From the category archives:
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.
Men are becoming shallower than ever. They are focusing on a woman’s packaging to the virtual exclusion of other far more erotic elements of feminine attractiveness that strike deeper than skin. [Click to read more…]
{ 0 comments }
WIDK By Rabbi Shmuley Boteach
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 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 that 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.
{ 0 comments }
WIDK By Rabbi Shmuley Boteach
Readers of this column will know that last week my wife and I, thank G-d, married off our eldest child. What they will not know are the conditions we endured for the days prior to the wedding when a freak snow storm caused a power outage in our home town of Englewood, New Jersey, and much of the Northeast. We were preparing for a wedding with a house filled with relatives from around the world who, freezing with no heat, light, or phones, thought America was a third world country. Compounding that feeling were the dilapidated roads, like the I-95 – one of the America’s premier highways – that passes near our home and that is so filled with potholes and is so perennially under construction that it calls to mind a war zone like Kandahar. Add to that the staggering traffic in New York City where it can take 30 minutes just to go around a city block and my Australian, European, and Israeli relatives came to the conclusion that America is teetering on the brink.
We were fortunate that, although the beautiful Rockleigh Country Club where the wedding was held itself lost power, its internal generators allowed us to proceed with what was a magnificent wedding. But a few relatives who were supposed to stay for the seven days of celebration that traditionally follow a Jewish wedding left in the morning hours after the ceremony swearing they could no longer endure the freezing conditions to which our area of the country subjected them.
They were right.
Yes, a freak snow storm in October is a challenge. But this is the third power outage lasting several days with which we have been hit in about half a year. All could have been easily avoided if our town could simply afford to run the power lines under the ground where they belong, where trees can’t knock them out of commission, and where they can’t dangle and kill small children, as tragically happened in our area in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene. But although we have nearly the highest property taxes in America, our town can barely afford to fix its own streets. Most New York and New Jersey municipalities are spending upwards of $23k per student in the school systems and are locked into such expensive union contracts that they simply don’t have the funds to upgrade infrastructure. The roads in the New York metropolitan area are a disaster zone and will remain that way indefinitely.
While the world reads daily about America’s high unemployment rate and a staggering national debt that just about equals its GDP, what they don’t see is the dilapidated state of America’s infrastructure or the nightmare traffic jams in all its big cities. But government has spent so much money on so many wasteful and ineffective social programs that the funds to stop America from crumbling simply don’t exist.
Truth be told, we should by now all be sick of just complaining about the problems. The last thing America needs is more armchair pundits or television talking heads. It’s time we all did something about it.
When I was a guest on the Glenn Beck show a few weeks ago, he gave his version of the Ten Commandments, one of which was the obligation to run for elective office if you see your country suffering and more worthy candidates than yourself do not exist. This is probably what America most needs: courageous, principled, visionary, and determined citizens unseating the do-nothing class of politicians who watch America crumble by the day yet continue to waste our hard-earned money on efforts that yield few results.
But anyone who has watched what has happened to Herman Cain the past few days will understand why few choose to run and we continue to see mediocrity in the political classes. We’re all human and fallible and most people have things in their past of which they’re not proud. The last thing they want is to be crucified for previous mistakes by the media.
This is not to say that if someone like Herman Cain harassed women it should be overlooked. Of course it should not. These are serious allegations and the American people deserve to know that they are electing dependable, good, and honest people. It is to say that were we to live in a society that had proper values, including that of forgiveness, than Cain and many like him – if the allegations against them are true – could get up in front of the public, admit their mistakes, request forgiveness, change their ways, and run for office. The fear, however, is that the political climate is so fractured, the public so polarized, the media so hungry for blood, that anyone courageous enough to tell the truth and ask to be pardoned for past sin so that they could serve their country would be dragged through the mud and humiliated.
Yet, politicians like Bill Clinton – seen as flawed yet effective – remain highly popular, as does the memory of other seriously blemished men like Thomas Jefferson, Franklin Roosevelt, and John Kennedy.
America has to make a decision. Does it want perfection like Barack Obama who rarely stumbles but lacks the grit to get American out of the morass of crushing debt and joblessness or does it want men and women who can dig us out but who have dirt under their fingernails?
The Jewish people are currently reading the book of Genesis. It is a fascinating narrative of incredible men and women who achieved great things while simultaneously guilty of serious error, from Adam and Eve’s eating of the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden to Jacob favoring Joseph over his other children and the tragic consequences that followed. Yet, these were men and women built whole nations, serving as patriarchs and matriarchs. The moral of the story: righteousness is defined not by perfection but by wrestling with one’s nature to serve the public good amid one’s undeniable defects.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is the international best-selling author of Kosher Sex, Kosher Adultery, and the Kosher Sutra. Follow him on Twitter @RabbiShmuley. You can support Rabbi Shmuley’s work and office by texting a $10 donation from your phone to “VALUES,” 85944. For larger amounts please go to http://thisworld.us/getinvolved.
