The Dishonest Right

The Discovery Institute blog has a horrible post attacking Richard Dawkins for calling Shmuley Boteach "Hitler." Is this true?

Not really.

Dawkins – who knows Shmuley personally and knows Shmuley's tactics – responded to a Shmuley column in the Jerusalem Post that attacked Dawkins for "forgetting" a debate the two had at Oxford many years ago. Sandbagged by Boteach's behavior, Dawkins responded at length on his own blog. One thing Dawkins wrote is that Shmuley "shrieked like Hitler" in a recent debate between the two in Canada:

…As it happened, my taxi was late. While I was waiting for it, I was able to hear your speech, relayed over a loudspeaker in the foyer. I was astounded by what I heard. Gone was the urbane, humorous, polite Shmuley that I had known at Oxford, and with whom I had had lunch. What I heard over that loudspeaker was a shrieking rant, delivered with an intemperate stridency of which Hitler himself might have been proud. As I listened, I was shocked by your lamentable, but vocally confident ignorance of Darwinian evolution. And even more shocked by your shrill and vicious attack upon me. You were shrieking invective, in the belief that I was on my way to the airport. Had you prepared your ranting attack in advance, or did you extemporise as soon as you read my note? Had you somehow managed to convince yourself that this really was a ‘debate’ between us, even though I was not present? Are you, perhaps, in the habit of fantasizing about debates that never took place? Either way, you were giving me ample reason to be cool towards you – after Toronto. But, when we actually met in Toronto, I had no idea you were going to attack me, and my attitude towards you was the very opposite of cool.

In the following exchange between the two, Dawkins made it clear he was referring only to Shmuley's speaking style, not to anything else.

The point is, the two were friends from Shmuley days in Oxford. Dawkins was kind and polite to Shmuley. Shmuely appeared to be friendly and polite to Dawkins, but that facade was dropped after Dawkins left.

On the Discovery Institute's Evolution blog, John West handled the conflict this way:

…When Boteach criticized Dawkins for his rhetorical overreach, what did Dawkins do? Apologize? Of course not! Dawkins dug himself an even deeper hole. On May 8, he publicly responded to Boteach that he “did not say you think like Hitler, or hold the same opinions as Hitler, or do terrible things to people like Hitler. Obviously and most emphatically you don't.” Although this wasn’t exactly an apology, at least it was civil. But Dawkins couldn’t help himself, and so he started up again:

I said you shriek like Hitler. That is the only point of resemblance, and it is true. You shriek and yell and rant like Hitler… throughout your speeches you periodically rise to climaxes of shrieking rant, and that is just like Hitler. Incidentally, Dinesh D'Souza yells and shrieks in just the same way. I suppose it impresses some people, although it is hard to believe.

…when you turn to the subject of evolution, you don't know what you are talking about, so you yell and shriek to make up for it. Maybe yelling and shrieking works with an ignorant audience. It apparently worked for Hitler, but that is not a happy precedent. You should know better. Go and read some books about evolution, learn something about biology, and you'll then find that you can talk about it in a calm and civilised voice. You'll find that you won't need to yell and shriek like a madman, and you'll be all the more persuasive for it.

Where is the Anti-Defamation League when you need it?

The Discovery Institute linked to a YouTube video of Boteach's speech. But this video, bad as it is, is only Shmuley's opening, the first 10 minutes of his speech. Embedded below is the second part of that speech – the part Dawkins was actually referring to:

Shmuley sure does a lot of shrieking here.

Past that, Shmuley has nothing to say. He is a huckster par excellence and a fraud, (Watch Christopher Hitchens mop the floor with him if you don't believe me.) The louder he gets, the less sense he makes.

While Dawkins mention of Hitler is unfortunate, it is not antisemitic.

Dawkins is correct. Shmuley prances around the stage and screams and shrieks. And he makes no logical sense.

Shmuley is dishonest, not just in the arguments he makes but in how he conducts his business, as Roger Friedman reports (scroll down linked page for story):

…Back on May 23, 2001, we revealed the truth about the "Kosher Sex" rabbi who started a bogus charity with Jackson.

To this day there has no been no accounting for the money Boteach and Jackson raised for their Time for Kids/Heal the World Foundation. Indeed, the event they held on Feb. 14, 2001, at Carnegie Hall — a symposium on children — has never turned up in tax returns.

