April 19, 2012 | 2:49 pm

In Norway you can murder 77 people and still enjoy retirement

Posted by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

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Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

When I lived in England I got used to my British friends regularly taking digs at how primitive America is compared to enlightened Europe. To be sure, most of the time the mocking denigration was done in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way, and they really weren’t looking to offend me as an American. Still, the taunts were said with conviction. Today it continues, with my friends in England who hear I’m running for Congress asking me why I would want to be part of America’s fundamentalist, right-wing shift.

One of the foremost examples cited by Europeans as to America becoming a country of knuckle-dragging Neanderthals is the fact that we still have the death penalty while Europe has abolished it utterly. I’m wondering, therefore, what my European friends are currently thinking about Anders Behring Breivik who yesterday pleaded not guilty to the massacre in Norway of 77 people, most of whom were teenagers. Breivik cited “self-defense” as the reason for his rampage seeing as he was trying to stop Norway from being overrun by Muslims. He added chillingly, “I would have done it again.”

And here’s the best part. If Breivik is found to be mentally competent, which observers say is likely, the toughest sentence Norwegian law can mete out is twenty-one years, though he may still remain incarcerated if he is deemed to be a a danger to society. All told, Breivik may be walking the streets by the time he’s 55.

Counter to my European friends’ claims that the death penalty is abhorrent, I would ask them whether they felt that seeing a man who killed 77 people sipping a latte on a sidewalk café is not more so. My close friend Dennis Prager, the well-known author radio host, once said that the death penalty, where it is truly warranted, is actually the more compassionate thing to do since the idea of a mass murderer being freed from prison inflicts a sadistic cruelty on the families of the murderer’s victims who demand justice.

To be sure the Talmud famously says that any court that put more than two people in seventy years to death was considered murderous, which just demonstrates how absolutely meticulous and careful any court must be before it metes out the ultimate punishment. But surely Breivik, even according to this most compassionate of opinions, would be one of the two. If a mass murderer of approximately 70 young people merits being freed from incarceration after just two decades then justice has no meaning and the world we live in is utterly lawless.

In the United States we rightly demanded a full judicial inquiry into the death of Travyon Martin. We were flabbergasted that a 17-year-old armed with Skittles should lie in a grave without a complete investigation. Multiply that now by 77 and imagine Breivik walking the streets in his fifties, enjoying a cool morning breeze.

Europeans can mock us all they want, but one of the distinguishing characteristics of the United States of America is its hatred of evil and its constant preparedness to fight it. Whether it’s our 28,000 troops currently protecting South Korea from the new North Korean thug Kim Jon-Un or our brave service men and women fighting the wicked Taliban, America has always fought tyranny while the rest of the world has often preferred to hide their heads in the sand.

Mass murderers in cold blood are wicked beyond comprehension and do not deserve to walk G-d’s green earth along with the righteous. After a proper inquiry and absolutely fair trial, if found guilty we must dispatch mass killers to the hell they deserve. Leaving them alive to one day walk free is deeply contemptuous of the many lives they have slaughtered and trivializes the unending grief of their surviving relatives.

Likewise, when our nation sees a tyrant and bully like Saddam Hussein who gasses children we remove him from power, just as Britain and France courageously did, along with American air power and following the lead of the brave Libyan people, to Muammar Kaddafi. Which just shows that maybe even Europe admits it has something to learn from us backward Americans.

Fighting evil is not primitive nor Neanderthalic but is rather deeply moral and demonstrates a deep commitment to the infinite value of every human life.

Shmuley Boteach, “America’s Rabbi”, is the international best-selling author of 27 books and has just published Kosher Jesus. He is currently running for Congress from New Jersey’s Ninth District. Follow him on Twitter @RabbiShmuley. His website is www.shmuleyforcongress.com.

Written in memory of Machla Dabakarov, the mother of a dear friend of Rabbi Shmuley, who passed away last year.

April 4, 2012 | 1:58 pm

When A Teenager Buys Iced Tea and Ends Up in a Grave

Posted by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Members of the New York City Council wear hoodies in New York, Mar 28. Photo by REUTERS/Mike Segar

No greater tragedy can befall parents than having to bury a child. This is especially true when the child is killed and a perpetrator gets away with it. In this sense no American can but feel the double pain of the parents of Trayvon Martin.

On the other side of the equation, however, is the interview given by the father and brother of George Zimmerman, the shooter, who have spoken of a son and sibling who shot an assailant in self-defense but who is now being so pilloried and demonized that he cannot leave his home for fear of violence.

Who is right?

Well, we don’t yet know all the facts and it would be wrong to prejudge the outcome.

What is clear, however, is that a young African-American teenager, wearing a hoodie against the rain, died, seemingly, for carrying a can of iced tea and a bag of skittles. If that isn’t a tragedy than the word has no meaning. He was unarmed. Zimmerman was told by 911 that it was unnecessary for him to pursue Martin. So why did he continue to give chase?

Was it, as so many, especially in the African-American community, believe because Trayvon was black and thus racially profiled by Zimmerman as a menace? It seems impossible not to arrive at that conclusion. Whatever transpired after that – and Zimmerman is claiming that Martin assaulted him – the question remains why Zimmerman didn’t heed the advice of the 911 dispatcher he himself contacted and stand down.

Race continues to divide our great nation. Truth be told, I hate the very word. There is no white race and there is no black race.  There is only one human race that diverges into far more tangential considerations like ethnicity and skin color. Trayvon Martin was not a black teenager. He was an American teenager. He was our son, he was our brother. He belonged to all of us. And he died, seemingly, for no reason except that he was trying to protect himself from the rain with a hood on his head.

The hoodie got me thinking. When you speak of a hood in the context of race the first thing that comes to mind is the hood of the Ku Klux Klan which is used to allow Klansmen to appear frightening and menacing and to conceal their identities. That’s the kind of hood we should have a problem with, not a hood worn by a teenager against the rain.