{ 1 comment }
Those who criticize the House Majority Leader for refusing to raise taxes accuse him of harming America over a financial issue but they are forgetting that the American revolution itself was a call to resistance against unfair taxation.
(WIDK By Shmuley Boteach) – Attacks on US congressman Eric Cantor are gaining steam. Senator Harry Reid called him childish. Many in the media have portrayed him as the obstinate Republican who will destroy American credit by blocking a deal on raising the debt ceiling. But for those of us who feel constantly ripped off by a government addicted to irresponsible spending, he is a hero.
See DVD - Kosher Sex with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach
I know Eric personally. He is a modest, focused, and unassuming man who speaks up with something important and wise to contribute. But beneath his calm exterior is a steely core which President Barack Obama is now witnessing against first hand. Cantor is not easily intimidated. Pursuing principles rather than popularity contests, Cantor is not flashy and neither is he desperate to be loved. He is a man of faith and conviction, and his salt-of-the-earth values stem from his upbringing in Richmond to a family of committed Jews with deep communal involvement who till today serve in leadership positions in synagogues and educational establishments. Eric’s mother is a warm Southern matron with a caring smile who converses freely and kindly. You would never be able to tell that she has a son in such a high position of power.
But what is most responsible for Eric’s meteoric rise to House Majority Leader is that he is a people person. When you write to him, no matter how busy, he writes back. When you speak to him in his office, he listens attentively and he seeks to learn from all whom he meets. I remember feeling, the first time we met, that I was in the presence of the consummate Southern gentleman.
And because he’s a people person he knows that people are plain fed up. We work hard to support our families and raise good kids. We feel let down by undisciplined politicians who think the American tax-payer is a piggy bank. We’re drained from bloated government waste. Yes, we want America to be a compassionate country that takes care of the needy at home and fights bad guys overseas. But we’re tired of being pawns in a game of vote-buying by political figures appealing to special interests. We feel no guilt at protecting that which we have legitimately earned and we want our generous charitable giving to be at our own, rather than the government’s discretion.
Those who criticize Eric for refusing to raise taxes accuse him of harming America over a financial issue. They forget that the American revolution was a call to resistance against unfair taxation. And while the circumstances were, of course, different, and the British levied taxes without giving us elected members of parliament, the principle remains the same: fair taxation, by the will of the people, inspires citizens to live by the sweat of their brow.
The national debt has increased by a third in the two-and-a-half years since Barack Obama became President. Is the solution to closing this gap really to tax us more rather than to finally reign in spending?
We Americans are taxed up the wazoo. We are taxed when we wake up and we are taxed when we sleep. We are taxed when we breathe and we are taxed, ironically, when we stop breathing. We are taxed when we work and we are taxed when we rest. Yet still, our government is bankrupt.
Aside from federal, state (in New Jersey it’s nearly 10%), and local tax, owning a home requires me to pay exorbitant property taxes of which not a single dollar can go to my children’s education because they are in a private Jewish day school. You’d think that some of my tax money could go to their school’s mathematics or social studies departments, which are not religious. But I and other religious parents across the nation are being bankrupted by high property taxes and high tuition rates that are becoming unaffordable. So imagine how we were made to feel when in early 2009 we read in The New York Times that President Obama’s trillion dollar stimulus package forced public schools (who did not request nor require stimulus funds) to accept the money and spend it? We middle-class Americans are paying about half of all our earnings to the government. On top of that we want to give charity. Is it reasonable to ask for more?
Yes, we’re fed up. President Obama can storm out of all the meetings he wants with Cantor. But he cannot break the man because Cantor is backed by people who are already broken and who have had enough.
Amid a flawed nature and an imperfect character I try to live by the values of justice and compassion. I believe in helping all those who are in need, and Lord knows, I have been in need at times of my life as well. But I also know that greater even than the necessities of food, clothing, and shelter is that of human dignity, which derives from self-sufficiency. Dignity accrues to the man or woman who, with God’s blessings, provides for their family’s daily bread. The role of government is to facilitate the acquisition of human dignity by giving men and women the opportunities to be self-sufficient. In life we all seek redemption. But we wish for it to come through our own devices.
A bloated, nanny-state government is an impediment to that self-sufficiency. We want teachers who are effective rather than teachers with job protection who stunt the development of students and undermine the dignity of faculty and education. We want unions who understand that collective bargaining that drains a government’s coffers is bad for workers as well as for business.
I have had jobs and I have lost jobs. But the last thing I want is to be kept on in a job because I am pitied. If I have had to lean on others in difficult times – and I have – it has eroded my self-esteem and I have therefore endeavored to get back on my own two feet rather than develop a stultifying and painful dependency. This sentiment is best captured in a beautiful Jewish prayer, recited on the graves of the righteous: “May my sustenance be conveyed to me by Your hand and may it be sweet. May it not be conveyed to me by the hands of mortals, for then it would be as bitter and tough as wormwood and shamefully degrading. Therefore may You, in Your abundant mercies, prepare my sustenance from Your good and full hand, and may it be complete.”
