The Michael Jackson Tapes

by Shmuley Boteach

  SB: These are the questions you were asking the elders?

  MJ: Uhuh.

  Michael’s questions are actually important enough to be asked and answered by some of the leading Jewish Biblical commentators of ancient times. For those interested in finding some answers to his questions, see my books The Private Adam and Judaism for Everyone, where I discuss Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Also, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik’s seminal work, The Lonely Man of Faith, brilliantly analyzes Adam and Eve in the Garden.

  Religion and Finding God in Rituals

  Shmuley Boteach: I always say that the main purpose of religion is to teach you in your twenties what you only find out in your seventies. Otherwise religion is not principally designed to offer cosmic secrets. It’s straightforward and its profundity is found specifically in its simplicity: Be a good person, spend time with your kids, love God. You know all that at eighty, but you should know it in your teens and twenties, so you don’t squander your life.

  Michael Jackson: Right, I see it, I see it. That’s what we’re all talking about.

  SB: You’re one of the few people who seems to be religious without practicing, meaning, you have a very deep-seated sense of spirituality, but you don’t undertake many religious rituals. You’ll tell me things like, “Although I once believed God is in a church, I now believe that God is everywhere, he’s in my heart. . . I now find God in those moments I spend with my children, I find God in the innocent.”

  This was quoted from the article about the Sabbath that I wrote for Michael based on our conversations.

  MJ: Yeah it’s true, it’s true.

  SB: See, you’re very religious, but it’s important to also connect with God through rituals. It’s like [my wife] Debbie. Debbie’s more spiritual than I am naturally. She just feels God more than I do. I need to do things to feel him often. I’m not the pure soul that she is. I am very different.

  MJ: So you guys don’t go to the. . . uh. . .

  SB: We go to synagogue every week, yeah.

  MJ: Every week?

  SB: Absolutely.

  MJ: What day?

  SB: Friday nights and Saturday.

  MJ: You do?

  SB: Yeah, of course. Remember that service we had at my house?

  Michael had come to a Friday night service at my home and danced in a large circle with all my friends.

  MJ: And do all your children go?

  SB: Yes, of course.

  MJ: And how long do you stay?

  SB: Friday nights, it’s about an hour. Then about three hours on Saturday mornings. Then Saturday afternoon it’s another hour.

  MJ: And the children stay for three hours? And they do well? SB: Yep.

  MJ: That’s why they’re so well behaved.

  SB: They’re very good about that. They’re very good. And once a month I don’t go to synagogue and I stay home with them and practice their prayers so they know what to say in synagogue.

  MJ: So you have these prayers?

  SB: We do services at home once a month.

  MJ: They must be some beautiful prayers.

  SB: Oh they’re beautiful, yeah.

  MJ: I know they must be very beautiful.

  SB: They’re very simple. Jewish prayers are not about big things; they’re about little things. The prayers condition us to find God in the minutiae of everyday life. He is all around us.

  MJ: But they’re beautiful aren’t they?

  SB: They’re about thanking God for the rain, about thanking God for the cooling wind. They’re about thanking God for all the miracles he gives the Jews in history.

  MJ: Wow.

  SB: The Jews have been around for a long time. He’s looked after us. We’re an ancient people.

  MJ: Wow, and Mushki and everybody go? Baba? [Baba, our nickname for our daughter Rochel Leah, was three at the time.]

  SB: Baba goes too. Baba doesn’t go three times on the Sabbath, she goes once Saturday morning with Debbie. ’Cause Debbie’s pregnant now, although she sometimes goes three times, now she just goes in the morning. You know, we walk, we don’t use a car. We don’t drive on the Sabbath at all.

  MJ: How far do you walk?

  SB: It’s not that far. About a half a mile. It’s not that far.

  MJ: All the kids walk?

  SB: All of them.

  MJ: Really?

  SB: In Oxford [where I served as rabbi for eleven years], it was very far. In Oxford we walked three miles each way.

  MJ: You and the children?

  SB: It was always raining. It was always raining.

