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Monday, September 21, 2009
Rabbi Boteach Releasing Book Based On Michael Jackson Interviews
by Gary Rosenblatt, Editor and Publisher of The Jewish Week.
Article originally posted at www.TheJewishWeek.com .
NBC Dateline is planning a one-hour special this coming week on Rabbi Shmuley Boteach’s latest book, based on 30 hours of taped interviews he did with Michael Jackson more than eight years ago – interviews he describes as “raw, intimate, revealing.”
But the rabbi won’t be watching the show because it is scheduled to be broadcast on Friday night (Sept. 25). Which is only fitting because Shabbat, and its observance, is what strengthened the relationship between the rabbi and the late pop star, and it will be a theme in the television broadcast.
The program will explain that the rabbi was taped in advance because he could not participate on Shabbat. And Rabbi Boteach, an author, lecturer and host of the television show,
“Shalom in the Home,” will note that he and Jackson shared an interest in and commitment to turning Friday night into family night throughout the country, encouraging Americans to make time for families to eat and talk together without distractions.
In addition, NBC has agreed to broadcast at least five 30-second public service announcements featuring prominent figures, including Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Newark Mayor Cory Booker, and TV personalities Kathy Lee Gifford and Dr. Phil (McGraw), endorsing Rabbi Boteach’s national initiative to strengthen families by promoting meaningful time spent together on Friday nights.
The rabbi heads an organization called This World: The Values Network, which seeks to bring Jewish values to mainstream American culture.
“Michael loved coming to our house for Friday night dinners with his kids,” Rabbi Boteach told The Jewish Week. The rabbi, who met Jackson 10 years ago through a mutual friend, mentalist Uri Geller, said the pop star and his children behaved completely normally, and seemed to enjoy the informality and warmth of the Boteach home, in Englewood, NJ, where they could act naturally.
“We started our conversations on Shabbat, the only day of the week with no intrusions or distractions. He had nothing but distractions in his life, he was always so busy.”
In the summer of 2000, and for about 10 months, the two men met regularly during the week, and Rabbi Boteach interviewed Jackson about his life, his views on celebrity and what motivated him.
The rabbi planned to publish the book, at Jackson’s request, but then shelved the idea after Jackson was arrested in 2003 on charges of child molestation.
After Jackson died suddenly in June, Rabbi Boteach decided to go ahead with the book, titled “Michael Jackson Tapes: A Tragic Icon Reveals His Soul in Intimate Conversation,” to be published by Vanguard next week.
Why now?
Rabbi Boteach said the primary reason is because Jackson very much wanted it published. In addition, “this is a great morality tale” about the dangers of celebrity and excess, the rabbi said, that applies not only to Jackson but to American culture as well.
“And in the words of Hillel, if not now, when?”
Rabbi Boteach said that “whether you loved or hated Michael Jackson, this was a tragic waste of a life. He had a mixed history, he reached many people and he may have been guilty of terrible things, but that doesn’t mean he had nothing to say. He’s never given credit for becoming very introspective about life in general, and his own life. I want people to hear him in his own voice and judge him based on the full facts.”
The main body of the book is “60,000 words of Michael” being interviewed, Rabbi Boteach said, with little commentary. It also includes an introduction by the rabbi offering an overview of their friendship, which cooled after Jackson’s 2003 arrest, and an afterward on celebrity, featuring what the rabbi calls his own “mea culpa” about his personal need for attention.
Rabbi Boteach said Jackson told him that what he sought from the time he became a child star was neither wealth nor fame, but love, especially from his father.
“Michael represented an extreme form of brokenness,” the rabbi said, noting that, like American culture, “he had everything but was often depressed, living in a world that was increasingly sexualized. He had the resources to take his dysfunction to a particular extreme, but we may be headed in the
same direction.”
A second book of the taped interviews, focusing on why Jackson sought refuge in childhood as an adult, is scheduled to be published next year.
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Comments
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Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Daisy
I’d like to know if Boteach, a member of the clergy subject to rules of confidentiality applicable to all members of the clergy, can provide a waiver of confidentiality signed by Michael Jackson, or play a portion of the tape wherein Jackson clearly states that it was his desire to have his raw, unexpurgated comments aired on national television.
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Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Paulie
Yes, I would like to see that agreement. You are as guilty as the media with the labeling and blanket statements based on very little. You get a few angry comments and then you label his fans as fanatics who cannot see the forest for the trees.
What the fans don’t like is you - yet another hanger-on claiming to have been a spiritual advisor (do you know how many people have claimed that?) and a close friend (do you know how many people claimed that?) of Michael.
Now, Michael said he had no real friends and only named a few and we don’t recall seeing your name on that list. The only one who publicly stood by him through everything and didn’t seem to be sucked into any horrific vortex that she so needed to *save* herself from him when the going got rough was Liz and the only one who he said wanted nothing from him was Lisa Maria. But we do know you were on his “hit” list.
Once again someone in the media arrogantly believes that everyone else (the public) is so stupid that they and only they can set them straight. No one believes you is all. They don’t believe your motives for publishing his thoughts and they don’t share your opinions. And that is all they are - opinions - and your interpretation of what Michael meant. They object to your opinions/interpretation and they object to you publicizing his private thoughts and they are being vocal about it.