Hence, my support for Eric Cantor. He, more than anyone else currently in government, is the dam holding back the torrent of spending that would deepen our national depth and increase the unhealthy dependency that government sometimes creates. His efforts may not be fully appreciated now, but in cutting government waste he will earn the gratitude of the American people for saving our country from financial calamity and saving the rest of us from the plundering of private pockets to facilitate that oblivion.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is the international best-selling author of Kosher Sex, Kosher Adultery, and the Kosher Sutra. Follow him on Twitter @RabbiShmuley. You can support Rabbi Shmuley’s work and office by texting a $10 donation from your phone to “VALUES,” 85944. For larger amounts please go to http://thisworld.us/getinvolved.
{ 1 comment }
Was G-d at Ground Zero? By Rabbi Shmuley Boteach
(WIDK by RABBI SHMULEY BOTEACH) — I visited Ground Zero at midnight on the tenth anniversary of 9/11 and felt myself transported, as if by a time machine, back to that terrible day that changed America forever.
An eerie stillness hung over the site, reminiscent of a visit to a cemetery, an apt description for a place where the dust of so many bodies still lingers. Everywhere there were poster boards with hand-written tributes by family members and friends alongside the pictures of the fallen which sunk me into a state of gloom and had me fighting back tears. Flowers sent anonymously by citizens from all over the country with cards reading, “Send to Ground Zero, NY, and leave outside,” reminded me of the big-heartedness of the American people. The firefighters moving bronze memorial covering an entire wall and reading “May We Never Forget” and “All Gave Some and Some Gave All” conjured recollections of the incomparable sacrifice of those who rushed up the stairs against a tide of humanity which was hurrying the other way.
Suddenly, my mind was flooded with memories of that terrible day.
What I remember most are the jumpers. Of all the horrors of 9/11 none conveyed the full extent of the tragedy more than those who were given the choice to either be incinerated in 2000 degree jet-fuel fired heat or plunge to certain death more than 1000 feet below. I recently watched an amazing HBO documentary about the attacks whose core is an amalgamation of all the privately recorded video of that frightful day. Seeing the jumpers through the lens of ordinary citizens and hearing the screams of the amateur cameramen and women as they watched their fellow countrymen plunge to oblivion is chilling beyond words.
Could G-d possibly have caught them? Could He have extended the famously outstretched arm He used in Egypt to save the Israelites and grant the jumpers a soft landing so they could safely return to their families?
The next most chilling recollection was the recordings of the phone calls made by those trapped in the buildings to their families. Nearly every one mentioned their love for the person they were calling and the fact that they were trapped in a burning building with little prospect of getting out.
Could G-d have not reached down from his heavenly thrown and plucked them from the inferno, just as he saved Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah from Nebuchadnezzar’s cauldron in the Book of Daniel
The firefighters who charged up the stairwells were instantly turned to dust when the towers came crashing down. Could the same G-d who breathed life into the clay of Adam have not have breathed life into the ashes of these heroes and restored them to their children?
And as the two planes flew at great speed toward the towers in the first instance, could the same G-d who provided defensive clouds and protective fire to the Israelites for forty years in the desert not have provided a barrier and shield that would have made the buildings impregnable to the aerial assault?
Of all the monumental questions that relate to 9/11 none is so strong as how an omnipotent, all-powerful G-d watched in silence as 3000 men and women – whose only crime was to rise early in the morning to feed their families – perished in a grizzly tragedy that traumatizes America till this day. September 11th was a religious attack against the United States by a group of men who thought they were striking a blow for their deity and would earn eternity for doing so. But the infidels they chose to murder are a nation where 92 percent believe in G-d and where the Almighty even features on the currency. I am reminded of the words of Abraham Lincoln in his second inaugural: “Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other… The prayers of both could not be answered.” Fair enough. But why then were the prayers of one – the terrorists who screamed ‘Allahu Akbar’ as they blasphemed by killing in the name of G-d – answered? Would it have been too much to ask of the Creator that their wire cutters set off the alarm of the airport screening machine so that the entire plot be discovered and foiled?
America is a righteous, benevolent nation. It deserved far better than the suffering inflicted upon it ten years ago today. Why G-d allowed a tragedy of this magnitude is something we humans will never know. But our ignorance should not let G-d off the hook. In commemorating the tragedy we dare not practice a submissive, counterfeit faith that assumes our own sinfulness and G-d’s righteousness. We did nothing to earn this. Those who would fault America, as some religious leaders did in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, would have us embrace a fraudulent relationship with G-d where man is always culpable and G-d is always innocent. I prefer the faith of Abraham who pleaded with G-d for the lives of even the wicked inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah and Moses who told G-d that if He punished the Israelites He must also remove Moses’ name from the Bible and thereby sever their relationship forever.
