I discuss the weekly Torah portion with Rabbi Rabbs every Monday at 7pm PST on my live cam and YouTube.
This week’s parsha is Yitro.
I discuss the weekly Torah portion with Rabbi Rabbs every Monday at 7pm PST on my live cam and YouTube.
This week’s parsha is Yitro.
I discuss the weekly Torah portion with Rabbi Rabbs every Monday at 7pm PST on my live cam and YouTube.
This week’s parsha is Yitro.
I discuss the weekly Torah portion with Rabbi Rabbs every Monday at 7pm PST on my live cam and YouTube.
This week’s parsha is Yitro.
I discuss the weekly Torah portion with Rabbi Rabbs every Monday at 7pm PST on my live cam and YouTube.
This week’s parsha is Yitro.
I discuss the weekly Torah portion with Rabbi Rabbs every Monday at 7pm PST on my live cam and YouTube.
This week’s parsha is Yitro.
On his radio show today, Dennis Prager said: “I want you to think about people you know who went from right to left or left to right [politically] and is there any tendency in their daily kindness and niceness? Is there any relationship? It’s like a religious conversion.
“Someone who becomes a Christian or a religious Jew or a Muslim, do they become kinder after conversion? If you don’t get better with your conversion, there’s something wrong.”
I’ve found that nothing has made me nicer and easier to get along with than Alexander Technique. It’s helped me more than religion in this department.
I wonder if converting to Judaism made me a kinder person? If not, what’s the point? Nobody has ever accused me of being kind. Did your conversions (politically or religiously) make you a finer person? I fear I am largely unchanged.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011 Radio Show
H1: How Important Is Blood?
Prager H1: How important is blood? Not very. Here’s a good example. Michael Reagan, the adopted child of Ronald Reagan, honors and promotes his father’s values and memory; Ron Reagan, the biological son, dishonors his father’s values and memory… European Union Student Calendar (whatever that is) listed many religious holidays, but forgot one – Christian holidays… New research suggests that during first two years of college students spend more time partying and sleeping than studying…
Tuesday, January 18, 2011 Radio Show
H2: Fatwa
Prager H2: In Egypt a fatwa was issued and approved by a major Islamic theologian endorsing the idea that Muslims can attack anyone anywhere who opposes Islam… Dennis talks to Roy Baumeister, Professor of Psychology and head of the social psychology graduate program at Florida State University. His new book is Is There Anything Good About Men?: How Cultures Flourish by Exploiting Men… Chris Matthews makes some very foolish comments about blacks and Conservatives to former RNC Chairman, Michael Steele. They say a lot about how liberals, even bright liberals like Matthews, think.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011 Radio Show
H3: Ultimate Issues Hour: The Fifth Commandment
Prager H3: The fifth of the Ten Commandments states that you have to honor your father and mother. Why does it say “honor” not “love”? And what does it mean to honor your parents.
Dennis talks to Roy Baumeister, Professor of Psychology and head of the social psychology graduate program at Florida State University. His new book is Is There Anything Good About Men?: How Cultures Flourish by Exploiting Men.I discuss the weekly Torah portion with Rabbi Rabbs every Monday at 7pm PST on my live cam and YouTube.
This week’s parsha is Yitro.
Conservative rabbi Jason Miller writes:
The debate over “Who is a Jew” is back in the headlines following the shooting in Tucson, Ariz., that critically injured Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. For Giffords, the daughter of a Christian Scientist mother and a Jewish father who is the grandson of a rabbi, there is no question of her Jewishness. She is a proud Jew who is an active member of her Reform congregation. She was married under a chuppah (wedding canopy) by a rabbi, albeit to a non-Jewish man.
As Giffords lay in a hospital recovering from being shot in an assassination attempt by a domestic terrorist, her Hebrew name has circulated the world to be used in the traditional Mi Shebeirach prayer for healing. Some rabbis have even questioned whether her non-Jewish mother’s name should be part of her Hebrew nomenclature for the prayer, while others have referred to her as Jewish but added the caveat “not halachically speaking.”
I do not recall any major American daily attacking another major American daily the way the Wall Street Journal attacked the New York Times last week under the heading “The New York Times has crossed a moral line.” I do not recall Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer ever expressing contempt toward a colleague the way he did against New York Times columnist Paul Krugman last week. Krauthammer ended his column “Massacre, Followed by Libel,” with this sentence: “The origins of Loughner’s delusions are clear: mental illness. What are the origins of Krugman’s?”
