Shmuley Boteach Meets Pope — Urges Him To Keep Speaking Out on Hatred
In a brief audience at the Vatican Wednesday, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach urged Pope Francis to condemn current day anti-Semitism in Europe and acts of hatred directed at Israel.
Boteach, who gained national recognition as the rabbi to the stars, told the Forward that during the short conversation with Pope Francis, he asked the pontiff to raise his voice as a moral authority on issues that are currently threatening the Jewish people.
“Your condemnation of anti-Semitism in unconditional terms and acknowledgement that there is no difference in hating Israel and hating the Jewish people, is vital,” Boteach told Pope Francis.
He added that there is “no difference between anti-Semitism and the hatred of Israel.”
The pope, according to Boteach, listened and asked the visiting rabbi to pray for him to have deeper understanding of this issue.
Boteach also handed him a copy of his latest book “Kosher Jesus,” which, he believes, could help “strengthen the theological bridges between Christians and Jews.”
Credited with arranging the Vatican audience was Gary Krupp, who has been known for his role as the leading voice within the Jewish community in favor of Pope Pius XII, the World War II era head of the Catholic Church. Pius XII’s silence during the Holocaust has led many Jewish activists and scholars to call for rejecting his canonization.
This is the second audience Krupp, who was knighted by the Vatican, arranged for Boteach with the pope, despite the fact that Boteach and Krupp hold opposing positions regarding Pius XII. While Krupp, through a foundation he created, has been tirelessly promoting the acceptance of Pius XII, Boteach is a harsh critic of the former pope and has written extensively against his war time behavior. “Even though I vehemently disagree with him on Pius XII, we have still remained close friends,” Boteach said.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO