December 13, 2011 | 3:38 pm

Unfaithful husbands can still be faithful leaders

Posted by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

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U.S. Republican presidential candidate former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich covers his face with his hands during his Lincoln-Douglas style debate at St. Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire on Dec. 12. Photo by REUTERS/Brian Snyder

Can a man who cheats on his wife be trusted with public business?

In the recent Iowa Republican debate, Governor Rick Perry of Texas attacked Newt Gingrich’s admitted infidelities. “If you will cheat on your wife, if you will cheat on your spouse, then why wouldn’t you cheat on your business partner?” Perry’s inability to recall the government agencies he would to eliminate has already shown that he is not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree. But his latest statement betrays not bad memory but bad judgment.

An important fact I have learned from the numerous couples I have counseled, as well as from the events and lives of historical figures, is that private betrayal does not necessarily imply public dishonesty. First, the impulses for each are very different.  For the most part a man cheats on his wife not because he wishes to be deceptive or even to obtain sex. Rather, he cheats out of a sense of brokenness and out of desperation to feel desirable. If sex was what he was truly craving, he would have it with his wife.  Rather, men with deep-seated insecurities feel the need to be desirable to the opposite sex. In fact, of the estimated 50% of married men who cheat on their spouses, 48% of men surveyed in this demographic claimed that emotional dissatisfaction was the main driving force behind their affairs, as my colleague Gary Neuman shows in his book, The Truth about Cheating: Why Men Stray and What You Can Do to Prevent It.  Many of these men sadly find it easier to open up about their feelings and concerns to their mistresses than their wives because they are cheating primarily out of a sense of failure and pain. The mistress makes them feel successful and soothes their agony. So why can’t their wives do the same? As I explain in my book The Broken American Male, the man who sees himself as a loser will view the woman dumb enough to marry him as a loser squared.  It is specifically the stranger who has made no commitment to him— the woman who has not allied herself with failure—that can assuage his macerated ego. Hence, men who are often otherwise honest in every other area of life still have affairs. Cheating on your wife is a terrible sin and a horrible violation of a marriage. But it does not mean that the person cheating will be a crook in the rest of his life or a failed public servant, as indeed some of our greatest Presidents have demonstrated.

Thomas Jefferson had a sexual relationship with Sally Hemmings, a slave he owned who may have had no choice in the matter.  Though he had already lost his wife for a number of years before this relationship began, his actions in this regard are still deeply troubling.  Yet, he remains the author or our independence and one of the principal founders of our nation.  Franklin Roosevelt saved the world from Hitler. But he could not save his marriage after his infidelity with Lucy Mercer, which left his wife Eleanor romantically cold to him till the day he died. John Kennedy is remembered as one of modern history’s most inspiring leaders. Yet the ego gratification he required from women is legend, and the same was true of Lyndon Johnson.  LBJ’s compassion for America’s poor which led him to promote the Great Society and to expand school lunch programs did not prevent the pain he caused his wife with his repeated infidelities.

The fact that so many males in office are guilty of cheating should not surprise us.  Personal struggles with self esteem that drive numerous politicians to seek validation from the electorate are many times the same force that drives their need to feel desirable to women.  Yet this does detract from the immense good that they are able to do with their lives.  It was Aristotle who said, “No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness.”

Conversely, the irony of the secure and content man is that, since he feels comfortable in his own skin and is satisfied with his place in the world, he often achieves less professionally because he has less to prove. He does, however, sleep much better at night, and happily with the woman he married, even though he may have fewer accomplishments than his colleagues who are consumed with feelings of inadequacy.

For those like Governor Perry who believe that men who cheat on their wives are not to be trusted in the public sector, I remind them of men like Richard Nixon. He appears to have never strayed from his marriage vows to his wife Pat, whom he loved deeply, though that had little bearing on whether or not he always told the truth to the American public. Likewise, I would be shocked if a man as disciplined as President Obama has ever been unfaithful to his wife, whom he genuinely loves and respect.  But with the moribund state of the economy, the high jobless rate, and his inability to effect any meaningful change in Iran’s race to become a nuclear power, his effectiveness as a family man has not translated into effectiveness as a President.

I personally never much cared for the press coverage of what transpired between Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky and found the whole episode tawdry and possessing little redeeming public value. Yes, it is sad that with his actions Bill Clinton caused great pain to his wife as well as substantial disruption to the nation. But Clinton’s great disappointment as a President was his failure to kill Osama bin Laden when he was presented with several opportunities to do so and, of even greater significance, his inaction in the face of the genocide in Rwanda. The fact that an American president in an age of mass communication did not even have a single meeting with his senior staff to stop the quickest slaughter of innocents in world history – 330 dying every hour and 800,000 dying in three months—is a far greater stain on his presidency than anything left on a dress.

Newt Gingrich made terrible mistakes in his marriage and has acknowledged his need to repent. But none of that has compromised his phenomenal moral clarity on issues like identifying Hamas and Fatah as being nearly identical in their mutual support for terror acts against Israeli civilians or their unbridled hostility to Israel.  I cannot say the same of President Obama whose private moral commitment to his family is sterling, but whose foreign policy allows Assad of Syria to continue to slaughter his people and who pressures Israel to make concessions to terror organizations sworn to its destruction.

