The Michael Jackson Tapes

by Shmuley Boteach

  And now you begin to understand why so many people around the world think Americans are so shallow. Our celebrity-driven culture doesn’t focus on education, hard work, sacrifice, or family. It focuses on entertainment, which by its very nature is something you do in your spare time. Entertainment is designed to be on the periphery, never at the center, of national endeavor.

  The larger threat to the United States does not come from foreign powers or terrorist plots. Terrorists can harm us but they can never defeat us. The only thing that can threaten the continuity of this great country is if its actual foundations corrode to such an extent that the national edifice falls victim to the forces of historical inevitability. If our nation is built of the marvelous marble of the Greek Parthenon or the Roman Pantheon or the solid stone of Jerusalem’s Western Wall, it will last for many centuries, and perhaps millennia, to come. But if it is built of the flimflam material of mere media hype, a sound stage that is all glitz with no substance, it will, God forbid, crumble before our very eyes.

  As I’ve said, no culture is ever healthy if it deifies human beings. It was not for naught that God made as the very First Commandment the injunctions to accept only one God and never to embrace counterfeits: I am the Lord Your God. You shall have no other gods before me. God alone should be the epicenter of our lives, the heart of our existence, the soul of our actions. We dare accept no fraudulent substitutes.

  Nearly all of us have become closet idolaters, to our own detriment. I used to tell Michael constantly that the act of making himself a god had to end in tragedy. But we who worship at the altar of celebrities must be aware of our own transgression.

  Mea Culpa

  I, too, as a man of religion who is firmly immersed in the culture, must confront my own veneration of celebrity. Since first deciding to become a rabbi at the age of sixteen, I harbored a dream that one day I would help make spirituality go mainstream, that I would be an instrument in helping Jewish values rise out of the backwater and earn a popular voice in our culture.

  Once I became rabbi at Oxford and hosted renowned figures as speakers to our students, I convinced myself that celebrities and the microphone they had to the world offered a shortcut by which to advance a godly message. Why not float noble ideas through the mouthpiece of superstars? All it took was getting the celebrities on board and the rest of humanity would follow.

  But I have come to see the error of my own judgment and now believe that celebrity culture is as destructive as it is promising. I realize that I, too, was engaging in the promotion of idolatry. By using a celebrity to talk about values, the message is made less important than the personality. The light of the idea is absorbed and lost in the aura of the star. If the purpose of knowing God is to be weaned off false idols, then God cannot be taught by those who have allowed, and perhaps even encouraged, their own deification.

  There are exceptions, wholesome celebrities such as Bono who have leveraged their fame to highlight causes more worthy than themselves. Yet these notable celebrities are so few that they constitute the exceptions that prove the rule.

  The Culture Will Change You Before You Change the Culture

  If there is one thing I have learned from my friendship with Michael Jackson, it is this: I, who always prided myself on being above celebrity gossip—finding it rancid and shallow—discovered that I was no more immune to celebrity idolatry than anyone else.

  When my relationship with Michael unraveled, one of the people before whom I was most ashamed was Elie Wiesel. I had worked extremely hard bringing the two of them together. Professor Wiesel was kind enough to publicly embrace Michael, a distinct honor from someone who is one of the most respected figures alive. I remember calling him on the phone to discuss the ending of my friendship with Michael. Professor Wiesel was gracious. He did not rub salt in the wound. He said that he predicted that something like this might happen, and that this was the reason that, in general, he had always stayed away from celebrities and their causes, amid numerous invitations. “Shmuley, you don’t want to believe in an ‘us’ and ‘them’ mentality,” he told me. “You want to believe that God’s message can be channeled through any medium. You want to believe that because people are famous—no matter how they became famous—they have the ability to broadcast a wholesome message. But here is something you never reckoned with. I fear that you will discover that the culture will change you before you change the culture.”

  I had to take a long hard look at myself after that conversation and make important changes in my life, beginning with distancing myself from nearly all celebrity acquaintances for a time until I could regain a substantive footing. I am often described as a man with many celebrity friends, an interesting sobriquet since I have few to none, as I have recommitted myself to a circle of “ordinary” people, among which I number myself.

  I spend my time broadcasting my daily radio show on politics, religion, and culture, writing books and articles, lecturing to audiences on contemporary issues, counseling failing marriages, trying to reconnect parents and angry children, and most of all, trying to be a decent husband to my wife and father to our nine children. When the opportunities arise, I accept invitations to appear as a guest on TV and radio, and indeed I am proud to host my own TV show on TLC that focuses on helping families in crisis. But I no longer hunger for those appearances the way I once did and feel embarrassed and ashamed when I do. After all, I spent two years with the most famous person of all and saw where it all led. And if I did not take that message to heart, there is no hope for my ever learning.

