A MICHAEL JACKSON MOMENT

by Gary Rosenblatt
Editor and Publisher
The Jewish Week

NBC Dateline is planning a one-hour special this week on Rabbi Shmuley Boteach’s latest book, based on 30 hours of taped interviews he did with Michael Jackson more than eight years ago – interviews he describes as “raw, intimate, revealing.”

But the rabbi won’t be watching the show because it is scheduled to be broadcast on Friday night (Sept. 25). Which is only fitting because Shabbat, and its observance, is what strengthened the relationship between the rabbi and the late pop star, and it will be a theme in the television broadcast.

The program will explain that the rabbi was taped in advance because he could not participate on Shabbat. And Rabbi Boteach, an author, lecturer and host of the television show,
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“Shalom in the Home,” will note that he and Jackson shared an interest in and commitment to turning Friday night into family night throughout the country, encouraging Americans to make time for families to eat and talk together without distractions.

In addition, NBC has agreed to broadcast at least five 30-second public service announcements featuring prominent figures, including Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Newark Mayor Cory Booker, and TV personalities Kathy Lee Gifford and Dr. Phil (McGraw), endorsing Rabbi Boteach’s national initiative to strengthen families by promoting meaningful time spent together on Friday nights.

The rabbi heads an organization called This World: The Values Network, which seeks to bring Jewish values to mainstream American culture.

“Michael loved coming to our house for Friday night dinners with his kids,” Rabbi Boteach told The Jewish Week. The rabbi, who met Jackson 10 years ago through a mutual friend, mentalist Uri Geller, said the pop star and his children behaved completely normally, and seemed to enjoy the informality and warmth of the Boteach home, in Englewood, NJ, where they could act naturally.

“We started our conversations on Shabbat, the only day of the week with no intrusions or distractions. He had nothing but distractions in his life, he was always so busy.”

In the summer of 2000, and for about 10 months, the two men met regularly during the week, and Rabbi Boteach interviewed Jackson about his life, his views on celebrity and what motivated him.

The rabbi planned to publish the book, at Jackson’s request, but then shelved the idea after Jackson was arrested in 2003 on charges of child molestation.

After Jackson died suddenly in June, Rabbi Boteach decided to go ahead with the book, titled “Michael Jackson Tapes: A Tragic Icon Reveals His Soul in Intimate Conversation,” to be published by Vanguard next week.

Why now?

Rabbi Boteach said the primary reason is because Jackson very much wanted it published. In addition, “this is a great morality tale” about the dangers of celebrity and excess, the rabbi said, that applies not only to Jackson but to American culture as well.

“And in the words of Hillel, if not now, when?”

Rabbi Boteach said that “whether you loved or hated Michael Jackson, this was a tragic waste of a life. He had a mixed history, he reached many people and he may have been guilty of terrible things, but that doesn’t mean he had nothing to say. He’s never given credit for becoming very introspective about life in general, and his own life. I want people to hear him in his own voice and judge him based on the full facts.”

The main body of the book is “60,000 words of Michael” being interviewed, Rabbi Boteach said, with little commentary. It also includes an introduction by the rabbi offering an overview of their friendship, which cooled after Jackson’s 2003 arrest, and an afterward on celebrity, featuring what the rabbi calls his own “mea culpa” about his personal need for attention.

Rabbi Boteach said Jackson told him that what he sought from the time he became a child star was neither wealth nor fame, but love, especially from his father.

“Michael represented an extreme form of brokenness,” the rabbi said, noting that, like American culture, “he had everything but was often depressed, living in a world that was increasingly sexualized. He had the resources to take his dysfunction to a particular extreme, but we may be headed in the
same direction.”

A second book of the taped interviews, focusing on why Jackson sought refuge in childhood as an adult, is scheduled to be published next year.