Dennis Prager Brings Out Conflicting Emotions

How am I supposed to react when I see a person I went to school with for 16 years be the subject of an Op-Ed piece in The New York Times? And then, before I complete a blog about it, another Times article shows up in the Arts section Wednesday concerning a different controversy involving him. So what am I to feel?

Envy? Pride? Impressed? Depressed?

Conservative columnist Bret Stephens chastised Dennis Prager for recently tweeting the (liberal) media was a more existential threat to America and Western civilization than Russia. Among other things, Prager is dismissive of actions on college campuses that have shut down conservative speakers (https://nyti.ms/2tsxZIU and don’t forget to link to Prager’s online column for Townhall). 

For those who don’t know, Prager is a talk radio host, a prolific writer and co-author with Joseph Telushkin of two books on Judaism. Dennis and I were schoolmates through three different schools during our elementary, high school and college years. As high school freshmen, while our class was studiously trying to master French (ou est la bibliothèque?) at the behest of Mr. Rosenthal, Dennis was peering at a book under his desk teaching himself Russian. 

His intellect was what we would now call “gifted,” though back then, 55 years ago, it was unrecognized. We were in the B class. So was Telushkin. I spent the four years of high school in the same classroom with Joseph, but our ties go back even earlier. We were sleepaway camp bunkmates for four or five summers at Massad Aleph during our pre-teen years. Joe was not the best of athletes, but a fun guy to be around. 

In high school, he, too, never seemed intellectually challenged. One of my memories of Joseph was watching him play desktop golf during class. This was pre computer days. When I refer to desktop golf I mean there was a hole carved into the top of his wooden desk. He would make mini golf balls out of paper scraps, and from different spots on his desk would flick the wads of paper with his finger toward the hole. 

Aside from his dedication to the game, Joseph’s other defining characteristic was a spot of white hair at the front of his otherwise dark locks. He’s balding now so you’d never know it was there.

I’ve known for years, decades actually, that Dennis Prager held and espoused conservative views. Many, too many, of my Brooklyn Hebrew high school classmates do.

But I must say it goes beyond the pale (an intended pun, as the phrase “beyond the pale” comes from the tsar’s restriction on where Jews could settle in Russia) that anyone could equate a free and vibrant press with existential threats. It is widely agreed that democracy, a central platform of Western civilization, is strongest when the press is diverse and unfettered. 

Of course, voices on the left decry press outlets that advocate restrictive voting rights and repressive prejudicial laws while supporting a strong man president unchecked by Congress or the courts.

But let’s not give liberal media and activists a pass. Liberals have their own set of biases playing out in another Prager chapter. 

One of Dennis’ lifelong passions has been classical music. Often he conducts orchestras for charitable causes. He signed on to lead the Santa Monica Symphony Orchestra August 16 at the world renowned Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.

But his writings and rantings, specifically about LGBTQ issues, offend several members of the volunteer orchestra who refuse to play for him and want his invitation to conduct rescinded (https://nyti.ms/2vdl1OL).

So far Prager and the leaders of the orchestra are standing firm. Good for them. And bravo to those musicians who decline to participate. We should not condone intellectual boycotts no matter how repulsed we are by someone’s political or social stances. No one is forcing anyone to attend the concert or a lecture or watch a cable news station. 

Nor should we condemn individual musicians whose conscience does not allow them to perform. Keep in mind, members of Congress have chosen not to attend presidential addresses. Protest is a right enshrined in the Constitution. 

So, how do I feel? Sad, actually, that our country has devolved into a seemingly non stop pissing match where opponents barely respect their adversaries. Sad, because their antipathy often devolves into disrespect. Sad, because I doubt this condition will change in the foreseeable future.

From Israel It's Getting Harder To Be Called a Jew

First and foremost I am a Jew. Not an America-Jew or a Jewish-American. Just a Jew.  

History, centuries and decades old, even into current times, has shown bigots and anti-Semites make no hyphenated distinction. So neither do I. I am just a Jew.