I’m a Jew and I wear a hood. It’s called a Yarmulke, or a black Hassidic hat, and, like Trayvon Martin, it allows others to make snap decisions about what I represent. If the assumptions were only positive – Shmuley has a commitment to spirituality and ethics, he is open-minded and tolerant – I would be flattered. But often the assumptions are that I am a right-wing religious fundamentalist who looks down at non-Jews and is part of a religion that oppresses women. I hate when people judge me by my garb and not by heart and I understand why African-American youth would feel the same.

To be sure, just as there are things in the Jewish community that must change, there are things in the African-American community that should as well. In my community materialism can sometimes trump spirituality, as when a Bar Mitzvah or wedding becomes more about impressing guests than a holy celebration that brings us closer to G-d. Among African-Americans a 75% out-of-wedlock birthrate runs against the values of a community that is deeply religious and has always cherished marriage, family, and children. This is something must definitely be addressed. But wearing a hoodie is not.

Zimmerman may have fired in self-defense. We just don’t know the facts yet. But even that confrontation, if it’s accurate, came about because he saw a hooded black man walking through a neighborhood at night and immediately thought, in the words of Zimmerman himself, that the youth was ‘up to no good. He is on drugs or something?’

I live in a community comprised largely of orthodox Jews and African-Americans. People have a right to walk through a neighborhood and look at homes, which is what Zimmerman is alleged to have said of Martin. That’s why the dispatcher at 911 told him to stay in his car. What he was being told, in essence, is that Zimmerman’s suspicions alone were not sufficient to pursue the teenager. It was for the police, who were on their way, to make that judgment.

I am a white man. But I understand completely the feelings in the African-American community that this was the most senseless death predicated on the conjecture on the part of a neighborhood watch volunteer that a black man walking through a neighborhood presupposes ill intent. Neighborhood watch volunteer means just that. You watch. You study. You report. You don’t take the law into your own hands. You don’t become judge and jury as to a person’s intent. If it were a Jew murdered in similar circumstances for simply walking around a neighborhood at night with a bottle of Coke and a black hat I would hope that our community would likewise be up in arms. No doubt people with white skin can appreciate that when you have darker skin and you go out to buy some candy it’s outrageous for others to assume that you may be a criminal.

Then there is the Florida “stand your ground law,” which gives people wide latitude to use deadly force rather than retreat during a fight. Is it a just law? I am not a lawyer. But I am a Rabbi and I employ my Judaism and its values in determining justice. Jewish law is clear. One may only take a life when it is evident that an assailant has murderous intent. Could Zimmerman have reasonably surmised that Martin had murderous intent as he walked with a hood through his neighborhood? Certainly not. Did it happen later, when, as Zimmerman claims, Martin assaulted him? Perhaps. But once again, had Zimmerman left the matter in the hands of the police as he was instructed to do the confrontation would never have happened.

I want to repeat. George Zimmerman may be innocent of murder. I am not a law-enforcement professional and I do not know all the facts. Besides, he retains the presumption of innocence as justice and our legal system stipulate. One injustice does not deserve another. We have to wait for all the facts of the case to be made clear. But to say Zimmerman is innocent of bias – certainly as his actions of that terrible night indicate – seems a real stretch.

If I were Trayvon Martin’s parents I would feel an absolute obligation to go to the ends of the earth to demand justice. If justice determines that Zimmerman walk, then so be it. But who could fault parents demanding that they get to the bottom of why their son, who went to buy a can of iced tea, is now in a grave.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, the international bestselling author of 27 books including his the acclaimed new bestseller “Kosher Jesus,” is a candidate for the United States House of Representatives in New Jersey’s Ninth Congressional District. His website is www.shmuleyforcongress.com. Follow him Twitter @RabbiShmuley.

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March 19, 2012 | 1:43 pm

An Ungrateful Karzai Calls American Troops Demons

Posted by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Hamid Karzai recently called the brave and selfless members of the United States military ‘demons’ who were guilty of perhaps ‘500’ atrocities against the people of the Afghanistan. One would have thought that the American Commander-in-Chief would swiftly denounce this stunning act of ingratitude by reminding him that nearly 2000 American troops have given their lives for the freedom of the Afghani people. They are angels of mercy, not demons. But in remaining silent President Obama not only missed an opportunity to defend the honor of our brave men and women in uniform, but also missed an opportunity to remind Muslims the world over of the beautiful tenets of their faith that would never brook such shameful ingratitude. The Koran, Sura 14, says that those who are grateful will be given more by God. And the prophet Mohammad also said, “Gratitude for the abundance you have received is the best insurance that the abundance will continue.”

The point is this: capitulation by Western leaders in the face of pressure or bullying from Islamic leaders who, with their misguided actions, betray a great world religion is bad for the West and bad for Islam.

For the last three years I banged my head against a wall called the City of Englewood – its Mayor and Council –  cajoling, pushing, and nearly begging that they do something about the Libyan Embassy that is my immediate next-door neighbor. Tax it, fine it, do something to make life uncomfortable for the Kaddafi government who owned it so that the murderous regime would choose to sell it and return the millions of dollars invested in it – all in an attempt to make it comfortable for Kaddafi to stay for a short while – and return the money to the Libyan people to whom it belonged.

Now comes the unbelievable news that the city’s inaction potentially endangered its inhabitants greatly, and not just me, its neighbor. We now know that the Kaddafi regime, under the concealment of diplomatic immunity, was using its embassies throughout the world to stockpile weapons like handguns, sub-machine guns, plastic explosives, hand grenades, and wiretapping equipment. In some embassies the equipment even included booby-trapped vehicles and rocket-propelled grenades.

All this was revealed when the weapons were discovered by representatives of Libya’s interim government, the National Transitional Council who started taking over the embassies abroad.

When NTC Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammed Abdul Aziz was asked whether he thought that the weapons, which were shipped in diplomatic bags, were planned for covert operations by Kaddafi and his regime, he answered “I have no single doubt in my mind.” Aziz revealed that the weapons discovered thusfar are just the tip of the iceberg and even included “chemical stuff.”