A few nights ago on HLN’s Joy Behar show I debated the question of whether the 9/11 terrorists ought be forgiven. Hell no. Let others peddle their syrupy speeches about how an inability to forgive leads to psychological scarring and emotional pain on the part of he who harbors the anger. It is not anger but righteous indignation that we Americans feel. And we ought all prefer to live with that scar and endure that pain rather than trivialize the memory of 3000 innocents and inflict even greater suffering on their families by affording absolution to heartless killers who believed they were earning an eternity of sex in exchange for a brief instant of monstrous violence.
As their wretched souls left their bodies no doubt they were shocked to discover that it plummeted downward faster than any jumper into the eternal abyss.
But shooting up right past them, like a rocket to the stars, were the souls of those lost whose bodies may have been claimed by the earth’s gravity but whose spirit was pulled directly into heaven.
And upward they go, every day and every year, loftier in our consciousness, grander in our memory, pulling we who remember them ever higher.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is the international best-selling author of Kosher Sex, Kosher Adultery, and the Kosher Sutra. Follow him on Twitter @RabbiShmuley. You can support Rabbi Shmuley’s work and office by texting a $10 donation from your phone to “VALUES,” 85944. For larger amounts please go to http://thisworld.us/getinvolved.
{ 1 comment }
(WIDK By Rabbi Shmuley Boteach) — A funny thing happened to me as I surveyed all the tragedies that have filled our newspapers over the past few weeks. I discovered that I was slowly becoming inured to the murder of children and the loss of human life.
From the freeing of Casey Anthony who partied while her daughter decomposed in a Florida wood, to the dismembering of Leibi Kletsky, whose only sin was to inquire of Levi Aron how he might find his way to a place called home, to the indiscriminate slaughter of 76 Norwegians, mostly young campers, by a heartless, right-wing villain, to the senseless death of Amy Winehouse, I concluded that for all our society’s protestations as to the infinite value of every person, human life is cheap and being further discounted by the day.
The death of Amy Winehouse is particularly indicative of that thrift. Not because she was more famous that the other victims or had more fans to grieve her loss, but because all the other deaths might not have been entirely preventable. We simply can’t stop every neighborhood monster from chopping up children and one would be hard-pressed to imagine what could have been done to anticipate a summer camp turned into a killing field. But we did know that Amy Winehouse was drugging herself to oblivion and had terrible influences in her life that were keeping her flying higher than the Hindenburg. We knew that her lyrics, “They tried to make me go to rehab, I said, “No, no, no,” were shockingly personal and biographies of the singer list so many public drug incidents that her body had become a walking pharmacy. Still, the paparazzi gathered. Still we amused ourselves with tabloid reports of her drunken concerts and slurred lyrics. Still we were regaled by media tales of her punching people in the face. Until, one day, she didn’t wake up and it wasn’t entertaining any more.
Michael Jackson was also a source of unending tabloid delight until his sleeping pills closed his eyes forever, orphaning three children and leaving us to wonder to whom we could now turn for further water cooler delight.
There is something sick about a society that has so caricatured celebrities that their suffering makes no human indentation, as if they were all cartoon characters who get squashed by a giant hammer only to pop right back up. But seeing the contorted faces of Janis and Mitch Winehouse was enough to remind us that Thor, Captain America, and the Green Lantern are fictional characters while drugged, drunk, and dead celebrities are all too human and frail.
My conclusion that we are all becoming desensitized to the value of life – especially children – was cemented by the bizarre criticism of the one tabloid story that should have brought us some cheer. Instead, the announcement that David and Victoria Beckham had just given birth to a fourth child brought derision in many British circles for the couple having too many children and overpopulating the earth, a sad fact that parents of large families, like me and my wife who thank G-d have nine, have encountered on many occasions.
Why is innocent life becoming so cheap? There are a number of factors.
First, there is the rampant materialism of a culture that values objects more than people. From parents who ignore their kids as they work long hours to keep with the Joneses to even spiritual rights of passage, like weddings and Bar Mitzvahs, that have become more about impressing friends than celebrating family milestones, money and fame are becoming more important than life and children. Just the other day a couple came to me for counseling because the wife wants a second child while her husband complains they can’t afford it. When the session was over they drove away in their Porsche.
Second, there is the shocking failure of religion to instill values in a culture that so desperately needs to be reminded of what is truly important. Even as we mourn the senseless deaths of so many children in so short a timeframe, religious leaders continue their obsession with fighting gay marriage which has just been legalized in New York. No doubt if gays were prevented from getting married society would become immediately healthy again and all the dead children would come back to life. Furthermore, with so many ostensibly religious people being guilty of perpetrating the horrors in the first place – from the Hamas anti-tank Missile fired against an Israeli school bus to Norwegian killer Anders Breivik being a self-declared Christian to Levi Aron’s credentials as orthodox Jew – the authority of religion is compromised from the outset by the evil still perpetrated by those who claim its name.
