About Rabbi Shmuley Boteach
Rabbi Boteach came to world attention through his founding of the Oxford University L’Chaim Society, an organization of Oxford University students that within three years of its founding in 1988 had become the second largest student organization in Oxford’s history. In Oxford, where Rabbi Shmuley served as Rabbi to the students for eleven years, he played host to, and debated, some of the world’s leading thinkers, statesmen, and entertainers including Mikhail Gorbachev, Professor Stephen Hawking, Shimon Peres, Deepak Chopra, Binyamin Netanyahu, Elie Wiesel, Yitzchak Shamir, Prof. Richard Dawkins, Javier Perez de Cuellar, Simon Wiesenthal, and Prof. Colin Blakemore, to name but a few.
In 2007, Rabbi Boteach was labeled “a cultural phenomenon” and “the most famous rabbi in America” by Newsweek magazine, and was named one of the ten most influential rabbis in America. He is host of the US daily national radio programme, “The Rabbi ShmuleyShow” and also of his award-winning national TV show, Shalom in the Home. In the same year he was honoured by America’s National Fatherhood Initiative, receiving their most prestigious award for his to promote the importance of a caring father in the contemporary family. Rabbi Boteach was also named by Talkers Magazine as one of the hundred most important radio hosts in America.
In 1999, Rabbi Boteach won the highly prestigious Times Preacher of the Year Award, setting a record for the most points ever garnered in the competition’s history. He is one of five finalists for Brandeis University’s Bronfman Visiting Chair in Jewish Communal Innovation for his proposal “Bringing Judaism into the Mainstream”. The proposal is an extension of This World: The Jewish Values Network, an organization he founded and chairs, which aims to bring Jewish values to mainstream American culture via the media, live debates, and the arts.
Hailed by broadcaster and author Dennis Prager as “possessing one of the most fertile minds of our generation”, Rabbi Boteach has written many best-selling books including Wisdom, Understanding, Knowledge, Kosher Sex, Kosher Adultery, Dating Secrets of the Ten Comandments, Face Your Fear, the critically-acclaimed Judaism For Everyone, his critique of American celebrity culture, The Private Adam, and his two-volume review of Oxford history and life, Moses of Oxford. His book Why Can’t I Fall in Love? was a finalist for the 2002 Books for a Better Life Award, and in April 2005 Rabbi Boteach published Hating Women: America’s Hostile Campaign Against the Fairer Sex. His most recent work, The Broken American Male: And How to Fix Him released in January 2008. Rabbi Boteach also publishes a weekly syndicated column for which, in 2005, he was awarded the American Jewish Press Association’s highest award for excellence in commentary.
Many of Rabbi Boteach’s books have been serialized in major international publications and have been translated into seventeen languages, including Japanese, Thai, Czech, Chinese, Italian, Dutch, German, Russian, and French.
In America, Rabbi Boteach is highly sought-after as a television and radio guest, and he was also the subject of the BBC Everyman documentary, Moses of Oxford. He has been profiled in many of the world’s leading publications, including The Times, Time, Newsweek, The New York Times and The Washington Post.
Rabbi Boteach is married to his Australian wife, Debbie, and they have eight children.