And it is here that my evangelical brothers and sisters like Rick Perry can learn something from Judaism. While Christians emphasize the perfection of Christ, and utilize the question “What would Jesus do?” in order to judge people by this infallible standard, the Hebrew Bible has not a single perfect man or woman. All make mistakes and all are imperfect, especially in the realm of family. Abraham has a broken relationship with Ishmael.  Jacob fractured his children’s filial love by favoring one son, and David had the incident with Bathsheba. But each is remembered as a great personality of the Bible and human history because, amid their private failings, they wrestled with their nature to be better and contributed mightily to establishing G-d as a living presence among the earth’s inhabitants. The moral: even imperfect people can contribute mightily to the perfection of the world.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach has just published Ten Conversations You Need to Have with Yourself (Wiley) and will shortly publish Kosher Jesus. Follow him on Twitter @RabbiShmuley

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November 30, 2011 | 6:30 pm

Are Mormons Any Weirder Than the Rest of Us?

Posted by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

I have watched with mild amusement as the debate surrounding the beliefs of Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman have gained steam. Aren’t the Mormons weird fanatics? Should we trust people who have such strange beliefs with high office?

This is an interesting question coming from my Evangelical brothers and sisters, whose belief that a man, born of a virgin, was the son of God, only to die on a cross, and then be resurrected — a belief that is, with all due respect, not exactly the most rational belief either. It is equally interesting coming from Orthodox Jews, like myself, who believe that the Red Sea split, a donkey talked to Balaam, and the sun stood still for Joshua.

But it is equally strange coming from evolutionists like Richard Dawkins who have said, without a single shred of evidence, that life on our planet may have been seeded by space aliens. Even those evolutionists who reject Dawkins’ faith in extraterrestrial life have a belief system of their own, namely, that intelligent life somehow evolved capriciously and accidentally from inorganic matter, even though the possibility of complex organisms evolving without guidance is mathematically nearly impossible. This is how Julian Huxley, who stemmed from the world’s most famous family of evolutionary proponents, put the probability of the evolution of a horse: “A proportion of favorable mutations of one in a thousand does not sound like much, but is probably generous … and a total of a million mutational steps sounds a great deal, but is probably an understatement. ... With this proportion, we should clearly have to breed a million strains (a thousand squared) to get one containing two favorable mutations, and so on, up to a thousand to the millionth power to get one containing a million. … No one would bet on anything so improbable happening …  And yet it has happened!” Yes, even men of science can believe things that can be construed as highly irrational.

Now, do I believe that Joseph Smith found ancient tablets written in reformed Egyptian in upstate New York, that Jesus Christ appeared to the people of South America as recorded in the Book of Mormon, or that when a Mormon dies he becomes a god and gets his own planet? No. Respectfully, I do not. Nor should it matter. It is what a person does, rather than what he believes, that counts. It took four years for the Dalai Lama to be identified as the reincarnation of his predecessor in a process that to Western eyes can appear highly arbitrary. Yet, the Dalai Lama remains one of the most respected men alive because of his commitment to world peace and good works.

Misguided attacks on groups like the Mormons stem from a willful desire on the part of many to fraudulently identify people with a different faith system as fanatics and, therefore, a brief discussion of religious fundamentalism is in order.

The most confusing story of the Bible involves God’s commandment to Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac. What was the God who would later declare that all human — and especially child — sacrifice to be an abomination, thinking?

The most insightful commentary I have seen on this story comes from the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, who says that the key to the story is to see Isaac not as an individual but as a religion. Who was Isaac? He was Judaism. He was the person who would continue Abraham’s belief system. With his death, everything that Abraham had taught in terms of his rejection of paganism and the belief in one God would be lost.

The test, therefore, was this: Would Abraham follow God’s commandment to kill off his religion or would he put his religion before God’s will? What really mattered to Abraham? God or Judaism? And if they were to be put in conflict, what would he choose? The religious fanatic is the man or woman who has ceased to serve God and has begun worshipping his or her religion, making that faith into yet another false idol. Religion is solely the means by which we come to have a relationship with our Creator. But when it becomes a substitute for God, it becomes soulless and fanatical, seeing as there is no loving deity to temper it. It is in this light that we can understand why an Islamic fundamentalist is so deadly: In order to strike a blow for the glory, not of the deity, but of Islam, he is even prepared to go against God’s express commandment not to murder.

Hence, our concern need not be with a person’s faith in public office. It does not matter if he or she is Jewish, Evangelical, Mormon or Muslim. What does matter is whether the person’s faith is focused on relating to God and, by extension, caring for God’s children, or whether that person sees the purpose of his or her high station to promote a particular religion. It is easy to identify the difference. People who are in a relationship with God are humble and do their utmost to refrain from judging others. Their proximity to a perfect being reminds them of their own fallibility. Their experience of God’s compassion leads them to be merciful and loving. But those who worship a religion are arrogant and think they have the only truth. They are dismissive of other people’s beliefs and maintain that advancing the cause of their religion is more important than life itself. The rabbi in Israel who recently made the strange comment that soldiers should face a firing squad rather than listen to a woman sing is a classic example of this heresy.

Those who worship their religion evince the classic characteristic of cult members. Whereas a real faith system is empowering and makes one strong and capable of operating outside one’s own faith community, cult members can only identify with other members of their group and require the environment of the cult in order to function. They don’t have beliefs. Rather, they take orders.

