December 22, 2002

By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN


NE unlikely afternoon in October 2001, an Orthodox rabbi and a black journalist found themselves just outside Yasir Arafat's office, arguing so intensely that even the armed guards looked astonished. Having accompanied the Rev. Al Sharpton to Israel, only to wind up this day in Gaza, Shmuley Boteach and Peter Noel were enacting their own version of a failed peace process.

"Here's your chance to look him in the face," Mr. Noel cried, yanking on Rabbi Boteach's arm, trying to haul him up a staircase into Mr. Arafat's domain. "Ask him: `Do you condone terror? Do you condone killing children?' " Just as fiercely, Rabbi Boteach resisted, shouting back: "Peter, I can't tell you how wrong you are. He didn't listen to the Pope. He didn't listen to Clinton. Why is he going to listen to me?"

When the literal and figurative tug-of-war ended in stalemate 45 minutes later, it might well have ruptured any relationship between the two men. Blacks and Jews have come to ruin over just such matters for decades. Instead, the showdown forged a mutual respect, and cast the template for a partnership to come.

That partnership, both personal and professional, takes the form of the men's morning talk show on WWRL-AM (1600) in Queens. As Mr. Noel and Rabbi Boteach take on topics ranging from the war on terrorism to the war between the sexes, spending one hour discussing the Central Park jogger case and the next speculating on the state of Halle Berry's marriage, they simultaneously embody and transcend their own racial and ethnic camps.

"This is an interracial buddy pair, the radio equivalent of `Lethal Weapon,' " says Jonathan Rieder, a sociologist at Barnard College and formerly the co-editor of CommonQuest, a magazine devoted to black-Jewish relations. "Listening to the show, what makes it work is that they aren't self-consciously in their role every minute as the archetypal black man or white man or Jewish man. They're Peter and Shmuley.

"And that's not only healthy, it's a sign of where much of black and white life is emerging. Race as a dividing line is diminishing without disappearing. And permeable boundaries allow for what's now possible — in marriage, in friendship, in alliances."

Certainly, Mr. Noel and Rabbi Boteach are breaching the traditional borders within the medium of radio. Rarely does a black-oriented station like WWRL use a white host, according to Michael Harrison, the publisher of Talkers, a trade magazine for the talk-show industry, and rarely does a white audience listen to a black station for anything except music. Partly for its very oddity, Mr. Harrison says, the Noel-Boteach pairing "is a brilliant move on the part of WWRL management."

His characterization imposes design on a sequence of events that could safely be called unpredictable. Born and educated in Trinidad, Mr. Noel, 44, immigrated to New York in 1978 and within a decade had earned a controversial reputation in the black news media as an advocacy journalist closely tied to Mr. Sharpton. Still, mainstream periodicals, including The Village Voice and New York magazine, sought his work on volatile episodes like the jogger case and the Million Youth March, and he signed a contract to write a book tentatively titled "Playing the Race Card: The Bully Boys of Black Rage," scheduled for publication in 2003.

As for Rabbi Boteach (pronounced bo-TAY-ach), 36, he moved from the United States to Oxford in 1988 as an emissary of the Lubavitcher Hasidic movement. In 12 years in England, he built a thriving Jewish student group called the L'Chaim Society, brought onto campus speakers ranging from Mikhail Gorbachev to Boy George and won a national prize for preaching.

He ultimately broke with his religious leadership, however, over issues ranging from his outreach to non-Jews to his authorship of "Kosher Sex," a celebration of the carnal pleasures of monogamy. Returning to America in 1999 as a self-promotional force of nature, he proceeded to befriend Michael Jackson, sell book excerpts to Playboy magazine and appear in several hundred newspaper articles a year.

Most relevant to his radio future, Rabbi Boteach agreed in April 2001 to debate black-Jewish relations with that human lightning rod, Mr. Sharpton. Through him, the rabbi met Mr. Noel. Six months later came the defining moment in Gaza.

"We could see the rage in each other's face," Mr. Noel recalls. "But we had the healthiest debate. Because we chose our words carefully and we didn't attack each other personally. Even in the most contentious moments, we did not say the wrong thing." Or as Rabbi Boteach puts it: "There's a famous rabbinic saying that words that emanate from the heart penetrate the heart. In that moment, I saw the sincerity in Peter's eyes and heard it in his expressions."

Meanwhile, WWRL was searching for a niche in the radio market. Since the early 1970's, it had gone through rhythm-and-blues, sports and gospel formats. When the media company Access.1 bought the station in the 90's, it took aim at metropolitan New York's large community of West Indian immigrants. WWRL's program director, Rennie Bishop, had been host of a renowned show mixing music and politics in his native Trinidad. One of its ardent listeners was a young Peter Noel.

Starting with the general notion of an interracial talk show, Mr. Bishop went through several dozen prospective hosts last spring before auditioning Mr. Noel. And Mr. Noel instantly suggested Rabbi Boteach as sidekick. The three met at a kosher restaurant in Manhattan in September. "We practically had a show right there," Mr. Bishop recalled.

Both of the incipient partners had by that time accumulated some radio experience, Mr. Noel as the self-proclaimed "Flamethrower" on public-affairs shows on WRKS-FM in New York, Mr. Boteach on the BBC and the TalkAmerica network. More important, perhaps, each had crossed the racial divide in some significant way. While at Oxford, Rabbi Boteach had supported an African-American student named Cory Booker (now a rising politician in New Jersey) as president of the L'Chaim Society. During the rioting in Brooklyn's Crown Heights neighborhood in 1991, Mr. Noel had rescued a Hasidic Jewish resident from a black mob.

The pair went on the air on WWRL in mid-November. From 6 a.m. until 10 a.m. each weekday morning, they squeeze into a studio the size of a moderate closet, Mr. Noel with his billowing Afro sprouting dreadlocks, Rabbi Boteach with his yarmulke and the ritual vest called a tallit kattan. Arrayed on a console between them are tear-sheets from the morning newspapers, results of recent opinion polls and printouts from the Internet. A given show brings telephone interviews with guests mirroring the ideological spectrum of the hosts, from the conservative Senator Orrin G. Hatch to the liberal Representative Charles B. Rangel, from law professor-cum-provocateur Alan Dershowitz to the minister-politician-college president Floyd Flake.

As much as Rabbi Boteach and Mr. Noel personify the obvious categories of white and black, right and left, both palpably delight in subverting expectation. Sometimes they do it with substance — Rabbi Boteach arguing in favor of giving money to beggars, Mr. Noel assailing deadbeat tenants in public housing — and sometimes they do it with shtick. Mr. Noel can credibly pronounce "chutzpah," while Rabbi Boteach one morning confided, "My ambition has always been to be the first Jewish Rasta."

After the decibels rose in a debate about racial aspects of the then-impending transit strike one recent morning, Rabbi Boteach's daughter asked him, "Are you still friends?" As if to answer, Mr. Noel joined the rabbi's family for Sabbath dinner that Friday.

While it is too soon for WWRL, which has an average audience of about 60,000, to have Arbitron ratings on the show, advertising sales and listener calls have grown during the initial month. Some white listeners have phoned in often enough to qualify as regulars, introduced by first name and neighborhood alone, a rarity for the station.

"We are teaching people how to get along," Mr. Noel says. "We're not fake, we're not pretending. When we come here, we're both passionate, ready to make our argument. But our argument is never personal." Rabbi Boteach, ready like an experienced clergyman with an aphorism, explains it this way: "A bird flies because it has two antithetical wings."