Third, and perhaps most important, is the immediate tendency to declare anyone guilty of heinous crimes – especially against children – to be immediately insane. In a televised debate on the Joy Behar show between me and Father Edward Beck, the prominent Catholic cleric excused Caylee Anthony’s clubbing after the death of her daughter by claiming she probably snapped and said that Levi Aron was insane and not responsible for his actions, even though Aron himself told police, “I understand this may be wrong and I’m sorry for the hurt that I have caused,” thus clearly demonstrating his ability to distinguish between righteous and immoral action. Anders Breivik’s own attorney is already claiming his client is crazy, even as the mass murderer argues that his actions were a European declaration of war with Islam. Is it not equally possible that each of these individuals was evil rather crazy, wicked rather than insane?
A rush of atrocities of this magnitude in so short a space of time should serve as a wake-up to our need to protect, value, and cherish children. We parents have no excuse to miss family dinners or bedtime stories. The boss and the office be damned. We need religious leaders that stop condemning gays and begin praising brave parents who adopt unwanted children. And if certain heterosexuals reading this are uncomfortable with gay adoption, then by G-d, adopt the kids yourself. We need Rabbis and priests who educate their communities in the value of visiting the sick in hospital, honoring and visiting elderly parents, and inviting guests to their Sabbath and festival tables, teaching children hospitality and caring for fellow beings.
Finally, we need the courage to call evil what it is. To point a finger at the real abominations in our midst so that those who devalue and destroy human life find no quarter in our sympathies or hearts.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is the international best-selling author of Kosher Sex, Kosher Adultery, and the Kosher Sutra. Follow him on Twitter @RabbiShmuley. You can support Rabbi Shmuley’s work and office by texting a $10 donation from your phone to “VALUES,” 85944. For larger amounts please go to http://thisworld.us/getinvolved.
{ 1 comment }
(WIDK By Rabbi Shmuley Boteach) — Attacks on Eric Cantor are gaining steam. Harry Reid called him childish. Many in the media have portrayed him as the obstinate Republican who will destroy American credit by blocking a deal on raising the debt ceiling. But for those of us who feel constantly ripped off by a government addicted to irresponsible spending, he is a hero.
I know Eric personally. He is a modest, focused, and unassuming man who speaks up with something important and wise to contribute. But beneath the calm exterior is a steely core which President Obama is now brushing up against firsthand. This is not a man whom you can intimidate. He is not flashy and is not desperate to be loved. He pursues principles rather than popularity contests. A man of faith and conviction, his salt-of-the-earth values stem from his upbringing in Richmond to a family with deep communal involvement. They are committed Jews who till today serve in leadership positions in Synagogues and educational establishments. Eric’s mother is a warm Southern matron with a caring smile who converses freely and kindly. You could never guess that she has a son in high position of power.
But what is most responsible for Eric’s meteoric rise to House Majority Leader is that he is a people person. When you write to him, no matter how busy, he writes back. When you speak to him in his office, he listens attentively and he seeks to learn from all whom he meets. I remember feeling, the first time we met, that I was in the presence of the consummate Southern gentleman.
And because he’s a people person, he knows that people are plain fed up. We work hard to support our families and raise good kids. We feel let down by undisciplined politicians who think the American tax-payer is a piggy bank. We’re drained from bloated government waste. Yes, we want America to be a compassionate country that takes care of the needy at home and fights bad guys overseas. But we’re tired of being pawns in a game of vote-buying by political figures appealing to special interests. We feel no guilt at protecting that which we have legitimately earned and we want our generous charitable giving to be at our own, rather than the government’s discretion.
Those who criticize Eric for refusing to raise taxes accuse him of harming America over a financial issue. They forget that the American Revolution was a call to resistance against unfair taxation. And while the circumstances were, of course, different, and the British levied taxes without giving us elected members of Parliament, the principle remains the same: fair taxation, by the will of the people, which inspires citizens to live by the sweat of their brow.
The national debt has increased by a third in the two-and-a-half years since Barack Obama became President. Is the solution to closing this gap really to tax us more rather than to finally reign in spending?
We Americans are taxed up the wazoo. We are taxed when we wake up and we are taxed when we sleep. We are taxed when we breathe and we are taxed, ironically, when we stop breathing. We are taxed when we work and we are taxed when we rest. Yet still, our government is bankrupt.
Aside from federal, state (in New Jersey it’s nearly 10%), and local tax, owning a home requires me to pay exorbitant property taxes of which not a single dollar can go to my children’s education because they are in a private Jewish day school. You’d think that some of my tax money could go to their school’s mathematics or social studies departments, which are not religious. But I and other religious parents across the nation are being bankrupted by high property taxes and high tuition rates that are becoming unaffordable. So were we to feel when we read in the New York Times in early 2009 that President Obama’s trillion dollar stimulus package forced public schools that did not request nor require stimulus funds to accept the money and spend it? We middle-class Americans are paying about half all we earn to the government. On top of that we want to give charity. Is it reasonable to ask for more?
