12/24/06
Dennis Prager Speaks To Orthodox Union
Dennis Prager (.wav) Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein responds Dennis Prager responds Dennis Prager takes questions Dennis Prager
Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, Lisa Aiken speak on the yeshiva curriculum.
Rabbi Michael Broyde: “Interacting With Noachides, Gentiles & Pagans Who Love Us.” Rabbi Broyde takes questions.
9 a.m. Room is full (about 80 persons) for Rabbi Riskin’s talk. He says Iran won’t nuke Jerusalem because it won’t damage the Al Aksa mosque on the temple mount.
10 a.m. Lisa Aiken says Judaism is primarily about having a relationship with God.
Does anyone aside from a few eccentric intellectuals believe that? I’ve met few religious Jews who claimed to have a relationship with God. It’s just one of those things that speakers say but few people do.
It’s like saying, “Jews don’t think they’re better than anybody else.”
I get that obligatory disclaimer every time choseness is introduced. Yes, Jews are God’s chosen people but Jews don’t believe they are any better than anybody else.
That’s nonsense. Of course Jews believe they are better than everybody else, just as every religious and national group thinks it is number one. The only difference is that many non-Jews believe Jews are special, and sometimes hate them for it.
This old man (I think it was the Rabbi Emmanuel pictured here with Richard Joel last month) dressed like a Hasid makes a loud, passionate and incomprehensible speech complaining that he’s been forbidden from passing out his flyers, which he does anyway over the next few hours to anyone he thinks is important (Michael Broyde, Dennis Prager, etc).
Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb does a good job keeping the yeshiva curriculum discussion moving.
11:30 a.m. Rabbi Yitzchok Lowenbraun lectures on why our youth are leaving Orthodoxy. He says it is not for intellectual reasons.
Rabbi Michael Broyde says it is for intellectual reasons. That the kids see irreconcilable differences between Torah and science. That “being happy and feeling good” is an insufficient reason to stay Jewish.
I wonder how many people leave Orthodox Judaism because so many of its practicioners are fat, slovenly, and unattractive?
A YULA boys school teacher says the reasons were intellectual a century ago but now kids are just giving into their lustful desires.
Fundamentalist religion attracts a disproportionate number of kooks and many of them are dying to speak up and bore us to tears.
Much of the room has nodded off. The sages command us to follow the majority, so I also nod off.
I walk out and past Rabbi Daniel Korobkin posing for photographs.
“Now, let’s vary the background,” says the photographer.
I make eye contact with a leading Los Angeles rabbi in the hallway. He stares at me, says hello, and then backs into the ladies room.
“Wrong room!” I warn.
Because I’ve studied Torah, I choose to believe that the rabbi went into the ladies room for the best of reasons.
Still, my soul is troubled. Why do so many of our rabbis go off the derech and into the ladies room? Is it for intellectual reasons or are they just following their lustful desires?
I listen to Rabbi Broyde’s instructions on interacting with gentiles. I know more about dating shiksas than this rabbi. I should be giving this talk.
Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, the leading Orthodox decider of Jewish law in the last half of the 20th Century, characterized American government as grounded in righteousness (he said that in Hebrew, much more impressive sounding). He said we should offer profound fidelity to secular American law.
Rabbi Broyde says we have to careful in selecting those who will do inter-faith dialogue. “I think much harder before speaking to The New York Times than I do to the Jewish press.”
Do we want to encourage abortion laws along the lines of what Christians want that could possibly cause a mother to lose her life in a case where Jewish law would prescribe an abortion.
Jewish law is more concerned with the life of the mother than that of the fetus.
Standing up for religious values that are not ours, such as animal sacrifice by cults in Florida, protects our right to practice our religion.
A fat hippie teacher from Shalhevet wonders how Rabbi Broyde can give so much honor to American law when it allowed such terrible miscarriages of justice in the cases of Jonathan Pollard and the Rosenbergs.
“I don’t see Jonathan Pollard case as a terrible miscarriage of justice. Nor the Rosenberg case.”
The teacher yells at Broyde who replies, “You asked for my opinion. I gave it to you.”
That quiets the yelping masses.
Rabbi Alan Kalinsky (West Coast director of the O.U.) holds the full house (about 250 persons) hostage for about 15 minutes to do housekeeping items and bestow some pointless award (a yad aka Torah pointer) on an O.U. functionary (president Steve Savitsky).
Finally, we’re allowed the main event — Dennis Prager vs. Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein.
