|
|
March 21, 2008
Presenting the case for Judaism
At the 92nd Street Y, Dennis Prager puts forward some of the reasons for being Jewish.
CYNTHIA RAMSAY
New York, N.Y.
If nationally syndicated radio talk show host Dennis Prager had to make the case for Judaism while standing on one leg, he would say that Judaism is all about goodness.
On March 11, Prager spoke at New York's 92nd Street Y on the many merits of Judaism. He began his exploration of this topic years ago and has written extensively on it. Raised in an Orthodox home, he went to yeshivah until age 18. While he continued his Jewish studies, he said, it was not in a yeshivah setting, where he could only get "Judaism as habit, rather than as reasoned conviction."
Prager stressed the idea that God would not give us laws that were inexplicable, but that most of Jewish religious life is about the "how" – how to keep kosher and how to build a sukkah, for example – rather than the "why."
When he was invited back to his former yeshivah as a guest, Prager said he spoke to six different classes, asking the students in each of them whether they kept kosher, which, of course, they did, and whether they thought it was important for all Jews to keep kosher, which they did. But when Prager asked the students to explain why kashrut is important – without saying "because the Torah said so" – there was no response. The reasons for Jewish laws are not important to them, he said.
For Prager, however, the reasons behind God's laws are very significant. If we don't have reasons, he said, how will other nations find it wise to follow our laws?
Prager has done much interfaith work, with Catholics, Muslims, Hindus, Protestants and others around the world. He said that when he tried to form a Bring a Christian Home for Dinner program in Los Angeles, where he lives, it failed. The religious Jews he knew had no Christian friends, and the non-religious Jews didn't keep Shabbat. However, he was not deterred from what he calls his lifelong crusade "to make a case for Judaism." In that endeavor, he has written several books, including Why the Jews and The Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism with Rabbi Joseph Telushkin.
"I have brought many, many Jews to Judaism," said Prager. "And I have done so using reason."
The belief that Judaism only has something to say to Jews mystifies Prager. He thinks that if the reasons are persuasive, Judaism should make sense to everyone. In the condensed version of his case for Judaism, Prager highlighted four areas: goodness, holiness, joy and intellect.
"I have always associated Judaism with goodness," said Prager, as well as the need "to fight evil." He said that the teaching that God measures people by their goodness, by their actions, is uniquely Jewish. He recounted as an example the admonition in the Talmud that, when a Jew enters a store, he cannot ask the shopkeeper the price of an item he does not intend to purchase. In Judaism, said Prager, there is a preoccupation "in detail" with how you treat your neighbor, whereas other religions are more vague.
Expounding on the shopkeeper rule, Prager explained that people who are planning to buy an item on the Internet may go to a store, take a half an hour of the merchant's time getting all the product information, then leave. "In Judaism, that's a sin!" he asserted. That person has stolen the time of the shopkeeper, as well as having falsely raised his expectations of a sale, he explained.
If someone professes to be a religious Jew and he/she hasn't become a better person as a result, that person is doing it wrong, said Prager. Judaism and all of its rules are not for making people more observant, he added, but to make them better people.
Taking his arguments to a societal level, Prager said we must not only be good, we must combat evil. "A person who never hates troubles me," he said, adding, what do you feel toward Nazis and torturers if not hate?
He quickly returned to the concept of goodness though and noted that Jews and non-Jews should all be judged only on that aspect: "Goodness is the premium, not theology," he said. But Jews are more harshly judged in Judaism and that's what makes the Torah such a remarkable document in Prager's view. Most religious texts uplift and praise their adherents, he said, but, in the Torah, "the Jews are jerks." As well, the Torah celebrates good non-Jews, such as Noah, Jethro and the midwives of the Passover story. "I believe the Torah is divine and that is one of the reasons that I do," said Prager – because of how critical it is of its group.
With the Ten Commandments and the notion that people can morally progress toward a messianic age – contrary to other faiths that are circular, Judaism has linearity – Judaism changed the world, argued Prager. Christians understand this, he said, and it "will be a wonderful day for Islam" when it recognizes its Jewish roots.
