For Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, his speech at Concordia University was the first time he’s ever had security officers with him on stage. “Who would want to hurt me? Raise your hands please,” Boteach wondered. Boteach continued, “I assume that this [the security on stage] is the product of some earlier incidents at this University,” referring to previous visits by former Israeli Prime Ministers Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, in which they were prevented from speaking.
In 2002, Netanyahu was forced to cancel his speech due to the now infamous riots, and two years later, Barak never even made it onto campus due to the discretion of Concordia University’s administration. Although he did not attract a single protester, Rabbi Shmuley used these previous events as the foundation for his speech.
The star of TLC’s Shalom in the Home came to the university to address the topic of contemporary co-existence within diverse university settings: sharing values and promoting tolerance. In doing so, he took a page from his television series where he spends his time dealing with various problems, as he connected the relationship between males and females to that between Jews and Arabs.
“Why did I start a lecture about tolerance and togetherness with relationships?,” Boteach asked, answering “the only proof that Jews and Arabs will one day live in peace is that something as different as masculine and feminine can prove that they have something in common…that marriages can be strong and children can be raised in a stable and secure home, in a stable and secure environment.”
According to Boteach, if males and females cannot only co-exist, but live happily together, then Jews and Arabs must take a page from their relationships and go beyond mere tolerance, as he believes that merely accepting someone is one of the highest forms of insult.
“There are those who believe that we should be tolerant, that Jewish students and Islamic students should tolerate each other at Concordia,” he said, noting “to tolerate someone is to believe that if they were hit by a bus tomorrow and no longer walk the earth, that you would not be poorer for it…we have to go beyond tolerance.”
Boteach said that he didn’t understand what the problem was between students at Concordia University. “What are university students so angry about?,” he wondered, asking “what happened to you guys, that on campuses throughout the world we see so much fighting?”
In his lecture, he pointed to overly-passionate students on both the Jewish and Arab side who are re-defining the term of hero to fit their respective causes. “We must have a new definition of heroism in our time,” he declared, adding “I hope the Jewish students advocate for Israel, I hope the Arab students advocate for their country… [however it is those] that can shake hands after that peaceful advocacy and still find something human in their adversary that’s the real hero…it’s the man or woman that conquers their passion, that is the hero.”
Although for the rabbi who spends his days as a marriage counselor there is not one simple solution, he said both Jews and Arabs on campus must start on a level playing field and begin re-defining their relationship from that point forward, and he once again drew on the connection between males and females to emphasize his point.
“Religions always emphasize heterosexual marriage so that it can show that opposites can come together as one because they come from the same origin” he said, asserting “when man and woman come together as one, they create the greatest equation ever known…not one plus one equals two, but one plus one equals one.”