CCU’s new Presidential Signature Series to welcome Rabbi Shmuley
The ticketed event is free and open to the public. Tickets may be reserved in person at the Wheelwright Box Office Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., via phone at 843-349-2787, or online.
“Rabbi Shmuley and I have shared a 30-plus-year friendship since we first met while I was attending Oxford University, and he was establishing one of the largest student groups on campus,” Benson said. “He was founder of an outreach organization, the L’Chaim Society, and I was honored to serve as an officer. We are delighted to host Rabbi Shmuley as the first guest speaker in the Presidential Signature Series, and I’m confident his presentation will generate much conversation.”
Rabbi Shmuley, whom The Washington Post and Newsweek call “the most famous Rabbi in America,” is, for many, the face of Judaism in the modern world. He is one of the leading defenders of Israel and appears as a regular guest on international media outlets. Rabbi Shmuley is also one of the world’s most respected voices on politics, media, and culture with Jewish values, and an oft-quoted relationship expert. An international best-selling author of 31 books, Rabbi Shmuley’s works have been serialized in major international publications and translated into 20 languages. In 2000, he won the famed Preacher of the Year award from The London Times.
According to Rabbi Shmuley, his lecture will address the debate over nationalism versus immigration, which he says has become one of the great political touchstones of our time, but overlooks a key point.
“Those who argue for a more open America do so in the name of tolerance,” Rabbi Shmuley said. “Little do they realize that tolerance is actually a degrading idea – it means to stomach someone’s differences, to put up with their differences in the name of some higher ideal like morality. America is great because it always went beyond tolerance. It created a multi-ethnic society where each and everyone’s contribution was truly valued. Sameness leads not only to monotony and boredom; it actually leads to a loss of creativity. It is time for America to embrace a true idea that goes beyond tolerance, and this is captured in the biblical story of the tower of Babel, where the people tried to create a society of sameness and God dispersed them throughout the Earth in order to create a richer whole. America’s tradition of going beyond tolerance is what has made it the most prosperous and mightiest nation on Earth.”
Rabbi Shmuley first came to world attention through his founding of the Oxford University L’Chaim Society, an organization of Oxford students that within three years of its founding in 1988 had become the second-largest student organization in Oxford’s history.
At the university, where Rabbi Shmuley served as rabbi to the students for 11 years, he played host to, and debated, some of the world’s leading thinkers, statesmen, and entertainers, including Benjamin Netanyahu, Mikhail Gorbachev, Stephen Hawking, Shimon Peres, Deepak Chopra, Elie Wiesel, Yitzchak Shamir, Richard Dawkins, Javier Perez de Cuellar, Simon Wiesenthal, Michael Jackson, Boy George, Leonard Nimoy, and Colin Blakemore, to name a few. The organization’s former presidents and members include New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, former Israeli Ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer, and mayor of Los Angeles Eric Garcetti.
Rabbi Shmuley is one of America’s most sought-after television and radio guests, having appeared on shows such as Oprah, The Today Show, The View, Dr. Phil, The O’Reilly Factor, and Good Morning America, with regular appearances on CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC. He was also the subject of a full-length BBC documentary, Moses of Oxford. He has been profiled in many of the world’s leading publications, including Time Magazine, Newsweek, The New York Times, The London Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Politico, New York Observer, and The Washington Post.