I see none of these characteristics in Mitt Romney or Jon Huntsman — who graciously hosted me along with my guest, Elie Wiesel, in the governor’s mansion in Utah a few years back — or any of my countless other Mormon friends. All should be judged on their merits as people and politicians, whatever their faith and whatever their beliefs.

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November 18, 2011 | 11:15 am

Ashton, Demi and younger men’s inability to appreciate older women

Posted by  Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore in Los Angeles on Jan. 11. Photo by Reuters/Mario Anzuoni

The unfortunate breakup of the marriage between Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher should be of interest even to those who have better things to do with their time than follow mindless Hollywood chatter and celebrity gossip. This relationship was always unique in that it involved an actress who was 16 years older than her husband. That alone sent tongues wagging as soon as the relationship was announced. Many questioned whether a man in his thirties would continue to remain attracted to a woman who next year turns 50. What strained the relationship even more, according to those who always questioned it, was how Kutcher’s career took off like a rocket over the past few years, including getting a huge contract from CBS for Two and a Half Men, while Moore’s career stalled. Can a power couple’s relationship survive when one partner becomes a supernova and the other’s star fades?

There was then the curious item of just how public this relationship was. To be sure, there have always been Hollywood super couples who were photographed constantly in Cannes, at red-carpet movie premieres, and walking their children for ice cream in Beverly Hills. The difference with Moore and Kutcher was that they decided to Tweet so much of their relationship, including intimate pictures in their underwear, that the marriage seemed to lose a semblance of privacy. Could a marriage survive that kind of exposure or is erotic attraction to be found specifically in the mysterious and the hidden?

No doubt, the allegations that the marriage came to an end over Kutcher’s alleged unfaithfulness will simply be seen as part of a long line of men behaving badly. Kutcher will be grouped with other high-profile alleged philanderers, most notably Tiger Woods, Eliot Spitzer, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. But – and let’s not be afraid to ask the question – did any of this have to do with a young man in the prime of his life feeling less attracted to a wife that was entering middle age?

Here’s my opinion on the matter. Men are becoming more shallow than ever. They are focusing on a woman’s packaging to the virtual exclusion of other far more erotic elements of feminine attractiveness that are strike deeper than skin. Forget the phrase don’t judge a book by its cover. Women today are judged almost entirely by the color of their hair, the size of their chest, the length of their legs, and, most importantly, how young they are and how thin they are.

I know this was always the case and it sounds like a cliché. But it certainly did not happen before when it came to, say, thinks like newscasters. But just look at who is chosen today to read the news on national networks. They are blond-haired, blue-eyed, thin Nordic bombshells who all look indistinguishable from one another. Feminism, which once had the lofty goal of having a woman taken seriously for her brains rather than her bust, seems to have failed utterly.

Now, men are certainly responsible for their own superficiality and the eruption of public men cheating in their marriages is disgusting, tremendously hurtful, and must be condemned. If you’re a husband you have to honor your commitments. Period. You’re unhappy. Go for counseling. Still unhappy. You can divorce. But you can’t cheat. And you certainly can’t blame your wife for your duplicitous behavior. Its yours and no one else’s fault.

But in addition to the legitimate need to hold men responsible for their own actions, there is also a need to encourage women to stop participating in their own degradation and stop reinforcing the notion that women are to be judged by their body and youthfulness alone.

Women like Demi Moore have, unfortunately, at least in the past, served to hinder men taking women seriously or respecting them holistically by adopting roles as the libidinous man’s plaything. I do not mean to blame the victim. I am clearly blaming us men for being increasingly shallow in an age of television, pictures, glossy magazines, and deluge of Internet porn. But why did Demi Moore do a movie like Striptease, which was so reviled by the critics that it won the 1996 Razzie Award for Worst Picture of 1996? It seemed that the principal purpose of the film was simply to show off Moore’s body – including movie posters where she is wearing nothing –  in a lousy B-movie script. The same applies to the Vanity Fair covers she did where was once again completely nude except for body paint. Now, is a woman just her body or is there a brain and a heart that counts as well?

I am saddened to see Demi Moore – or any wife for that matter – hurt and in pain at the hands of her husband. Having counseled countless women who have been cheated on and having written an entire book on adultery and infidelity, I have seen the indescribable trauma of wives who feel discarded by men who aren’t faithful. But reversing the increasing trend of men behaving so selfishly involves, first, a commitment on the part of those same men to be moral, ethical, and faithful under all circumstances, and second the creation of a culture in which women are valued for something other than skin tone, biceps, and breast size. And while men who cheat are of course the guilty party, this also requires a commitment on the part of women to help create a more dignified culture where men value women holistically and not just body parts.

In my book Hating Women I focus on the bizarre phenomenon of women participating in their own degradation in a culture that uses their bodies to sell beer. Look at people like Madonna who ultimately left the United States when she was raising her children because she claimed American culture had become too vulgar. But who contributed to that vulgarity? Did Madonna not play a role when she first started to simulate masturbation on MTV? And I’m loathe to bring it up, because in truth she has changed and become more much spiritual and responsible. But can we really create a culture of men acting like gentlemen–which they must do under all circumstances without any excuses – when women don’t always believe they should be ladies?