  The Jews were brought into the world as witnesses to God’s presence, and our highest mission is to return God to the center of human life. We are the original Jehovah’s Witnesses, our long existence amid pogroms and persecutions bearing witness to our devotion to that most noble of causes and God’s continued presence amid our challenged existence. Our national calling is dedicated to a single proposition: that man is created by a loving God to spread law and love. The Jews were meant to inspire all inhabitants of the earth to love not the sparkling, shallow things, such as celebrity, but the simple yet grand things, such as living decent and honest lives, being responsible members of a spiritual community, caring for our spouses and parents, and acting as devoted servants of the public good. The more attention we humans draw to ourselves, the more we subvert the reason for our existence. Similarly, we dare not allow ourselves to live vicariously through our favorite celebrities in place of leading a purposeful and authentic existence.

  This does not mean that all hero worship leads to idolatry. Indeed, all my life I have looked up to, and been inspired by, great men and women. I love history and devour human biographies. I love being inspired by lives of courage and commitment, men who fought tyranny, women who spoke truth to power. We all need people to motivate and inspire us. But I now understand that a true hero is the man or woman who knows God as the hero, someone who has subordinated his or her ego to a higher ideal by placing God and humanity at their core. It is fine to try to follow in the footsteps of my great teacher, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, or the Pope, Nelson Mandela, Mother Theresa, the Dalai Lama or Martin Luther King, Jr. Indeed, Hasidic Jews have pictures of the Rebbe in their homes because his saintly life inspires them. But the lives of these people are less arrows pointing to themselves than vectors pointing to the heavens and to their fellow man.

  According to Jewish tradition, God hid Moses’s burial place, whose location remains a secret until this very day, to ward off the possible deification of Moses and the establishment of his sepulcher as a shrine. Moses wrought great wonders in Egypt, but he was merely a conduit of God’s awesome might.

  Still, I do not seek to judge any celebrities who have allowed their lives to become public monuments. I am not here to condemn those who have allowed the public to get carried away with a fascination for the minutiae of their lives. Insofar as I have judged Michael in this book it is because the magnitude of the tragedy, which I personally witnessed, cries ou
t and I can no longer be silent about it. But neither will I ever again seek to propagate a love of the Creator solely through men and women who have not yet learned the lesson that God is the source of their glory and that their spotlight comes from He who created all light. Neither can I condone modern men and women allowing their human potential to remain so tragically underdeveloped as they indulge in discussions of whether their favorite actress will win the Oscar, rather than focusing on their need to achieve triumphs in the real game of life.

  Saying Goodbye

  When Michael invited me and my family to attend his thirtieth anniversary concert in New York the day before September 11, I remember wondering if I still had the power to resist the magnetic attraction of a superstar, if the fireworks display of Madison Square Garden posed a greater thrill for me than the thunder and lightning of Mount Sinai. In the end, one of my proudest moments was when I declined the invitation. I wanted to go back to what I had been before my first meeting with Michael Jackson, a rabbi who tried to spread the light of God rather than bask in the aura of a celebrity.

  Our favorite stars might light up the crowd, but their glow is a mere reflection of a more infinite radiance, their rhythm but a hollow echo of a more eternal beat. While enjoying the entertainment value that celebrities can bring into our lives, it behooves us all not to settle for, and certainly not to obsess over, their glow but to seek out the true source of the light. Isaiah put it best: “Lift your eyes heavenward, and see Who created all these.”

  In seeking proof of the necessity of finding God in our lives, we need look no further than the tragedy of Michael Jackson. For Michael is living proof that spirituality and values in the modern age are no longer a luxury but a necessity. God is not something we can pull out as a Christmas gift only once a year. Faith is no longer something that can be reserved only for the bunker. Prayer is not something that we can resort to only while ensconced in the valley. God must accompany us now and always—even as we ascend the mountain’s summit.

  When we speak of the need for God for human salvation, we don’t mean salvation from only poverty, pain, and affliction. We especially mean salvation from materialism, shallowness, decadence, and the suffocating selfishness of narcissism and egocentrism.

  Michael Jackson was actually an outstanding candidate to come back to God because he was once a pious and devoted religious son, who spent his weekdays in church and his Sundays proselytizing. If he had had any chance of arresting the downward freefall that was his life, it would have first and foremost come about through a humble return to God. Sadly, it appeared that Michael had to hit rock bottom before he was humble enough to take that step and attempt to return to a family of faith that he so desperately needed. And even then it did not happen. Even if he never again became the King of Pop or conquered the world with his music, he might have claimed a title to a different crown that had eluded him throughout his eventful life—namely, the master of his own destiny.

  Some will say that I am being too judgmental. Why should Michael have to go back to an organized church when he claimed to be a spiritual man, even though he was not a regular churchgoer? Indeed, in our conversations, Michael claimed to be highly religious, albeit in his own way. I am dubious of the claim. Proximity to God breeds a distinct humility. Charlatans garbed in religious robes but as distant from God as Pluto is from the sun exhibit an arrogance and a nonrefinement of character that is the hallmark of a counterfeit faith. In our time we have seen enough abuse of those who claim to be religious and spiritual but who are nothing but hate-peddlers. Real spirituality means submitting to God as Master of the Universe and living by His rules rather than by those of our own taste. Michael was in desperate need of latching on to the time-honored values and framework of a religious lifestyle to rescue his moribund existence. The Jehovah’s Witnesses Church, with its many rules, had grounded him and kept him humble growing up. And a moral straitjacket to curb his destructive excess was exactly what Michael required.