I still have no idea if the Embassy next door to me has been searched after this information was revealed. Pretty scary for a small Jersey town or for the Rabbi who lives next-door with nine kids and a Synagogue on his property, or the Moriah Jewish Day School with a thousand Jewish kids that is also a next-door neighbor.

I had actually told city officials how worried I was that there might be arms in the Embassy. But like everything else it was just shrugged off. This led to a clash between me and Congressman Steve Rothman who publicly gave me and other Englewood residents advice to be “appropriately good neighbors” to the Libyans and followed up later, after I had publicly rejected his advice, with publishing a three page press release attacking me and defending the status quo of the Libyans living tax-free in Englewood, since the city had lost an earlier challenge nearly 30 years earlier.

But what we have learned from the brave Arab peoples of Libya, Egypt, and Syria in the courageous Arab spring is that there can be no capitulation in the face of oppression and terrorism.

BBC head Mark Thomson recently confessed –  to the Oxford University research project known as The Free Speech Debate –  to giving Islam a better media portrayal than Christianity out of fear, arguing that the media had to consider the difference between ‘violent threats’ in place of polite complaints if they pushed ahead with certain types of satire.

Thompson said: ‘Without question, “I complain in the strongest possible terms”, is different from, “I complain in the strongest possible terms and I am loading my AK47 as I write.” This definitely raises the stakes.’

Thomson was commenting on a 2005 BBC portrayal of Jesus wearing a diaper, something they pushed ahead with even as 45,000 people complained the broadcaster about its irreverent treatment of Christian themes. Thompson belatedly accepted their argument that the BBC would not have ridiculed Islam in a similar fashion.

The idea that one of the world’s foremost news organizations would capitulate to fear and intimidation is deeply disturbing, and not principally for Westerners but for Muslims. The more the West shows an unwillingness to bow in the face of fright and panic, the more our oppressed Muslim brothers and sisters who live in various totalitarian regimes will feel they have committed partners in confronting tyrants like Basher Assad of Syria, and the more Islam will be purged of a militaristic strain that is a betrayal of its core values.

Those who argue that Islam is an inherently violent faith, or anti-Jewish, deliberately deny history as when Sultan Saladin took back Jerusalem in 1187 and allowed all Christians to ransom their lives and the penniless to go free. The Christians had expected the same harsh treatment that they had meted out in conquering Jerusalem in 1099, when all Muslims and Jews were massacred. Saladin was also generous in his treatment of the Jewish community in his realm. In 1190, he called on Jews to settle once again within the walls of Jerusalem, since they had been banned from the city during the Crusader occupation. Maimonides, one of Judaism’s greatest thinkers, was court physician to Saladin.

To assail Islam as inherently anti-modern is likewise to ignore how already in the ninth century Muslim rulers were prioritizing general education when few others were.  Al-Mamun, Caliph of the Abbasid dynasty, established state-funded academies that translated Greek and other works of antiquity, thereby predating European universities by some three centuries. The Abbasid Muslim Empire brought about agricultural innovations in the 8th century that would not be seen in the West until late in the twelfth century. Al-Razi of Baghdad wrote numerous medical books in the tenth century which included groundbreaking health treatments which the West would not match for another six hundred years.  In the sixteenth century Muslim Sultan Akbar of India was renowned for cross-cultural political appointments and enacting laws that embraced religious tolerance and protection of women and children. He was also one of the first commanders to insist on humane treatment of captured enemy troops.

Islam today can experience the same kind of enlightened golden age it has in the past if it, along with the West, stands up to the murderers and bullies who betray a great world religion by daring to speak wickedly in its name.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, who just published Kosher Jesus, is running for Congress in New Jersey’s Ninth Congressional District and recently won the Bergen County Republican Endorsement in a vote. His website is www.shmuleyforcongress.com. Follow him on Twitter @RabbiShmuley.

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March 5, 2012 | 12:54 pm

Why B’nai Brith Canada Defended Michael Coren’s Anti-Semitism

Posted by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

B’nai Brith Canada is an organization whose stated purpose it is, like our excellent Anti-Defamation League here in the United States, to defend Jews against attack. It’s run by Frank Dimant whom I only ever met over the phone and who appears to be a gentleman. But that begs the question of what his purpose was in releasing a statement in support of Sun TV host Michael Coren after I condemned Coren’s anti-Jewish remarks in his interview with me in Toronto about my new bestseller Kosher Jesus. The full interview is available here.

To be sure, Coren’s comments to me was not the first time he publicly insulted Jews. Ever since my horrible experience with Coren, I have received emails from people all over Canada sharing other Coren highlights, like his TV show last October where he said, in discussing Canadian groups who complain too much, “To those Jewish organizations pretending (his emphasis) that neo-Nazis and anti-Semites are hiding behind every corner…. Of course you’ve suffered in the past. Of course there were pogroms and the holocaust. But this is now, in Canada. So… SHUT UP (his emphasis again).” Coren’s words beggar belief, and you have to view how flippantly he spoke of Jewish suffering, which this transcription cannot convey. Of course you Jews have suffered, of course there was a holocaust. But get over it. That’s the past. Now you live in a nice country. So shut your trap!

Surely Coren’s attack against paranoid Jews who believe there is still Jew-hatred is aimed first and foremost at organizations like B’nai Brith who ‘pretend’ and invent anti-Semitism to suit their own purposes.

Yet, with all that, Dimant released a statement, without having had the decency to even pick up a phone to me prior, saying, “It is truly unfortunate that Rabbi Boteach misunderstood the words of Michael Coren during their on-air discussion and subsequently publicly labeled him as an anti-Semite… Michael … has never given any indication whatsoever of harboring anti-Semitic tendencies.”

