Top rabbi defends Shmuley Boteach
ONE of Australia’s most senior Orthodox rabbis has moved to stem a campaign from Chabad in the United States to discredit Rabbi Shmuley Boteach for his controversial book on Jews and Jesus.
The breakthrough came in a meeting between the celebrity rabbi and Rabbi Moshe Gutnick, president of the Organisation of Rabbis of Australasia, after Rabbi Boteach lamented “a whispering campaign to make me persona non grata” during his Australian visit last month.
For the figure tagged “America’s rabbi”, who counselled Michael Jackson, regularly appeared on Oprah and wrote Kosher Sex, a rift with Australia’s Chabad over Kosher Jesus has been like a family feud.
Rabbi Boteach spent a part of his youth in Sydney, involved in Jewish studies, and it’s where he met his wife Debbie. He has visited Australia more than 50 times.
“I’m Chabad to my core and that will never change,” he told The AJN during his visit. “It stings, I’m only human. I’m not here to promote the book, but there’s been an effort to marginalise me.”
But if Rabbi Boteach’s Australian visit fuelled a broigus, last week’s face-to-face parley with Rabbi Gutnick, who has known him “since he was a bocher [young student]”, was an opportunity to make peace.
Rabbi Boteach said Australian rabbis took their cue from an American ruling by influential Chabad scholar Rabbi Dr Immanuel Schochet, who wrote in January that followers were banned from reading Kosher Jesus because it encouraged proselytisers.
Ahead of his visit, Rabbi Boteach was targeted by “an avalanche of hysterical letters to me from Sydney. Five or six rabbis from the Chabad community wrote to me that ‘You really made a mistake with this,’ and ‘This book is really dangerous.’”
During his visit, colleague Rabbi Yaakov Glasman, Rabbinical Council of Victoria president, told The AJN he accepted Rabbi Schochet’s view “as authoritative”.
But Rabbi Gutnick said, while he was aware of widespread criticism, he had read Kosher Jesus and was convinced it does not encourage missionaries.
“Notwithstanding all the criticisms heaped on Rabbi Boteach, I think his intentions are proper and sincere. The suggestion that Rabbi Boteach is a heretic is simply ludicrous, and those who make that charge either do not know Rabbi Boteach or choose not to know him,” he stated. “Whoever suggests the book is in some way a support for Christianity and its teachings has obviously not read the book.”
Rabbi Gutnick said he was concerned by a reference that “Judaism permits and encourages a diverse world.
“This theme is, I believe, heretical. Unequivocally Judaism believes that God gave only one truth to the world, the truth of the Torah.”
But he said that on speaking to Rabbi Boteach, “I accept his intent was not to suggest multiple truths other than the Torah, but rather that not everyone has to believe as a Jew,” and urged the rabbi to clarify future editions.
“Where he is controversial, but in my view not heretical, is in his attempt to rehabilitate Jesus himself as a loyal Jew from whom Jews can learn.”
Rabbi Boteach spoke at Caulfield Synagogue in Melbourne and Maroubra Synagogue in Sydney, and told The AJN that attempts to ostracise him may actually have swelled attendances.
“There has to be more oxygen in the Jewish community … Some rabbis are mired in the past and see Christians as anti-Semites who want to convert us. But one in five Americans are born-again Christians. They’re our friends.”
Rabbi Boteach, who hopes to win a June 5 primary to contest a New Jersey Congressional seat as a Republican in the November election, has been endorsed by House of Representatives majority leader Eric Cantor.
REPORT: Peter Kohn
PHOTO: Rabbi Shmuley Boteach has sought to quell controversy on his latest trip to Australia. Photo: Peter Haskin
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