Last week at Vassar, Max Blumenthal called out Rabbi Shmuley Boteach– who has schooled Senator Cory Booker and UN Ambassador Samantha Power in the ways of Israel support– for issuing the nutty charge that Iran threatens another Holocaust.
After Blumenthal’s comment, I went to Boteach’s prolific twitter feed to find the Iran speech. Boteach calls himself “America’s Rabbi,” and here is one of his pictures from the April 27 rally. The sign says:
“Holocaust Remembrance Day. More than six million reasons to be united against a nuclear Iran.”
Anti Iran rally on holocaust memorial day pic.twitter.com/joJFOaANEI
— Rabbi Shmuley (@RabbiShmuley) April 27, 2014
This is nothing new for Boteach. He was on stage at Yeshiva University last fall when Sheldon Adelson called on Obama to nuke Iran, and has only approved Adelson’s language.
But in getting to the Iran speech, I had to go through a lot of celebrities pictured on Boteach’s twitter feed. Adam reminded me that Boteach has a long history of friendship with celebrities, having been Michael Jackson’s spiritual adviser.
Here are more recent shots.
First, Boteach befriends the excellent journalist Rod Nordland. Looks like a drive-by shooting.
Say it ain’t so Rod; I can’t believe you are down with Boteach’s program.
I have closely followed @Rodnordland stories from afghan in @NYTimes pic.twitter.com/tHFZDzG9Q5 — Rabbi Shmuley (@RabbiShmuley) May 7, 2014
Here he is with Alex Rodriguez at the Milken Institute’s global conference in LA from late April.
With A-Rod at Milken Conference pic.twitter.com/s7ULDCjl7q — Rabbi Shmuley (@RabbiShmuley) May 4, 2014
Sean Penn at the same event:
With Sean penn our honoree at #Milkenconference pic.twitter.com/IMPybCmvfC
— Rabbi Shmuley (@RabbiShmuley) April 30, 2014
And then there are a lot of tweets of Charlize Theron.
#milkenconference Charlize Theron: most important thing is fighting aids is partnerships pic.twitter.com/SVWAfkOAVi
— Rabbi Shmuley (@RabbiShmuley) April 30, 2014
I mean a lot. Another:
#milkenconference Charlize Theron: pres zuma of South Africa has been a true leader in fight against aids pic.twitter.com/d49XvLBMOX
— Rabbi Shmuley (@RabbiShmuley) April 30, 2014
Another.
#milkenconference Charlize Theron: proven fact that kids who stay in school start having sex later pic.twitter.com/1cYIqog9uj — Rabbi Shmuley (@RabbiShmuley) April 30, 2014
Another.
#milkenconference Charlize Theron: 30 million people have died from aids. And it was preventable pic.twitter.com/roTgCC1O0R — Rabbi Shmuley (@RabbiShmuley) April 30, 2014
She’s got her arms crossed in this one.
I count fifteen tweets/photos of Charlize Theron in all from America’s rabbi. The Milken Conference itself published Theron’s photo, but it found time for pictures of other celebs, Tony Blair, Deepak Chopra, Jerry Brown, Magic Johnson.
Maybe she’s going to run for Senate!
Milken Institute?
Wikipedia: Michael Robert Milken (born July 4, 1946) is an American business magnate, financier and philanthropist. He is noted for his role in the development of the market for high-yield bonds (“junk bonds”),[2] for his conviction following a guilty plea on felony charges for violating U.S. securities laws, and for his charitable giving. […] Milken was sentenced to ten years in prison, fined $600 million, and permanently barred from the securities industry by the Securities and Exchange Commission. His sentence was later reduced to two years for cooperating with testimony against his former colleagues and for good behavior.
A fraud and a rat? Nice that he could fund his institute after paying 0.6 G$ fine. But how it can be treated seriously? What kind of people agree to be photographed with “Milken Institute” background?
Shmuley is one of those people. They love it when you look at them.
Thats not all that is wrong with Boteach. Is this Judaism?
