The Michael Jackson Tapes (3 page)

Again our conversation was open, warm, and surprisingly trusting for a man I was told was so private. He showed me a full-page picture in
The New York Post
of him walking out of a meeting with the Dalai Lama the day before. He said that he found his conversations with me more enlightening than those he had had with the Dalai Lama. Flattered and a bit embarrassed, I responded that the Dalai Lama was a truly great man and that I was not in his league, not a guru of any kind,
but simply a man who had chosen to be a rabbi as a direct consequence of his parents' divorce and that I was trying to figure out the labyrinth of life using the profound moral code found in God's law, the Torah. Along the way, I sought to share with others what I had discovered about mastering life and establishing an ethical and spiritual foundation into which we could all anchor our lives.

As I was leaving his townhouse, Michael suddenly said, “You know I'd really love to go to synagogue with you.” Surprised at the statement, I asked him if he was serious. “Yes, Shmuley, could you please take me to synagogue?” I replied, “Sure Michael. It would be a pleasure. I will take you to a synagogue I love.”

The next week was the major Jewish festival of Simkhat Torah, the happiest day on the Jewish calendar. I took Michael to the most musical of all the synagogues in New York City, the Carlebach Shule founded by legendary Jewish folk artist Shlomo Carlebach, whose beautiful and soulful melodies have become justly famous.

No one except the rabbi knew that Michael was arriving. Jews do not activate electronics on holy days, so we took no pictures, made no recordings, informed no press, and tried to make it a truly personal and spiritual experience. When he turned up, the congregants were excited to see him and welcomed him warmly. He, in turn, put away his shyness and seemed to feel at home, humming along with the music, swaying with the rhythms, shaking the hands of all who greeted him, and blushing all the while. In his speech, the rabbi said that he hoped “Brother Michael” enjoyed this somewhat different kind of music. Michael, looking blissful, seemed enraptured by the atmosphere. This was clearly a man with a spiritual bent who hungered to be reconnected. He later told me that that evening at the synagogue was one of the happiest of his life. And he told Frank, his mother, and others the same thing. That evening made a mark on him.

A week or so after his wonderful experience at the Carlebach synagogue, Michael invited me and my family to his home for dinner. I explained that we're kosher and he went out and got a kosher caterer. When we all had dinner with him, I really started to notice just how shy he was.

Sitting there altogether, I found it almost impossible to imagine him as a superstar. He seemed so utterly ordinary. He remained shy even in
his own (albeit temporary) home and I noticed that he hated existing at the center of attention in an intimate setting. Having people look at him up close made him feel like he was being evaluated and he became reticent. I surmised that perhaps this was due to the fact that he believed people were looking at him as a freak. But then, as we were getting up from dinner, which he barely ate, he hummed a tune from one of his songs and in that instant the beautiful voice reminded me of his vast talent that was usually nowhere apparent.

On Thanksgiving, Michael invited my entire family to see Disney's
Toy Story
at a regular theater. Michael's family and mine came in once the movie started and everything was dark. The last few rows had been blocked off and the theater brought all of us popcorn and drinks. I sat one row in front of Michael as he laughed uncontrollably throughout the movie. At first it struck me as juvenile. After all, this was a kid's film and I was attending it only for the sake of my children. But to be honest, hearing Michael in fits of laughter in the seat behind me was liberating, like it was okay for adults to let their guard down and see the world through the innocent eyes of a child. Soon I was laughing as well. This episode made Michael more human and further endeared him to me. Just before it was over we left. We missed the very beginning and end, but no one ever knew Michael Jackson was in the theater.

Some other family “adventures” didn't feel as innocent and uncomplicated. There was a shopping trip to FAO Schwartz that Michael intended to be the toy spree of a lifetime for my kids. He said he often went there and they closed the whole store for him. “I love it there,” he said “We'll go, just us, and the kids can get whatever they want.” So my wife and I discussed it and decided we would join Michael but with an important caveat. We sat our kids down and explained that they could each spend 25 dollars maximum—two gifts, 12 bucks each.

