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A funny thing happened to me the other day when my wife and I had, thank God, another baby (a boy). Many of my friends didn’t seem all that happy for me. Sure, they went through the motions of smiles and congratulations. But it was evident that many thought me insane. Why would a young man and his wife ruin their lives with eight children? Who could afford the day-school bills? Didn’t we want to live life a little, and not just be burdened with kids? It got downright surreal when a European film company pressed me, while my wife...

While serving as rabbi at Oxford University, I befriended a young African-American Rhodes scholar by the name of Cory Booker who became like a brother to me. Because of Cory’s immense popularity within our student organization, the Oxford L’Chaim Society, he was voted in as co-president 1992, serving as leader of an organization of more than 4,000 student members. Many in the Anglo-Jewish community were puzzled at a non-Jew serving at the head of a Jewish organization, especially when pictures of Cory, with a yarmulke on his head introducing our speaker Mikhail Gorbachev, appeared throughout the UK press. But to...

It was puzzling for the mostly African-American guests at Camp Williams – who had been evacuated from a destroyed New Orleans to Utah – to suddenly see a rabbi with a yarmulke about to address them in their temporary military home. It was even stranger for them to suddenly recognize that that rabbi was the radio host whom the Utah papers had been reporting all week had lost his radio show after using his program to stage an event that would assist the evacuees to find permanent homes in the white, middle-class neighborhoods that Mormon Utah is famous for. And...

Just a little over a month ago I visited the Gulf Coast states of Mississippi and Louisiana on a radio road trip across America's Deep South. When I arrived on Bourbon Street in the French quarter of New Orleans, with its sex shops and year-round Mardi Gras drunkenness, I told my listeners, jokingly, that no doubt the Big Easy (as New Orleans is known) would one day be swallowed by the earth in some awesome display of the divine wrath. The joke became all too real in the terrible aftermath of Hurricane Katrina that devastated the Gulf Coast, leaving New...

Do not use my tax dollars for disengagement By SHMULEY BOTEACH Ariel Sharon prides himself on being a pioneer, Israel's human bulldozer, the man who is always out in front, who achieves the impossible, who breaks through all barriers. Well, chalk up yet another first to this stubbornly audacious man, for Sharon is the first Israeli prime minister to have caused Israel's staunchest allies, America's evangelical Christians, to come out against the Israeli government.

Ariel Sharon prides himself on being a pioneer, Israel's human bulldozer, the man who is always out in front, who achieves the impossible, who breaks through all barriers. Well, chalk up yet another first to this stubbornly audacious man, for Sharon is the first Israeli prime minister to have caused Israel's staunchest allies, America's evangelical Christians, to come out against the Israeli government. It is indeed a singular achievement to take your greatest friends and make them into enemies. Sharon has now done this twice. First, with the settler community, who were hoodwinked into believing that Sharon was their ally....

Let us say for a moment that we who oppose the withdrawal from Gaza were to belatedly and begrudgingly accept the calculus of disengagement. Imagine for a moment that Prime Minister Sharon is right. Eight-thousand Jews living in the midst of 1.3 million Palestinians have no future. The military commitment of protecting the settlers is just too expensive and the potential loss of life too costly. It's time to pull out. It's painful, but logical. There are other places in Israel for the settlers to live, and these brave pioneers dare not allow themselves to become obstacles to peace. There...

In May 1995, Christopher Reeve was taking part in a cross-country equestrian event when a fall caused his skull to literally become separated from his spinal cord. He was totally paralyzed. Of that moment he later said, "It dawned on me I was going to be a huge burden to everybody, that I had ruined my life and everybody else's. Not fair to anybody. The best thing to do would be to slip away." When his wife, Dana, came into his room he looked at her and mouthed the words, "Maybe we should let me go." His wife started crying...

I never believed that I would live in a country that would, in effect, execute a brain-damaged woman who never hurt anyone in her life. The story of Terri Schiavo should outrage every decent American. While our soldiers valiantly fight and die across the sea so complete strangers can enjoy human rights, here at home an American woman who suffered severe brain damage 15 years ago is being subjected to death by dehydration and starvation by order of a judge. Today, her feeding tube was removed. The humanity of every society is determined first and foremost by how it treats...

I never believed that I would live in a country that would, in effect, execute a brain-damaged woman who never hurt anyone in her life. The story of Terri Schiavo should outrage every decent American. While our soldiers valiantly fight and die across the sea so complete strangers can enjoy human rights, here at home an American woman who suffered severe brain damage 15 years ago is being subjected to death by dehydration and starvation by order of a judge. Today, her feeding tube was removed. The humanity of every society is determined first and foremost by how it treats...