Now, Dimant is wrong. I never labeled Coren an anti-Semite. I do not live in Canada and am prepared to follow the lead of the local Jewish community in determining who our friends are. But even “friends” can sometimes say horrible things for which they have to be called out, particularly when they involve perpetuating offensive and defamatory anti-Jewish stereotypes.

For 20 years I have been at the forefront of educating the Jewish community worldwide as to the friendship of the Mormon Church well before it was fashionable to even mention. At Oxford, Michael Taft Benson, whose grandfather was the prophet of the Mormon Church, became one of my dearest friends, and remains so, and I learned that contrary to Jewish feelings at the time, the Mormons were amazing people who loved Israel and the Jewish people. Nevertheless, Elie Wiesel, whom I took in 2006 to Utah to lecture to the Mormons, was right when he recently criticized the Church for the posthumous baptizing of holocaust victims, especially the parents of Simon Wiesenthal, and the Mormon Church, to its enormous credit, acted with humility and sensitivity in stopping the practice. Coren, however, remains utterly unapologetic about his disgusting remarks.

Harry Truman was Israel’s greatest friend in its formative stage. Israel remains in his debt to this very day. But about our people he wrote this: “The Jews, I find are very, very selfish. When they have power, physical, financial or political neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the underdog.” Surely, amid our gratitude to Truman for Israel, we have a right to criticize these astonishing remarks.

Billy Graham, America’s greatest evangelist, is a proven friend of Israel and the Jewish community. He is a man I consider a hero and to whom I look up. But should we ignore his statement to Richard Nixon in the White House, taped secretly in 1972, that, similar to Coren’s remarks about Jews and Hollywood, Jews control the American media?  Graham called it a “stranglehold” according to tapes released by the National Archives. “This stranglehold has got to be broken or the country’s going down the drain.” Jewish friends, he said, “swarm around me and are friendly to me… They don’t know how I really feel about what they’re doing to this country.”

And Nixon himself, in one of the greatest acts of pro-Israel friendship and courage, helped to rescue Israel from oblivion in the 1973 Yom Kippur War by initiating the military airlift. But does that mean the Jewish community should overlook the nonstop anti-Semitic comments Nixon made about Jews in the Oval office?

Perhaps Dimant and the B’nai Brith would care to share what part of Coren’s words I misunderstood.

I was invited on to Coren’s TV simply to discuss Kosher Jesus. Within minutes the host turned the conversation away from my book to the subject of Jews and Judaism and made four very troubling assertions. First, that Jesus completed Judaism, thereby emphasizing classical replacement theology where Christianity sought, for two thousand years, to dismiss Judaism as an outdated religion. Second, that liberal Jews who strongly dislike Christians are involved in a conspiracy to portray them as Neanderthals. Third, the proof that Jews seek to malign Christians? Well, Hollywood, of course, which Jews either control or significantly influence. Fourth, and finally, that the Jews are engaged in another conspiracy to malign Pope Pius XII, the wartime holocaust pontiff whom the Catholic Church is currently seeking to beatify but who is known to the rest of the world as Hitler’s Pope.

This last point was particularly low. Pope Pius was the man who signed the first treaty with the Nazis, refused to even once condemn the extermination of the Jews through all the years of the holocaust amidst constant prodding from all the allied leaders, and, after the war, ordered the mass kidnapping of untold numbers of baptized Jewish children who had been given to the Church for safekeeping. (My many columns on the history of Pope Pius, as well as my experiences with Coren after the show, can be found at www.shmuley.com). Coren is obsessed with Jews and others maligning poor Pope Pius. Last week he devoted another unhinged show to once again attacking me personally, making fun of my name and appearance, and most importantly, defending Hitler’s Pope from his monumental sins against the Jewish people.

Are Dimant and the B’nai Brith in the business of defending this kind of portrayal of Jews? Is Dimant a defender of Pope Pius?

Yad Vashem’s caption of Pius says he did not protest the Nazi genocide of Jews and maintained a largely neutral position. This led the Vatican to threaten to cancel Pope Benedict’s visit to Israel’s holocaust museum unless it was changed. Needless to say, Yad Vashem refused to capitulate. I would guess that Canadian Jewry support that position, which is why B’nai Brith should do the right thing and publicly clarify for the Canadian Jews, who finance them, their position on Pope Pius.

I publicly debated the Vatican’s desire to beatify Pius XII with my very dear friend, the papal knight and devoted Jewish activist, Gary Krupp, on 26 May, 2010. The video is available here. The viewer will determine who prevailed, but regardless, Gary is a refined gentleman who took me to meet Pope Benedict. Coren, by contrast, is a fundamentalist religious fanatic who savages those who disagree with him, even on historical fact. I have politely and repeatedly invited Coren to a public debate on Pope Pius. He has responded with further grotesque and cowardly personal insults. But then, personal insults are the last refuge of the intellectual coward.

Here is what renowned historian Robert Wistrich said of the Vatican’s effort to canonize Pope Pius: “Pius XII personally intervened after 1945 to commute the sentences of convicted German war criminals. This solicitude for Nazi criminals contrasts sharply with Pius XII ignoring all entreaties to make a public statement against anti-Semitism even after the full horrors of the death camps had been revealed in 1945.”

Jewish leaders who condemned the attempted canonization of Pius included Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean at The Simon Wiesenthal Center, who said he was “amazed” and that “it… would be a great distortion of history” if Pius XII were canonized. The American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants called the announcement “profoundly insensitive and thoughtless” while Stephan Kramer, the head of Germany’s Central Jewish Council, called the declaration a “hijacking of historical facts concerning the Nazi era… That’s what makes me furious.” And Rabbi Yisrael Lau, Chairman of Yad Vashem and Israel’s former Chief Rabbi, said, “This is a shame I think for the church. It is not a good education for generations to come.”

How could Dimant and B’nai Brith be so profoundly out of step with world Jewish leaders on Coren’s remarks that Pius is being falsely maligned?

