Wednesday, June 18th

Boteach versus botox! Rabbi radio star Shmuley Boteach has written a book, The Broken American Male and How to Fix Him—the exact instruction manual we’ve been waiting for!—and tonight he discusses it with NY1’s Budd Mishkin. “We live in a culture that judges men solely based on their income,” said the rabbi. “That makes them emotionless and soulless. Take, for example, a hedge fund manager”—we have, rabbi, it didn’t work out so well!—“he can’t react emotionally to the whims of the volatile market. A guy who gets butterflies in his stomach can’t be a successful doctor. The men in Iraq can’t identify emotionally with the men they’re supposed to shoot. So these men come home and can’t relate emotionally.” And the rabbi was just warming up! “Broken men lead to inadequate women,” he continued. “One out of three young marriages are platonic. When a couple gets home after work, the husband won’t talk. When the wife is getting undressed, her husband is watching television. She thinks, ‘He won’t talk to me anymore because I’m not interesting. He won’t make love to me anymore because I’m not sexy.’ It leads to women thinking they’re not thin enough, not blond enough. To be an American woman is to never be enough.” Oh rabbi, you’re telling us.

[Shmuley Boteach at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, 36 Battery Place, 7 p.m., www.mjhnyc.org]

mbryan@observer.com