Yes, we’re fed up. President Obama can storm out of all the meetings he wants with Cantor. But he cannot break the man because Cantor is backed by people who are already broken and who have had enough.
Amid a flawed nature and an imperfect character, I try to live by the values of justice and compassion. I believe in helping all those who are in need, and Lord knows, I have been in need at times of my life as well. But I also know that greater even than the necessities of food, clothing, and shelter is that of human dignity, which derives from self-sufficiency. Dignity accrues to the man or woman who, with G-d’s blessings, provides for their family’s daily bread. The role of government is to facilitate the acquisition of human dignity by giving men and women the opportunities to be self-sufficient. In life we all seek redemption. But we wish for it to come through our own devices.
A bloated, nanny-state government is an impediment to that self-sufficiency. We want teachers who are effective rather than teachers who are guaranteed jobs that stunt student development and undermine the dignity of faculty. We want unions who understand that collective bargaining that drains a government’s coffers is bad for workers as well as for business.
I have had jobs and I have lost jobs. But the last thing I want is to be kept on in a job because I am pitied. If I have had to lean on others in difficult times — and I have — it has eroded by self-esteem and I have therefore endeavored to get back on my own feet rather than develop, G-d forbid, a stultifying and painful dependency. The sentiment is best captured in a beautiful Jewish prayer, recited on the graves of the righteous:
May my sustenance be conveyed to me by Your hand and may it be sweet. May it not be conveyed to me by the hands of mortals, for then it would be as bitter and tough as wormwood and shamefully degrading. Therefore may You, in Your abundant mercies, prepare my sustenance from Your good and full hand, and may it be complete.
Hence, my support for Eric Cantor. He, more than anyone else currently in government, is the dam holding back the torrent of spending that would deepen our national depth and increase the unhealthy dependency that government sometimes creates. His efforts may not be fully appreciated now, but in cutting government waste he will earn the gratitude of the American people for saving our country from financial calamity and saving the rest of us from the plundering of private pockets to facilitate that oblivion.
{ 3 comments }
(WIDK By Rabbi Shmuley Boteach) — There are three reasons Hassidic Jews live together in tight-knit and often insular communities. The first is shared values. The second, a strong support network and security in number. And the third is a desire to filter out some of the corrosive elements of outside society from corrupting their children.
All three have been undermined by the brutal murder of Leiby Kletzky by Levi Aron. Where did Mr. Aron stem from? Yes, he dresses like an orthodox Jew. But one can only pray he is mad. Because Judaism, as a religion, commands the highest sensitivity to all life and even inanimate objects. Moses was not permitted to smite the waters of the Nile or dust of Egypt because both had saved his life. Cruelty to animals is one of Judaism’s most severe sins. How could a man schooled in the Jewish tradition of the infinite value of life butcher a boy into pieces?
As for a strong support network, one assumes that this is the reason Leiby’s parents agreed for him to walk home from camp. No one can now imagine how their unspeakable pain is being now compounded by extreme and unjustified guilt. Why did the boy walk home? But that’s the whole point. Borough Park is a safe neighborhood. It’s the reason you choose to raise a family in a community surrounded by people who are never total strangers. They share your faith, your values, your way of life. So your kids are never in danger. When one family is in trouble, all come to the rescue, as was evidenced by the outpouring of help to find Leiby in the first place. Therefore, when Leiby got lost he walked over to someone who, though unrecognizable as an individual would have been very familiar to him as a member of his community, in other words bearded and with a yarmulke or a hat. Someone safe.
I have long argued that one of the factors that has led to the national child obesity epidemic is parents’ fears for their children’s safety, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Children are no longer permitted to walk to school because parents’ don’t want them to bump into sickos. The net result is that they don’t get the exercise they need. But in the case of a child in a highly orthodox community the thinking would be that the child is safe because unzere, ‘our own people,’ are around to help and protect.
But Levi Aron is not unzere. Not only is he not part of the religious Jewish family, he is not part of the human family. He is a beast of the field, a cold-blooded predator, devoid of any spark of G-d or hint of humanity. He is a man without a soul, a spiritless hominid.
Which leads to the most important question of all. In most cases where a child is abducted or brutally murdered by a predator, the child had already been a mark. A pedophile would have been at a playground or on a street corner studying a child who is then abducted. But in this case, a child became lost and he approached a man for directions who turns out to be a diabolical fiend. One can only hope and indeed assume that there aren’t that many crazed killers stalking Borough Park. So how could it be that the child ends up asking the one psychopath who just happened to be at his dentist to pay his bill? In other words, what was G-d thinking? We Jews believe in divine providence. Nothing happens by accident. So a child gets lost and the only person who is around for him to ask ends up being a schizoid killer?
