the greater the validation these men feel. Coupled with this is the intuitive gravitation by men to the healing powers of the feminine. Men who are in pain use the caress and the care of a woman as a salve to sooth their broken egos. Having a woman care for you and make herself available to you – not to mention tell you how wonderful you are – becomes a like a drug that makes you feel instantly better. Of course, the healing is ephemeral and unfulfilling based as it is on a highly artificial sense of intimacy.

The obvious question, now, is this. If a man who feels deeply insecure looks to a woman to make him feel special, then why doesn’t he turn to his own wife? Because any man who suspects deep down that he is a loser is going to look at the woman dumb enough to marry him as a loser squared. She has allied herself with failure and is part of the same loser package. And if she has no value, how can she confer it on someone else?

The public makes the mistake of assuming that powerful, successful men are the most confident, that elite sport stars like Tiger Woods are unflappable. Precisely the opposite is true. Everyone who seeks the spotlight, whether in sports, television or politics, does so to compensate for some inner feeling of inadequacy, as Aristotle made clear more than two millennia ago. Every ‘successful’ man is inwardly broken in some way. If not, why would they spend their lives seeking a place in the public’s heart?

Many will argue with me. Adultery is about sex. It’s about powerful men behaving arrogantly. But then why is the most common refrain of the adulterous husband to his mistress the very infamous, ‘My wife doesn’t understand me,’ meaning, My wife can’t take away my pain, but maybe you can. My wife can’t make me feel good about myself. Even in my marriage I still feel so insignificant. But being with you makes me feel special.

I was not at all surprised to hear Tiger’s alleged mistresses saying that he told them he loved them and was unhappy with his wife. Cheating husbands always say things like this. And at the time, they mean it. Monica Lewinsky said that Bill Clinton told her he would leave Hillary and marry her, which again is common with the unfaithful spouse. They’re expressing their inner misery and blaming their wives for their unhappiness when really they are solely responsible for their low self-esteem which will carry over into every relationship until he finally decides to fix himself.

This is why we see philandering husbands so often having many, as opposed to just one mistress, like Tiger Woods. No woman can make a broken man feel good about himself. So he becomes a wanderer, obsessively traveling from woman to woman hoping that at least one will provide the magical salve he seeks.

Many have said that husbands like Tiger Woods are sex addicts. But then why aren’t they addicted to sex with their wives? Why does it have to come from another woman?

But from understanding the cause we can create a solution. Men who learn to talk to their wives about their deepest fears slowly become immune to an affair. Infidelity, it turns out, often provides a starting point for couples to address the void in their relationship which usually consists of the lack of truly intimate communication about life’s anxieties and apprehensions. A man’s deepest fear is of failure. And the person he most masks this from is his own wife because she is the person whose opinion matters most. I know husbands who have been laid off from their jobs in this recession who still put on a suit every day and leave the house so that their wives never find out. So called ‘successful’ men harbor the same fears. And rather than destructively address the fear by becoming a stud to other women, he can purge from himself a dependency on strangers by learning to confide fully in his wife.

The number one complaint of wives in marriage is that their husbands don’t talk to them about their feelings. When a philandering husband is trying to win his wife back after cheating on her, what better way than to finally open up to her about the reasons for his unfaithfulness. It was never a rejection of her. It did not happen because she did not give him enough sex, or that she didn’t go to the gym, or wasn’t emotionally available. Those are the excuses of a coward. A boy blames others for his failures. A man takes responsibility for his actions. Rather, it was because he falsely thought that someone other than his wife could make him feel good about himself. And now he has learned that those feelings of self-confidence are the preserve of only one woman.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is author of many books on relationships, including ‘The Kosher Sutra,’ ‘Kosher Sex,’ and ‘Kosher Adultery.’ www.shmuley.com

14 Comments — Leave your comment

December 8, 2009 | 3:49 pm

Why Christians Refuse to Hate: My Experiences in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe

Posted by  Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Visiting Zimbabwe can be a heart-wrenching experience. It is a beautiful land of warm and soft-spoken people. But hovering over the landscape at all times is the specter of extreme poverty and political oppression. The poverty is merely tragic. But the political oppression is brutal, murderous, and criminal. Most of the people I met went quiet with fear on the subject of Robert Mugabe, afraid that a stranger may be a government agent and any criticism can make you the next target of his thugs.

One innocent victim was Ben Freeth, a sunny Christian farmer who, after publishing an article in the Western press about the illegal and murderous farm seizures being carried out by Mugabe’s Zanu (PF) party, was savagely beaten and later watched as his farm was burnt to the ground. When I met Freeth in Harare last week he described to me and my friends from the Christian relief organization ROCK of Africa who were hosting us how, in the midst of the assault that fractured his skull, he suddenly reached out and touched the feet of his assailants and said, “Bless you, bless you.” My Christian counterparts were deeply moved by this quintessential story of Christian love for one’s enemy. I, however, was aghast.

