Rabbi Shmuley never lost his love of the outdoors.

Question: Who are you?

Shmuley Boteach: My name is Rabbi Shmuley Boteach. I was born in L.A., but I was raised in Miami Beach. Of course it shaped me. First of all they are both beautiful places. It was sunny. It was . . . So I learned to be a bit of an extrovert, outdoorsy. I never lost my love of nature. I don’t like being indoors. I’m gonna . . . I’m about to rage and thunder against this studio. We should be doing this in a park. I was also raised in close-knit, religious, Jewish communities – Orthodox communities, which was basically good but it had a negative side. My parents divorced when I was young, and that was very uncommon in 1970s Los Angeles. And that made us a bit different, I guess. I also think that Los Angeles and Miami are big cities. Maybe it addicted me a bit too much to civilization, because I really wish I could just move to some little village somewhere and have a cow, raise hogs, and I haven’t done that yet. So maybe . . . maybe concrete has entered my system a bit too much. But I also love camping and going to the outdoors, so maybe it’s an escape from that kind of confining civilization.

Recorded on:09/05/2007