Unfortunately, Dimant’s unbelievable defense of Coren has given him license to vilify me non-stop on his TV show while simultaneously defending the “saintly” Pope Pius. Indeed, Dimant himself sat in total silence while Coren made fun of my height, name, appearance, and then slandered my character. I have long given up hope of Sun TV reining in their shameful, immature, and unprofessional host and clearly they will give a TV show to absolutely anyone. But I did expect much more from a Jewish organization which purports to defend the Jewish community. We are a community that has been maligned for millennia and must be on our guard against defamation, and that applies also to extremist right-wing commentators like Coren who are friends with conservative Jews but who savagely attack liberal Jews. We are one people and dare not allow outsiders to divide us.

Truth be told, I gave Coren an out. Right after the interview was over, as he ordered me out of his studio, I asked him if he really wanted to be known for those comments. His reaction was to grow extremely aggressive, tell me I was threatening him, and then to have his Jewish intern attack me as well. I refused to leave the studio as he tried to evict me, enforcing my long-stated policy of ‘No tolerance for Intolerance.’ I told Coren he can call security, but I would not leave until I spoke to one of his superiors. Ever since, Coren’s attacks have lowered the bar on any semblance of journalistic professionalism or adult maturity, repeatedly attacking my name, appearance, and height. But though Coren chooses to be a disgrace to his profession and network, that does not mean that respected Jewish organizations need condone such shameful behavior.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, whom Newsweek calls ‘the most famous Rabbi in America,’ was the host of TLC’s Shalom in the Home, which won the National Fatherhood Award, was the London Times Preacher of the Year at the Millennium, and received the American Jewish Press Association’s Highest Award for Excellence in Commentary. The international best-selling author of 27 he has just published Kosher Jesus. He is currently mulling a run for Congress from New Jersey’s Ninth Congressional District, running as a Republican. www.shmuleyforcongress.com.

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February 28, 2012 | 11:41 am

Jews Must Demand a Relationship of Full Equality with Christianity

Posted by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach with Michael Coren. Photo from Youtube

My much-publicized dispute with Canadian TV host Michael Coren last week taught me valuable lessons about the Jewish community and the new relationship with our Christian brothers and sisters.

For those of you who missed it, I was invited on to Coren’s Sun TV show to promote my new book Kosher Jesus, or so I thought. Within minutes Coren had made four very troubling suggestions. First, that Jesus completed Judaism, thereby emphasizing classical replacement theology which sees Judaism as a subordinate religion to Christianity. Second, that liberal Jews who strongly dislike Christians are involved in an effort to portray them as unsophisticated bumpkins. Third, proof that this is so comes from Hollywood, which Jews either control or significantly influence, so that they can portray Christians in any negative way they wish. Fourth, and finally, that unappreciative Jews have engaged in an effort to malign Pope Pius XII, the wartime holocaust Pope whom the Catholic Church is currently seeking to beatify but who is known to the rest of the world as “Hitler’s Pope.” (The full video can be found here and my two columns on our dispute on my blog at the Huffington Post.)

Normally, any of these four insinuations would be seen as highly prejudicial against Jews and even anti-Semitic, something I called on Coren to apologize for. Instead, he disgraced himself further by launching into sharp personal attacks against my appearance, my name, coupled with slanderous allegations that are beneath contempt.

Now, Coren does not much matter, given his tiny footprint in the media landscape. But what happened next is instructive in terms of how desperate we in the Jewish community can sometimes be for allies. A Canadian Jewish organization came to Coren’s defense, saying he has a long history of defending the State of Israel and friendship with the Jewish community, albeit, I assume, with right-wing elements thereof, seeing as he perceived ‘liberal’ Jews to be poisonous in their outlook. I also received emails from Canadian Jews saying that while Coren’s comments were repulsive, given that Israel has so few friends we have to be happy with what we have. We dare not alienate friends in the media.

For the record I do not believe Coren to be an anti-Semite and can of course accept that his protestations to friendship are genuine. Indeed, we have a mutual acquaintance who now wishes to bring us together and I have extended an olive branch to Coren in the form of a respectful challenge to a professional debate on the record of Pope Pius XII during the holocaust. I await his response. But there can be no question that his comments were slanderous toward Jews and furthered classic anti-Jewish stereotypes about world Jewish dominance, Jewish contempt for Christians, and the lying, unappreciative Jew who will even go after a saintly pope. Yet, in this age when Israel is so utterly marginalized and vilified we are prepared to overlook Christian brothers who look down at our faith and who only dislike some Jews—in this case liberals—to clasp at any hint of friendship.

I disagree. I believe passionately in the new Jewish-Christian alliance and wrote Kosher Jesus primarily to advance it. The book seeks to share the Jewishness of Jesus so that a theological bridge can exist between the two disparate faith-communities and I am proud of the global impact it is making on both Jews and Christians. But I do not believe in friendship at any cost. We need not seek the position of superiority vis-a-vis Christians that was humbly bestowed upon us by that most righteous of popes, John Paul II, when he referred to Jews as “our elder brothers” in the faith of Abraham. But we must insist on a relationship of equality, brotherhood, and mutual respect. We need not, we dare not, embrace Christian friendship toward Israel if it has any hint of condescension toward Jews and Judaism and, of course, from the vast majority of the world’s Christians – including the current Pope and outstanding friend of the Jewish people, Benedict XVI—it does not.

Yes, Iran, as it never ceases to remind us, is gearing up for a possible war of annihilation against Israel and, of course, we require every media voice possible to sound the clarion call against Iran’s possession of nuclear weapons. Likewise Israel needs every last media ally to remind the world of the existential threat it faces from Iran-funded Hezbollah and Hamas, not to mention the barbarous Syrian regime to the north. Christians in general and evangelicals in particular have become Israel’s most stalwart allies. But that need not mean that we must tiptoe around the relationship afraid to give offense when any of those same Christian allies seek to proselytize Jews, as my friend Dr. Mike Brown, and many other Jewish converts to Christianity, still do. We must vigorously oppose them, which is why I have agreed to debate Mike next month in New York. Glenn Beck expressed it best at the Christians United for Israel dinner in Washington last year. Christian support for Israel should be based not on end-of-days theology or a desire to bring back Christ but on simple, unadulterated love for the Jewish people, just as we Jews must reciprocate with unadorned love for our Christian brothers and sisters who stand by the Jewish state through thick and thin.

