Shalom, in the Catholic Home
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
If doling out advice — from parenting to relationships to spirituality — to American Jews and gentiles weren’t enough, celebrity rabbi Shmuley Boteach has gone for the big score: the bishop of Rome, the head of the Catholic Church, the pope.
By consulting with Boteach, the pope joins the ranks of Michael Jackson and Oprah Winfrey, both of whom looked to the host of TLC’s “Shalom in the Home” for guidance. In a meeting on April 28, Boteach encouraged Pope Benedict XVI, who’s currently embroiled in yet another round of hullabaloo surrounding the Catholic Church sex-abuse scandal, to hop on board with his “Turn Friday Night Into Family Night” initiative.
By putting a Friday focus on the family, “America’s Rabbi” contends that the Catholic Church could clean up its tanking image and shift its opponents’ criticism away from same-sex marriage and abortion. In promoting a Sabbath-style dinner, Boteach educated His Holiness on his concept of the “triple two.” The dinner can be accomplished by inviting two guests, discussing two different subjects and giving one’s children undivided attention for two hours.
Call it “Shalom in the Catholic Home.”
— JOSH TAPPER
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
