Boteaching Them a Thing or Two

The self-proclaimed “Moses of Oxford” and kosher sex expert, Shmuley Boteach, has come out swinging at some rather famous pop stars.

In a Jerusalem post op-ed, Boteach has this to say about Madonna:

Madonna has been studying Kabbala now for a good many years. The same woman who helped debase the dignity of women everywhere with her mainstreaming of sado-masochism, who helped launch a decade of decadence and misogyny with her music videos, and who in her 1992 book Sex bared every region of her body for money and publicity is now a devoted student of the most sacred mystical texts in Judaism.

Has it made her into a better person? Has she ceased her contemptible portrayal of women as the lecherous man’s plaything? Was an ennoblement of character in evidence in the recent MTV music awards, where the publicity-famished star “swapped spit” with Britney Spears, while millions of teenage girls looked on? (She defended her coarse performance as “the kind of kiss you would give your sister,” thereby insulting our intelligence as well as our morals.)

And what of her most recent film, Swept Away, which itself was swept away by critics who described its embarrassing amalgam of “vulgarity, nudity, adult situations, sex, bad taste, bad acting, bad judgment.”

Here was Madonna at 44, years into her Kabbalistic journey, proving, in the words of an on-line reviewer, “that she is still willing to strip for the cameras with a couple of peeks at her breasts and her bottom.”

Kabbala argues for the spiritual supremacy of women over men, for feminine transcendence over masculine imminence, and feminine radiance over masculine expedience. Yet Madonna has spent her career dishonoring women, portraying them as chunks of meat bereft of personalities or even souls. She set back the cause of female recording artists by a generation by showing, a full 50 years after the feminist revolution, that a woman cannot sell a record unless she takes off her bra..Madonna has taken the Zohar – “the book of luminosity” – and made it dark.

Just look at Madonna’s sleazy imitations, and Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera for confirmation. One’s heart goes out to three desperate women reduced to outrageous antics because they have no real talent. Somehow I don’t remember the Beatles having to run around in thongs with guitars in order to sell out a stadium.

Boteach then bollocks ex-friend Michael Jackson:

It is no secret that I spent two years in close friendship with Michael Jackson which I now regard as one of the great mistakes of my life. To be sure, we worked together toward the noble goal of parents prioritizing their children. I also took him to meet Ariel Sharon at a time when Israel needed all the friends it could get. And, truth be told, there is much good in Michael, including a soft heart and a meek spirit.
But my embarrassment comes from my insecurity in believing that I needed a celebrity pairing in order to be an effective exponent of Judaism, and that the Jewish faith needed a celebrity spokesman in order to garner mainstream credibility.

Like many others who make the similar mistake of thinking that “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” and thus try and wed vulgar popular culture with the spiritual enormity of Judaism, I did not realize the serious dilution of Judaism’s monotheistic message that would result from being twinned with a culture which promotes human beings as gods.

I have since learned from my mistake and two years ago declined Michael’s kind invitation to me and my family to attend his 35th anniversary concert in his special friend’s box. I told my children at the time that I wanted them to understand that no man but God is the real Thriller.