Which brings me to my final point. I said the third reason why religious Jews live together is to protect their children from corrosive influences, to filter out elements of the popular culture and the media which are unhealthy for a child’s development. My G-d, given that’s the case, how do we make sense of a child being killed in a neighborhood set up to protect children?
We will never understand a mind like Levi Aron. Nor should we try. I just read that he is on suicide watch and wish he weren’t. If he killed himself it would be no great loss. He is not human anyway. But I wish I knew what celestial purpose could possibly have been filled by an innocent child innocently bumping into someone who would murder him.
The G-d who we Jews love and to whom we have been, and will continue to be, so tenaciously attached for thousands of years has a lot of explaining to do.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is the international best-selling author of Kosher Sex, Kosher Adultery, and the Kosher Sutra. Follow him on Twitter @RabbiShmuley. You can support Rabbi Shmuley’s work and office by texting a $10 donation from your phone to “VALUES,” 85944. For larger amounts please go to http://thisworld.us/getinvolved.
{ 2 comments }
(WIDK By RABBI SHMULEY BOTEACH) — The two sides of war – useless carnage on the one hand, necessary bravery and heroism on the other – were always in evidence as I toured with my wife and older children the WWI and WWII battlefields of Belgium and France.
In Flanders and at the Somme, where millions of soldiers lost their lives in the First World War to capture a few yards that were quickly recaptured by the enemy, the feel of death lingered nearly a century after the fearsome clashes. Everywhere around the towns of Albert at the Somme, and Ypres in Flanders, there are graves. Endless mounds of graves. So many that it would take weeks to visit them all. Military cemeteries dot the landscape with the ubiquitousness of Starbucks and Macdonald’s. The cemeteries each have hundreds and often thousands of headstones. Never in my life have I been surrounded by so much death. A single British memorial at Thiepval lists the names of seventy-two thousand soldiers whose bodies were never recovered.
The pock-marked, cratered battlefields where so many soldiers died in vain are likewise everywhere along the truly massive Western front, which extended from Switzerland to the North Sea. Nearly a hundred years later, the cemeteries are still richly maintained by the British, Canadian, Irish, and South African governments. The famous poppies which came to define the First World War still grow between the graves and on the side of the road in a manner reminiscent of John’ McCrae’s unforgettable poem, Flanders Fields. And the overwhelming emotion felt by the visitor a century later as he views this most quintessential of European wars is the utter stupidity, futility, and uselessness of war. Painful as it is to say, these millions of men, including the 400,000 British casualties of the Somme offensive which yielded but a few hundred yards and which the Germans retook just a few months later, died for nothing.
Not that the military cemeteries would ever admit as much. In nearly all the first words you encounter, etched in bright stone, is ‘They Fought for Freedom,’ or some such banner. But the truth is they fought for the limitless egos of European imperialists and the megalomaniacal stupidity of clueless generals, all of whom – Wilhelm II, Nicholas II, Kitchener, Haig, Bethman, and the Ottomans – have been utterly discredited by history.
By the time you drive southwest, however, for just three hours, the beaches of Normandy yield a uniquely American face of war. Just as I can scarcely describe the feelings of horror I experienced amid the tombstones of poppy country at the Somme, I struggle equally to convey the inspiration of living out my lifelong dream of standing on the invasion beaches of D-Day. From the British and Canadian beaches of Sword, Juno, and Gold and especially to the American beaches of Omaha and Utah, there is heroism glimmering from every particle of sand and bravery shimmering from the crest of every wave. Here was war with a noble, human objective. Not to win glory but to defeat evil. Not to expand empire but to crush tyranny. Not to subdue a foreign nation but to stop the genocide of a defenseless people.
Omaha Beach should be the American Mecca, a place of required pilgrimage for every US citizen at least once in their lifetime. As I stood on the vast expanse of Omaha beach I closed my eyes and tried to see the nearly three thousand Americans who died storming a heavily fortified beach, dodging machine gun nests, evading mortar fire, jumping from tanks hit by German 88mm cannons, until they could fight no more, falling amid the withering German crossfire in defense of people they had never met. Walking among the silence and perfect rows of Crosses and Magen Davids of the ten thousand Americans interred at the Omaha Beach cemetery overlooking the invasion site, you can still feel the tremor of millions of American soldiers hurling themselves against Hitler’s Atlantic wall to liberate a continent that Americans had themselves abandoned a century-and-a-half earlier because of its limits on human freedom. To witness the scale of the effort, like the remnants of the mammoth ‘Mulberry’ artificial harbor at Arromanches, built in the absence of a captured port to feed and supply the immense army, is to be rendered small as you stand amid the enormity of those justly labeled ‘The Greatest Generation.’
Americans do not fight wars for medals or conquest. They fight wars for liberty and freedom. Colin Powell expressed it best: “Over the years the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our border. The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return.”