The truth of the matter is that as a woman gets older she becomes sexier. She becomes a much better lover as she learns to accept herself, becomes comfortable with her sexuality and much freer in its expression. She integrates her mind, body, and heart in a much more wholesome package so that her sensuality is expressed not only in the physical but through the mental and emotional faculties as well. Above all else, as a woman gets older she comes to know her unique gifts and as such she obtains the confidence that she has something special to contribute that other women do not have and in that confidence she radiates a more alluring erotic attractiveness. I wrote about the eight erotic qualities that make women attractive in my book ‘The Kosher Sutra’, with confidence at the top of the list. But for men to see that we beyond the flesh we need women who, in their Hollywood careers, demonstrate that a woman’s attractiveness is comprised of not just one but five qualities: her body, her mind, her heart, her voice, and her spirit.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach has just published of “Ten Conversations You Need to Have with Yourself.” (Wiley) and will shortly publish “Kosher Jesus.” Follow him on his website www.shmuley.com and on Twitter @RabbiShmuley.

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November 8, 2011 | 10:53 am

Conrad Murray’s conviction has left everyone else off the hook

Posted by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Dr. Conrad Murray stands in court with his attorney J. Michael Flanagan, left, before the guilty verdict was read in his involuntary manslaughter trial in Los Angeles Nov. 7. Photo by REUTERS/Al Seib/Pool

One can only imagine the sigh of relief on the part of all those who contributed to the death of Michael Jackson. With the conviction of Conrad Murray, there is an official scapegoat and the finger-pointing can now end. We found the culprit. It was Michael’s corrupt physician who would do anything to remain in the orbit of the superstar and receive his monthly retainer of $150k per month. Murray was even prepared to become Michael’s pusher. Now he has been justly punished and we can put the matter rest. Rest in peace Michael. Your killer has been identified and sent to jail.

If only.

For years a group that surrounded Michael watched as his life deteriorated but did nothing for the very same fear that if they opened their mouths they would be out. The publicists he paid, the managers who took their percentage, the handlers who got their cut, watched as he dangled a baby from a balcony, proclaimed his pride in sharing a bed with a child on international TV, and slowly went bankrupt as he squandered his fortune as garbage purchases. And they did… nothing.

Michael’s addiction to prescription medication was well known yet few cared to get him the help he needed. Worse, Michael was lethargic, uninspired, and required serious counseling to get his life in order. The response, however, was to persuade him to agree to 50 concerts in London – a staggering feat for even the most well-balanced performers – in order to take their share. Whatever the consequences, the troubled golden goose had to continue to lay some golden eggs.

So much of it came out in the trial. There was the testimony from concert director Kenny Ortega who said, ““My friend wasn’t right. There was something going on that was deeply troubling me. He was chilled. He appeared lost. Just sort of lost and a little incoherent and although we were conversing and I did ask him a question and he did answer me, I did feel though that he was not well at all.” Ortega went so far as to email AEG Chief executive Randy Phillips that Michael was seriously unwell. “My concern is, now that we brought the doctor into the fold and had played the ‘Tough Love,’ Now or Never’ card, is that the artist may be unable to rise to the occasion due to real, emotional stuff… He appeared quite weak and fatigued this evening. He had a terrible case of the chills, was trembling, rambling and obsessing. Everything in me says he should be psychologically evaluated. If we have any chance at all to get him back in the light, it’s going to take a strong therapist to help him through this as well as immediate physical nurturing.”

But if Ortega felt this way, why was he prepared to proceed with the concerts? Why did he not resign and declare that he would not contribute to Michael’s decline?

The role of AEG has similarly escaped serious evaluation. If the director you’ve hired is warning you that the artist you’ve contracted to do 50 concerts is in psychological turmoil, why were the concerts not cancelled or postponed? Was profit a factor in the decision to proceed, regardless of Michael’s psychological state?

To be sure, Michael was an adult and bears responsibility for his actions. But if he was not prepared to heal himself than it was the responsibility of all those who benefited from being in his orbit to get him the help he needed and, if the effort failed, at the very least not contribute further to his self-destruction.

Is it only the doctor who gave Michael propofol who is the culprit? What about doctors who continued to continued to give him plastic surgery to the point that his body was falling apart? And even if that’s not illegal, should they at least not be ashamed?

It was the tragedy of Michael Jackson to have been so successful that he became an industry that supported so many that they were prepared to look the other way as his life slowly sunk into the abyss.  In the final analysis, Conrad Murray was the person was most responsible for Michael’s death. But a host of others played a significant role. They ought to thank their lucky stars that the sins of the many have fallen on the shoulders of one.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is the author of “The Michael Jackson Tapes: A Tragic Icon Reveals his Soul in Intimate Conversation”. Follow him on Twitter @RabbiShmuley.

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October 24, 2011 | 10:04 am

Death of a Tyrant: Gadhafi’s opponents and those who chose passivity

Posted by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

A woman holds up a photo of a relative as Libyans celebrate the liberation of Libya at Martyrs' Square in Tripoli on Oct. 23. Photo by REUTERS/Suhaib Salem

When I led public protests in the summer of 2009 against the arrival of Moammar Gadhafi to Englewood, New Jersey, that ultimately pushed him out of our town, friends called me concerned that I would be found in a shallow ditch somewhere, a victim of Gadhafi’s global terror apparatus. None of us could possibly have known or believed that just 27 months later Gadhafi himself would be found hiding in a ditch in Libya and executed by his own people.