The Jews need to kick him to the curb.
hhtp://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/No-Holds-Barred-Jewish-lust-versus-Christian-love
No Holds Barred: Jewish lust versus Christian love
By SHMULEY BOTEACH
(snips)
”While Christianity posits love as the foundation of a relationship, Judaism has always emphasized desire in its place. The principal reason for the breakdown of marriages and relationships is that in modern times they are built not on lust but love.
Judaism never posits a G-d that is so monolithic as to be described as love. Do you really want a G-d who is all love when it comes to punishing the Nazis for cremating children? Do you want a G-d who is all love when it comes to stopping an al-Qaida terrorist from planting a bomb that will blow up an airplane? Or do you want, at that moment, a just G-d who will cause that terrorist to have a car accident on the way to the plane so he can’t plant his bomb.
G-d is not love. Rather, He is utterly beyond any emotion or description. At times He is loving and at times He is jealous and punitive, as when he punishes the Egyptians at sea for enslaving and slaughtering an innocent nation. It was Paul of Tarsus, in the New Testament, who famously said, “Love is patient, love is kind… Love never fails” (1 Corinthians 13:4-8).
What an excellent description of the virtue of love – and its limitations!
This is the perfect description of love as companionship and friendship.
And if anyone wants to have a romantic relationship based on these warm and cuddly attributes, that’s fine. But while love is warm, lust is passionate.
While love seeks to share, lust seeks to acquire. While love can be satisfied, lust is utterly insatiable
So how did we get it so wrong? How did love come to trump lust? Why have we, for centuries, based marriages on the weaker link of love instead of the nuclear bond of erotic desire? To many this would seem a crazy question. Love is everything, right? Even G-d is love? But who said these things and why do we just take it for granted? The source for G-d being love and for marriages being based on love rather than lust is Christianity.
Its source is not the Hebrew Bible but The New Testament: “The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love” (1 John 4:8). It’s repeated again a few verses later: “And we have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him” (1 John 4:16).
Rabbi Shmuley is America’s Rabbi
For the first time in history we are witnessing the mainstreaming of Jewish ideas, Jewish values, Jewish personalities, and Jewish culture in the American media. Slowly but surely, Jewish values are sculpting and molding the mainstream culture. Rabbi Shmuley is at the forefront of that movement, to help educate and evolve with the masses.
Yes, I guess it suggests power, to pretend to stand or speak for a group.
‘View With Favor’by TOM SEGEV, NYT August 20, 2010.
Chaim Weizmann, the leading spokesman for Zionism in Britain, must have felt ill at ease when he entered those awesome corridors of power. A Russian-born chemist, he began to solicit support among the British soon after he settled in Manchester in 1904. He could hardly speak English in those days: his first contacts with British officials were conducted in French. But if he was taken aback by the snobbery and coolness that awaited him at Whitehall, he made sure to conceal his uneasiness, acting as if he commanded an almost omnipotent power: world Jewry. The British believed he did.
Obviously there was no “Jewish power” controlling world affairs, but Weizmann successfully pretended that the Jews were in fact turning the wheels of history. For once, the anti-Semitic image of the Jews proved useful — they were believed to be so maliciously dangerous that one would do best to acquire them as allies rather than as enemies.
He is a disgrace. To politicize the Holocaust, and link it to war mongering with Iran is despicable. He is a zionist in American clothing. Why is he inciting people by going against what the President is doing – trying to make an agreement with Iran, in an effort to avoid a war with them? Iran so far has been cooperative with the UN, and the nations involved in these negotiations, which puts Israel and it’s refusal to cooperate with the US, and make a peace agreement with those they occupy, look very bad. Boteach is behaving like a rabble rouser with ulterior motives. To think they call themselves Americans, and live here, while doing the bidding of an alien nation, is unbelievable .
It is ironic that Israel stifles peaceful protests and free speech when it comes to the Palestinians, but take full advantage of our constitution, to make servants like Boteach do his bit of war mongering.