Shmuley Boteach, who’d been spiritual adviser to Michael Jackson, is now marriage-counseling — ready? — Jon Gosselin. The Bible tells us Moses the Lawgiver was slow of speech. Shmuley the Rabbi is not.
“You pay a price for fame,” he told me. “It unhinges you from your foundation. Celebrities get totally carried away. I told Jon you cannot cavort with other women. You must apologize to your wife. He agreed. And he did. He says I’m responsible for helping his situation with Kate.
“Today 40 percent of women are single. Four times a week I counsel couples. Divorce is a national tragedy. Children hear fights. They must manage themselves. They go house to house, mother to father. It’s an unnatural situation. They become caregivers to the parents.
“I began counseling my own parents when they divorced and I was 8. My mother moved away, I had a surrogate father, my life was lonely, chaotic, and I felt totally dislocated. It caused such pain that my siblings asked for help and I, our family’s smallest, began easing everyone.
“Look, celebrity marriages are complimentary marriages. No healthy love, but an unhealthy love for attention. The lifelong process of a need for recognition. She’s famous, I’m famous. Celebrity and celebrity don’t make it. For them, it’s not what I lack in life and how will this person complement my needs. It’s disintegration into entertainment. Social status. They marry their double. Real love is not what you are, it’s what you give.
“Hollywood is analogous to royal weddings 500 years ago. A count’s daughter to a duke’s son. It’s not devotion and what you need, it’s only what complements you. Couples who marry their double always falter. Because when the publicity stops and the paparazzi don’t follow you, comes the deficiency syndrome.
“My job is to inspire people. Help them. I knew early, by age 13, at my bar mitzvah, that I had a responsibility to the whole world. My mother did not appreciate it, but such life’s work was told to me by a famous rabbi. So, on my show I go around rescuing people and in doing that I also help my own union. I married my wife when I was 21. I’m 46 now. I have nine children. And my eldest son also wants to be a rabbi.”
He says he’s running for Congress in New Jersey’s ninth district. He says he’s running on a plank of “tax-deductible marriage counseling.” Ask if he’s also running for celebrity status, and he answers: “Maybe it’s because of my upbringing, but I’ve had a lifelong insecurity complex.”
EXCESSIVELY thin Nora Ephron never mentioned her illness. I saw her repeatedly recently. At an HBO screening at the Copacabana, where I emceed a woman’s event, at some party somewhere because she always hit some party somewhere. She told me: “It’s hard to be a woman director. It’s also just as hard to be a director.”
We discussed a possible project I thought might interest her. She said, then, prophetically: “I have too much on my plate, and there’s not enough time for me.”
FORGETTING his miseries, I’m glad for Charlie Rangel. Whoever’s needed anything, he’s always been the first to help. That’s all I’m saying . . . Previous presidents presented voodoo economics. With tax increases, raids on the rich, health care and Medicare on life support, is Obama giving us doo-doo economics? . . . Outlaw Biker publisher Casey Exton was asked for his autograph at Flex Mussels eatery. They thought he was Kenny Rogers.
HOWARD Stern at Fine & Schapiro kosher restaurant inhaling Nova Scotia salmon. The daughter downed turkey. Nobody pestered him. Maybe because everyone was knee-deep in chopped liver . . . Selena Gomez filmed a Kmart commercial in Downey, Ca.’s last shoot. Previously NASA’s space shuttle training studio, it’s where Queen Elizabeth met Apollo 11 astronauts following 1969’s first moon walk. Selena lunched with the crew in the parking lot. They loved her.
KITTY Pilgrim wrote a romantic thriller, “The Stolen Chalice.” Maurice Tempelsman, Jackie Kennedy Onassis’ last live-in, gave the party.
Who’s Kitty Pilgrim? “In CNN’s beginning, I did every job. Correspondent, was their first anchor, won an Emmy, Peabody, assorted awards, stayed 24 years and finally retired.”
Why Maurice Tempelsman? “He’s a friend and I’m into politics and on the Council on Foreign Relations. I know him forever, and he once asked me to the opera.”
What’s the novel about?
“It’s international. Set all over in exotic places, and there’s maybe a film version. Clooney’s good for the lead. Or Clive Owen, or a tall, dark young guy like Eric Bana. And maybe a little of me’s in the strong female protagonist.”
Jackie-style, Kitty wore pearls and simple unadorned black sheath. Maurice-style, his party was in the refined Century Club. CNN-style, what’s Kitty’s take on its future? “[Head of CNN] Ken Joust is coming to this party. He’s a force. He makes good decisions.”
PAYMENTS to the NYC Department of Finance go out of state to P.O. Box 07101, Newark, NJ.
Only in New York, kids, only in New York.