Ben is a hero who, at the risk of his life continues to serve as a spokesman for the thousands of white families who have been brutally dispossessed of their land and many of whom have been killed. But I could not help but challenge this aspect of the story. “Every ounce of blessing we have in our hearts has to be reserved for the all the AIDS orphans that I saw dotting this once-proud land. These wretched thugs deserve not our blessing but our contempt, not our love but out hatred.” A debate broke out in the room. I alone maintained my position. My dear friend Glen Megill, a saint who founded ROCK of Africa, said, “Shmuley, Jesus told us to love our enemies.” Yes, I said. But your enemy is the guy who steals your parking space. G-d’s enemies are those who murder His children. And Jesus never said to love G-d’s enemies. To the contrary, the book of Proverbs is clear, “The fear of the Lord is to hate evil.” Psalms reinforces the point.  “Those who love G-d hate evil.”

This is something that has always puzzled me. My Christian colleagues at ROCK of Africa are angels. In ten days we distributed corn seed to the poorest villages, gave out mosquito nets, hugged and prayed with AIDS victims, and put on large feasts for hundreds of hungry villagers and children who dwell in mud huts. We colored pictures with orphans in Harare and gave them toys and presents. The hearts of evangelical Christians are enormous repositories of loving-kindness. But why must the heart be so wide as to extend to Mugabe’s killer henchmen? What place have murderers earned in our hearts? The same is true of my many Christian brothers who have told me that their faith commands them to love Osama bin Laden.

My fear is that such distortions of Christian teaching undermine our resolve to confront evil regimes. When Jesus enjoined to ‘Turn the other cheek,’ he meant to petty slights and humiliations. Does any sane person really imagine that he meant to ignore and overlook mass murder?

Mugabe has brought a reign of terror to Zimbabwe, making its name synonymous with wholesale slaughter, political intimidation, brutalization of opposition elements, and illegal land grabs. The country is now the poorest nation on earth, with an annual per capita GDP of just $200. Donor agencies estimate that more than 5 million Zimbabweans, representing almost half the population, currently rely on food handouts. The stores are half empty and last year they were completely empty. The ATMs often have no cash. Many of the gas stations have run out for the day. Even Victoria Falls is nearly bereft of tourists.

The black population is noble, extremely welcoming, and exhibit the nobility of spirit of those who have suffered much but complain little. A white population of approximately 4000, down from about 250,000, still remains. They seem to love Zimbabwe, consider it their home, and insist on staying.

They are, of course, hopeful signs, especially the new unity government which has brought Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara into shared power with Mugabe. I interviewed Mutambara, a 43-year-old former Rhodes scholar whom I knew from Oxford and is now the country’s deputy Prime Minister (the full interview is available on my website). A compelling man of vision, eloquence, and academic brilliance, he is convinced that within two years Zimbabwe will be completely ready for free and fair elections. I hope he is right.

But farm confiscations continue and Mugabe’s gangsters still terrorize political opponents. And the only hope for Mugabe to be completely and utterly marginalized is if the international community comes together to push him off the scene. This will not come if the man does not chill our bones. We must not bless but curse his rule.

I don’t do well with tyranny. I have undisguised contempt for tyrants and knowing that I was staying just a few miles from Mugabe’s house spooked me throughout my stay in Harare. As you drive by his home you are told that you are not allowed to look for fear of attracting suspicion and being arrested. Highly-educated locals told me there is a law that says that you cannot stare at his motorcade either and that his guards have been known to fire on those who do. Is this a man whom my Christian friends tell me I must love?

No, I refuse. I will go further. Anyone who loves the wicked is complicit in their wickedness. Anyone who blesses the cruel is an accomplice to their cruelty.

I choose to bless the courageous people of Zimbabwe rather than the tyrant who has slaughtered and impoverished them. I choose to bless a country like America which fights to liberate the weak in Iraq and the oppressed in Afghanistan rather than the Saddams and the Taliban who have brutalized them. Most of all, I choose to bless people like Ben Freeth that one day the long arm of justice will catch up to his tormentors and they will discover that while G-d is indeed a long-suffering G-d, for those who continue to slaughter innocents He is also a G-d of justice.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, founder of This World: The Values Network was on a relief mission to Zimbabwe with Rock of Africa. To read his blogs and see videos of the visit, go to www.shmuley.com.

2 Comments — Leave your comment

November 23, 2009 | 7:19 pm

Why Barack is Becoming Boring

Posted by  Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

For the first time in his presidency Barack Obama has, according to a Gallup poll, fallen below a fifty percent approval rating. It’s not hard to see why. No, it’s not because he’s spending too much money. There seem to be many Americans who want him to boost social programs. Less so is it because people perceive him as accomplishing little because if he pulls off health care reform that is a big thing indeed. No, the principal reason Obama, who became President by electrifying the electorate, has fallen to earth is that he has become boring. Humdrum. Can anyone recall any important line the President has uttered since assuming office or a single dazzling speech?

