I looked at the website, www.davincidebateny.com and found it extremely deceptive about the thrust and sponsorship of the debate; it provides nothing but scant bios about the three speakers. To uncover the game going on here, one needs to click the "contact us" button to get an email address, findshalom.org, that's redirected to Chosen People Ministries, a New York messianic group.

I realize that Boteach is an unconventional rabbi in his interests and writings. He's lectured on the topic of "Who Killed Jesus," and a 2004 essay on "The Passion of the Christ" shows he's upfront about his feverishly warm feelings for Christianity:

"There exists today the startling possibility that because of the new social, religious and political ties among Christians and Jews that the Jewish people might look at Jesus anew and that both groups might meet through the personality of Jesus himself, even as we both understand him in totally different ways. . .

The Jews will not accept Jesus as savior, but why not as sage? They will not embrace him as god, but why not as guru? After all, many Jews study the teachings of the Buddha, even while remaining faithfully loyal to Jewish observance! And it is this act of total rejection of Jesus that serves to hinder a deeper intellectual or spiritual connection between Christians and Jews from developing.

But Boteach jumped the Jewish shark in a major way with that comment on "total rejection" and its consequences. And with his appearance at a forum organized by messianics -- termites and cockroaches feeding on ignorance, deception, and confusion -- he's completely lost his marbles, or, at least, his shame. Hanging out with Michael Jackson was one thing, but this . . . I'm sure Boteach can rationalize his presence at this "debate" in any number of ways (e.g., Ka-CHING!) but whatever credibility he had as a Jewish leader has utterly vanished.

Hey, Shmuley, what's the next stop -- Teheran? What's the price to talk about our "total rejection of Mohammed"?