The people of Libya showed incredible courage in standing up to, and ultimately defeating, the terrible tyrant, and President Obama deserves to be applauded for America’s indispensable role in dispending with Gadhafi. Too bad that our local politicians here in Englewood, nearly all of whom are Democrats, did not follow the leader of the party’s example in taking related action against the Libyans living tax-free here in Englewood for nearly thirty years. Rarely in the field of peaceful protest has one municipality done so little to object to the presence of murderers in its midst.

Ever since Moammar Gadhafi made known his desire to take up residence and pitch a tent at the Libyan Embassy in our town, our local government has barely lifted a finger to make life uncomfortable for the terrorist government. It was the residents, rather than the government, that cared enough to protest Gadhafi’s arrival in the memorable summer of 2009. I remember having to go to City Hall, a few weeks into our fight against the tyrant’s impending arrival, and pressure the city manager and council to join the outraged citizens in taking some sort of action to stop the monster from defiling our town. That pressure led the city to go to court to stop the Libyans from renovating their mansion to make it fit for a king and, having found building code violations, a judge issued a stop-work order which was instrumental in purging our city of the mad dog of the Middle East.

And after that… nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Our city threw in the towel and capitulated to the Libyans utterly. The Libyan Ambassador to the United Nations, Muhammad Shalgham, who was Gadhafi’s right hand man and Foreign Minister for eight years, was allowed to become my next-door neighbor. The residents of Englewood were forced into the immorality of having to literally support the government of Libya financially by paying for the Libyan mission’s police protection and basic city-provided services. And amid the herculean pressure brought by me and a few other residents to compel the city to challenge the Libyan’s tax-exemption, the city refused to take the Libyans to court ever since an original suit was filed by the Libyans in 1982, granting them immunity. Of course, this was well before Gadhafi began blowing up airliners, murdering American servicemen in Europe, and funding international terror throughout the globe. Yet, the city could not be bothered in thirty years to even bring a lawsuit against these murderers to at least pay for the removal of their own garbage, even though the Libyan Ambassador already has one tax-exempt residence in Manhattan, near the UN.

But Lord help you if you are an Englewood resident who is late or delinquent on property taxes. The city will give you up to twelve months to catch up, all while you accrue exorbitant interest, and will then move rapidly against its own citizens to sell the debt to outside investors who can then charge a further 18 percent interest against the debt and put your home into foreclosure after twelve months of non-payment.

Now that Gadhafi is dead the city has lost the opportunity to inspire other municipalities throughout America where terror-sponsoring governments buy mansions to house their Ambassadors and heads of state, expecting American tax-payers to fund their presence.

There are two transgressions in life, since of commission and sins of omission; the bad things we do and the good things we fail to do. Of the two, the latter is by far the more severe. It is not the man who cheats on his wife who will destroy his marriage, even though that is of course a very grave sin. Rather, it is the man who has failed to show his wife any affection who will never be forgiven for an indiscretion by a wife who has fallen out of love with him due to his neglect.

Englewood has sins that are, unfortunately, common to many other New Jersey municipalities: sky-high taxes amid poor city services, an inadequate educational system that spends a fortune on students yet has an unacceptably high failure rate, and, worst of all, corruption, with its Construction Code Head recently pleading guilty to accepting bribes in an FBI sting operation. But its sin of omission in passively allowing a terrorist government to live in its midst is an international embarrassment that has humiliated every single one of our elected officials and bureaucrats.

Gadhafi was killed, ironically, on the most joyous day of the Hebrew Calendar, Shmini Atzeret. Because it is a Jewish holy day, I was offline and unavailable by phone, email, or any other electronic media for three days. But I knew in my bones that the media would be asking what would now become of Gadhafi’s New Jersey mansion. Sure enough, when the festival was over on Saturday night, I saw the Wall Street Journal’s major piece highlighting Gadhafi’s home in New Jersey. My voicemail and email mailboxes were full of press inquiries asking whether I will continue my campaign against the Libyan mission. You’re damned straight. The mission must be sold and the money returned to its rightful owners, the Libyan people, who need every penny to rebuild their broken country. The millions that Gadhafi poured into the home so that he and his Ambassador can live in luxury while his own people live in squalor must be put to building basic housing for the brave citizens of Libya who overthrew their tyrannical government.

But left out of any of this is the government of the City of Englewood who continue, as before, innocent bystanders to the last, embarrassed by their own inaction, even as the world celebrates the fall of a tyrant.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach has just published “Ten Conversations You Need to Have with Yourself” (Wiley) and will shortly publish “Kosher Jesus” (Gefen). He is in the midst of creating the Global Institute for Values Education (GIVE). Follow him on his website www.shmuley.com and on Twitter @RabbiShmuley.

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October 18, 2011 | 1:27 pm

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach: Israel must have a death penalty for terrorists

Posted by  Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

A vehicle carrying Gilad Shalit arrives at the northern village of Mitzpe Hila on Oct. 18. Photo by REUTERS/Nir Elias

No Jew, and indeed no decent person in whom there beats a human heart, could fail to be moved to tears by the reunion of Gilad Shalit and his family in Israel. Looking pale from years of being held in a cell and deprived of sunlight, and extremely shy due to years of being denied virtually all human contact, Israel welcomed home a hero for whom they had traded one thousand murderers, terrorists, and criminals committed to its destruction to keep true to its promise, that no soldier is ever forgotten or left behind.

