Video: Rabbi Shmuley Boteach and Christopher Hitchens Debate God - 92Y Blog - 92nd Street Y

Thursday, January 31, 2008

Video: Rabbi Shmuley Boteach and Christopher Hitchens Debate God

Last night the popular Rabbi Shmuley Boteach and full-throttled non-believer Christopher Hitchens debated the existence of God before a packed audience at the Y’s Kaufmann Concert Hall. Both have recent books to help make their case: God Is Not Great and The Portable Atheist by Hitchens, The Broken American Male: And How to Fix Him and Shalom in the Home by Boteach. It was a spirited and contentious talk to say the least and we have the video to prove it. In the clip above, Boteach offers his image of God while Hitchens is convinced that God is man-made. Neil Gillman, Jewish philosophy professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary, was the admirable moderator.

Early blog reviews are in at FishbowlNY and What Would Phoebe Do.

Update: Read the follow up email exchange between Boteach and Hitchens.

Update #2: Watch the FULL VERSION of the video.

Upcoming: State of Anti-Semitism Lecture with Noah Feldman: The U.S. and the Middle East—Where Do We Go From Here? and more lectures of Jewish Interest

Comments (5) | Posted in Humanities Jewish Life at 2:48pm |

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Reader Comments

Where can we watch the whole debate?

By Mark at February 01, 2008, 12:20pm

Somebody upload the entire debate to stage6, googlevid, or richarddawkins.net

By EdwardNigma at February 01, 2008, 2:33pm

Please upload the goddamn debate, goddamnit.

By Lucretius at February 02, 2008, 6:30pm

If the whole debate appears on the web somewhere else, you might check Hitchens’ own website for a link (once he updates it). See http://hitchensweb.com/

By Steve McKenna at February 03, 2008, 1:57pm

WOW!

I just listened to the whole debate. Shmuley Boteach was so out of his depth it was truly embarassing to watch. His inability to answer one question, without launching into a rant, tangent or resorting to cheap shots against Christopher Hitchens was astonishing.

Couldn’t they have got someone else to go up against Hitchens at the Kaufmann Concert Hall?

The “100 books or 1000 books” challenge by Boteach would have been funny if it wasn’t so sad and it wasn’t in a venue platform like the kauffman center. It brought back memories of school playground arguments and I cringed when Boteach continued with the challenge, particularly when he used that irrititating tactic of shouting and raising his voice…

Hitchens won this debate by a knockout in every round and if it were a boxing match, the organisers would be held to task for putting up such a lightweight against Hitchens.

By Phillip Mc at February 05, 2009, 4:56am