Not a particularly observant Jew, as regards devotional prayer, though I attend synagogue services most Saturdays and on most holidays. I fast on Yom Kippur and conduct family seders for Passover. 

It might appear I am observant, but I am not. Rather, I am a religious Jew based on values honed by my ancestors over 3,600 years, from the example of Abraham to be welcoming to strangers, to the promulgation of 10 basic commandments by which to live one’s life, to the precept of Hillel that the centrality of Judaism is, “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn.”

Judaism, of course, did not stop evolving from the time of Hillel (roughly the beginning of the Common Era, some 2,000 years ago). As with other religions, evolution meant division, whether it was the Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes of Second Temple latter days, or the Reform, Conservative, Hasidic, Reconstruction and Haredi movements of the last hundreds of years that broke away from traditional Orthodoxy. 

Living as minorities in lands not their own, traditional Orthodox Jews could rail against what they considered unacceptable, even blasphemous, heretical alterations to their religion. But their anger and disapproval could not and did not result in physical persecutions, though spiritual punishments were meted out (google Baruch Spinoza to see how free thinkers could be treated by the Jewish establishment).  

No one, however, was burned at the stake. Unlike what transpired in Europe and the Middle East, no armies assembled and marched on heretics or infidels, no blood was shed among different sects in their ideological dispute about the ideal way to serve God, though, for the record, when Jews lived in what we now call Israel in the first century CE, fratricide did occur before the Second Temple fell. Indeed, some rabbis have taught that religious differences were the cause of the Temple’s destruction and Jerusalem’s defeat by the Romans.

Once Judaism evolved into a religion of rabbinic tradition, bloodletting was not part of its template.

Which brings us to contemporary times and a schism that threatens to do more harm to Jewish unity than any despot could have imagined. Israel’s multi-party political system has invested an ultra-Orthodox segment of the society (the Haredi) with power and influence that may well transform the country away from its pluralistic, multi-cultural, egalitarian roots into a repressive, religious regime that restricts freedoms and norms common to Western civilization. 

In addition, the schism has global ramifications as non Haredi Jews in the diaspora, despite their financial and political backing of Israel, feel marginalized by the Netanyahu government’s support for the Haredi chief rabbinate’s exclusionary dictums.  

The current fight is over two issues. The first is appropriate access to the Western Wall (the kotel), Judaism’s holiest site. The second is over recognition of religious conversions by non Haredi rabbis.

Assessing the merits or details of each dispute is not my intention here (you can research the issues on your own). Rather, my concern is the presumption of one sect to have the right to determine the religious validity of the remaining people who classify themselves as Jews along with their respective religious practices. (There’s no doubt they have the power to do so because of their leverage in keeping Bibi Netanyahu’s coalition government in office. But that power does not imbue moral authority.)

“The reason why Judaism is the only religion that survived throughout thousands of years and all the massacres and all the attempts to destroy it is that ours is the only religion that has always been the same, the way it was given to us on Mount Sinai,” Nachum Eisenstein, chief rabbi of eastern Jerusalem’s Haredi Maalot Dafna neighborhood, said in an interview with The Jewish Week. “Who gave you, the Conservative and the Reform, the authority to make up a new religion?” (http://jewishweek.timesofisrael.com/controversial-cabinet-moves-through-charedi-eyes/#.WWfrkaYWvOk.email)

On the other hand, as Morris Allen, rabbi of Beth Jacob Congregation, Mendota Heights, MN, wrote in the Forward newspaper, “The secret of our longevity during the generations of our statelessness was the vibrancy of open and competing views for Jewish meaning. It is evident in our exegesis, in our rabbinic texts and in our philosophical works. The imposition of an official doctrine is now sowing the seeds of our own destruction.”