To be sure, in Judaism action is much more important than intention, and whatever the reason for friendship and good deeds, they supersede the motivation. But Jews and Christians have come long enough and far enough to now engage in a mature relationship of mutual affection where we both respect the G-dly calling that each faith poses without engaging in games of one-upmanship.

It is for this reason that I also agree with my friend and hero Elie Wiesel that it is high time that our warm allies in the Mormon Church cease the posthumous baptizing of any and all Jews, once and for all. I have been close to the Mormons since my early twenties and have lectured in Utah to Church groups on countless occasions. Indeed, I once even believed that posthumous baptizing did not much matter given that it was a private ritual and the public friendship of the Church was much more significant. But friends do not just respect one another in public, they do so in private as well. And it is time that our evangelical, Mormon, and Catholic friends respect and learn from the faith that was not only practiced by their savior and redeemer, as I detail in Kosher Jesus, but who said in Matthew 5:18 would be in force for all eternity. That religion, of course, was not Christianity but Judaism.

Shmuley Boteach, “America’s Rabbi,” is the international best-selling author of 27 books and has just published Kosher Jesus. The London Times Preacher of the Year at the Millennium, he is currently mulling a run for Congress from New Jersey’s Ninth Congressional District, running as a Republican. www.shmuleyforcongress.com.

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February 24, 2012 | 11:28 am

The Michael Coren Christians Who Cowardly Deny Church History

Posted by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

I came on to Michael Coren’s TV show in Canada to simply talk about my new book Kosher Jesus, which has received wide attention throughout the world. I left dazed, having heard from him that Jews refuse to appreciate Christians, depict them negatively, and essentially control Hollywood.

Now Coren has shoved his foot far deeper into his mouth with a personal diatribe against me.

Personal insults are the last refuge of the intellectual coward.

All Coren had to do was apologize for these nauseating insinuations and remarks. Instead, he made the matter worse by complaining that I’m short, that my office had the temerity to request kosher food from the exalted Coren and his staff, and that I refused to exit his studio when he obnoxiously demanded that I exit the very moment the cameras stopped rolling. For good measure, he made sure to gratuitously insult Oprah and Michael Jackson for their mere associations with me, as well.

For the record, there is little I can do about my height, and I apologize to Coren for offending him with my diminutive appearance. Likewise, there is nothing I can do about being kosher. I will never give it up, no matter how much he attacks me for simply asking where I might obtain kosher food since I am not familiar with Toronto. And when Coren’s show asked me to take an early morning flight to Toronto – to talk about my new book Kosher Jesus – where I was traveling for my nephew’s wedding, my office simply asked if a kosher meal could be procured since I would not be eating the whole day and, as a kosher Jew, cannot buy food in most places. Even so, they told my assistant we would have to arrange and pay for it ourselves.

As for Coren’s libel that I threatened him with disclosure of his remarks about Jews and Hollywood, the paranoid claim is laughable given that he had just made his remarks about Jews on national TV in Canada.

It is absolutely true that I refused to leave his studio after his reprehensible treatment of me and his attempt to evict me just as soon as the interview concluded, demanding to see his superiors and finally meeting a man named Matt Wolf, executive producer of Sun TV’s prime time talk shows, who turned out to be quite a gentleman.

I make no apologies for my actions. I am somewhat who fights anti-Semitism and holds those who malign my people accountable. Coren can claim from here to kingdom come that he is a friend of the Jewish community, and that may be true. But that does not excuse his odious remarks. His comments about lack of Jewish appreciation for Christians and the connection between Jews and Hollywood are the very stuff of negative Jewish stereotypes and if he was not prepared to retract them – as Marlon Brando did years ago when he too insinuated on Larry King Live that Jews control Hollywood – then I will bring the matter to his superiors. And his claim that he was only speaking about ‘liberal’ Jews matters not a toss. For the record I am a Republican who is currently seeking our party’s nomination for Congress in New Jersey’s Ninth Congressional District. But I will stand with my people, whatever their political persuasion, and will not allow them to slandered.

As for the Jewish intern of whom he speaks, how sad that some Jews appear to turn the other cheek even when their people are maligned in order to remain in the good graces of superiors.

More troubling still is Coren’s praise for Pius XII and his attempt to hold the Jews accountable for misrepresenting this most ignominious of Popes. Indeed, Sun TV cut Coren’s remarks about Pius from their online post of the broadcast. Why? And why isn’t the interview posted unedited? The public has the right to see it in its entirety.

I stand by my comments about Pius, a religious hypocrite who remained silent while six million Jews died and never once protested. Decent people the world over are repulsed by the memory of a man who disgraced a great Church by showing a total absence of moral leadership, refusing to even once condemn Hitler and the Nazis through all the years of their monstrous murders and tyranny.

An autocrat who told the Roman curia repeatedly that their job was not to give him advice, but to follow his orders, there is ample evidence for Pius as a collaborator with the Nazi government in their occupation of Rome. When the Nazis committed the heinous war crime of executing 335 Roman citizens – many of them Jews but most of them Catholic – in reprisal for a partisan attack against Nazi troops, Pius was implored to publicly protest and protect his personal flock. As usual, he refused to say anything that might upset the Nazis. It seems that neither the love of God nor the love of his fellow man could ever move Pius to publicly condemn Hitler, with whom he had famously negotiated, as papal nuncio, the 1933 treaty which the Fuhrer praised to his cabinet on July 14th of that year as being “especially significant in the urgent struggle against international Jewry.”