  MJ: Shmuley, you guys walked three miles?

  SB: Three miles.

  MJ: And they didn’t complain?

  SB: No. Sometimes they complained if we’d come back very late ’cause we used to eat with the students for the Friday night Sabbath meals, and often we’d walk home well after midnight.

  MJ: I love your family.

  Karma and Justice

  Shmuley Boteach: I really like the fact that at Neverland the Security are called Safety… it’s on their badges, uniforms, and hats.

  Michael Jackson: I don’t know.

  SB: The fact that is says “Safety” rather than “Security,” it’s like, “We are not here to keep the world out, but simply to ensure the safety of everyone who is visiting here.” It’s less intimidating and more humane.

  Children have a really strong sense of justice. The most common thing I hear from my kids is, “That’s not fair.” You just said that these people who did this thing at your performance got away with it. On the one hand children have this very strong sense of justice, and on the other hand we see how mean people get away with things and no one stops them.

  MJ: It happens all the time. I think justice is important because there are many injustices in the world and I hate injustice. “I am tired of injustice” is the opening to one of my songs on my last album, called Scream. That’s the first line I say. There’s a line where Janet [Jackson] says, “Oh my God I can’t believe what I saw on the TV this evening. I was disgusted by all the injustice,” because I wanted people to know about that and people get away with it and I don’t believe in karma. I think that is a bunch of crap, because so many mean-spirited, evil people are on top of the world and doing well and people love them, no matter how evil they are.

  SB: I love it when you make strong statements like that.

  MJ: Well, I’m sorry, it’s crap. Karma is a theory like any other theory that some human made up.

  SB: Well, “what goes around comes around” is ok, because there’s great truth to that. But karma could actually be evil because karma says that handicapped children did something bad in a previous life.

  MJ: That’s a fine line and I’m sorry for talking like that. But I hate whoever says some thing like that. A child did something in a past life so God is going to handicap them? There were all these orphans in this one country coming to America to be adopted. The plane crashed. Every child on the plane died. Why? If you could save those kids, if you were in Heaven, you would say, “This one is not going down. Maybe another one, but not this one.” I know I would.

  SB: Did you ever have Eastern spiritual gurus who came to you and said, “Michael children get hit by trucks because they fornicated in a previous life?”

  MJ: No, and if they did I would be furious and I would give them all the reasons why that is a bunch of crap. That’s doodoo. That’s a theory like any other man’s theory about the universe. Some people believe in the Big Bang, which I don’t, and some people believe in the Creation, that story with Adam and Eve, that this universe isn’t an accident. To say this universe was created by a Big Bang or an accident is to say, “Okay, I want you to take a car engine and we are going to take each piece apart and we are going to put it in a bath tub, and I want you to shake it up.” You can shake that tub 100 years and it will never become the perfect engine. All the pieces to come together and make an engine, that is like saying the Big Bang theory, and the
re was a big explosion and we got children, and trees, and plants, and the air we breath, and oxygen. Somebody had to create this, a designer had to create this. From our lashes to our mouths to our digestive system. Don’t you agree?

  SB: That’s the most important of all religious beliefs, that God is the origin of life.

  MJ: When I used to go door to door [Witnessing for the Jehovah’s Witnesses Church] and people would say, “We are atheists,” [I’d think] what? They don’t believe in.... I heard it a lot and I had a brother who was an atheist for a while but I think he isn’t now. Tito was an atheist even after being raised as a strict Jehovah’s Witness. I know some of the famous directors, the guy who directed Singing In The Rain and who won academy awards, Stanley Donen….

  SB: So what arguments did you have for people when you were Pioneering when they told you that they were atheists?