Let’s put some of Rabbi Eisenstein’s claims in context: Jews do not practice their religion as given to us on Mount Sinai. We don’t indulge in ritual sacrifices. Prayer was not authorized on Mount Sinai. It is an invention of rabbis, a substitute for ritual sacrifices. Indeed, the position of rabbi was not part of the revelation. It is a construct centuries in the making. After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, Judaism evolved into a set of rules promulgated by rabbis in diverse regions, generally agreed to by a majority but not the totality of Jews. To this day there are rabbis who issue guidelines on what is acceptable Jewish practice given changes in society and technology. But they are not universally accepted as gospel by all denominations. 

So who’s to say Judaic law has to be rigidly set in stone, so to speak? 

Apparently, the Haredi, under the auspices of the chief rabbinate of Israel, do. Their followers have even gone so far as to assert Reform, Reconstruction and Conservative Jews are not really Jewish. Sounds like the Sunni-Shia battle without the bombings.

It is ironic to note that even as Israel is fighting a political battle around the world against forces that want to delegitimize its existence, its Haredi rabbinate, with a complicit Netanyahu government, is engaged in a process to delegitimize the authenticity and practices of a majority of Jews the world over. 

Regrettably, in Israel too many Jews, the vast majority of whom are secular, do not really care about egalitarian access to the Western Wall or control over conversion policies unless they are personally affected when a marriage inside Israel is proposed. But diaspora Jews do care and claim skin in the game because of their previously unflinching support for the state of Israel. 

I agree with Rabbi Allen: “The unhealthy and unwise intertwined relationship between a state and a particular stream of Judaism is destroying the contours of the Jewish people. There can be no possibility of restoring the glitter and joy of being Jewish when an official state religion dices and slices our people apart.” (http://forward.com/opinion/israel/376654/i-was-blacklisted-by-israels-chief-rabbinate/)

Here’s an example of that slicing and dicing. According to the Associated Press, “Israel’s Chief Rabbinate has compiled a blacklist of overseas rabbis whose authority they refuse to recognize when it comes to certifying the Jewishness of someone who wants to get married in Israel.” The list includes 160 rabbis from 24 countries.

Israel’s Jewish future, of course, involves more than just prayer at the kotel and conversion laws. How Israel deals with the Palestinians within the land captured in the Six Day War 50 years ago is a stress point separate and apart from the religious issues. 

I don’t have a solution for any of these trouble spots. But as a Jew I am conflicted by any attempt to minimize my Jewishness, regardless of its originator. 

So I read. Here are a few recent articles worth considering.: 

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/israelis-dont-care-that-youre-insulted-an-open-letter-to-american-jews/

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Is-Jewish-unity-an-Israeli-national-security-issue-499315

https://nyti.ms/2u7Etwl

Lessons to be Learned

Spent an engrossing 95 minutes Tuesday afternoon watching The Gatekeepers, the Academy Award-nominated documentary that interviewed six former heads of Shin Bet, the Israeli internal security service.

I won't bias your opinion of this film by injecting my analysis of the merits of what was conveyed by them.  I urge all to see it. It’s a refreshing presentation of ideas and events from key participants in Israel’s history since 1967. I was captivated by the candor of these six men, especially when I compare two interviews I saw and heard with former Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O’Connor this week. She's promoting a new book she wrote about the Court, but when pressed by Leonard Lopate of WNYC-NPR or Jon Stewart of The Daily Show for specific insights into the inner workings of the Court, the best they were able to elicit was the fact that when the justices get together for lunch they individually order food from the Supreme Court building cafeteria.

What I do want to highlight from the film it how fragile relationships between peoples—especially enemies—can be. They can turn on a phrase spoken with casual sincerity but unintended consequences. Shortly after Israel took control of the West Bank and Gaza and their more than one million Palestinians after the Six Day War in 1967, Israel undertook a census of the territories. As one of the Shin Bet directors recounted, Israelis would knock on Palestinian doors, announce themselves, and say in Arabic they were there to “count the men.” But the word for “count” sounds disastrously close to another word that would not instill confidence or bonhomie. That other word is “castrate.” Whether it was Israeli mispronunciation or Palestinian mishearing, a casualty of understanding ensued.