London newspapers reported that Boteach was ousted from the L'Chaim Society of Oxford University for mismanagement of funds. (He allegedly used money from the charity to maintain a lavish home. Boteach insisted it was his right to do so.) He was also reportedly banned from having a pulpit in the U.K., although during our conversation last year he denied that.

The New York Times also didn't bother to look into the infamous L'Chaim Society, Boteach's New York charity.

The most recent tax return available, which covers all of 2000, states that the New York edition of L'Chaim Society took in $203,185 in donations but paid out $240,164 "for administration." There are no funds listed for "Program Services."

In May 2001, this column discovered quite a lot about the so-called Oxford L'Chaim Society of New York, which has nothing whatsoever to do with Oxford University in Great Britain.

I wrote: "In 1999, the British government criticized (Boteach's) L'Chaim Society of Oxford, London and Cambridge — an organization that was supposed to support and promote Jewish thinking and life on the Oxford campus — when they discovered that Shmuley (his name is Shmuel but he loves the nickname) had been dipping into the funds.

In an e-mail to the Oxford Union, Sonia Tugwell of the Charity Commission wrote on January 8, 2001: "In August 1999, the Charity Commission opened an inquiry under section 8 of the Charities Act 1993 into the L'Chaim Independent Charitable Trust as a result of concerns that the charity's funds were being misapplied.

"The inquiry established that a number of apparent inappropriate payments were regularly being made by the founder of the charity, Rabbi Boteach and his wife. Fundraising costs and administrative expenses were high in relation to relatively low charitable expenditure.

"As a result of the inquiry, in March last year, the trustees of the charity, after taking appropriate legal advice, reached an agreement with the Boteaches. The result of this was that a sum was paid by them to the charity. The trustees of the charity decided to wind up the charity and the London and Oxford offices were closed last year with our approval. It was agreed that the assets of the Cambridge Society would be transferred to another trust. If there are any funds remaining after outstanding liabilities have been paid, these will be given to other charitable causes similar to those supported by the L'Chaim Independent Charitable Trust."

An article dated June 1, 1998, in the London Daily Telegraph clearly states: "Ah Shmuley. The shame, the disgrace. (He's been) publicly reproached by Elkin Levy, president of the United Synagogues; forced to resign from the synagogue in Willesden where he preaches, accused of conduct unbecoming, bringing the rabbinate into disrepute." The resignation was apparently in response to the publication of Boteach's controversial book, "Kosher Sex," which has been a bestseller and was excerpted in Playbo y.

"It seems funny to me," said a source at the Oxford Union, "that the headquarters for the L'Chaim Society of Oxford is in New York."

Frustrated by the lack of information from Boteach's office, I subsequently wrote another story on Feb. 18, 2002, stating that Boteach's tax-free foundation in the United States is alled Oxford L'Chaim Society, implying a tie to the prestigious British university.

I also wrote that the L'Chaim Society's 1999 public tax filing shows that the charity took in $300,000. Of that amount, $160,000 went to "management" and $122,000 was sent as a lump-sum donation to the L'Chaim Society of Cambridge, the other top British university.

But, of course, representatives of the Cambridge Society swore to me last year that they hadn't heard from Boteach in a long time. Certainly they didn't mention a huge donation, and neither did Boteach.

Even so, more than half the money collected by Boteach in 1999 went to salaries. Less than half was donated to charity. Just in case you were wondering.

This from the poster boy for "family values." Disgusting.

Comments

[Sarah]

Boteach is our own Sharpton and Jackson rolled into one. G-d help us.

[R]

watched some of that video but couldn't finish it as his shouting gave me a headache.
Infact he isn't the only Rabbi speaker to shout to make a point across, i have noticed it with alot of Lubavitch type Rabbi speakers, i think they learnt it off the L. Rebbe.

[Sam]

Shmarya, I agree with you 98%--Shmuley hasn't got a rhetorical leg to stand on, he does shriek quite painfully, Dawkins's comments are not anti-Semitic, and so forth. But don't you think he could have chosen his words a bit more carefully than to compare a Jew, a rabbi, to Hitler? You say it's "unfortunate" and then seem willing to give Dawkins a complete pass because of the idiocy of Shmuely's own words. Doesn't it go a little beyond this, though?

As an someone with an archaeological background, I was quite interested in Shmuley's assertion that "They dug up the whole world!"

Really?

Just in the realm of ancient human cultures there are so many areas that we could learn more about if we could conduct further excavations at present.