Pius even granted a secret audience to Supreme SS Polizeifuhrer Wolff, who had served Himmler as chief of staff and was, in 1943, serving as the chief of German persecution apparatus in occupied Italy. That Pius realized he was doing something that others would regard as scandalous is attested to the fact that the meeting took place in great confidence, and Wolff came dressed in disguise. Years later, Wolff had this to say about the meeting: “From the pope’s own words I could sense the sincerity of his sympathy and how much he loved the German people.”

The coup de grace, of course, was how Pius XII literally watched as the Germans, on Oct. 16, 1943, rounded up more than 1,000 Jews of Rome, nearly all of whom would perish by gas a few days later at Auschwitz. A special SS contingent had been brought in for the roundup, and since many of them had never seen the great city, used the roundup of the Jews as a partial tourist excursion. This brought them to St. Peter’s Square, where many of the trucks actually parked, not more than 300 feet from Pius’ window. Even as the Jews were herded aboard cattle trains and taken to their death, Pius dared not upset the Germans by offering any kind of protest. His strict policy of neutrality was upheld as the Jews of his diocese were literally turned into ash.

But while he did not prize the lives of Jews, there was one thing that Pius did esteem, and that was the bricks and mortar of his churches. As the British and American armies geared up for a massive offensive in the spring of 1944 to capture Rome, Pius suddenly found his voice. He condemned the allies for bombing the eternal city and ordered his American bishops to launch public relations offensives in the United States to pressure the Roosevelt government not to cause destruction to the sacred monuments of the city. This while the Nazis were gassing more than 10,000 people per day.

Not all Christians are like Coren. The vast majority are prepared to honestly study painful moments in the Church’s history, take responsibility for moral failures, and move on to a more Godly future with the Jews as brothers. That was the purpose of my writing Kosher Jesus, which is now a bestseller on many Amazon subcategories. My intent was to educate my Christian brothers and sisters about the Jewishness of Jesus so as to bring our two peoples closer and I am moved by the untold numbers of devout Christians who have written to me thanking me for the book.

What a shame that the moral courage required of such honesty eludes Michael Coren. And how unfortunate that rather than rising to the occasion of building bridges between Jews and Christians, he resorts instead to shameful personal attack.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, whom Newsweek calls ‘the most famous Rabbi in America,’ was the host of TLC’s Shalom in the Home, which won the National Fatherhood Award, was the London Times Preacher of the Year at the Millennium, and received the American Jewish Press Association’s Highest Award for Excellence in Commentary. The international best-selling author of 27 he has just published Kosher Jesus. He is currently mulling a run for Congress from New Jersey’s Ninth Congressional District, running as a Republican. www.shmuleyforcongress.com

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February 23, 2012 | 2:54 pm

Canadian TV Host Insinuates to Rabbi Shmuley Jews Control Hollywood [VIDEO]

Posted by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Today I had what was probably the most unpleasant TV interview of my life on Canada’s Sun News Network (national). Interviewed by host Michael Coren about my book Kosher Jesus, I expected to be asked about the book’s content. The interview started that way. But then Coren quickly got to a question that seemed to be bursting from within. You’ll have to see the exact show, airing tonight at 7pm, for complete accuracy, and I am writing this about an hour after.

Coren essentially asked me why Jews depict Christians so negatively. He went on about how much the Catholic Church and Christians in general have done for the Jews of late. Yet the Jews continue to be so unappreciative, always questioning Christian motivation, always finding fault with Christians no matter what.

I asked him to justify his claim that Jews depict Christians negatively. He said something like, “What do you mean? Just look at Hollywood.”

Hollywood? I was confused. Weren’t we just talking about Jewish-Christian relations? Where did Hollywood come in, unless, for Coren, Jews and Hollywood were synonymous.

What was the connection between Hollywood’s depiction of Christians and the Jews, I asked. The show went downhill from there, with the anti-Semitic stereotype of the Jews controlling and influencing Hollywood dominating the interview. I defended my people against this disgusting slur, a tributary of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, that the Jews control whole segments of society, in this case the motion picture industry, which they use to negatively depict Christians as a bunch of illiterate and primitive bumpkins.

From there Coren went on to speak about the negative Jewish depiction of Pope Pius XII, which I battled him on further. This was amazing. The Jews were defaming the saintly Pope Pius? For the record, I have written a great deal on Pius XII, the man John Cornwell, a non-Jewish British journalist, famously called Hitler’s Pope in his best-selling 1999 biography of the same name. Pius was the wartime Pope who never once condemned the systematic murder of Europe’s Jews through all the years of the holocaust and who, after the war, allowed the mass kidnapping of Jewish children who had originally been given by their families to Christians in order to save their lives. Pius advised, in the form of a typewritten directive discovered in a French church archive and dated Oct. 23, 1946, that church authorities not return to their relatives Jewish children who had been baptized. They must remain Christian and should not be returned to Jewish families.

He was the Pope who famously refused, amid unmistakable evidence of thousands of Jews being shipped to slaughter in Nazi concentration camps, to ever speak out against the Holocaust. This followed Pius’ successful efforts to prevent the publication of an encyclical commissioned by his dying predecessor to condemn Nazi anti-Semitism. This is also the Pope who sent Hitler birthday greetings every single year and who refused to excommunicate Hitler or any other top Nazis who were on official Catholic rolls (to give this context, the singer Sinead O’Connor was excommunicated). He ignored the pleas of President Roosevelt and Winston Churchill to denounce the Nazis. He later refused to endorse a joint declaration by Britain, U.S and Russia condemning mass murder of Europe’s Jews, claiming that he simply could not condemn “particular” atrocities. The most he ever did was a single pronouncement during the war on the murder “of hundreds of thousands.” By then, of course, there were millions, and he did not mention Hitler, Nazi Germany, or the Jews in the statement. Most infamously, he was silent when the Germans rounded up Rome’s Jews in October 1944 for slaughter. They were being processed for extermination in a military school a few hundred yards from his window in St. Peter’s. An Italian princess, Enza Pignatelli, forced her way into the Pope’s study and warned him about the imminent assault on the city’s Jewish citizens. “You must act immediately,” she cried. “The Germans are arresting the Jews and taking them away. Only you can stop them.” The Pope assured her, “I will do all I can.” He made no protest and nearly all were later gassed in Auschwitz. Curiously, amid the Pope’s inability to find his voice to condemn the extermination of European Jewry, when the Catholic archbishop of Berlin issued a statement mourning Hitler’s death, the Pope did not reprimand him.