The crowd is thrilled to hear Prager. His billboard “Just Right” is all over L.A. for his radio show.
Rabbi Daniel Korobkin gives the introduction: “My 21-year old son was looking over the program and his eyes perked up when he saw Dennis Prager’s name. ‘I’m going to that one.’
“You’ve all been put in cherem [excommunication] for being here today,” says Rabbi Korobkin.
Prager is not Orthodox and a lot of people are upset about him being invited to an O.U. event.
Rabbi Korobkin says the O.U. got a telephone message from a local leader of left-wing Orthodoxy complaining about Prager’s inclusion. That Prager was intolerant of other religions because he wants Muslim congressman Keith Ellison to take his swearing in oath on a Bible (in addition to the Koran).
Rabbi Korobkin: “The feeling at the O.U. is that we are sufficiently confident that Torah is emet [truth] and that what we have is emet and whatever deficiencies we have…we have to be prepared to look at someone pointing out our flaws…”
Dennis wears a light blue shirt, an orange and blue striped tie, and a brown jacket. “I was the one who opened the media to Muslims.”
That would come as news to the hundreds of journalists who wrote stories about Muslims and put them on the air (radio and television) before Prager ever got a radio show.
“If we Jews think we are secure in America because of the constitution and not because of the Bible, we are fools.”
“Of all the ethnic groups in America, we are the most foolish.”
“The great majority of serious Jews are Orthodox.”
“On the great moral issues of life, you and I are in agreement 99% of the time… Because we both believe the Torah comes from God.”
“The average Orthodox rabbi and Reform rabbi share almost nothing [in values].”
“You turned out to be right… I could not argue against it — the ordination of women. The adding of vast numbers of females to the Jewish and Christian clergy has not helped those religions. Women bring gifts that are different than what clerical leadership need. Women prefer compassion to standards and clergy have to prefer standards to compassion.”
“Faith matters a great deal. When I grew up [in Orthodoxy], everything was halakah. About once a year, one of the rabbonim might have a hashkafa shiur where God might be mentioned. In my Orthodox world, the question was never what does God want. It was, what’s the halakah?”
“It’s hard to argue that God does not women to be able to marry if their husbands refuse a get [divorce]. Why even ask what does God want if my only question is, what is the halakah?”
“My oldest son [David], in a deep rebellion, has decided to become an Orthodox rabbi.”
“My brother [Kenny], who is Orthodox, says to me, ‘I should’ve been Reform. Then my kids would be Orthodox.'”
“The eruv is baloney. It is a legal fiction. We’re going to fool ourselves that it is ok to wheel our kids to shul.”
“I can’t believe that God wants a woman [on Shabbos] to be under house arrest because there’s not a string around the city.”
“I believe that God doesn’t want us to look silly in the eyes of the nations. The L.A. Times article [on the Venice eruv] makes Orthodox Judaism look silly. You can’t blame the L.A. Times.”
“I believe that God wants Pesach [Passover] to be seven days [rather than the eight days now observed by traditional Jews in the diaspora]. That’s what he wrote. The Torah’s from God.”
I can’t believe how several Jews have the chutzpah to answer their cell phones during the lecture.
“The siddur [prayer book] is too long. The maxzor [High Holiday prayer book] is too long. Nobody understands the piyutim [which make a Rosh Hashanah morning prayer service last over six hours].”
“Then I have Orthodox friends tell me, ‘Dennis, at our hashkama minyan, we do everything in 90 minutes.’ Then you have to say the prayers so fast they become gibberish. Evelyn Wood [speed reader] grew up Orthodox.”
“I believe that the Torah wants Pesach to be seven days because it recreates creation. Judaism stands on two pillars — creation and the Exodus from Egypt. When you make it eight days, you lose the whole point of what HaShem wanted.”
“Are we a kiddish HaShem in the way we kill animals? We had the most humane way to kill animals…but do we today? I don’t think so.”
“Kosher veal? It’s killed in a painless way but it is raised in a painful way.”
“I wish I could say that halakah [Jewish law] makes people good.”
Dennis relays a story from Rabbi Shlomo Riskin who interviewed various rabbis to become the head of his yeshiva. All of them said that if they ordered a shaver in the mail and the company accidentally sent an extra one, they would keep it, as there was nothing wrong in keeping such from a Gentile. They could even quote some Jewish text to support it.
“Here’s a case of halakah making people worse.”