Those noble ideals should guide the current debate as to whether America should be participating with the French and English in the fight against Kaddafi, as more Republicans join the criticism of President Obama for bombing Libya without Congressional approval.
Like any nation, there are limits to our manpower and resources. America should not have to be the world’s policeman, a goal that was originally set for a now toothless and corrupt United Nations. But as someone who has criticized President Obama in the past for showing weakness toward Iran in 2009 and doing next-to-nothing about Syria in 2011, I strongly applaud his efforts to bomb the hell out of Kaddafi’s thugs who are slaughtering their own people. I am amazed that any Republican would feel differently.
The British humiliated themselves by freeing the Lockerbie bomber over what seemed to be capitulation for an oil deal favoring BP. Likewise, the French condemned America for removing Saddam Hussein, a man who gassed thousands of children. But both nations have found a measure of redemption in their bold campaign to punish Kaddafi for brutalizing innocent people. And the thought that the United States should not, at the very least, participate with drones and the supply of logistics and ordinance, even as British and French pilots carry the heaviest load, to pummel a bloodthirsty tyrant runs contrary to the spirit of every American value.
It was we Americans who inspired our European brethren to put aside war as an instrument of glory and employ it solely as an apparatus to protect life and dignity. It was we who saved Britain from invasion and France from occupation. And now that they too are to fighting to protect complete strangers, we dare not retreat from values that were midwifed by generations of brave Americans.
{ 1 comment }
(WIDK By Rabbi Shmuley Boteach) — As Michael Jackson’s rabbi, I saw how dangerous the pull of fame could be.
Michael Jackson was doomed to a life of empty celebrity incarceration when, in truth, he so badly wished to dedicate his renown to a cause larger than himself.
Ten years ago I tried to extract Michael Jackson from the hell of a tabloid life. Nothing hurt him more than being referred to as Wacko Jacko, something he told me originated in the British tabloids. And it is worth mentioning, now that we have commemorated the second anniversary of his death, that the mountain of pills he regularly swallowed and which eventually killed him was an effort, more than anything else, to muzzle the pain of being treated as a joke.
Michael believed he had a serious message to share, that children were special and innocent and the world had a responsibility to prioritize them and preserve their goodness. But he also understood that with the two boys alleging that he had acted indecently, though he was never convicted, his credibility had been irreversibly shattered. He was therefore doomed to a life of empty celebrity incarceration when, in truth, he so badly wished to dedicate his renown to a cause larger than himself. This lesson – that fame is nice, but credibility is everything – has strong resonance for modern Britain, a country I arrived in at the age of 22, where I spent 11 years of my life, and where six of my nine children were born.
While living in Britain and serving as rabbi to the students of Oxford University, I slowly noticed a change taking place. I still remember the day in 1994 the Oxford Union – once the most celebrated debating society on Earth – invited Kermit the Frog to be one of its speakers. This was before Britain became synonymous with the origin of reality TV. It was before stories about John Terry, Wayne Rooney, Ashley Cole, and Ryan Giggs trumped the reporting on Britain’s laudable efforts in Libya. When I lived in the UK, serious newspapers were not yet published as tabloids and a strict line separated thoughtful journalism from scandal saturation.
That seems to have changed. I used to sit in awe as I watched young Oxford students and British politicians at the union eviscerate each other with a command of language that had little parallel in anything I had witnessed in the United States. It inspired me to speak and write better. But I was, sadly, not all that surprised when I asked a recent Oxford graduate who was the most memorable speaker he has heard at Oxford over the last few years and he responded: “Martin Sheen.”
Yes, we Americans have trash TV and our own celebrity scandals. We have politicians who self-destruct and supermarket tabloids that assure us Elvis is still alive and married to Princess Diana. But that world still seems cordoned off – for the most part – from the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Harvard and Yale. The UK, however, has allowed some of its leading institutions to go tabloid and obsess over sensationalism.
Britain was once the most serious, highly educated and influential nation. It gave the world Magna Carta and parliamentary democracy, William Shakespeare and Sir Isaac Newton. It freed its slaves decades before America and led the charge in saving the world from Hitler. Now it has traded in seriousness and credibility for out-of-control celebrity. Having at times in my life made the mistake of prizing recognition over gravitas, I’m not here to judge. Lord knows, I served as Michael Jackson’s rabbi and revolved, at times, in celebrity society; I experienced how good it felt to feel famous. But seeing what the tabloid life did to Michael, I now run from it like the plague.
The above article first appeared in guardian.co.uk.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is the international best-selling author of Kosher Sex, Kosher Adultery, and the Kosher Sutra. Follow him on Twitter @RabbiShmuley. You can support Rabbi Shmuley’s work and office by texting a $10 donation from your phone to “VALUES,” 85944. For larger amounts please go to http://thisworld.us/getinvolved.
{ 0 comments }