  Today, whenever I see myself described in the media as “Michael Jackson’s former rabbi,” I feel a certain embarrassment from having to face my original insecurity in having believed that I needed a celebrity pairing to be an effective exponent of religious values, and that religion in general, and Judaism in particular, needed a celebrity spokesman 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 religion, I did not realize the serious dilution of Judeo-Christianity’s monotheistic message that would result from being twinned with a culture that promotes human beings as gods.

  I have since learned from my mistake and have tried to educate my children to know always that no man but God is the real Thriller.

  I was taught as a child that there is no greater privilege than for one’s actions to add to God’s grandeur and there is no greater failure than to diminish His glory. In the Jewish religion we call it Kiddush Hashem, sanctifying God’s presence, and Chillul Hashem, desecrating his sacred name. When I have made mistakes in my life, I have been pained not only by the personal consequences of my actions but especially by the fact that as a rabbi and a Jew I diminished a great world religion. The title I carry is supremely meaningful to me. I did not just take a test to acquire it but rather invested all of myself into being worthy of it. While Judaism will always flourish with spiritual-seekers, it will founder with publicity-seekers. And I know to which camp I must forever belong.

  God promised Abraham that his children would be “like the stars of the heaven,” not the stars of the silver screen. The former radiate light amid an all-encompassing darkness, and, indeed, the Jewish nation has retained its righteousness in a dark and cruel world. But the latter, our movie stars, are often counterfeit constellations, artificially illuminated facsimiles set in a world of make-believe.

  One cannot be religious without being righteous. To the extent that I added to the counterfeit message being promoted in our celebrity-obsessed society by becoming dependent on Michael for a period of two years to be effective as a rabbi, I greatly regret the action and have endeavored to correct it by becoming an outspoken critic of the destructive effect of celebrity culture, as well as becoming a more wholesome and grounded human being.

  This is not to say that I condemn Michael and foreswear entirely our once intimate friendship. Rather, it was the dependency that I regret, the belief that I needed him more than he needed me. I believed that religious values would benefit from having a renowned celebrity spokesman and was flattered that a man as famous as Michael Jackson found my spiritual ideas compelling.

  A Final Thank You, Michael

  Still, after all is said and done, I conclude this book with something that may surprise you. I want to acknowledge a debt of gratitude toward Michael that should not go unpaid.

  In the Jewish religion one of the greatest sins is to live as an ingrate. The Bible provides instances where human beings were expected to show gratitude even to inanimate objects. Moses was not allowed to smite the Nile and turn it into blood because it had earlier saved his life when he was a baby in a pitched basket. Similarly, Moses could not wield his staff against the dust of Egypt and turn it into lice because it had saved his life by allowing him to bury the body of an evil Egyptian taskmaster whom he had smitten. How much more so, to use the Talmudic phraseology, must one show gratitude and appreciation to a human being with whom one once enjoyed the solid bond of friendship and a deep bond of affection.

  For all his destructive flaws and serious shortcomings, I became a better father as a result of my friendship with Michael Jackson. It was impossible not to, so passionate was Michael about the infinite value of children and so infectious was his enthusiasm for childlike creativity and wonder. For the rest of my life I will never forget Michael making me promise that I would look into my childrens’ eyes whenever I told them I loved them. More than anything els
e, this could have been Michael’s lasting legacy and unparalleled gift to the world. How tragic it truly is, therefore, that he corrupted that ideal.

  A friend of mine told me that The New York Post had ridiculed me, the day after Michael’s arrest in November 2003, for a speech I gave a number of years ago where I stated that Michael inspired me to better value my children. But I still stand by those words. I do not believe in blind allegiance either to an active or a former friend. God and morality precede even kinship and friendship, and if someone we love or care about has contravened morality then their actions dare not be defended.

  But I still believe in heartfelt gratitude. And I will always be grateful to Michael for inspiring me not just to appreciate the infinite value of my children but to act on that appreciation by prioritizing them always. Amid his undeniable gifts, Michael had led a profligate and largely selfish existence and admitted to things, such as sharing a bed with children, that are unforgivable. That does not make him guilty of pedophilia, and if he was culpable it doesn’t annihilate the good he inspired. Any good things I picked up from him along the way remain with me, even as I lament his stunning destructive streak that culminated in his tragic and untimely death. As the great Jewish philosopher Maimonides wrote nearly a millennia ago, “Embrace the truth regardless of its source.” The truth that Michael strengthened in me about how my children are my greatest blessing is something for which I will forever be grateful.