Which brings me to my own experience with language, in my case, English. If you’ve ever tried to teach English to anyone from a non-English speaking country, you would know that English is a darn hard language to learn. Too many words sound alike. Too many words have multiple meanings. Too many words, depending on their usage, can be either nouns or verbs, or adjectives. 

For more than a year I have been tutoring English as Second Language students at our high school during their study hall. I stay away from math assignments. English. History. Geography. Simple science lessons. I'm pretty good at imparting some knowledge in those subjects.

But the lessons aren’t always easy. It doesn’t help that my Spanish (most of the students are from Latin America) is limited to 20 words or so. I had a major breakthrough today. Trying to explain “cowgirl,” I made little headway saying it was a female cowboy. The student had no idea what a cowboy was. Fortunately, all those years watching westerns paid off. I said “vaquero.” A connection was made.

It’s not always that simple, or lucky. Today I was helping a student study vocabulary. He had to identify words as nouns, verbs or adjectives and define them. Sounds straight forward. Only trouble was many of the words crossed over into multiple designations. Words like “cheer.”  Or “refuse.” How did you read refuse—as a verb (re-fuse) or as a noun (ref-use)?   

What about homonyms, such as profit and prophet. The other day a girl asked about Judaism, Christianity and Islam. When I started to tell her about the prophets Moses and Mohammed, she became bewildered. She wanted to know why I was talking about money.

Learning to master a language means learning idioms. Today’s idioms included “putting one’s foot in one’s mouth,” “get out of the car and assume the position,” and “no good deed goes unpunished.” 

I try to spend two hours a day, several times a week, tutoring. Sometimes, real estate work intrudes on my time commitment. So do food deliveries to seniors on Wednesdays. Don’t presume going to the Tuesday movies does—school ends hours before the first screening of the day. Helping these kids gain a better understanding of their new surroundings is among the most gratifying work I’ve ever done. When it’s your turn to retire, you could find few pursuits more fulfilling, rewarding and necessary than spending time assisting ESOL students acclimate to America.

Some Common Sense Thoughts

Fourteen years ago this week my father died. It was on December 27 by the Gregorian calendar, this past Saturday, the 9th of Tevet, by the Jewish calendar. I lit a 24-hour yahrzeit memorial candle Friday night. It lasted 30 hours. 

Saturday morning while reciting the kaddish memorial prayer, as I have done several times every year since his death, I found myself for the first time really visualizing different scenes of my father—working in his factory; sitting in his office; his back straight, left arm extended, dancing a waltz with my mother; driving his Buick; giving his first grandchild, Eric, a horsey ride on his back. I can’t explain why such memories had never been evoked before.  

Common Sense: Perhaps I’m not fully tuned into the value of this research, but a team from Tulane University, Carnegie Mellon University, the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology examined patterns of heat-related deaths between 1900 and 2004. Lo and behold, they discovered in the absence of air conditioning more people died from excessive heat. 

When temperatures rose above 90 degrees Fahrenheit, about 600 more premature deaths occurred annually between 1960 and 2004. Those deaths were just one-sixth as many as would have occurred under pre-1960 conditions, before air conditioning became prevalent throughout our country, they reasoned (http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/study-home-air-conditioning-cut-premature-deaths-on-hot-days-80-percent-since-1960/2012/12/22/5b57f3ac-4abf-11e2-b709-667035ff9029_story.html). Now, I ask you, did we really need to spend money to figure this out?

Sure, the researchers will tell you such a study could influence the adoption of air conditioning in tropical climates as in India or Southeast Asia, but again, I ask, wouldn’t common sense have suggested that? 

Today’s Hypocrisy Award goes to ... Senate Republicans. Eight years ago John Kerry was swift-boated by Republicans when he ran for president. Now, the GOP is seemingly forgiving his alleged anti-Americanism by declaring him suitable to be the top diplomat of the United States, succeeding Hillary Clinton as secretary of state. Just another example of politics being one of the sleaziest and least trustworthy professions.