  MJ: I tried to bring out the miracles of life, the children, look into their eyes, our bodies, how it all works just right, this can’t happen on its own, come on, no way. Then there are the questions I have about why we are here and why we are allowed to destroy each other. Because we are the only species who destroys their own. Every species on this planet... I don’t understand how all that injustice takes place. Why didn’t something in heaven stop the Holocaust or some of the great genocides that happen in the world, from the lynchings and slavery, to all the great problems, to Stalin, to…? I hate to say this but Napoleon, too. He gets praised for all his genocide [I assume Michael means all the wars he caused], whereas Hitler gets called the Devil, which he was. But they both did the same thing. But one was doing it for his country and the other one was too! But a lot of people died with Napoleon. There are statues of Napoleon.

  SB: Well, no one was ever as evil as Hitler. And Napolean, while being a man who started many wars, was still a benevolent dictator and in no way could he be compared to Hitler. Still, in his day, Napoleon was referred to by the English and by all the nations of Europe as “the beast.” They called him the anti-Christ.

  MJ: But he died a lonely man on an island all alone.

  SB: Do you enjoy reading about history?

  MJ: I do enjoy reading about history, but I don’t know what to believe and what not to believe. Because I know how much that is written about me is twisted… about me… how much stuff in history is twisted. Because the way this country was taken away from the Indians and the way Australia was taken from the blacks and apartheid, how they killed so many blacks.

  SB: You know that most of the death of the indigenous peoples here in the Americas, as well as most of the slaves who were brought from Africa, was through disease and germs. Almost ninety percent of Native Americans died because of European diseases. You see the Europeans had so much disease in their blood they developed immunity to it. But the Native Americans had no such immunity and European germs killed off about eighty seven percent of indigenous peoples in the Americas, and something like ninety five percent of the Aborigines died of disease. They lived in more wholesome environments without all the European illness.

  MJ: I hate it. I’m sorry I hate it.

  SB: You know, when I was in Australia recently they had this big debate about whether the government should finally apologize to the Aboriginal people.

  MJ: I know all about this. I told Frank about it, remember? [Frank Cascio was in the room with us during this conversation.] They say that if they apologize then they have to pay them the way they are paying the Jews for the Holocaust. And they don’t want to pay them so they can’t say they are sorry. They made a mistake because they are worried that they will stick their hand out and ask for money.

  SB: Do you think they should?

  MJ: Absolutely, and I give the Jews credit for standing up for the past. Yes. The Germans paid the Jews $47 billion a year in taxes because of the Holocaust.

  SB: It’s actually nowhere near that much. But the Jews were never paid for their slave labor and certainly never accepted blood money for the six million killed. Rather, they were compensated for the tens of billions of dollars in confiscated property that was stolen and destroyed by the Nazis and their collaborators, and even then only got a fraction of what they lost.

  MJ: But I hate when people to this day think that all Germans are bad, because they are not.

  SB: In the Bible there is horizontal, rather than vertical accountability. So, if I saw you beating up Frank and I didn’t stop you, I am also responsible because I was here witnessing it but chose to do so without stopping you. But Prince wouldn’t be responsible just because he is your son. We do not visit the sins of the fathers upon the children. So, horizontal accountability, but not vertical. He can’t be accountable for what his father does. So we of course don’t hold this generation of Germans responsible for what their parents did. But we do hold the generation who perpetrated it, and those who watched in silence, we hold them accountable.

  Racism, Religion, and Anti-Semitism

  Michael was heavily criticized for using kike, a term of derision for Jews, in his song “They Don’t Care About Us.” Indeed, many Jewish people, when hearing that we had become friends, wrote to me and told me that Michael was an anti-Semite. But with all the flaws I admit existed in Michael’s life, being an anti-Semite was simply not one of them. If anything, I believe Michael had an intuitive affinity with Jewish people. He greatly respected the fact that I was a rabbi and did much to learn from the wisdom I had as a scholar of Jewish texts. And yes, I am well aware that in 2006 Michael left a voice message on a recording machine disparaging Jews. But while I’m not here to defend such a repulsive action it has to be remembered that by that time Michael was often stoned out of his mind on prescription medication and who knows who was feeding him these lines. Michael always demonstrated the highest respect for Jews and Judaism in my presence.

  Shmuley Boteach: So you have been the voice for a lot of the people who have been left out. Like in the song “They Don’t Care About Us,” the main message being they don’t care about who? The poor? The third world?