“My dad has been Orthodox his whole life. Even though he enlisted in World War II, he noticed all these yeshivot popping up in New York during World War II so Jews could avoid service in the armed forces by studying to become rabbis. All these goyim are fighting Hitler and all these frum Jews are enrolling in yeshiva to not fight Hitler.”
“The finest Jews I have known have tended to be Orthodox.”
Dennis complained about Orthodox Jews who don’t greet gentiles on the Sabbath.
“The Reform conference recently passed a resolution that Washington D.C. should become a state. There’s a pressing Jewish issue.”
Rabbi Korobkin: “I’ve never been so glad to see Rabbi Adlerstein. Better you than me.”
Rav Adlerstein makes a response (and blogs about it later). “If I score a couple of points for the Ribbono Shel Olam, Baruch HaShem.”
“I applaud the O.U. for allowing this despite everyone’s lock-jaw. We do have a tradition of being open to criticism.”
He recommends an article by Judy Bleich in the Orthodox Forum on Reform doing away with selichot. He says that shorter prayer services don’t attract more people to shul.
Rav Adlerstein says the lack of greeting gentiles was not because such persons were Orthodox but because they were from New York.
Rabbi Korobkin says that if there’s anything that’s bothering you, seek out your rabbi and ask. “There are answers to all these questions.”
Dennis: “When I first met Rabbi Adlerstein, he was not the same. He had to get halakic permission to go on Religion on the Line (KABC) and dialogue with non-Jewish clergy. Today he’s a leader in Jewish life in talking to Christians and meeting with them and hugging them.”
Rabbi Adlerstein: “Just the men.”
Dennis: “The tradition with Conservative Judaism is not the non-fidelity to halakah. They are overwhelmingly faithful to halaka… The problem with Conservatism is that they don’t believe the Torah is divine.”
When Prager speaks, my face angles up and to the side like a puppy towards his master.
Dennis says it is wrong that we have to stand during Neilah (and much of the High Holiday prayer services). “If you had to stand during my talk, all you’d think about is when you could sit down.”
“We’re stuck with standing up more than any other religion.”
“You can’t say anything in Orthodox life that something rabbinic is a bad idea.”
If you want to become effective at outreach, learn from Chabad in two ways:
One. Chabad doesn’t ration its love for Jews on the level of the Jews’ observance. Chabad seeks to make Jews Jewish while the mitnagdim (non-Hasidic Orthodox) seek to make them Orthodox.
Two. Chabad emissaries are happy. “A shaliach [emissary] who is not happy is sent back to Brooklyn. A rebettzin who is not good looking is sent back to Brooklyn.”
“The best advertisement for religion is when its practicioners are happy.”
Dennis says that only two or three people in his yeshiva class did not cheat.
“Joseph Telushkin was a Republican ten years before I was.”
A young man gets up and says how disgusted he is that Prager was invited to speak and to criticize the Orthodox. About 15 people applaud him.
Dennis: “Reform does not invite me (because of my politics). Conservative does. I spoke at the Rabbinical Assembly convention.”
“My parents went to my Stephen S. Wise minyan Saturday morning for my youngest son’s bar mitzvah. They loved it.”
Rabbi Korobkin says Dennis Prager thinks more like an Orthodox Jew than most Orthodox Jews.
At the end of the program, a man loudly pleads with Dennis to daven mincha with them. Prager agrees.
As for me, I can’t wait to get home to watch some football.
Gadi Pickholz emails (israelfrac@gmail.com) from the Israel Fathers Rights Advocacy Council:
Did anyone point out in the discussion of why youth depart orthodoxy that it is neither attraction of secularism nor intellectualism, but the recognition that orthodoxy today as practiced today as devolved into nothing more than empty ritual masking rampant materialism and socioeconomic climbing? This is clearly the primary justification heard in Israel for American aliya from parents — fleeing the Affluenza of American Orthodoxy before one loses the children entirely the other critical issue, which you hinted at in an earlier post but also did not pursue, is that with the loss of all Rabbinic leadership in America to the black hat chareidim (Steven Riskin could no longer exist in America, as an example, much less be Rosh Yeshiva of my daughter’s program training female advocates for the Jerusalem Bet Din) there is simply no longer any connection between the true values and hashkafa of the modern orthodox families and their Rabbinic leadership, particularly educational leadership. This seems to be the problem not only at Valley Torah, but also at YULA girls in particular.
