Sunday, May 07, 2006

Rabbi, counselor, TV star

Rabbi, counselor, TV star

Monday, May 8, 2006

By JOHN CHADWICK
STAFF WRITER

The family is in crisis.

The parents, Luis and Beatriz, have divorced following her discovery of his infidelity.

Their four children are running amok, punching, kicking and even swinging a broom at one another.

“It’s gotten to the point where I want to strangle them,” Beatriz says.

But an unlikely rescuer is about to enter their Camden home—with camera in tow.

Meet Shmuley Boteach, an Orthodox rabbi from Englewood and host of “Shalom in the Home”—a new television reality show and the first to have a rabbi as its star.

Boteach amiably enters into the lives of troubled families every week, probing their problems and trying to restore harmony.

“Her home has become a virtual war zone,” he declares at the start of the April 10 debut episode, featuring Luis and Beatriz. “The kids are out of control, and Beatriz is out of her mind with despair.”

On the surface, it could be just another show, like “Nanny 911,” or “Wife Swap,” that shines an unflattering and exploitative light on a dysfunctional American family.

But “Shalom in the Home,” which runs Monday nights on The Learning Channel, strikes a different tone by using a rabbi to quell the quarreling.

Boteach, a 39-year-old maverick and best-selling author, is known for penning books like “Kosher Sex” that apply traditional Jewish wisdom to the modern conundrums of love, sex and marriage.

Rather than engage in the typical reality show shtick of berating and humiliating his guests, Boteach (pronounced Boe-tay-ach) plays the role of family therapist and mensch as he travels each week to a new household hot spot.

“The whole purpose is to inspire the best behavior in people,” Boteach said in an interview at his home on East Palisade Avenue. “I want to show parents that their roles are heroic and sacred, no matter how society may define success.”

The show’s debut season has, if nothing else, chronicled the diverse state of 21st-century parenthood: The heads of household have included a lesbian couple, a widow and two previously divorced parents jointly raising their children from their first marriages.

Their problems are just as diverse.

A Wayne couple—identified by pseudonyms—ask Boteach to help tame their chronically cantankerous 9-year-old daughter.

“I’m not sure if this family needs a rabbi or an exorcist,” Boteach quips at the start.

But within minutes, he shows how the daughter is learning her abusive behavior from watching her father bully her mother.

“You were showing your daughter that your wife is a punching bag that she can beat up on as well,” he tells the father.

Other families are stuck in quiet ruts.

One show focused on a Muslim family in which the parents’ busy lives drained the romance from their relationship.

“Shmuley did a fantastic job of improving the relationship between me and my wife,” the husband, Ali Waxman, said in an interview. “He was able to point out that mom and dad have to provide a loving relationship for one another in order for the children to see that as an example.”

The show will run for another five episodes. No decision has been made about whether it will be extended.

“This is a big risk for The Learning Channel,” Boteach said. “Can a show hosted by a rabbi make it in prime time?”

Although Boteach fits the image of an Orthodox Jew with his yarmulke, beard and eight children, there’s no preaching or even any mention of Judaism on the show.

Yet Boteach sees “Shalom in the Home” as a pulpit for exploring the most basic of Jewish values: sanctification of the home and family.

His earnest, gentle approach with the families—most of whom aren’t Jewish—reflects his belief in Judaism as a universal force to inspire good behavior.

“From the time I was 16, I believed Judaism has a wider message that could help heal the world of a very high divorce rate,” Boteach said. “Judaism is not focused on the grand mysteries of the universe but on the small questions in life: How do you behave? How do you treat others?”

Some observers say the show’s effort to distill Jewish wisdom for a general audience has rarely been attempted.

“He’s trying to take an ancient tradition that has been familial, tribal and inwardly focused, and translate it into an American idiom so it can benefit the larger society,” said Rabbi Irwin Kula of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, a Jewish think tank in Manhattan. “He’s essentially bringing the Torah to the marketplace of ideas, and there are very few people doing this.”

Parents divorced

Boteach is no stranger to family strife. He said the show, like his books, was born from the pain of his own parents’ divorce when he was 8. He moved to Miami with his mother while his father stayed in Los Angeles.

“I was probably the only kid in my class whose parents were divorced,” he said. “It made me feel weird, uncomfortable and very unhappy. But I decided I would use this turbulence as a blessing.”

Boteach said he encounters many fathers, like Luis in the first episode, suffering from what he calls the “broken American male syndrome”—a deep feeling of failure in a culture that reveres the likes of Donald Trump and Bill Gates.

“Luis’ friends start making more money than he is, and so he feels like a loser,” Boteach said. “But then the woman he meets in a bar one night who is young and attractive ... makes him feel like a winner.

“And you do dumb things to be a winner.”

Boteach begins the episode, as he does the others, by observing the family’s behavior on closed-circuit TV from his trailer—the “Shalom Mobile Home.” Then he engages mom, dad and the kids in conversation and activities to get at the root of the problem.

When he brings Luis and Beatriz into the trailer for their first face-to-face talk since the divorce, the tension is so thick that Boteach warns: “If someone gets knocked out today, it might just be me.”

The parents stay divorced. But by the end of the show, Boteach has persuaded the couple to continue working together to stabilize the chaotic household.

“Get in there and be ... the man you failed to be,” Boteach tells Luis at the end. “There are second chances in life.”

E-mail: chadwick at northjersey.com

Article taken from http://www.NorthJersey.com

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