Those who have read my writings, and especially those who have read Kosher Jesus, will know that I have unbridled love for my Christian brothers and sisters, a deep respect and affection I have written and spoken about on countless occasions. They will also know that I was given the great pleasure and honor of being greeted by Pope Benedict in Rome in 2010. They will further know that I am invited to address Christian audiences the world over, including in Israel. And I wrote Kosher Jesus in response to the great Christian yearning to discover the Jewishness of Jesus.

But people like Coren who perpetuate the anti-Semitic canard that Jews both control Hollywood and have contempt for Christians are a serious obstruction to the new era of Jewish-Christian brotherhood and rapprochement. It is an absolute lie that Jews have contempt for Christians. It is likewise a lie that Christians are victims of Jewish hostility, as Coren implies. The truth, of course, is that Jews have suffered mightily at the hands of Christianity for nearly two millennium. But thankfully a succession of great Christian men and women in modern times, led by Pope John XXIII, the greatest of all popes, and then by John Paul II and Benedict XVI, both outstanding friends of world Jewry, and joined especially by the 80 million born-again Christians in the United States, the vast majority of whom are phenomenal friends of Israel, have reversed this trend and made Catholicism and Christianity stalwart allies and friends of G-d’s chosen people.

Denying the past is not going to increase our friendship just as being limited by it will not either. This is a new time for Jews and Christians. Let’s forgo the old animosities, the old prejudices, and especially the old and ugly stereotypes.  Michael Coren owes Jewry an apology. If he’s man enough to give it I will overlook his foul treatment of me, both during the interview and after it was over.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, whom Newsweek calls ‘the most famous Rabbi in America,’ was the host of TLC’s Shalom in the Home, which won the National Fatherhood Award, was the London Times Preacher of the Year at the Millennium, and received the American Jewish Press Association’s Highest Award for Excellence in Commentary. The international best-selling author of 27 he has just published Kosher Jesus. He is currently mulling a run for Congress from New Jersey’s Ninth Congressional District, running as a Republican. www.shmuleyforcongress.com

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February 16, 2012 | 5:05 pm

A thank you to a political rival for my son’s nomination to West Point

Posted by  Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Steve Rothman, U.S. Congressman (D-NJ, 1997-present)

If I run for Congress in New Jersey’s Ninth district, I will be squaring off against either Congressman Steve Rothman or Congressman Bill Pascrell, who have been squeezed into the same district and who are competing against each other for their party’s nomination.

Rothman and I have fought some tough, public battles against one another, primarily over the Libyan embassy, which is my immediate next-door neighbor in Englewood, New Jersey. I have also been critical of his support for President Obama on Israel, even when the President’s positions put unfair and unjust pressure on Israel.

But today I am writing not to attack a potential political rival but to thank him. I have already declared that if I run I want to be the values voice in Congress. In Judaism gratitude for an act of kindness is among life’s highest virtues. So here I present a much-deserved thank you to Rothman that I am not running by any political advisors or consultants, who would presumably tell me is ill-conceived given my potential battle against him this autumn.

Congressman Rothman recently nominated my son Mendy to West Point. To be sure, Mendy is an outstanding young man and earned the nomination through personal merit. At just eighteen he is currently serving in his second year as a Chabad student emissary in Frankfurt, Germany, where he is helping to rebuild Jewish life after the devastation of the holocaust. He also began visiting with American service personnel stationed on bases in Germany to cater to their religious needs and, having been highly impressed with officer graduates of West Point, decided he wanted to serve his country and applied to The United States Military Academy. To be accepted you have to be nominated by your Congressman.

This is where things could have gotten a little hairy.

Congressman Rothman knew I might run against him. But that did not stop him from rewarding my son’s application with the nomination to West Point. Rothman’s decision to put merit before political consideration showed character and integrity and I salute it. It also demonstrated a willingness to populate our officer corps with deserving men and women, whatever the political consequences.

Having been nominated, Mendy may join his elder sister Chana who has now volunteered for two years of army service in Israel – training male soldiers for combat – to help an embattled democracy survive against brutal enemies. Mendy is now down to 4000 applicants from which 1500 will be chosen as cadets for the West Point Class of 2016.

He faces an uphill battle.

Mendy has to be incredibly physically fit, even though his Yeshiva in Frankfurt has no gym facilities and he therefore has to daily improvise for all his physical activities, and this while having a grueling daily regimen of Torah study that begins at 7am, ends at 10pm, and is only interrupted for hours of spiritual work with the community. Still, he wants to serve his country and is convinced that the greatest force for good in today’s world is the US military consisting of the bravest men and women who are prepared to fight for the freedom and rights of total strangers the world over.

For recognizing Mendy’s commitment and character, I am taking the opportunity to thank Congressman Rothman in writing. Even if Rothman and I end up later doing battle in the fall, it will never be as dangerous as any of the battles that our service men and women fight daily in hellish warzones against evil terrorists like the Taliban in Afghanistan.

I pray to G-d for the safety of all our service men and women, especially my children, who may be placed in harm’s way. And I thank G-d for the opportunity they have been afforded to serve, and for the people through whom such service comes about.

Shmuley Boteach, whom Newsweek calls ‘the most famous Rabbi in America,’ is an award-winning national TV and radio host and international best-selling author of 27 books. He has just published Kosher Jesus. Follow him on Twitter @RabbiShmuley.

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