Shmuley Boteach

His father Yoav Botach (1932–2020) was an Iranian Jew who left Isfahan with his family of 13 to settle in Israel.

His mother Eleanor (1942–2023) was an American Jew who met his father in Beersheba, Israel, where she was visiting as a tourist.

Shortly after their marriage, the couple relocated with their children to New York and then to Los Angeles.

Boteach's parents divorced when he was eight years old; on his bar mitzvah, he told his parents that he wanted them to reunite.

Jacob Shmuel Boteach (born November 19, 1966), commonly known as Shmuley Boteach, is an American rabbi, author, television host, and radio host.

In 1977, he joined the Miami Boys Choir (then known as the Miami Choir Boys).

His most notable solo was in the hit song 'Boruch Hashem' in 1979.

Boteach attended a Chabad (Lubavitch) camp, and fell in love with Judaism.

The Lubavitcher Rebbe became his patron, and at age 13 Boteach joined the Chabad movement (a Hasidic philosophy that traces back 250 years to Lubavitch, Russia).

At age 14, he decided he wanted to become a rabbi, to help heartbroken people.

He studied at Rabbi Alexander S. Gross Hebrew Academy and at a series of yeshivas in Los Angeles, New York, and Jerusalem, Israel (for three years at Torat Emet Yeshiva).

Boteach was ultimately chosen to be one of ten Chabad students sent to Sydney, Australia, to start a yeshiva.

In Sydney he met the parents of his future wife, Debbie.

Boteach met her when he was 21 years old, and they married in Sydney in 1988.

He then returned to New York, and took semicha (rabbinical ordination) in 1988.

In 1988, Boteach was sent at age 22 by Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, as a Chabad-Lubavitch shaliach (emissary) to Oxford, England, where he served as rabbi to Oxford University's students for 11 years.

During that time, he founded the Oxford University L'Chaim Society (in Hebrew, L'Chaim means "To Life").

The society grew to be the second-biggest student organization ever in Oxford, with a membership that included over 5,000 non-Jews.

It attracted star speakers from politics, arts, and culture, including six Israeli prime ministers, former Australian prime minister Bob Hawke, former Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev, theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, singer Boy George, football player Diego Maradona, and actor Jon Voight.

The society's members included Cory Booker, Maurizio Giuliano, Michael Benson and Eric Garcetti Some Orthodox patrons became concerned about the percentage of non-Jewish members, and after Schneerson died in 1994, Chabad UK leadership asked Boteach to remove non-Jewish students from the society; others wanted Boteach to exclude gay students.

Boteach refused on both counts, saying the Rebbe had loved non-Jews and regularly reached out to them; Boteach then changed the L'Chaim Society from a student society into an independent organization.

Later in 1994, after Boteach refused to cancel a speaking event featuring Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, he and Chabad split over the issue.

Lubavitch leadership objected to the Prime Minister speaking, because Schneerson before he died had opposed Rabin's peace deal proposal.

After Boteach defied the suspension order, he was summoned to attend a beth din hearing at the Lubavitch World Headquarters.

Boteach later confirmed that he was involuntarily terminated by Chabad—but said he still loved Chabad, and was raising his children in the Chabad tradition.

Excerpts from his best seller Kosher Sex were serialized in Playboy in 1998.

Boteach at the time was the leader of Shabbat services at an Orthodox Willesden synagogue in north London, where attendance had more than doubled after his arrival.

He resigned from his role at the synagogue.

While he had received the support of England's Chief Rabbi, whose office issued a statement saying Boteach was an "imaginative talent... prepared to take risks in order to communicate an authentic Jewish message to a new generation," Boteach wanted to "spare Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks problems with his rabbinate and the London Beit Din" according to media reports.

He is the author of 31 books, including the best-seller Kosher Sex: A Recipe for Passion and Intimacy (1999) and Kosher Jesus (2012).

For two seasons, he hosted the prime-time reality television series Shalom in the Home, which was one of the highest-rated shows on TLC.

Shmuley Boteach's outspokenness has earned him both praise and criticism; he has been described as one of the most influential Jews in the United States and the world.

The Washington Post referred to him as "the most famous rabbi in America", Newsweek named him one of the 10 most influential rabbis in the United States, and The Jerusalem Post named him one of the 50 most influential Jews in the world.

Boteach was born in Los Angeles, California, the youngest of five children; he also spent part of his early years in Miami, Florida.

In 1999, the British government's Charity Commission raised concerns over payments made by the L'Chaim Society.

In September, the Charity Commission temporarily froze the Society's bank accounts as a "temporary and protective measure", citing concerns about "the application and control" of the charity's funds—however, the Charity Commission released the funds three months later, in December.

The Society had made payments on a north London home in which Boteach lived.

L'Chaim Society officials explained that the payments had been made only after the Society had consulted with and followed the legal advice of charity experts at a top London law firm.

By 2019, Boteach and his Australian wife Debbie had nine children; six of them were born in England.

They resided in Englewood, New Jersey.