But, in Judaism, "it's not enough to be good, you also have to be holy," continued Prager. Human beings were created in God's image and in the animal's image and each day, we have a choice as to which image we follow in action. It's not immoral to eat your food with no utensils – you may still be a good person, but you're being a slob and you aren't being holy. As further example, Prager said it's not surprising that Playboy uses a rabbit – an animal – as its image, because it is encouraging men to act as animals, rather than as holy beings.
The notion of Shabbat, a day of rest, not only accentuates the holy, but is also one of the many joys of Judaism for Prager. "I cannot conceive of a life without Shabbat," he said, adding, "Leaving the world one day a week is awesome!"
He lamented for those who do not set aside the Sabbath in some way, and not necessarily an Orthodox way. "I am convinced that the punishment for missing Shabbat is missing that Shabbat," he said: it gives you an inner peace that is not available outside of some type of religious commitment.
Happiness is important to Prager, who has written a book on the subject (Happiness is a Serious Problem), because, he explained simply, the world is made better by happy people and worse by unhappy people.
Prager said he believes in God, the Exodus, Maimonides' 13 principles and many other aspects of Judaism, and he lauds Judaism for letting "the mind go, for the most part." He asked, "Why demand of me things that my mind will almost instinctually reject," as do other faiths? Judaism focuses on our behavior, he stressed, and, while we all have good and bad inclinations, we're not judged by our bad thoughts, only by our actions.
"There's a lot of narcissism outside of a Ten Commandments-based life," he said, later saying that he trusts "those who base [behavior] on the Torah more than those who base [it] on their heart."
What children today are missing, he said, is the feeling of belonging to something that's larger than themselves. When asked if he is Jewish or American, Prager responds, "Yesh li sh'nei avot, I have two fathers," meaning Abraham and George Washington.
There are many Jews who want to be identity-free, just a human being, he continued, but that's not an identity, that's a biological statement. "To be identity-free," he said, "is to be like a feather in the wind." Judaism gives you a solid foundation, the stories of our ancestors, guidance for behavior and other benefits: "It is a sense of joy, of meaning," he said.
"I don't believe it is all pointless," that it's a coincidence that we went from amoeba to Beethoven, said Prager in response to an after-speech query about atheists, about whom he said, "I respect you necessarily if you're intellectually honest." If an atheist says there's no purpose in life and that we're just self-conscious rocks, that's OK with Prager. He is also fine if people who believe there is no objective measure of right or wrong acknowledge that this implies that the morality of genocide, for example, is a matter of opinion, rather than plainly abhorrent and wrong.
On the topic of why so many Jews are drawn to the left in politics, Prager pointed to Judaism's preoccupation with goodness, but, he said, the more Jews believe in Judaism, the less likely they are to be left-leaning and to need other "isms." He said Jews should be for traditionally right-wing causes, such as gun ownership, for example, because the biggest massacres in history have been committed by secular governments and that, if Jews had had guns during the lead-up to the Holocaust, the outcome would have been much different.
He attributed the hate of Jews to being a "hatred of God-based morality," citing a talmudic reference that, "The great sina [hate] comes from Sinai," where the Ten Commandment were given to the Jewish people.
The Hebrew prayers, however, were written by human beings – in particular, men – and so there are some aspects of the siddur that may offend modern sensibilities. Prager explained the verse thanking God for not being born a woman, as being reflective of the hard lives of women at the time the prayer was written – so many women died in childbirth, for example – which men were thankful they didn't have to endure. Prager bolstered his argument with reference to many of the strong women in the Torah and some of the weak men, as well as the additional commandments that men must follow and from which women are exempt.
As for other commandments, such as that of circumcision, Prager vehemently differentiated it from female circumcision. He said the removal of the foreskin is not mutilation and that, "We live in a very befuddled age, where a man misses his foreskin." He dismissed the argument about reduced sexual pleasure and, about the pain the baby endures during the procedure, he said it was minimal and that Jewish parents spend their lives making it up to him: "Jewish boys have never complained about being underloved," said Prager, eliciting laughter from the audience and answering the final question of the evening.
^TOP
|
|