Rather than insulting them, you need to cultivating them and convincing them you really had Michael’s approval and that you are sincere. Because they are the ones you are trying to peddle your book to. They feel you betrayed his trust. They are not afraid to hear what he felt and thought. What they feel is it is immoral and an invasion of his privacy to do so and it is against the tenets of confidentially for the role you claimed you played.
No one has said and certainly Michael always took pains to say he did not think he was Jesus or Christ but tried to have him in his heart. No one is delusional and thinks he was the second coming. Actually, many are shocked, surprised, and confused as to why they feel so strongly about someone they didn’t know. Rather than insult them, someone should try to understand this cultural phenomenon. If I were working on my dissertation I certainly would be.
He hasn’t said anything that any normal person hasn’t said about a parent, or a sibling, or someone they don’t like, or about how they feel. No one is shocked or screaming in pain because their idol called someone a name or said he didn’t like someone, or went to the bathroom like a normal person. Michael trusted no one, so why should we take your word for it? Did Michael start the tapes with a claim that he trusted you and wanted you to publish posthumously? No, you have no proof. So you put your spin on the reactions and disparage his fans as a bunch of kooks who don’t know what they are talking about.
Beg your pardon but Michael has been around for 45 years and so have many of us. We have lived long lives and know BS when we step in it. We’ve loved, lost, raised families, been lied to, had family squabbles and basically, lived. We’re not stupid, we know he was human and flawed. We know he was many faceted and could be a ruthless businessman and yet a kind an gentle person with his fans. We don’t need you to set us straight. What we do need is for media leeches like yourself to stop feeding off his carcass and to leave us with what Michael had to say - through his music, his art, his performance, and any publications *he* approved.
He only owed his public a great performance (and there was none better). He owed no one access to his personal life. We are not deifying Michael, we are rejecting yet another someone else’s version of who he was personally (and we know none of you really ever knew him because he trusted none of you.)
Get it right. What you are seeing is a blacklash against the media - pure and simple.
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Thursday, October 01, 2009
Paulie
Since you have closed comments to your article on the deification of Michal by his fans, I’m goin to post my response to Mouz’s response to my comment here.
As a writer, I hope you are not practicing censorship.
Mouz, yes, agreed. However, I never said that the media should or that I would want them cater to any one group. But they do don’t they? They cater to people who enjoy the crap that is put out there and called “news” (read “entertainment”.) I think the plethora of reality television shows speaks to that.My points were mainly directed at the Rabbi and his article. He gets a few nasty comments and he paints Michael’s fans with one brush. He’s trying to sell his book. And calling the very people who would be more than likely to buy a book about Michael as fanatics is not a good idea. I found his tone condescending and a little ill advised. With the click of a button, we are all critics and I believe that the power of the public is something that anyone who is shilling, whether it is a book or something they are passing off as “facts” or “news”, should start paying attention to.
Michael’s fan base is also made up people who did literally grow up with him - and Michael was 50 when a died. They’re not naive kids that need a lesson on life and how things work - they’ve lived it. And anyone who is too young or naive to know just how this world works can go to Youtube or any site to review materials that were written 20 years ago and were broadcast 5 minute ago - and catch the “inconsistencies” and distortions perpetuated by the media.
Honey, I was there during Watergate. I was there when the phrases “misspoke” was a new substitute for the old-fashioned word “lie” or the phrase “at that point in time” was used to mean, well it was a lie later but at that point in time it was only kinda sorta one. So don’t tell me about the media. I’ve been through the missile crisis (duck and cover) to the millennium scare. And I’m still waiting for those Africanize bees to make it here to kill us all.
Michael has millions of fans and out of those, you are going to find some who will be opposed to even the slightest reference to anything negative. And perhaps their reaction (over reaction?) is because they are fed-up with all that has gone before. People who have something negative to say are the ones most likely to be vocal and that does not mean that fans that know how to wade through the garbage are ignorant nut jobs that can’t handle the truth or are going to hate him because of what the media tells us he represents. What hypocrites they are are. Right now celebrities and the media are all appalled that admitted pedophile, child rapist, Polanski, should not be under arrest because of his artistry (and who is one of his supporters, why none other than Woody Allen). And I’m a fan of their work. But can I see the hypocrisy and will I criticize it? Yes.
And I beg to differ about the media. I’ve been around for a very long time and the media is *not* fair and balanced. It never has been. It is nearly impossible to be fair and balanced because as humans we cannot help but allow our personal opinions to creep into any story and as a business to print what sells. And there is certainly enough evidence today and yesterday (take any story) that the media caters toward sensationalism and ratings (from the Lindberg kidnapping to the OJ trial to Michael Jackson’s death).
Also, I know full well that Michael was very media savvy and used it to his advantage and some of it backfired on him and some of it was just simply made up, but to assume that many of his “fans” don’t know this is just insulting. Frankly, at my age and experience I don’t need anyone to “educate” me about much of anything. I know how to research, read being the lines, and infer from what I read and hear.
However, thank you for you attempt to educate me about people and how the world works. But maybe someone else will read what you’ve written and actually learn something that’s new to them.
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Tuesday, November 24, 2009
AnthroGrl
Daisy - As Judaism holds that one does not need formal schooling to be a “teacher” (the very definition of the word Rabbi), Rabbi’s are not held to confidentiality the same way Christian clergy persons are. And Jew in good comunity standards who understands and knows Torah, Talmud, and Kabbalah can be considered a Rabbi. Rabbi Boteach doesn’t need a confidentiality waver any more than a best friend needs a confidentiality waver to counsel a person.
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