There are lots and lots of areas that have been only minimally excavated - or not excavated at all. And this is only referring to excavations that go down to layers two or three thousand years old. What Shmuley is referring to is the excavations needed to research the paleontological record - layers millions of years old, which lie even *deeper* than the layers we haven't yet gotten to for archaeological purposes.

Come on, even a site as well known and excavated as Pompeii is still mostly unexcavated.

We haven't "dug up the whole world." Not even close. We've only just begun to uncover things in terms of archaeology . . . and when it comes to paleontology, we haven't even scratched the surface yet.

[Yoel B]

Old legal maxim: If the facts are on your side, pound the facts. If the law is on your side, pound the law. If both are against you, pound the table. Nu, Shmuley?

My initial reaction when listening to Shuley's Toronto rant was, "It sounds like he might have been hanging around evangelical pastors a little too much."

His style - shrieking included, is very reminiscent of the Christian fundie and evangelical style.

Perhaps Dawkins could have said that, instead.

However, Dawkins was probably just being honest. The Hitler comparison was probably the first thing that popped into his head when he heard the Shmuley Shriek and so, in recounting his experience, described them uncensored. He probably thought, "That's what I really thought at the time, so why change it?"

Dawkins seems to be a very polite and respectful individual both in his interactions with the public when he gives lectures and with his opponents when debating. This is something that he appears to take very seriously: treating one another with respect. He also gets noticeably offended/annoyed when people violate that respect.

If anyone should be respectful, it should be a friend and former collegue who you are supposedly still on good terms with.

When Dawkins walked in and heard Shmuley attacking him in that manner - completely violating the standards of respect and decency that Dawkins himself extends to his opponents, he was probably very offended and quite a bit upset, not to mention completely taken aback.

So, if the Shmuley Shriek first brought to mind one of the worst people in the world to employ the rhetorical shriek, then I'm not altogether surprised that happened.

[TheAdlerian]

I used to watch a show on public access in NYC staring two Ortho Jews. It was basically them shouting about which public figure was was spotted eating non-Kosher and how they should die from cancer, and so forth.

I believe that Hitler was inspired by Jews.

[Bartley Kulp]

I am listening to the youtube link right now. Rav Boteach is emotional in is speech however this is far from a Hitler rant. This is more like Jerry Falwell.

Dawkins should stop being so sensitive.

[Ichabod Chrain]

I'm confused about your headline "The Dishonest Right" Are you sayng that if Boteach is dishonest, then all public figures to the right of you is dishonest? If that's not what you're saying, then what are you saying? Boteach is not a spokesman for the "Right" and he's not a leader of the Right, and for all we can tell from the article, politically he might be towards the left. So how do you justify the headline?

If you're concerned about honesty, you might want to look at the Clintons, the Obama-Rezko connection, Harry Reid's land deals, Nancy Pelosi's business interests, etc. etc.

Anyway, the problem with Hitler was what he said and did, not his shrieking. So I don't understand why Dawkins would draw that analogy.

[Shmarya]

I'm saying Boteach is dishonest. I'm saying the Discovery Institute and WorldNetDaily are dishonest.

Anyway, the problem with Hitler was what he said and did, not his shrieking. So I don't understand why Dawkins would draw that analogy.

Because Dawkins was comparing Shmuley's screaming and onstage antics to Hitlers screaming and onstage antics. He was NOT comparing Shmuley to Hitler in general.

[Dave]

I am not Orthodox, and I do think that evolutionary theory is valid, but I also agree with about 99 percent of what Shmuley said. I do not agree with his anthropomorphic allusions.

[Sarah]

Dawkins claims to be friends with Boteach. You know what they say: you lie down with dogs you wake up with fleas. Seems like Dawkins got some good flea bites. A good lesson to be learned. I've always thought Boteach was quite a talented self-promoter, using other people's money to promote himself and live a very grand lifestyle. Shouldn't this tell us something?

I don't see your problem with Boteach's speech. I gather it was supposed to be a debate with Dawkins, who couldn't make it. Instead, Boteach turned it into a sermon of the kind popular with Evangelical TV preachers. Lots of stage movement, gesturing, and occasional shouting. It was a performance rather than a cool, logical exposition. There was no justification for Dawkins to label it as a Hitler-like performance. It was simply a performance, and a fairly interesting one at that.

