RABBI CALLED 'KOSHER DR. PHIL' IS UNORTHODOX REALITY TV HIT: The newest star of reality TV is an Orthodox rabbi who was raised in Miami Beach and travels the country dispensing advice from a trailer.

Byline: Alexandra Alter

Jun. 2--In a reality television landscape dominated by dog-whisperers, super nannies and swapped wives, it seems there's hardly room for . . . wait, an Orthodox rabbi? In an Airstream trailer? Shmuley Boteach -- a bearded and bespectacled rabbi, "kosher sex" expert and sublimely self-composed father of eight who was raised in Miami Beach -- has entered the limelight of reality TV. The star of The Learning Channel's show Shalom in the Home, Boteach packs up his Airstream every week and travels to the home of a troubled American family. He watches surveillance tapes of screaming fits, flung objects and other touching moments of full-blown familial mayhem before issuing his thumbnail diagnosis of their deep and abiding dysfunction. Over 10 days, boiled down into an hourlong episode, he engages them in his trademark, guerrilla-style therapy. "My parents had a very stormy marriage, and I was always the peacemaker," Boteach said. "I was doing Shalom in the Home when I was 6." The wise and winningly goofy rabbi breaks the emotional deadlock with a few choice words. Bratty teenagers, sexless marriages, disapproving grandparents are each chalked up to one sad archetype or another -- the lonely wife, checked-out dad or attention-starved child. 'Nine times out of 10, it's 'I have a demon child; you have to come fix them,' " he said. "Dysfunction will become a family heirloom passed from generation to generation." Boteach, who's affectionately called "Rabbi Shmuley" by his grateful subjects, says he can relate. His parents separated when he was 8. His brother is gay and an Orthodox Jew. Boteach has eight children between the ages of 3 months and 17 years. Boteach isn't the preachy type. Most of the families he counsels aren't Jewish. He rarely mentions religion. He often breaks traditional religious conventions -- counseling lesbian couples about parenting and urging husbands to treat their wives like mistresses.

In one of his most controversial episodes, Boteach helped a couple resuscitate their lethargic sex life by sending the wife for an erotic massage with a stranger. The husband stood in for the masseuse, and was shocked by the way his blindfolded, unsuspecting wife yielded to a stranger's touch. The husband felt both betrayed and aroused, he said later. RACY THERAPY Those racy therapeutic methods make for good television fodder. Since TLC launched the show in April, Shalom in the Home has had an average of a million viewers a week. The show airs Monday nights at 10 p.m. Boteach, 39, was born in Los Angeles and grew up in an Orthodox household on Miami Beach. His mother left his father when he was 8, moving the family to Florida to be near her parents. Boteach attended Hebrew Academy on Pinetree Drive and an Orthodox Jewish summer camp in Homestead. He says he knew he'd become a rabbi when he was 16. After more than a decade of study and rabbinical work in Jerusalem, Australia and Oxford, England, Boteach became a self-help sensation with his breakthrough book Kosher Sex. The book -- a sex-advice tome based on the Torah and the Talmud ...