Marriage, the death of a parent, the birth of a child: we here at Beliefnet pride ourselves on knowing what brings people back to a faith they’ve long ignored or to discover one they never had. But Jon Gosselin has a new one on us. The New York Post is reporting that the onetime star of “Jon and Kate Plus Eight” has been meeting with Michael Jackson’s erstwhile spiritual counselor (and a Beliefnet contributor) Rabbi Shmuley Boteach. With Boteach’s help Gosselin will “reconnect with my deeper, more spiritual, more altruistic self.”
What sparked his conversion? According to the Post, it was the suggestion bruited about recently that Gosselin was going to share a reality show with Octomom Nadya Suleman.

In a ceremony that sounds as much 12 Step as Judaism, Gosselin plans on publicly acknowledging his mistakes–for those who don’t follow the show, leaving his wife, sleeping with the nanny, doing drugs, harshing on his girlfriend and being famous for nothing (okay we made that last one up)–at the West Side Synagogue in Manhattan on Sunday.
Time’s James Poniewozik wrote in a recent column that reality television is the new American Dream, offering the Heene family and their Balloon Boy antics as proof that every red-blooded Joe Sixpack aspires to make reality a reality. Gosselin’s hurried retreat from “Jon and Nadya Plus Sixteen” may be an argument that there’s more nightmare in reality TV than dream. Or it could be the makings for “Jon and Shmuley Make a Minyan.” Stay tuned.