And lest we make the mistake of believing the President has become boring because his speeches are not up to par, let me be clear that I think the boredom is only partially related to failure to excite with inspired oratory.

Rather, the twin factors behind the President’s monotony are these: ubiquitousness and perfection.

This president does not seem to understand the power of mystery. At any given time, he is in China, Japan, Egypt, in the Rose Garden, at the UN, on your television screen, and on your radio. He does not believe in holding back. The net result has been to make him all-too available and utterly ordinary. The same is true of his propensity to prostrate himself – quite literally – in front of world leaders like the Saudi King and the Japanese Emperor. The issue is not that he belittles his office but that he comes across as a supplicant. What is about our president that propels him to seek others’ approval at every turn? And why can he not pace himself so that something of himself is left in reserve so that the people later want more?

Much more importantly, however, the President has become boring because he is way too perfect.

Last week I convened the first International Conference on Jewish Values. It featured most of Judaism’s foremost living personalities, including Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, Michael Steinhardt, Joseph Telushkin, Richard Joel, Alan Dershowitz, and Dennis Prager (full video of the entire conference is available at Shmuley.com). The last, and most important, of the seven universal Jewish values we focused on was struggle.

Where most of the world believes in perfection, Jews believe in struggle. Jesus was perfect, as was Muhammad. Any insinuation as to Jesus even getting lonely and requiring the love of a woman, as Dan Brown suggested in The Da Vinci Code, would greatly offend the sensibilities of Christian brothers and sisters. And an insinuation that Muhamad had any faults – even if the suggestion is made in a humorous cartoon – can and has let to riots in cities around the world.

But it’s not just religions that make the mistake of promoting perfection. I remember as a young American boy being taught that George Washington never told a lie and that Abraham Lincoln walked miles to return a single penny.

But the Jewish Bible has not a single perfect person. All are flawed. Abraham demonstrates a lack of faith, Jacob favors a child, and Moses often complains and then refuses to perfectly carry out G-d’s instructions for which he is denied entry into the promised land. David, the father of the Messiah, is so riddled with flaws that he must live through the open rebellion of his beloved Absalom. So if these people were so imperfect, why do we look up to them as heroes?

The answer, of course, is that Judaism has no time for perfection. Perfect people are monolithic, predictable, often judgmental, and, worst of all, boring. That’s the main reason why Americans did not develop a populist passion for books about the founding fathers until about twenty years ago when authors finally starting writing the truth about how complex and flawed these men who had been sold to us as statues actually were. Joseph Ellis wrote American Sphinx and shared with us, in vivid detail, the fact of Jefferson’s slaveholding and his sexual relationship with Sally Hemmings. In His Excellency Ellis reveals George Washington’s uncompromising ambition for wealth and social status. And in Lincoln’s Melancholy Joshua Wolf Shenk reveals the great president as a man so suicidal that his friends often feared leaving him unattended.

So why do we revere these men if they were less than perfect? Because the truly righteous man is not he who never sins but rather he who, amid a predilection to narcissism and selfishness, battles his nature to live a virtuous life. The truly great man is not he who slays dragons but he who battles his inner demons, he who struggles with himself to improve and ennoble his character

Israel means ‘he who wrestles with G-d.’ It was the name of Jacob who wrestled with a brother who sought to kill him and a father-in-law who sought to enslave him. Most of all, he wrestled with an angel, a symbol of his earthly and G-dly nature locked in battle for ascendancy.

I would personally choose the man who has wrestled and struggled any day over the trust-fund baby who has never struggled. Those whom have been given gifts often lack empathy and risk becoming conventional and uni-dimensional.

Which brings us back to Barack Obama, a man was raised without a father who had to wrestle with major challenges in order to succeed. So why does he insist on coming across as perfect? Why will he not leave the teleprompter and give an off-the-cuff speech where he can showcase his humanity? Why does he take such long pauses in responding to all questions to ensure that only perfection stems from his lips? And why is everything in this White House a perfectly calibrated photo-op?

Sure, during the campaign America may have wanted a Messiah figure. They saw messy wars and a collapsing economy and wanted a savior. But as President they want someone real, someone who struggles like them.

Even in the worst moments of the Monica Lewinsky scandal President Clinton’s poll numbers never dipped below fifty percent. Most Americans saw a flawed man and identified with his lack of perfection.

Barack Obama is far more disciplined for such unfortunate choices and I respect him for it. But don’t be afraid to show us Mr. President that, as in the title of George Stephanopoulos’ book about President Clinton, that you also are All Too Human.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, founder of This World: The Values Network, is author most recently of ‘The Blessing of Enough’ and ‘The Michael Jackson Tapes.’ www.shmuley.com.

2 Comments — Leave your comment