  Michael Jackson: Well I’d say, they don’t care about us, those who are treated unjustly, those who have been bastardized, being called “nigger,” being called the word that they misunderstood me for when I said those who say “kike” to people. When I was a little kid, Jews, we had Jewish lawyers and Jewish accountants and they slept in my bed next to me and they would call each other “kike.” I said, “What is that?” and they said, “That’s the bad word for Jews. For blacks they say ‘nigger.’” I said, “Ohhh.” So I always knew when people had been bastardized, they’ve been called “nigger,” they’ve been called “kike.” That’s what I’m saying and they used it. They took it all wrong. I would never. . . you know?

  SB: You were trying to stand up for those with no voice?

  MJ: Yeah, who don’t have a voice. I would never teach hatred, ever. That’s not what I’m about.

  SB: Are you proud to be an American? When you did all these concerts abroad in foreign countries, did you feel like you were some sort of American representative?

  MJ: I hope you don’t take this wrong, what I am about to say, but I feel I belong to the world and I hate to take sides. Even though I am an American and I was born in this country and there are a lot of things about America I am proud of, and there are a lot of things I am not proud of. . . ignorance . . . like that [Norman] Rockwell painting of the little girl trying to get to school to learn and they were throwing stuff at her.

  Rockwell had painted a black girl going to a recently desegregated school in the deep South, surrounded by Federal marshals who were there to protect her from attack. Michael and I had gone to see it at a private gallery.

  MJ: I don’t understand racism. My mother—and she is an angel and a saint—she was pulling out of the market and it was a block from my house in Encino and she was in her Mercedes. And my mother loves everybody, and this white man in a car screams out, “Go back to Africa, you nigger.” It hurt me so much that that
happened to my mother. . . this was no more than five years ago, because he was jealous.

  I know stories of my brothers in their Rolls-Royces get out of the car and lock the door and when they come back they find that some guy had taken a key and scratched the car because there is a black man driving it. I just hate anything like that because the color of a person’s skin has nothing to do with the content of their character.

  I love the Jewish babies and the German babies and the Asian and the Russians. We are all the same and I have the perfect hypothesis to prove it. I play to all those countries and they cry in all the same places in my show. They laugh in the same places. They become hysterical in the same places. They faint in the same places and that’s the perfect hypothesis. There is a commonality that we are all the same. Because I have heard that the Russians are hard-nosed and the Germans have no feelings and emotions. They were just as emotional [at my concerts]. . . even more so. Some of my most loving fans are in Germany and Russia. They will stand out in the cold and in the rain to get a glimpse. They scream, “We want to Heal the World. We love you.” And these are young people, you know, who had nothing to do with the war and all that crazy conditioning. They are different, you know. The new breed is different. They are wonderful. I feel like a person of the world. I can’t take sides. That’s why I hate saying, “I am an American.” For that reason.

  SB: Do you think the fact that you were one of the first incredibly successful and famous black men affected your career to an extent? Some of the unfair things that people did, was that partially racism in the way that your mother experienced it?

  MJ: Yes, because before me you had [Harry] Belafonte, you had Sammy [Davis, Jr.], you had Nat King Cole. You had them as entertainers and people loved their music. But they didn’t get adulation, and they didn’t get [people] to cry and they didn’t get, “I am in love with you, and I want to marry you.” They didn’t get people tearing their clothes off and all the hysteria and all the screams. They didn’t play stadiums. I was the first one to break the mold, where white girls, Scottish girls, Irish girls screamed, “I am in love with you, I want to. . . ” And a lot of the white press didn’t like that. That’s what has made it hard for me, because I was the pioneer and that’s why they started the stories. “He’s weird.” “He’s gay.” “He sleeps in a hyperbaric chamber.” “He wants to buy the bones of the Elephant Man”—anything that turns people against me. They tried their hardest. And anybody else would be dead as a junkie right now, who’d been through what I’ve been through. SB: What gave you the strength to persevere?