Rabbi Shmuley Boteach’s daughter is suing Mehmet Oz for stiffing her over Jewish donors list
(JTA) — Around the time Rabbi Shmuley Boteach was endorsing Mehmet Oz for the Senate, calling the TV doctor a “great friend of Israel” last December, the candidate for the GOP nomination for an open U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania was hiring Boteach’s daughter as a consultant.
That’s according to the daughter, Shterny Glick, whose consultancy is now suing Oz for breach of contract, according to a report Friday in the political online newsletter New Jersey Globe. (Oz, a Republican endorsed by former President Donald Trump, lived in New Jersey until last year when he moved states to run for the Senate.)
Glick’s lawsuit alleges that Oz’s campaign used a pro-Israel political donor mailing list without paying a promised 5% commission, according to the report. Glick says the lawsuit that Oz fired her in February but continued soliciting donations from those on the list — including many American Jews — afterward.
The lawsuit comes on the eve of the election between Oz and Democrat John Fetterman, Pennsylvania’s current lieutenant governor. It also comes after Boteach publicly broke with his former friend, calling Oz’s campaign a “tragedy for the Jewish people.”
Glick’s consultancy, Light Nation Media, says Oz’s campaign and associates owe hundreds of thousands of dollars for using the consultancy’s donor list to raise money for one of the most expensive races in the country.
“It was no secret that plaintiff’s list of established donors to political and other causes was drawn almost exclusively from the American Jewish community,” the lawsuit says. “Such potential donors were well known for generously supporting political candidates sympathetic to Israel, and other issues dear to the Jewish community,”
Oz and Boteach — a writer on sex, counselor to multiple celebrities and a one-time GOP congressional candidate — became friends in the 2000s when they were both mentored by Oprah Winfrey, the daytime TV giant. Boteach turned on Oz, he says, because Oz delayed making clear his support for Israel, because Oz’s campaign mocked Fetterman’s stroke, and because of Oz’s ties with the Turkish regime of Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The Republican Jewish Coalition has enthusiastically embraced Oz and has made a note of the fact that he is a Muslim who is close to Israel.
The New Jersey Globe said Oz’s campaign did not return a request for comment. Meanwhile, Winfrey broke her silence in the race last week to endorse Fetterman, saying, “If I lived in Pennsylvania, I would’ve already cast my vote for John Fetterman, for many reasons.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO