In the Jewish religion the highest form of charity is when the benefactor does not know the identity of the recipient, and the recipient does not know the identity of the benefactor. Hence, the Jewish custom of putting money every day into a charity box at home or into a publicly administered fund that is later distributed to the poor.
SB: Was she [Rose Fine] a committed Jew? Was she observant of her faith? Or was she more of a secular Jew?
MJ: What does that mean?
SB: Did she refrain from traveling on the Sabbath, did she eat only kosher food, things like that?
MJ: Not that I remember. She taught me a lot about the Jewish way. I don't know if she ate the kosher food, but I always felt so bad for her because her son suffered so badly. He was a doctor who died early and the day he died, I remember how deeply dark and sad she was. He was a wonderful doctor, went to Harvard, and he was tall and handsome. He had some kind of brain tumor. I can't imagine losing your own child like that, let alone losing any child.
SB: Did you find out anything about Judaism from Rose Fine?
MJ: She taught me about the Jewish culture and I will never forget when I was a little kid we landed in Germany, she got real quiet. I said, “What's wrong, Miss Fine?” You know how kids can tell when something is wrong with their mother? She said, “I don't
like it.” I said, “Why?” She said, “A lot of people suffered here.” That's when I first learned about the concentration camps, through her, because I didn't know nothing about it. I'll never forget that feeling. She said she felt cold there, she could feel it. What a sweet person. She taught me the wonderful world of books and reading and I wouldn't be the same person if it wasn't for her. I owe a lot to her and that's why I am dedicating the new album to her.
SB: Do you think she saw you as her son?
MJ: She called me her son. Whenever you go on the plane you see these seven little black kids and a black father, all got big Afros, and this white Jewish older woman would be in the back. They would stop her and go, “Who are you?” She would say, “I'm the mother.” She would say it every time and they would let her go. Sweet story. She was special. I needed her.
SB: Did she show you unconditional love?
MJ: Yes.
SB: So you think unconditional love can be shown even by two people who are not related by blood?
MJ: Oh my God, yes, of course. I think I learned it through her and I have seen it and I have experienced it. It doesn't matter with blood or race or creed or color. Love is love and it breaks all boundaries and you just see it right away. I see it in children's eyes. When I see children, I see helpless little puppies. They are so sweet. How could anybody hurt them? They are so wonderful.
SB: She died this year so that means you have to deal with grief. How does a child deal with grief? A child lives in a paradise, a perfect world that we are trying to describe. Adults are later largely corrupted through their wars and their jealousy and their cynicism, and suddenly along comes death and even a child has to deal with a death. So how do you deal with death? And how does a child deal with death?
MJ: Yes, I have had to deal with death and it is very difficult.
PART 2
JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES YEARS AND RELIGION
Rejection by the Jehovah's Witnesses Church
Religion was a big part of Michael's life. He was raised by his mother Katherine to be a devout Jehovah's Witness. Michael took his religious commitments so seriously that even after the
Thriller
album he still continued to go missionizing every Sunday, knocking on people's doors, giving them copies of the
Watchtower,
and trying to convince them that God existed. But as time went by, Michael became alienated from his Church. It was a fateful estrangement. Michael, in my opinion, never recovered from the loss of his spiritual anchor and most of the bizarre elements that would come to characterize his life began with his exit from the Church.
Michael described his childhood experiences as a Jehovah's Witness in an article I wrote for him that appeared on
Beliefnet.com
, the well known spirituality website, on people's experiences with the Sabbath. His memories of that time were so vivid and meaningful to him that I thought it made sense to share a bit of them here:
When people see the television appearances I made when I was a little boyâeight or nine years old and just starting off my lifelong music careerâthey see a little boy with a big smile. They assume that this little boy is smiling because he is joyous, that he is singing his heart out because he is happy, and that he is dancing with an energy that never quits because he is carefree. But while singing and dancing were, and undoubtedly remain, some of my greatest joys, at that time what I wanted more than anything else were the two things that make childhood the most wondrous years of life, namely, playtime and a feeling of freedom. The public at large has yet to really understand the pressures of childhood celebrity, which, while exciting, always exact a very heavy price.
There was one day a week, however, that I was able to escape the stages of Hollywood and the crowds of the concert hall. That day was the Sabbath. In all religions, the Sabbath is a day that allows and requires the faithful to step away from the everyday and focus on the exceptional. I learned something about the Jewish Sabbath in particular early on from Rose, and my friend Shmuley further clarified for me how, on the Jewish Sabbath, the everyday life tasks of cooking dinner, grocery shopping, and mowing the lawn are forbidden so that humanity may make the ordinary extraordinary and the natural miraculous. Even things like shopping or turning on lights are forbidden. On this day, the Sabbath, everyone in the world gets to stop being ordinary.
But what
I
wanted more than anything was to
be
ordinary. So in my world, the Sabbath was the day I was able to step away from my unique life and glimpse the everyday.
Sundays were my day for “Pioneering,” the term used for the missionary work that Jehovah's Witnesses do. We would spend the day in the suburbs of Southern California, going door to door or making the rounds of a shopping mall, distributing our
Watchtower
magazine. I continued my Pioneering work for years and years after my career had been launched. Up to 1991, the time of my
Dangerous
tour, I would don my disguise of fat suit, wig, beard, and glasses, and head off to live in the land of everyday America, visiting shopping plazas and track homes in the suburbs. I loved to set foot in all those houses and catch sight of the shag rugs and La-Z-Boy armchairs with kids playing Monopoly and grandmas baby-sitting and all those wonderfully ordinary and, to me, magical scenes of life. Many, I know, would argue that these things seem like no big deal. But to me they were positively fascinating.
The funny thing is, no adults ever suspected who this strange bearded man was. But the children, with their extra intuition, knew right away. Like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, I would find myself trailed by eight or nine children by my second round of the shopping mall. They would follow and whisper and giggle, but they wouldn't reveal my secret to their parents. They were my little aides. Hey, maybe you bought a magazine from me. Now you're wondering, right?
Sundays were sacred for two other reasons as I was growing up. They were both the day that I attended church and the day that I spent rehearsing my hardest. This may seem against the idea of “rest on the Sabbath,” but it was the most sacred way I could spend my time: developing the talents that God gave me. The best way I can imagine to show my thanks is to make the very most of the gift that God gave me.
Church was a treat in its own right. It was again a chance for me to be “normal.” The church elders treated me the same as they treated everyone else. And they never became annoyed on the days that the back of the church filled with reporters who had discovered my whereabouts. They tried to welcome them in. After all, even reporters are the children of God.
When I was young, my whole family attended church together in Indiana. As we grew older, this became difficult and my remarkable and truly saintly mother would sometimes end up there on her own. When circumstances made it increasingly complex for me to attend, I was comforted by the belief that God exists in my heart, and in music and in beauty, not only in a building. But I still miss the sense of community that I felt thereâI miss the friends and the people who treated me like I was simply one of them. Simply human. Sharing a day with God.
Shmuley Boteach: Do you think a hatred of pride is still a relic of your religious upbringing?
Michael Jackson: It hurt me a lot and it helped me a lot.
SB: How did it hurt you?
MJ: Er [long silence]. When I did certain things in the past that I didn't realize were against the religion and I was reprimanded for it, it almost destroyed me. Certain things that I did as an artist in my music I didn't realize I was crossing a line with them and when they chastised me, it really hurt me. It almost destroyed it. My mother saw it.
SB: Their disapproval, their rejection?
MJ: When I did the Moonwalk for the first time,
Motown 25
, they told me I was doing burlesque dancing and it was dirty and I went
for months and they said, “You can never dance like that again.” I said 90.9 percent of dancing is moving the waist. They said, “We don't want you to do it.” So I went around trying to dance for a long time without moving this part of my body. Then when I made “Thriller” with all the ghouls and ghosts, they said that it was demonic and part of the occult and that Brother Jackson can't do it. I called my lawyer and was crying and I said, “Destroy the video, have it destroyed.” And because he went against my wishes people have “Thriller” today. They made me feel so bad about it that I ordered my people to destroy it.
Michael did incorporate, at the Church's behest, a disclaimer at the beginning of the “Thriller” video announcing that nothing contained therein constituted an endorsement of the occult.
SB: So you have seen two sides of religion, the loving side that teaches you not to like pride and humility, but you have also seen what you would describe as mean-spiritedness and judgmentalism.
MJ: Because they can discriminate sometimes in the wrong way. I don't think God meant it in that way. Like Halloween, I missed out on Halloween for years and now I do it. It's sweet to go door-to-door and people give you candy. We need more of that in the world. It brings the world together.
SB: Do you take Prince and Paris trick-or-treating?
MJ: Absolutely, we have a family that we go with in the area and we give them the candy. I want them to see that people can be kind. We get it in a bag and then [whispering]
I exchange their candy for candy eyeballs
.
SB: I was speaking to Andrew Sullivan late last night, the journalist who was the editor of
The New Republic
. We had a debate together on homosexuality at a university and afterward we were talking about you and he was surprised to hear nice things about you and he said, “So why don't I know any of this?” I said, “I don't know.” Insights like that, Michael, “the essence of Halloween.” You should do press releases about things like that. “The essence of Halloween is for children to witness the kindness of
strangers.” I like that. It's a nice thought. It elevates trick-or-treating into something more meaningful than sponging candy.
MJ: I cry behind my mask. I really do when I go with them and people say, “Open your bag,” and I think, look what I have been missing. I didn't know that this.... I look at their face and they are giving you a gift. It's sweet. The kids come and they open their bags and then they go, “Oh look at this little one,” and it is just sweet the way they respond. I think that's very kind. That part of America I am proud of.
Did Michael See Himself as God's Chosen? Did He Have Special Healing Powers?
Shmuley Boteach: Jesus said, “Suffer little children to come unto me.” He had all these amazing quotes about children and most saintly figures are seen around children. Do you identify with people like that? Do you feel that God has given you more than just a talent for music?
Michael Jackson: Yes, absolutely.
SB: . . . Wait. I think you do have something special to do here on this earth. Every human being does. And we can't ignore the fact that you have a level of renown rarely seen before. And we have to channel that celebrity in the proper way. That's when you become a teacher, Michael, not just an entertainer, you have to identify what it is, what positive message, you wish to impart to mankind. That's when your celebrity becomes redemptive. In fact, I think the word
entertainer
for you is a bit insulting. You are not an entertainer and you should always strive to be much more than merely an entertainer. As you said to me many times, no one would do the things you do if you were just an entertainer. Eddie Murphy is an entertainer. He is great. He is funny. But no one camps outside his home. You know what I mean. So that's something very powerful and you have to determine what it is you want to achieve with that, to what healthy and Godly use can you put it? And it can't be about you. It
has to be about something much larger than youâa goal that is lofty and goes way beyond entertainment. Do you see yourself in that guise? Do you feel that God gave you a certain healing power?
MJ: Yes.
SB: So when you speak to Gavin you are healing him, not just speaking to him?
MJ: I
know
I am healing him, and I have seen children just shower me with love. And they want to just touch me and hug me and hold on and cry and not let go. They don't even know me. You'll see sometime when you hang out, or we'll be in an open place, and mothers pick up their babies and put them into my arms. “Touch my baby, touch my baby, hold them.” It is not hero worship, like religions try to say, like idol worship.
SB: It is
not
idol worship? Why, because they're not worshipping you? Because they're getting to feel better about themselves? By being closer to you they feel lighter than air, they feel like they can almost walk on water themselves. Why isn't it worship?
MJ: Yes, because my religion taught us that you are not supposed to do that. If I had gone to my church they would have
never
treated me the way your church treated me.