There really is no school in LA that would support my daughter electing to do army service over being a nice jewish girl volunteer (American girls dont do that either when they come to Israel, but remain cloistered in the safety of a charedi seminar) before studying far more than simply talmud in a female hesder program designed to create not only female advocates for Bet Din but eventually female Dayanim as well. Rabbi Rakefet’s daughter, who is a prominent Jerusalem attorney and to’en rabbani in bet din, could not be tolerated in any educational environment for girls in LA today. Rabbi Rakefet openly states all the time that none of us could practice Judaism and raise our children in the American community of today, and that this is a much stronger pull for all of us than simply Zionism once we realize that American orhtodoxy has gone, to use his football field-goal analogy, “no good, way w-i-i-i-de to the right” This is a far greater turn-off, but no one can express it publicly as no one but the charedim want the career in chinuch in America today. This divergence in values grows annually until reaching a breaking point.
I agree that you should be addressing these issues, because everyone else is simply too scared given the Talibanization of American orthodox leadership to even loyal dissent.
Perhaps it is because, like the catholic church and mafia, much of orthodoxy (and particularly charedi orthodoxy, someone has to be willing to state that openly) have completely divorced ritual observance from basic morality. Our children are not foolish, and comprehend that scandal far better than we –they have not yet invested so much time, effort and money in the system. The cataracts will be removed from our eyes eventually; we can simply elect how painful a process it will be.
Dennis Prager Interviews Neil Strauss About Picking Up Women
Openers, negging, proof of social status.
What Do Terrorists Want?
About ten times in this interview, Dennis Prager lets his guest known about ten times whether or not he agrees with her. The Harvard professor, like most guests, evinces no interest in whether or not the host agrees with her.
That’s bad interviewing technique by Prager.
8/22/06
Dennis Prager’s step-daughter Anya married in the Napa Valley Aug 20.
Dennis Prager: “The dominant feature of a society [with little marriage] is secularism.”
“Secular life is just boring. Imagine saying, ‘Let’s all get together in Chicago because Jerry and I have decided to live for each other.'”
“Religious life is communal.”
“Nothing has the same clout as saying I was at your wedding.”
I remember chatting with a cute young blonde at a Jewish singles event at the Century Club in Century City in 1994. I was telling her about Dennis Prager. She said, “That’s my dad.” It was Anya, the only time I met her.
8/11/06
Dennis Prager‘s Happiness Hour: Maturity
Guest Dr. Steven Marmer, member of the clinical faculty at the UCLA School of Psychiatry and psychiatrist in private practice in Brentwood, CA outlines what it means to be mature. He asks three key questions of his patients: how much anxiety can you tolerate without having to do something destructive to yourself or others; how much are you able to live in the present; and do you like undertaking obligations.
As he did with Prager’s TV show 12 years ago, Alan Estrin has improved Prager’s product since taking over as producer (about two years ago). A longtime friend of Prager’s, Alan might have more strength to push Prager to not repeat himself as much, to get adequate sleep, to not spend time on esoteric subjects such as stereo equipment and favorite cigars.
If you’re thinking of marrying, part 1
4. Does the person have a number of good friends and at least one very close friend of the same sex?
It is a bad sign if the person you are thinking of marrying does not have good friends (including of long duration) of the same sex. Something is very wrong. This alone should rule out the person from consideration. A woman who cannot hold female friends and a man who cannot hold male friends have issues that will probably sink your marriage.
If you’re thinking of marrying, part 2
10. Is the person unhappy?
Having written a best-selling book on happiness and lectured on the subject on all seven continents, I am tempted write a book-length book explanation of just this question. Suffice it to say that the importance of marrying an essentially happy person cannot be exaggerated. If you are basically happy, do not think for a moment that you can make an unhappy person happy by marrying him or her. On the contrary, the ability of the unhappy to make the happy unhappy is far greater than the ability of the happy to make the unhappy happy.
12. What do people you respect think of the person you’re considering marrying?
It’s done by his radio producer Allen Estrin.
Prager writes 7/19/06:
The Arab and other Muslim enemies of Israel (for the easily confused, this does not mean every Arab or every Muslim) want Israel destroyed. That is why there is a Middle East conflict. Everything else is commentary.
Those who deny this and ascribe the conflict to other reasons, such as “Israeli occupation,” “Jewish settlements,” a “cycle of violence,” “the Zionist lobby” and the like, do so despite the fact that Israel’s enemies regularly announce the reason for the conflict. The Iranian regime, Hizbollah, Hamas and the Palestinians — in their public opinion polls, in their anti-Semitic school curricula and media, in their election of Hamas, in their support for terror against Israeli civilians in pre-1967 borders — as well as their Muslim supporters around the world, all want the Jewish state annihilated.