Arguably, the biggest problem in American culture today is the fact that mere entertainers are its heroes. There is no precedent in any civilization in the history of the world for entertainers – actors, singers, dancers and directors – to be elevated to the highest positions of prominence in the culture. That's why none of us can name actors and actresses from ancient Greece or Rome. They weren't important enough to be remembered. Sure, we can name the playwrights and we can name the satirists. We can name the politicians, the philosophers and the generals. Because literary, academic, political and...

Schmuley Boteach seems, on the surface, to be a pleasant, erudite Rabbi popular with the TV crowd because he presents himself well on TV interviews, is popular with the Hollyweird crowd, and voices some views that sync with pop culture, howbeit with a conservative religious wrapping. Recently 'Schmuley', as he is called by his acquaintances, was a guest on Michael Medved's talkshow, and once again affirmed to this observer that he [Rabbi Boteach] only seeks harmony between Christians and Jews on his own terms: which includes the emasculation of basic Christian tenets. The christian New Testament is a collection of...

The aristocracy of the beautiful is becoming increasingly pronounced in the Western world, with looks and figure trumping talent and effort in the professional marketplace. Even in such serious professions as broadcast journalism, appearance has become more important than substance. Just try to find a new female television anchor who doesn't look like a Nordic goddess, or, if she has to be a brunette, isn't glamorous, thin and beautiful. The practice of valuing a woman based on her high cheekbones instead of her intelligence reached its zenith when CNN advertised its new anchor, Paula Zahn, as "just a little bit...

Now that we’re passed the Golden Globes, it’s Oscar time and many Christians around America are hoping - and praying - that Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ will win the Academy Award for Best Picture. The possibility, a major long shot, no longer seems that outrageous now that the film has already won the People's Choice award for Best drama. Over the past year, I have been a vociferous critic of The Passion. Many of my Christian brothers and sisters have been extremely puzzled that, given my staunch admiration for the morality of the Christian faith in general,...

President George W. Bush's victory last November was a triumph for Jewish conservatives who have long argued for a close alliance with evangelical Christians in promoting the Judeo-Christian values upon which America is founded. Such a tiny and vulnerable nation needs friends and I, for one, reveled in Jews having found allies who revere the Bible and prophets, are staunch supporters of Israel, and oppose the crassness of the popular culture. It has been only four months since the election, but already we have discovered fissures in this special relationship. As Christmas approached, many right-wing Christians blamed atheist Jews for...

Editor's note: This commentary is in response to a commentary WorldNetDaily ran last week by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach. As we noted in his commentary, historians are split on whether Pope Pius XII's subdued response to Hitler and behind-the-scenes efforts helped save many Jews during the Nazi Holocaust, or whether his "neutrality" amounted to moral cowardice, costing many Jewish lives.A rebuttal to the hyper hysterics of Rabbi Boteach's article, "Pius XII: Collaborator and kidnapper" is simple: No good deed goes unpunished. And, apparently, a heroic deed will be punished with a vengeance. The document Rabbi Shmuley waved under the nose of...

Use people power against genocide By SHMULEY BOTEACH Two things were on my mind as I watched Hotel Rwanda, the stunning depiction of the 1994 Rwandan Tutsi extermination that was the fastest genocide in the history of the world. The first was Hollywood, and how I owed it an apology for the many times I have railed against its degeneracy. A film this powerful shames the world out of its indifference to the slaughter of helpless humans and demonstrates the potential of movies to reach the places photos and words cannot. The second was Bill Clinton, the great 60's liberal...

With the Democratic Party scrambling to discover how to reconnect with mainstream America, members of the Jewish community better ask themselves the same question. The foremost issue animating voters in the 2004 election was moral values, and 80 percent of the moral values voters went for George Bush. This contrasts with 75 percent of Jewish voters who went for John Kerry, which suggests that the Jewish community’s basic morality is out of touch with the majority of Americans. A giant gulf, in particular, has opened between the Jewish community and America’s 70 million born-again Christians for whom religion is primarily...

Conventional wisdom has it that the "morality voters" who rose to such prominence in this election voted for President Bush because of their opposition to gay marriage. But that is a complete misreading of why the morality voters dumped John Kerry. In reality, the No. 1 moral issue for most Americans is not gay marriage, but the foul and sleazy culture which is destroying their children's innocence. And it was John Kerry's alignment with Hollywood and its celebrities – who came out in full force for his elevation – that ultimately did him in. Pity the poor people of Hollywood....

Tuesday, November 2, 2004 My love affair with evangelical Christians Posted: November 2, 20041:00 a.m. Eastern By Rabbi Shmuley Boteach © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com Nearly the whole world is arrayed against President George W. Bush. The long list includes Europe, the United Nations, the Arab countries, the world's media, Hollywood, the universities, and half the United States. The question becomes: How can this man possibly survive as president? The answer to this question lies in the biggest American development since women's suffrage, namely, the rise of the Christian right. The United States has 70 million born-again Christians, comprising the single largest voting block...