When Dr. Mehmet Oz, the renowned daytime television personality, came to Rabbi Shmuley Boteach’s Shabbat table, he was surprised at all the sugary food.  “Shmuley, how can you do this to your children?” Shmuley pleaded innocent. “My wife did it,” he said.

The rabbi told the story at a recent dinner of his organization, This World: The Values Network, at the Marriott Marquis in Manhattan. The event, attended by 525 guests, benefited the Rambam Medical Center in Israel.

Boteach presented the inaugural Champions of Jewish Values Awards to Dr. Oz, a Muslim from Turkey, as a champion of the Jewish value of life. “We recognize that human life matters,” the rabbi said. “You don’t have to be Jewish to promote Jewish values of justice, truth and respect.”

Boteach also presented the inaugural award to philanthropists Dr. Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson as champions of Jewish identity, and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel as champion of the Jewish spirit. Elisha Wiesel accepted on behalf of his father who was ill.

In giving the award to Adelson, Boteach described him as “a billionaire with a common man’s touch. He’s risen to the top of Jewish philanthropy.”

Adelson noted that Jews have been persecuted from time immemorial. “Today only 42 percent of Jews say they’ll marry within the religion and raise their children Jewish.  There’s nothing more noble that a Jew can do than to mix the cement and build the next generation.”

His wife Miriam, who is Orthodox and a medical doctor, said she grew up in Palestine as a proud Jew. She said her four children see Israel more than she does. “Before Adam was one, his passport shows he was eight times in Israel.”

She said Sheldon grew up in a Boston tenement and faced antisemitism. He had to go to school in groups of four so as not to get beat up.

Sheldon, whose father was a taxi driver from Lithuania, was brought up as “a street kid. I was the designated bully. When a Jewish kid got into trouble he’d say, ‘You fool around with me you deal with Adelson.’ They once called my bluff and I woke up in the hospital.”

He said his father, who was poor, taught him nobility. “He said to consider yourself part of a world of Jewish people is to become noble. I don’t know too many Jewish wives who call their husbands noble.”

In saluting the Adelsons, Prof. Alan Dershowitz of Harvard Law School said that no family has done more to preserve the Jewish identity. And he added, “There can never be peace for the Jewish people without strength and power. We must use our wealth and brains to defend the Jewish people.”

Oz said when he was in the Turkish military he was a doctor among soldiers. “I performed circumcisions. That’s how I did my service.”

His wife Lisa is a Christian who grew up on a farm near Philadelphia. “I watched her ride a horse,” he said. “She put her legs around that horse and made him go where she wanted. That’s what she did to me and made me do whatever she wanted.”

On a closing note Boteach said that “ever since Mehmet and Lisa started coming to our home for Shabbat dinner, our home is sugar-free, no sugary drinks.”

A month after the awards dinner Rabbi Boteach took Dr. Oz and their families on a whirlwind tour of Israel in July, underwritten by the Adelsons. For 10 days they covered not only the usual tourist sites but also made a stopover at Rambam in Haifa. Dr. Oz was impressed with its state-of-the-art Sammy Ofer Fortified Underground Emergency Hospital which serves all patients, Muslims and Jews, in wartime.

In Jerusalem Dr. Oz met with Bibi. No word whether the cardiothoracic surgeon and the prime minister talked about bowel movements. 

[Editor's note: Who is Tim Boxer? On July 17, I received an email from Tim Boxer which made my day. It opened with "Hi Rhonda, I read your superb magazine often, and find it  dazzling and informative. With fond memories of growing up in the North End, I would like to retain a connection with my birthplace. So I’m reaching out to you."
 
Boxer, who has been writing a column for the New York Jewish Week for 36 years, said he would be pleased to enable the Winnipeg Jewish Review to reprint his work, for which  I am very grateful.
 
Boxer has a very impressive resume, one which I'd like to share with readers.
 
Boxer left Winnipeg in 1952 after high school at St. John's Tech and United College (now the University of Winnipeg). He  lived on Pritchard and Powers in the North End. " My father Gabriel was a grocery store owner, and my uncle Jack was a founding president of Herzliya [Synagogue], " he wrote after I inquired to know more about him.
 
"I went to Chicago to study at the Hebrew Theological College for four years. In my spare time I was a reporter for a local weekly paper,covering night life on the Windy City's Gold Coast and Near North Side. That's where I met Dick Gregory, became his publicist, and made him a star overnight as the first black comedian to break the glass ceiling in the major supper clubs of America. After promoting Gregory in Chicago and NewYork, Hugh Hefner sent me to preside over the opening of the Playboy Club in New York. Then I worked for 20 years as assistant and ghost writer to syndicated gossip columnist  Earl Wilson of the New York Post. After he retired I wrote my own celebrity column there for five years."

Boxer is in his 36th year as a  columnist at the New York Jewish Week and also his 15th year as editor and publisher of  15MinutesMagazine.com,  covering celebrity and society in New York, and which appeals to a high-end audience.  He is the author of two books: "The Jewish Celebrity Hall of Fame" with an introduction by Bob Hope (who wrote, "What's a nice goy like me doing in a book like this?") and "Jewish Celebrity Anecdotes." Besides being a writer, he is also a photographer, and  Getty Images distributes his celebrity photos around the globe. His celebrity Polaroids are going on auction in November in New York. A sampling, which is really worth looking at, is displayed  at http://15minutesmagazine.com/polaroid_portraits.htm.
 
In 1977 The Bay presented Boxer's celebrity photo exhibit and he gave a lecture on celebrity photography at the University of Winnipeg.
 
Boxer is currently writing his memoirs. "I live with my wife Nina in Queens, New York. Our firstborn, Gabriel, who's in the kosher catering business on Long Island, is married to Rebeka who has given us three grandchildren; our second, David, is a software engineer with IBM in Boston." he says.
 
Next time I am in New York Tim, I am definitely looking you up. Welcome and thanks for contributing.]