People are awakening to the crucial fact of left-wing success: The only way the Left can succeed in America is by libeling the Right. Only 20 percent of Americans label themselves liberal, let alone leftist. How, then, do leftists get elected? And why don’t more Americans call themselves conservative, when, in fact, so many share conservatives’ values?
The answer to both questions is that, through its dominance of the news media, entertainment media, and educational institutions, the Left has been able to successfully demonize the Right for at least half a century.
The Left rarely convinces Americans to adopt its views. What it does is create a fear of the Right that influences many Americans to align themselves with the Left.
For example, most Americans want to retain the man-woman definition of marriage. Even most voters in liberal Californians want to. The Left has not been able to convince even Californians to redefine marriage to include members of the same sex. So what the Left did was to declare as “haters” all those who wanted California to retain the definition of marriage as uniting a man and a woman. Prop 8 became “Prop Hate.”
But the Left’s modus operandi was never as apparent as it was this past week when it took a tragic mass killing of innocents by a violent, mentally ill individual and transformed it — within hours — into an attack on the decency of the Right — specifically Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, FoxNews, and talk radio.
The same Left, led by the New York Times, that warned against making any quick assumptions that Islam had played any role in Maj. Nidal Hassan’s murder of 13 people and wounding of 30 others at Fort Hood, immediately declared that the Arizona murders were largely a result of a “climate of hate” induced by Sarah Palin and other conservatives.
It wasn’t true. They knew it wasn’t true. And, yes, it was a libel.
But when you control all the major news media, Hollywood, much of rest of the culture, and most of the high schools and colleges, how are most people supposed to realize that?
What makes last week different is this: The Left, for the first time, does not have the same monopoly over mass information and the Republican Party is no longer emasculated. There is talk radio, there is the internet, there is FoxNews, and there is a vigorous, conservative Republican Party. So, when the Left unleashed its libel against the Right, claiming that it was responsible for a “climate of hate” that produced Jared Loughner, to its shock, America did not lie down and believe it. Many millions did, as usual. But for those with eyes to see, it was a false accusation, and for many, for the first time, it provided a clear view into how the Left operates.
As it becomes ever more obvious that Loughner’s crimes had nothing — absolutely nothing — to do with conservatives, the Left will do three things: change the subject by criticizing Sarah Palin’s use of the term “blood libel” (a term whose use by Palin was honorably defended by Prof. Alan Dershowitz, a prominent Jewish liberal); deny it ever really blamed the Right for the Loughner’s crimes (hoping, with good reason, that Americans have a short memory); and continue to blame the Right for creating the “climate of hate” that the Left itself has created.
Rabbi Pinchos Lipschutz writes:
A similar campaign to disparage frum Yidden in the religious Jewish media has been underway for some time. Cloaked deceptively in a religious veneer, using Yiddish names and faces, the relentless disparaging of the Torah community by anonymous bloggers, and certain publications, is diluting the power of Torah and halacha among religious Jewry in our society.
Many of the individuals who habitually undermine our community’s values using purported “news reporting” are emboldened by the built-in anonymity of the internet. They prey on the public’s weakest tendencies. These people, if identified, would draw scorn for their outrageous character assaults and gossip-mongering. They would be pitied for how far they have drifted.
Yet, these people, by virtue of their access to the public through a so-called “religious” blog, have the ability to promote their agenda.
The high cost of publishing once restricted people from foisting their misguided agendas upon an unsuspecting public through the printed word. Slick, colorful publications that would entice a broad range of readers are simply very costly. The internet, though, is free. Anyone can post their views on the internet and have the public read them at no charge.
Thus, the purveyors of daily doses of scandal and morbidity are able to draw in a wide circle of unsuspecting readers. A person surfing the internet for interesting tidbits and “hock“, satiates his appetite for shallow entertainment without much effort.
Taking Aim at the Frum Community
Unaware of how they are being manipulated, these surfers easily fall prey to a dangerous and cynical mischaracterization of the frum community. They once rightfully viewed frum people as an upstanding group with a few rotten apples. They knew that you can’t impugn the character of an entire community because of the actions of a few.
But after being exposed to a steady barrage of gossip, depicting one religious person after another as a lawbreaker, one’s attitude naturally becomes poisoned. Malicious speculation regarding the motives of rabbis and other community leaders, as well as entire groups, casting them as hypocritical or irresponsible, compounds the outrage.
On these blogs, religious leaders are consistently vilified. They can do no good. Regardless of what they do, their actions are twisted and portrayed as evil. When that fails, their motives are questioned and they are portrayed as corrupt, willing tools of strongmen.