The trip was an adventure. When we got to the store Michael came to life. He seemed to know it intimately and took us to every floor, trying toys, demonstrating how they worked, encouraging the kids to fill up their carts. Our children were showing the toys to us saying, “Ma is that too much?” Michael was watching and said to us it wasn't fair since they closed the whole store and we were barely going to spend 150 dollars. Some other kids came from another family and they didn't
have the same constraints. But I was adamant. I said to Michael, “There's no negotiation on this. Everyone has sucked you dry. Believe me, there's a part of me that can be as materialistic as the next guy. But we're never going to have that type of relationship.”

And this attitude was critical. I had already noticed that one of the biggest problems in Michael's life was the gravy train of hangers-on. If I were to ever become one of them, my very morality would be compromised, which would be terrible for me but even worse for Michael. He needed people with values in his life, not sycophants who could be bought. And I also detected Michael's inclination to buy friends, which was a sure sign of insecurity. He had to know that he was enough, just the way he was.

All in all, our families had become fairly close throughout the fall, having several Shabbat dinners at our house, and once a week Michael and I would get together to study and talk. Michael expressed his thanks for the inspirational dimension he said I brought to his life. In turn, I thought him the consummate gentleman, that rare Hollywood celebrity who actually cared as much for other people as he did for himself.

As a brief aside, I should mention that I never attempted to proselytize Michael to Judaism. Believing in the authenticity of any faith that leads people to God, Judaism is not a faith that seeks converts, and we are commanded, even if someone approaches us to become Jewish, to turn them away at least three times. I repeatedly encouraged Michael to return to his Christian roots, in particular to the Jehovah's Witnesses Church, where he had been raised. I brought him into our Jewish rituals, philosophy, and Friday night Sabbath table as a means to help him reconnect with the beauty of prayer and the moving sound of worshipful music, all in the wider context of inspiring him to bring spirituality back into his life. I certainly believed that Judaism, with its focus on family, community, and righteous action, could play a very positive role in Michael's life. But one does not need to be Jewish to be enriched by Judaism.

Before the Christmas and New Year's holidays, without having accomplished any real progress on his new album, Michael left New York and went back to California. We kept in contact by phone, talking about family and relationships.

What transformed our relationship from one of a warm friendship to that of a truly intimate bond was Michael's invitation to me and my family to join him for a few days at Neverland in the summer of 2000. It was August and we were already in Los Angeles visiting my father and brother. Since we were just a few hours away and hadn't seen him for months, we drove up for a short visit, which ended up stretching to nearly a week.

I think Michael sensed that I had something he needed—perhaps it was a sense of purposefulness. I knew what I wanted to do with my life; I had been a rabbi at Oxford and had built an organization that had an effect on its students, Jewish and non-Jewish alike; and given my parents' divorce, I had dedicated a large part of my life to counseling couples and writing books seeking to increase the passion and intimacy of couples. I had a sense of mission, and Michael seemed to have lost his.

Michael rolled out the red carpet for us. When we arrived he was outside with his children, accompanied by animal trainers with deer and even an elephant, a horse and buggy, and chefs and footmen dressed in appropriate attire. Michael was out to make an impression and he succeeded. We were overwhelmed by this fantasyland we had just entered.

My impression as soon as we arrived at Neverland was that by building this magical paradise Michael was making a statement. He had created his own private universe, a world of children's laughter, fun and games, cartoons, and candy. A world with no pain.

Every human being and every culture has a different vision of paradise. A year later on September 11, 2001, the world would discover that for an Islamic suicide bomber it could be an afterlife filled with wide-eyed virgins. For a shallow materialist it might be a place where money grows on trees. For Jews it is a future where the predatory instinct has vanished and the wolf lies down peacefully with the lamb. For Michael Jackson it was a place where no one ever grows up.