As Hamas and the Palestinians ululated and celebrated the return to their society of killers who had taken the lives of so many innocent men, women and children guilty of no other sin than going about their daily business, Israel cheered at the restoration of one of its sons who was kidnapped while trying to protect these innocent lives. The conflicting values systems of the two opposing camps – one dedicated to the life and the other, tragically, having been overtaken for decades by a culture of death – could not have been draw in more stark terms than watching our Palestinian brothers and sisters welcoming terrorists home with parades while Israel reembraced a soldier whose first words to the world media, after having been treated like a caged animal for five years, were his hopes for lasting peace. It also goes without saying that when Israel is prepared to trade a thousand predators for one lonely soldier it is because of Israel’s commitment to the infinite value of human life.

Still, the question remains whether the deal was worth it. Much comment has been made both pro and con, so I will here limit myself to a different angle of the story entirely, one that would obviate the need to trade killers for captured soldiers in the future. It is high time that Israel finally instituted a death penalty for terrorists. In the United States Timothy McVeigh, who murdered 160 people in Oklahoma in April, 1995, was dispatched after a fair trial and an appeal with no public outcry whatsoever. No man who takes that many lives may be permitted to live. So why would Israel lock up the most rancid, heartless, and cold-blooded mass murderers in its jails just so that they can serve as a lure for Israelis to be kidnapped in order that these killers be paroled?

A very partial of terrorists now released by Israel, and who were previously fed three warm meals a day in an Israeli prison for years, includes Ibrahim Jundiya, who was serving multiple life sentences for carrying out an attack that killed 12 people and wounded 50. There is Amina Mona, an accomplice to the murder of 16-year-old Ofir Rachum. She lured him over the internet to a meeting where terrorists were waiting to kill him. Jihad Yaghmur and Yehia Sanwar were involved in the abduction and murder of Nachshon Wachsman which also led to the murder of Matkal Unit member, Nir Poraz, head of the rescue mission sent to save him. I am an acquaintance of Nachson’s mother and can only imagine her pain at seeing her son’s killers celebrated as returning conquerors.

Also released are Ahlam Tamimi, the 20-year-old student accomplice to the Sbarros restaurant bombing in 2001 that left fifteen dead and 130 wounded, Aziz Salha who was famously photographed displaying his bloodied hands for the mob crowd below after beating an Israeli soldier to death, and Nasser Yataima who planned the 2002 Passover massacre that killed 30 and wounded 140.

The question this despicable list of the murderers being released begs is this: why were they still alive in the first place? Why were they not given fair and impartial trials and the right to appeal, and if found guilty of murder and especially mass murder, executed by the State?

Some will argue that this will only invite the Arab terror organizations to execute the Israeli prisoners they hold. It is therefore worth recalling that this is what the Palestinian terror organizations do overwhelmingly anyway and that Gilad Shalit is the first living soldier to be returned to Israel in more than a quarter century. In July, 2008, Israel arranged another prisoner exchange in order to obtain the release of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, captured two years earlier, sparking Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, only to tragically discover they had been dead all along.

Others, especially Europeans, will argue that the death penalty is cruel and Israel is more humane for banning it. I disagree. While there is a robust debate here in the United States related to the death penalty over individual acts of murder, there should be no such debate whatsoever when it comes to premeditated mass murder and terrorism. The Europeans powers like Britain and France participated in the execution of Nazi leaders in the Nuremberg trials of 1945-1946, with no compunction whatsoever in mandating state-sponsored executions of mass murderers. Indeed, I argue that it is cruel and unusual punishment against the families of Israel’s terror victims to leave these terrorists alive in Israeli prisons with the families not knowing day to day if they will even serve out their sentences should another Israeli soldier fall into captive hands. The families deserve closure.

For those who argue that if Israel puts its terrorists to death there will be nothing left to bargain with should an Israeli soldier or citizen become captive, I respond that other deals can always be made, be it with money, international pressure, or the exchange of Arab prisoners who are not guilty of terrorism.

And it’s not as if Israel has no precedent in taking the life of a mass murderer, having put to death one abominable soul, the architect of the holocaust itself, Adolph Eichmann, at midnight in a Ramla prison on May 31, 1962. Eichmann’s body was then cremated and his ashes polluting the Mediterranean a day later beyond Israel’s territorial waters. And the last words of one of the most wicked monsters of all time? “I die believing in God.” Let’s make sure that others like him whose crimes make a mockery of G-d meet the same end.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach has just published “Ten Conversations You Need to Have with Yourself” (Wiley) and in December will publish “Kosher Jesus” (Gefen). He is in the midst of creating the Global Institute for Values Education (GIVE). Follow him on his website www.shmuley.com and on Twitter @RabbiShmuley.

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October 10, 2011 | 10:23 am

Can Obama be trusted on Israel?

Posted by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (left) with Rabbi Shmuley (center).

This past Sunday night I conducted a conversation between Eric Cantor, the House Majority Leader and highest -ranking Jewish elected official in American history Birthright Israel co-founder and Jewish mega-philanthropist Michael Steinhardt on how universal Jewish values can be used to renew America. It was a spirited and comprehensive discussion that elicited from two of the most powerful and influential Jews in the world their views on the state of America, Israel, and the Jewish people and their belief that a heightened Jewish voice in global affairs could bring healing to a fractured world.

Michael was founding chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council that instrumental in the elevation of Bill Clinton to national prominence and indeed it was once a given that nearly all Jews would vote Democrat. But times are changing as American Jewry witnesses the unshakable commitment of leaders like Eric on Israel versus President Obama’s much more tenuous record.

