Shmuley Boteach’s Jewish Histrionics

Shmuley Boteach’s Jewish Histrionics

Posted: 19 Oct 2013 02:11 AM PDT

You have to read this to believe it.  Shmuley Boteach and his new billionaire pal, Sheldon Adelson, recently hopped into bed with Rwanda’s mass killer Paul Kagame and feted him as a special humanitarian.  Despite the fact that he played a major role in the killing of 4-million Congolese over the past few decades.
Now these guys are upping the ante.  Their new event is to be called:

Will Jews Exist? Iran, Assimilation, and the Threat to Israel and Jewish Survival

Besides “Global Jewish Philanthropist–Humanitarian,” Adelson and Shmuley the event is to feature the Wall Street Journal’s resident neocon intellectual, Brett Stephens and Rabbi Richard Joel.  Joel is a professor at Yeshiva University, an institution lately known for sheltering several known pedophiles on its staff.  The event will be held at YU.
The program title is a mish-mash of recent hot button issues in the Jewish community including the Pew Research Report on American Jewry.  Boteach has worked Iran into the equation as a special Jewish bogeyman.  Somehow it has also become a threat to Jewish survival, like assimilation.  Or not.
American Jewish communal leaders used to trot out anti-Semitism as the unifying fear around which Jews could rally.  The Holocaust continues to serve a similar role.  But as the emotive power of these shibboleths fades, people like Adelson need a new one.  So they’re pushed Iran forward.  It’s the new Hitler, the new Haman.
What’s truly pathetic about this is that Adelson and Boteach think that fear is a useful tool to rouse Jews to action (vote Republican!).  But if the Pew Poll proves anything, it’s that Jews are turning away from not just such negative, reactive forms of identity–but they’re turning against anything associated with the organized community.  One very good reason is precisely this sort of fear-mongering.
Clearly, Adelson has now adopted Boteach as his new pet project.  He couldn’t get Mitt elected president, so he’s taking some R&R till the next election.  While he sinks some serious money into Boteach’s various megalomaniacal Jewish projects.  Full page ads in the NY Times like the ones he’s taken out to promote these two events cost well north of $100,000, which is chump change for Adelson.  My guess is that Boteach is into him for a coupla cool million.  If I were to think in round numbers I’d guess Boteach can expect over time something like $20-million from Adelson.  For those who doubt me, I predicted from the very beginning that Adelson would invest $100-million in Romney’s campaign.  And that was before anyone predicted a figure anywhere near that.  His final giving totaled $150-million.  So don’t doubt Adelson’s vanity or ego and willingness to bet on–or create–a winner (he’s a gambler, after all!).