Y. Aharon

[uncle joe mccarthy]

boteach does not represent the right, he barely represents jews.

finally watched his "debate" with hitchens...what a joke.

i knew shmully when he was a kid...he was a con artist all the way back then.

how anyone buys into his spiel is beyond me.

and i feel sorry for his kids, cuz he has been ostracized from every part of judaism, including chabad....where are they gonna find shiduchim?

[Ichabod Chrain]

"I'm saying Boteach is dishonest. I'm saying the Discovery Institute and WorldNetDaily are dishonest."

Okay, but if that's what you're saying then you should change the headline. But then if that's what you're saying you need to back it up. You've come up with some things about Boteach, but you haven't laid a finger on the "right."
I don't know how honest the Discovery Institute or the World Net Daily are, but it's not right to take one entry in a blog and to tar the whole enterprise because of that. If you want to do that you can get more mileage by looking at what's on some of the lefty blogs,not to mention Newsweek, the AP, the New York Times, the Minneapolis Strib, etc.

"Because Dawkins was comparing Shmuley's screaming and onstage antics to Hitlers screaming and onstage antics. He was NOT comparing Shmuley to Hitler in general."

Yes of course. But my point was why would he draw that comparison. It's a cheap shot on his part.

By the way, I would like to point out that Shmuley incorrectly identifies Dawkins and Gould as "evolutionists."

More properly, they should be referred to as evolutionary biologists.

The "evolutionist" tag is another rhetorical device used by the anti-evolution crowd.

"Anthropologists and biologists refer to "evolutionists" in the 19th century as those who believed that the cultures or life forms being studied are evolving to a particular form. (see Platonic form). Very few scientists today, if any, believe that evolution in culture or biology works that way, and serious discussions generally take caution to distance themselves from that perspective."

"Scientists object to the terms evolutionism and evolutionist because the -ism and -ist suffixes accentuate belief rather than scientific study. Conversely, creationists use those same two terms partly because the terms accentuate belief, and partly perhaps because they provide a way to package their opposition into one group, seemingly atheist and materialist, designations which are irrelevant to science."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionism

[Ichabod Chrain]

Just wanted to follow up on my last comment. The Discovery Institute blog entry is absolutely freaking right when they said Dawkins compared Boteach to Hitler.

Dawkins could have compared Boteach to Michael Jackson, for example, but he chose Hitler. So why of all the people who ever lived did he have to choose Hitler, unless he wanted to compare them.

So do I now call you dishonest? No. You probably just made an honest mistake. It happens.

Yes of course. But my point was why would he draw that comparison. It's a cheap shot on his part.

Because Dawkins views Shmuley's performance as akin to the way Hitler used yelling, pounding, gesticulations, and emotional arguments to convince people - not by logic and reason, but via their emotional connection to the performance.

Dawkins also compared Ted Haggard's church services to the Nuremburg Rallies.

Dawkins is able to make such comparisons because he doesn't do this. If you've ever seen him give a lecture, he is very low key, and while eloquent, he is not a "performer" like Shmuley or Haggard. He presents the subject and relies on the logical reasoning of his audience to get the point across.

Shmuley goes out there, makes his jokes, yells a bit, waves his arms around, makes some emotionally cutting remarks, wrenches the heart strings here and there, and leads his audience to sympathize with his point.

Hitler didn't rely on logic and reasoning to convince his followers. He relied on charisma, oratory skills, emotion, and staging performances that overwhelmed the senses of the audience. Except for the last part, Shumley does these things (and evangelists do the sensory-overloaded performances).

Dawkins isn't the first person to bring this criticism regarding clergy. The expose (or at least one version of it) "The Many Faces of Benny Hinn" note that Hinn's performances are comparable to the Nurenberg Rallies in their composition and their use of sensory-overload techniques.

[Shmarya]

I'l try it again.

1. Dawkins compared Shmuley's rhetorical style to Hitler's. He did not compare Shmuley the man to Hitler the man.

2. That is obvious to anyone who can read. Yet WorldNetDaily and the Discovery Institute made their stories appear as if Dawkins had compared Shmuley the man to Hitler the man.

3. To accentuate their position, the Discovery Institute linked to the wrong video excerpt of Shmuley's talk.

Dawkins was clearly referring to part two. Discovery linked to part one, where Shmuley barely screams.

(Perhaps Shmuley was waiting for his friend Dawkins to be out of earshot before launching into a screaming rant.)

4. One would expect responsible voices on the right to condemn both WorldNetDaily and Discovery for what they did. Instead, all we hear is silence.