To be sure, the President deserves high marks for enhancing America’s military cooperation with Israel and especially his rejection of unilateral Palestinian statehood at the UN. Those who say that Obama is anti-Israel malign him against the facts and those who say he is anti-Semitic are guilty of character assassination. But what is undoubtedly true is that Obama cannot be trusted on Israel. Not because of any inner prejudice against the Jewish state but because of his belief that pressuring Israel is the royal road to Middle East peace. Whether calling in May, 2009 for a freeze on all settlement activity while making no reciprocal demands of the Palestinians, or disrespecting Prime Minister Netanyahu at the White House in March 2010, or provocatively invoking Israel’s 1967 lines in his May 2011 speech that was supposed to be about the Arabs and their spring, the President has shown a resolute conviction that putting the screws on Israel will produce broader results for Middle East stability.

Cantor, the leader of the House Republicans, and I, see it differently. The only thing that will lead to peace is the Arabs foregoing their decades-long hatred of Israel and their belief that the Jewish State is a transient entity that can be overrun, either militarily, via a slow, grinding war of terror attrition that forces Israel to cede strategic lands that ultimately render its security untenable, or through the influx of millions of ‘refugees’ who flood the state, diluting it of its Jewishness. The war between the Palestinians and Jews is not one primarily of land but of values, with our brothers the Palestinians tragically embracing a culture of death that glorifies martyrdom and violence and with the State of Israel embracing a culture of life and being committed to democracy and the value of every citizen, be they women, Arab, gay, or anything else.

Yes, President Obama stood firmly with Israel at the UN. But is this change of heart sincere or the product of a devastating Democratic loss of the safest of seats in Queens, New York’s ninth congressional district, thereby betraying the fact that no place – solid-blue Jew Jersey where I reside included – is safe for the Democrats.

At Cairo in June, 2009 the President analogized the holocaust to Arab “dislocation” that resulted from Israel’s creation: “The Jewish people were persecuted. …anti-Semitism …culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust…. Six million Jews were killed…. On the other hand, it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people — Muslims and Christians — have suffered in pursuit of a homeland.” These are ignorant conclusions that not only equate two utterly incomparable tragedies but overlook the fact that Israel has absorbed millions of Jewish refugees while the Arab nations have used the Palestinians as pawns in their never-ending war of annihilation against Israel. And who is to say that once Obama wins reelection and is no longer dependent on Jewish money or votes, he will revert to policies based on these erroneous comparisons?

Last week I wrote about Prime Minister Erdogan of Turkey’s blood libel against the Jewish state, claiming it has killed “hundreds of thousands of Palestinians,” and his never-ending campaign of defamation against what he labels Israeli barbarity and cruelty.

Turkey is a member of NATO and America is the very anchor of the NATO alliance. Yet President Obama has been silent while an ostensible ally daily demonizes Israel and accuses it of murder in genocidal proportions.

President Obama knows what if feels like to be defamed. Last week country music superstar Hank Williams, Jr. compared President Obama to Hitler, a disgusting and loathsome comment that was rightly condemned. Surely the President, in experiencing such vile attacks, knows what it’s like to see one’s name dragged through the mud and could stand up to protect America’s most trusted ally, whether there is an election coming or not.

In our public discussion I was given a written question by a participant asking Majority Leader Cantor if he foresaw more Jews becoming Republican, breaking a decades-old Democratic lock on the Jewish vote. Before Eric even had the opportunity to respond there was a sudden burst of thunderous applause from hundreds in the audience.

Time will tell if a red wave is about to wash over American Jewry, and for now Eric still remains the only Jewish member in the entire United States Congress. But unless President Obama stands up clearly and unequivocally to declare that the problems in the Middle East stem not from Binyamin Netanyahu – who was recently gratuitously and shamefully attacked by another Democratic president, Bill Clinton, as an obstacle to peace – but from parties like the Saudis, whose laws declare that women cannot drive and must be chaperoned in public, Bashar Assad, who continues to slaughter his people before the eyes of the world, and Hamas and Ahmadinejad, who remain committed to Israel’s annihilation, the Jewish vote might prove decisive for an Obama opponent in 2012.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, founder of GIVE, the Global Institute for Values Education, has just published “Ten Conversations You Need to Have with Yourself” (Wiley) and in December will publish “Kosher Jesus.” Follow him on Twitter @RabbiShmuley.

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October 4, 2011 | 10:32 am

Erdogan’s blood libel against the Jewish State

Posted by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan attends a delivery ceremony for the first nationally designed combat ship TCG Heybeliada at the Tuzla Naval shipyard in Istanbul on Sept. 27. Photo by REUTERS/Osman Orsal

The Jewish debt to the Turks goes back centuries when the Ottomans took in thousands of Jewish refugees after the Spanish and Portuguese expulsions of 1492 and 1497. Moreover, when Israel was shunned for decades by nearly every Muslim country, it was Turkey that was Israel’s military ally, friend, and commercial trading partner. And even in the midst of growing Turkish hostility, it behooves the Jewish state not to forget this debt of gratitude.

I have personally visited Istanbul as a Yarmulke-wearing, tzitzis-flying, Jewish Rabbi, and was warmly welcomed by Muslims everywhere. On her way back from Israel last year, my wife went through Istanbul with five of our children, including our baby, and was amazed at how many Muslim merchants gave the baby presents. My family came away smitten with Turkey.

