A federal magistrate judge in Miami has recommended that Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, known widely as “America's Rabbi,” lose his legal fight against Fontainebleau Miami Beach outright, finding he repeatedly violated a court order barring him from posting about the case on social media. U.S. Magistrate Judge Marty Fulgueira Elfenbein's recommendation, issued July 29, calls for default judgment against Boteach, striking his counterclaim and another filing, and ordering him to pay attorney fees in an amount still to be determined.
The recommendation lands in a bitter, nearly two-year legal battle that began with a December 2024 lobby confrontation at the 1,504-room Fontainebleau Miami Beach, located at 4441 Collins Avenue and owned by developer Jeffrey Soffer. As reported by The Real Deal, Elfenbein found that Boteach — also known as Jacob Shmuel Botach — “consciously chose to keep posting about Fontainebleau in willful and blatant disregard of the court prohibition,” despite Judge K. Michael Moore having directed him on February 20 to stop what the court characterized as harassing conduct in his social media attacks.
A Lobby Dispute That Went Viral
The case traces back to December 2, 2024, when Boteach and a man identified as Faiz Akbar exchanged hateful words in the hotel's lobby, according to the underlying claims in the litigation. Boteach has said Akbar called him a baby killer, and Boteach responded by shouting, “Allahu Akbar? Are you going to blow yourself up or something?” Boteach posted an edited Instagram video of the exchange the same day and has since described himself as the victim of an antisemitic hate crime, claiming the hotel failed to protect him, retaliated against him, and blamed him for provoking the attack because he was visibly Jewish. Fontainebleau Miami Beach ultimately banned both Boteach and Akbar from the property.
Fontainebleau Development responded with a defamation lawsuit, alleging that Boteach falsely accused the resort of condoning antisemitism and that he offered to de-escalate his public campaign in exchange for a $1 million donation to his nonprofit, the World Values Network — a claim the hotel says supports its allegations of civil extortion, according to The Jerusalem Post. The lawsuit also alleged Boteach posted AI-generated videos depicting resort personnel apologizing, admitting misconduct, and even celebrating antisemitism, including fabricated scenes of security guards hugging his alleged attacker. Boteach has said his posts were meant to prompt Fontainebleau and its attorney to change their litigation strategy, and he has claimed the hotel undermined his reputation by calling him a shakedown artist to donors.
Boteach Fires Back, Calls Soffer an Antisemite
Boteach did not stay quiet after the suit was filed. Per KosherSquared, he publicly claimed Soffer “joined the ranks of arch-antisemites” and described the lawsuit as reading like a photocopy of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” rejecting the extortion allegations as an antisemitic attack on him personally. Boteach, who countersued the hotel, has said he is being sued by people with overwhelming and endless financial power — a remark Fontainebleau's attorneys have argued was a reference to Soffer, a billionaire.
The case was originally filed in Miami-Dade County Circuit Court before being removed to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida in January 2025 as case number 1:25-cv-20251-KMM. Judge Moore, who presides over the matter, issued a 13-page order on September 16, 2025, denying Boteach's motion to dismiss and ruling that Fontainebleau's claims for defamation and tortious interference had sufficient merit to proceed to trial.
Epstein Posts Named as ‘Most Egregious’ Violation
Among the posts Elfenbein cited as violating the court's ban, Boteach attacked Fontainebleau attorney Sean Burstyn by name in May 2026, questioning whether Burstyn appeared in materials tied to Jeffrey Epstein and Virginia Giuffre and asserting that attorneys are “scumbags.” According to The Mael Review, the magistrate judge singled out those May 24 posts as “perhaps the most egregious violations” of the court's order. Burstyn, who is an Orthodox Jew, was named directly in posts Boteach has since said were partly the result of a phone data restoration glitch that caused some publications to appear twice.
Boteach was also sanctioned separately for posting police surveillance footage of the December 2024 incident three times and was ordered to pay $15,000 in attorney fees over that conduct. In March 2026, he posted videos filmed outside the Fontainebleau declaring that antisemitism was present there, and in late February he published a video claiming he was threatened with murder during the original incident, saying at the time he did not explicitly name Fontainebleau in some of his posts. The magistrate's recommendation notes that Boteach kept publishing even after lawyers for both sides had discussed the posts.
What Happens Next
Elfenbein's recommendation stopped short of civil or criminal contempt proceedings, basing the proposed default judgment specifically on Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 16(f), which allows courts to impose severe sanctions for violating pretrial orders without invoking contempt powers. Judge Moore has not yet ruled on Elfenbein's findings, and Boteach's attorneys are expected to challenge the recommendation. They have also asked to postpone the August 24 trial date until Moore rules on the pending filings.
Complicating matters further, one of the law firms representing Boteach filed a motion to withdraw from the case on August 5 — just as the district court began weighing the magistrate's recommendation, according to the same Real Deal report. That filing came weeks before the scheduled trial and adds fresh uncertainty about Boteach's defense as the case heads toward a potential resolution. Separately, Fontainebleau filed a Rule 11 motion in December 2025 arguing that Boteach's counterclaims, which include three civil rights claims, were legally frivolous and driven by personal animus toward Soffer, according to court filings reviewed by Justia Law.
Boteach, who has more than 1 million followers across social media platforms, has continued to frame the case publicly as an attack on his faith and his advocacy work rather than a straightforward commercial dispute. The Fontainebleau Miami Beach litigation is separate from another lawsuit Hoodline reported on over rental rules filed by condo owners against the resort, underscoring how the Soffer-owned property has faced multiple fronts of legal pressure even as its parent company pursues major expansions elsewhere.