Rob Barnett writes:
Reading Dennis Prager’s latest column has a surreal texture to it, like entering Alice in Wonderland where a word means exactly what DP wants it to mean, nothing more and nothing less.
In this column, he ascribes the cause of the Arab/Israeli conflict to Israel’s Arab/Mulsim enemies seeking to destroy it. This dovetails nicely with his usual glib, one-line description about the conflict: Israel wants peace, the Palestinians want to destroy Israel.
The problem with this depiction of the situation is that it is deceptive, manipulative, and completely disingenuous. Since DP is obviously a knowledgeable and intelligent person, one can be forgiven for assuming that this stance of his must somehow be malicious and deliberate.
Suppose we go back in time to the pre-1948 era for a moment, as the Arab/Jewish conflict over Palestine was gaining steam. Couldn’t we, fairly and accurately, say that all the Arabs wanted was to be left alone in peace, while Zionist Jewry’s top priority wasn’t peace but the decimation of Arab Palestine, or as much of it as possible, and replacing it with a Jewish state? Since that is an obvious truism, based on the historical record and the clearly recorded comments and goals of figures such as David Ben Gurion, Chaim Weitzmann, Menachem Begin, Yitzchak Shamir, and Abraham Stern, why does DP omit it?
So when we look at the big picture, we see that it was Zionism’s lack of desire for peace and untiring goal of wiping out Arab Palestine that is at the root of the problem. And if Zionism was dedicated to, and largely achieved, the dissolution of Arab Palestine, why is DP so upset, and by what right is he upset, when some Palestinians want to return the favor and do the same to Jewish Israel?
What DP serves to us is the same, usual, tired Israeli apologetics that cannot hold up to the light of facts and exacting moral reasoning. He apparently believes that mistreating Arabs, when hundreds were murdered and over half a million were effectively uprooted and dispossessed, is moral or at least acceptable, but when anything remotely comparable is done to Jews, it’s the most monumental moral transgression to ever befall humanity.
The hard facts remain in spite of such silly propaganda: in the 1947-49 era, a minority of Palestine’s inhabitants, mostly non-citizens, shot their way into power in defiance of the sentiments of the decisive majority of its inhabitants, murdering innocent Arab civilians and effectively exiling some 600,000 other civilians because they didn’t happen to be Jewish. Every day that has gone by since then when Israelis and American Jews fail to recognize and admit to the facts and wrongdoing of 1947-49 is a day that they don’t want peace but a mere cessation of hostilities that suits their interests.
We can either continue to pile up pyrrhic military victories and body counts or we can take a courageous step back, admit to and repent of our wrongdoing, and seek genuine peace. That’s why there is no peace: because neither of these paths is easy. But one of them is right.
Whatever Happened To Michelle Goldberg?
7/11/06
She profiled me for a couple of pieces (one in Speak magazine and one in Salon) that were published in 1999.
Michelle was a delight. I wanted to talk to her all day.
I remember chatting to my friends about how adorable she was. A graduate of U.C. Berkeley (I believe), she had a 14 year old’s voice and manner that made you want to open up to her.
I found she’s now blogging on HuffingtonPost.com, where I found this bio:
Michelle Goldberg is the author of Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism. Esquire described Kingdom Coming as “an important work of investigative journalism, exposing as it does a mass movement with ‘a vision of reality utterly at odds with that of the secular world,’ that would use its power to impose a religious worldview on a diverse country.” Publishers Weekly called it “an impressive piece of lucid journalism” and a “carefully researched and riveting treatise.”
Goldberg is a contributing writer at Salon.com, and her work has appeared in Rolling Stone, The New York Observer, The UK Guardian, In These Times, Newsday and many other newspapers nationwide. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
July 11, I catch her on Dennis Prager‘s show discussing her new book. She now has an adult voice and manner as she argues her case. But I’m sure she can still be as adorable as a kid when she works her interviewing magic.
I find it interesting when those of us who can be charming interviewers are called upon to argue out our ideas. It’s hard to do both things well. I have no doubt that Michelle and I are better interviewers than pundits. If you are primarily devoted to promoting your ideas, you’re rarely going to be a good listener. If you are primarily devoted to listening, you are unlikely to be a good polemicist.
Torah is an instruction book for life, Prager says
TORONTO – If Judaism can