But my call for Jewish memory and gratitude is becoming increasingly strained by the mouth of Turkey’s Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan who has made himself into a living fountain spewing anti-Israel invective. His latest attack on the Jewish state on CNN’s Fareed Zakaria beggared belief. Israel, he said, “shows no mercy” and is “cruel” in its treatment of Palestinians. Not content to feed the worst anti-Semitic Shakespearean stereotypes of Jews being vindictive and heartless, he trivialized Jewish suffering at the hands of thousadns of rockets fired from Gaza by Hamas before offering an unbelievable blood libel claiming “hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were killed” as a result of military action by Israel. Earlier he had accused Israel of acting like “a spoiled boy” and described the flotilla raid as “savagery.”

Erdogan is claiming that Israeli actions border on genocide and that Israel indiscriminately kills Palestinians when the truth is that the Israeli military is, given the level of threat it faces, one of the most humane and restrained in the world. Even if it were true that Israel has killed anything near that number it would still have to be seen in the context of the Palestinian people declaring a non-stop war of annihilation against the Jewish state and Israel being forced to defend itself. Hamas’s 1988 charter, which calls for the complete obliteration and dissolution of Israel, captures the level of hatred the Palestinians have harbored against Israel. Some choice nuggets include:

“The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews; until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him… The Nazism of the Jews does not skip women and children, it scares everyone… Jews control the world media (and use their) wealth to stir revolutions … There was no war that broke out anywhere without their (Jews’) fingerprints on it.” Hamas Imam Sheik Yunus-al-Astal talked about a verse from Koran suggesting “suffering by fire is the Jews’ destiny in this world and the next.” And, “Therefore we are sure that the Holocaust is still to come upon the Jews.” (NYTimes.com, April 1, 2008)

That Erdogan would speak as if Israel callously attacks a group which has for years launched rocket attacks against Israeli hospitals, kindergartens, and family homes is an indication of a deep-seated hostility to the Jewish state which he spares no opportunity in maligning.

But Erdogan’s numbers are grotesque exaggerations designed to portray Israel as a genocidal power.

The exact number of Palestinians killed in the last two Intifadas, beginning in 1987, is difficult to glean, but the most accurate numbers as assembled in Wikipedia from the United Nations, the Israeli Foreign Ministry, and assorted Human Rights groups put Palestinian casualties from the beginning of the First Intifada in 1987 until 1993 at 1,376 by Israeli security forces and 1,000 murdered by the Palestinians themselves..

The Second Intifada, from 2000 till the present, is said to have seen the death of 4,850 Palestinians who were killed by Israeli security forces and 594 Palestinians killed by Palestinians. It bears mentioning that during the Second Intifada 1,062 Israelis died at Palestinian terrorist hands.

It goes without saying that this is a far cry from Erdogan’s libel of hundreds of thousands of deaths and the attempt to decontextualize the deaths of even these thousands.

Starting in the 1960’s, the PLO made a global name for itself through international terror. In 1969 alone, the PLO hijacked 82 planes. In the 1972 Olympics it murdered 11 Israeli athletes in Munich. Since the Oslo Accords signed, Palestinians have killed 53 Americans and Injured 83 Americans. (Jewish Virtual Library)

But if Erdogan is truly concerned about Palestinian life, as indeed he and all of us ought to be, he would condemn the unbelievable Arab-on-Arab violence that has left far greater numbers dead.  In the first Intifada, more than 1000 Palestinians were killed by the PLO for supposedly “informing” for Israel. (Christian Science Monitor, May 22, 2002)

As early as the 1930s revolts in Palestine, Arabs fought each other. During the Lebanese Civil War, two Palestinian movements battled one another, leaving thousands of Palestinians dead. (Federal Research Division, Middle East Contemporary Survey, Volume 11, Google Books)

According to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, in Gaza, Hamas has killed and tortured thousands of other Palestinians who oppose their rule. By 2007, More than 600 Palestinians died during the Struggle between Hamas and Fatah. (Ynetnews.com, June 6, 2007)

Between 1986 and 1989, the Al-Anfal Genocidal campaign in Iraq against the Kurdish People and others have Saddam Hussein’s army killing 200,000 of his own civilians in that period. (The Middle East: A History, 2004) And The NY Times has reported that Saddam Hussein has “murdered as many as a million of his people.” (Oct. 7, 2007) The vast majority of these people were, of course, Arabs.

I am religious Jews who believes that Arabs are my brothers and are, of course, equal children of G-d in every way. The death of even a single Palestinian is a tragedy. But what choice does Israel have when the Palestinians launch wave after wave of horrific terror against innocent Israeli men, women and children. Will Erdogan next condemn the United States for the thousands of Taliban fighters it has killed in Afghanistan? Will he deplore American Predator strikes against Al Qaida in Pakistan? Since when is there a moral equivalence between the taking of a life in self defense and the taking of a life in an act of cold-blooded murder?

Just as it is proper for Jews to try and overlook Turkey’s current leader and remember the age-old friendship between the two people’s, it behooves the Turks themselves to rein in their Prime Minister from his character assassination of the Jewish state.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, founder of the Global Institute for Values Education, has just published “Ten Conversations You Need to Have with Yourself (Wiley) and in December will publish “Kosher Jesus.” Follow him on Twitter @RabbiShmuley.

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