5. Shmuley's checkered past, as noted in my post, should be enough to cause responsible media outlets to distance themselves from him.

That has not happened – yet.

[Sarah]

"and i feel sorry for his kids, cuz he has been ostracized from every part of judaism, including chabad....where are they gonna find shiduchim?"
Boteach will buy them with all the money people were duped into sending to his various "charities" that never made it to any charity except the one that begins at home -- Boteach's home. There's plenty there. Hasn't anyone ever seen these guys buy brides and grooms for their sons and daughters? An old tradition.

[Ichabod Chrain]

I'll try again too.

"Dawkins compared Shmuley's rhetorical style to Hitler's. He did not compare Shmuley the man to Hitler the man."

That's true only on the surface. Of course Dawkins didn't say that Boteach was a mass murderer who ruined the lives of tens of millions of people. But he used the Hitler analogy, rather than than, let's say Michael Jackson, so there was an innnuendo. The Discovery article didn't say anything different.

"One would expect responsible voices on the right to condemn both WorldNetDaily and Discovery for what they did. Instead, all we hear is silence."

But the Discovery article wasn't misleading. If they linked to the wrong part, then that could be explained in many ways.

There are also some things that fly beneath the radar screen. Boteach may be a prominent figure in some circles, but the right (as a whole) doesn't pay much attention to him. (Remember, there's an election this year.) So even if something did go wrong, the Weekly Standard, National Review etc aren't going to notice. They also aren't going to monitor everything on every website that has something to do with evolution.

"Shmuley's checkered past, as noted in my post, should be enough to cause responsible media outlets to distance themselves from him."

I don't know anything about his past except for what I've read in the blogs, so I'll bet the mainstream media doesn't know about it, but your logic doesn't follow. If he has a checkered past involving charities, the media should bring it out.

[Shmarya]

That's true only on the surface. Of course Dawkins didn't say that Boteach was a mass murderer who ruined the lives of tens of millions of people. But he used the Hitler analogy, rather than than, let's say Michael Jackson, so there was an innnuendo.

No innuendo at all. Dawkins was very clear.

The Discovery article didn't say anything different.

It clearly implied different and misrepresented what Shmuley actually did.

here are also some things that fly beneath the radar screen.

Claiming Dawkins called Boteach Hitler immediately after Ben Stein's horrible movie flopped, a movie that used a spurious Darwin-Hitler link for which Stein was loudly chastised, is something that hardly would go unnoticed.

The right just did what it often does – ignored something it should have distanced itself from.

I don't think William F. Buckley would have remained silent.

As for Shmuley's past, the information in the post comes from FoxNews..

[Yochanan Lavie]

People use the Hitler/Nazi analogy too easily. Even comparing Shmuely's rhetorical style with Hitler shows poor judgement. Civility is dead.

[C-Girl]

Oy. Boteach's ramblings are education for the secularly impaired and entertainment (and a shonde fur de goyim) for everyone else.

First he went off about the "Theory of Evolution." Newsflash: the "theory" of evolution's uncertainty is over *how* it happens, not *if*. Evolution is an accepted scientific fact, not a theory. It happens every time a virus mutates. Accept it, get over it.

Next, he mis-characterized the epic disagreement between Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Dawkins. Again, to drive the point home, they weren't in disagreement over evolution (aside from whether it happened incrementally vs. in giant leaps and bounds, but that's kind of nit-picking because small genetic changes can result in huge phenotypic, or outwardly obvious changes; tiny point mutations cause cancer, for instance). They mostly battled over "sociobiology," the idea of a genetic basis for behavior. Dawkins says the answer is yes, Gould said it's no. Boteach thinks the answer is "...green!"

Both Gould and Dawkins are/were known to be ardent opponents of creationism/intelligent design. What was Boteach trying to prove, aside from the gullibility of his audience?

And about the miniscule incidence of beneficial mutations-- recently it was found that having a single copy of a rare mutation endowed the carrier with the gift of low blood pressure and protection against heart disease (multiple copies cause problems). Please forward this link to Rabbi Boteach for me:
http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSN0644675020080407?sp=true

Could go on, but there's no need. Silly, silly, silly. I feel for the poor saps in the audience.

Great comment, C-Girl!

Thanks!

[Yochanan Lavie]

I am an evolutionist when speaking of science, but a creationist when talking theology. I don't mind compartmentalizing.