Michael was a gracious host. He gave my family and me an extensive tour of the almost-three-thousand-acre ranch, showcasing his home, which was not all that large, the rides in the amusement park, the animals in the zoo, and the video and arcade room. I remember vividly how he took us to the reptile house and instructed the zookeeper to take out a poisonous
rattlesnake, which Michael held with tongs. Contrary to all the press reports that Michael was a germophobe, afraid of his own shadow, clearly this was a man who was not easily shaken. He took us all around the property on his train, after which we toured much of the giant ranch on all-terrain four-wheel quads, with Michael in the lead wearing a large white helmet. We had dinner together that evening, and he told us how happy he was to have us at Neverland. But what interested me most was that even at Neverland, amid his graciousness, Michael, although more relaxed, still appeared shy, uncomfortable, and troubled.

A few days after we arrived, another family also came to stay on their first visit to Michael's ranch. I got the feeling that Michael invited the boy, Gavin, to Neverland solely to impress me with how devoted he was to children with cancer. Michael was hoping that I would vouch for him to the world. So I had to witness his commitment to the needy with my own eyes. Gavin was wearing a hat because chemotherapy had made him lose his hair. I watched Michael as he spoke to Gavin and encouraged him never to be ashamed of his baldness. I found it commendable that Michael would try so hard to give the boy a sense of his own beauty amid the ravishing effects of the treatment.

The whole atmosphere was relaxed with all the children enjoying each other's company. It seems incredible, in retrospect, that Michael's relationship with this family would lead to his arrest three years later when he would be accused of having molested that boy. Most of the time, Michael ignored both the boy and his family and I even found myself gently rebuking him for the neglect.

My children remember Gavin and his brother as being shy, and they remember how excited the boys were to have a sleepover in Michael's bedroom. My children were invited to join too, but being girls, and religious ones at that who are allowed limited contact with boys until marriageable age, they dismissed it outright and said no without further thought. I'm surprised parents would have allowed it, especially on their first visit, but nothing that happened during those few days seemed eventful. We were at Neverland the same night that the first abuse allegedly took place, in a room that was in the same guest suite as Gavin and his family. And it's equally hard to imagine that Michael was showing the boy pornographic materials while I was staying there with my family.

We soon discovered that our visit coincided with Michael's forty-first birthday, on August 29th. I was very surprised to see that nothing was being done to commemorate it. I wondered if being estranged from his family and with few close friends, he had invited us in order not to spend it alone.

I went to see him in his room. He told me, “In my family we didn't celebrate birthdays,” explaining that it was a Jehovah's Witnesses belief not to make too much of oneself because it could lead to conceit and arrogance. I responded, “Well, in the Jewish religion celebrating birthdays is very important. It is the day you came into the world. It celebrates your existence. We have to grow on our birthdays, and growth, since it is always painful, should never be a solitary experience. It has to be shared.” The kids of both families thereby went about arranging a small party that would take place that night for Michael's birthday.

My concern for Michael wasn't about his birthday, though. Something about the atmosphere of Neverland, combined with the long gap since I'd last seen him, raised my alarm. His lethargy was so pronounced it might have been described as lifeless. He wasn't so much sad as completely burned out, indolent, almost lazy, like a man who believed that life held no further mysteries or challenges. The only things that seemed to animate him were his children. He came across as a shell of a man, strangely incongruent with his electrifying stage presence and larger-than-life persona.

Michael's staff brought in the massive birthday cards and collages that his fans had either sent through the mail or left at the gates of Neverland. They were put up in the large kitchen for Michael to see, but he did not so much as look at them. He would wake up in the very late morning or early afternoon. Although he told me he was working feverishly to complete
Invincible
, I almost never saw work of any kind take place. A musician who had worked with Michael on several previous albums had come up from Los Angeles to work with him on new songs for the album, but he too spent very little time with Michael.