Shmuley Boteach Tweets Picture With Bannon, Gets a Bit Trump-Like on Twitter

Image by Getty Images
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach had a weird few hours on Twitter last night.
In the midst of a long run of tweets of photos of himself with famous people, the author of “Kosher Sex” posted a doozy: A picture of himself with Steve Bannon, the alt-right media mogul who Donald Trump will nominate to serve as a senior counselor in the White House.
The Anti-Defamation League has opposed Bannon’s nomination, objecting to his ties to the anti-Semitic and racist alt-right, and calling his nomination a “sad day.”
In Boteach’s tweet, the two are posing together as Boteach grins.
With Steve Bannon, Senior Adviser to President-elect @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/77OfjY4Gey
— Rabbi Shmuley (@RabbiShmuley) December 8, 2016
Boteach, who ran an unsuccessful campaign for Congress as a Republican in 2012, endorsed Trump in an op-ed in May, but then told the JTA in June that he had not decided whether he would vote for Trump.
The backlash to Boteach’s Bannon tweet was severe. “What is wrong with you?” asked a Twitter user whose profile is a picture of a hamburger.
Less than an hour later, Boteach doubled down, posting another picture of himself with Bannon. “Steve Bannon has shown great support for Israel & this administration promises to be very strong for the Jewish state,” Boteach wrote.
Criticism of Boteach continued. Rabbi Andy Bachman, former spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Elohim in Park Slope, Brooklyn, slammed Boteach in a sharply-worded Tweet.
@RabbiShmuley Your job as a rabbi is to offer reproof for the hatred and violence this campaign has engendered, not puff up your ego.
— Andy Bachman (@andybachman) December 8, 2016
That’s when Boteach’s tweets got strange.
As the backlash continued, a producer on the daytime talk show The Ellen Show tweeted that Boteach is “shameless and only cares about fame.”
He seems to have struck a nerve. At first, Boteach responded gently.
“I have too high an opinion of you to respond in kind,” he wrote.
But he didn’t stop there.
“I really thought Ellen Degeneres represented openness and fairness. Didn’t realize my old friend Andy traffics in smear campaigns & attacks,” he tweeted, moments later, quoting the same tweet by the Ellen producer.
And then, at 12:14 A.M. ET, Boteach did something very weird: He suggested that he knows the Ellen producer’s “secrets.”
Good thing we know each other’s secrets Andy. You know what they say about people in glass houses…. https://t.co/HJM9tApwjI
— Rabbi Shmuley (@RabbiShmuley) December 8, 2016
Afterwards, Boteach went back to posting pictures of himself with famous people.
Contact Josh Nathan-Kazis at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter, @joshnathankazis.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Most Popular
- 1
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- 2
News A Jewish Republican and Muslim Democrat are suddenly in a tight race for a special seat in Congress
- 3
Fast Forward The NCAA men’s Final Four has 3 Jewish coaches
- 4
Culture How two Jewish names — Kohen and Mira — are dividing red and blue states
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward Britain’s Tate to return Nazi-looted painting to heirs of Jewish art collector
-
Fast Forward 3 sentenced to death for murder of UAE Chabad rabbi
-
Books The White House Seder started in a Pennsylvania basement. Its legacy lives on.
-
Fast Forward The NCAA men’s Final Four has 3 Jewish coaches
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.