Giant Fall: As bad as the NY Jets have been this football season, the despair surrounding the NY Giants after a second consecutive humiliating defeat far exceeds that felt by any Gang Green fan. It’s difficult to repeat as Super Bowl champion, so realistically few Giants fans should have expected Big Blue to win again, even after a 6-2 start. But the team’s collapse over the last two months has far exceeded even the most level-headed fan’s expectations. Even if the Giants somehow make the playoffs they don’t really deserve to be considered an elite team. 

The winner of their division will be either the Dallas Cowboys, a team I loathe, or the Washington Redskins, a team I can’t stand, and not just because it’s my brother’s team (sibling rivalry) but also because of the obnoxious song they play after each of their scores during home games. The Cowboys play the Redskins in Washington this Sunday. Push comes to shove, I’m rooting for the ‘Skins.

More on Tyranny: The other day I lambasted Grover Norquist and Wayne LaPierre for being unelected officials who have imposed a form of tyranny in our land by restraining elected officials from mustering enough votes to pass needed tax increases on the wealthy and gun control laws. 

Today’s focus is international, not the tyranny of dictators such as Assad, but rather the tyranny of close-minded religious leaders in Israel and spineless government officials who have ceded them far too much authority over everyday life in the country, in particular religious practice at the Western Wall Plaza in Jerusalem, the outer portion of the Temple grounds destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE. Their hidebound ideas are turning the Western Wall back into a Wailing Wall.

For those not aware, given jurisdiction over the area, the ultra-Orthodox segregate women from men at the Wall plaza. They further deny them the right to wear prayer shawls and other religious garments there. Women of the Wall, and their sympathizers, have been fighting these restrictions for decades, with the hope that a new review ordered by the prime minister will make the zone more egalitarian (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/26/world/middleeast/israeli-law-curbing-womens-prayer-up-for-review.html?_r=0). 

When Gilda and I visited the Wall in 1976, she was not shunted off to one side. She stood and prayed next to me. It is troubling that successive governments have since courted religious party votes by granting them authority to impose restrictions at historical religious sites, especially when one considers that at different parts of the Wall, near Robinson’s Arch and in the tunnel beneath the Wall (the closest point to the Holy of Holies of the Temple), women are allowed to pray without restrictions. 

Westerners often decry the reactionary practices (at least in their minds) of Islam. Judaism has advanced past lopping the hands off robbers or stoning adulterers, but the treatment of women by the ultra-Orthodox is still stuck in the Middle Ages, or earlier. 

Memorial Day Thoughts

Madonna and Lady Gaga are no strangers to controversy. Now they are providing an almost parallel case study of tolerance by two of the worlds great religions, Islam and Judaism. Lady Gaga had to cancel her June 3 concert in Jakarta, Indonesia, after fundamentalists railed against her as a devil, not being in the best interest of Islamic morals. Violence was threatened. 

Madonna, meanwhile, has been targeted by Jewish extremists. Her concert in Tel Aviv Thursday is still on but there's no guarantee she will not submit to religious pressure, too, or that protests could mar the event.

FYI, Lady Gaga has scheduled a Tel Aviv concert for August.

On another religious note, here's something I overheard in a car full of teenagers last week: “Why is the devil evil if he punishes bad people?” Feel free to discuss among yourselves.

One of the most emailed stories from The NY Times last week profiled Robert Page, the founder and CEO of Replacements Limited (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/26/business/replacements-limiteds-stand-for-gay-marriage-draws-repercussions.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&pagewanted=all&adxnnlx=1338241661-BqQxE1UZC3c8Xh5s2X9OYA). Replacements is a host’s salvation for filling in missing or broken pieces of discontinued china, crystal and flatware. 

Page outwardly supported opposition to the North Carolina constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, a position that has hurt Replacements’ business. Page is gay; with his partner of 23 years he is the parent of 13-year-old twins adopted in 1999 in Vietnam.

I've known Page since 1991 when my magazine profiled him as an Entrepreneur of the Year selected by Ernst & Young. About 10 years ago I visited Page in his showroom outside Greensboro, N.C. He couldn’t have been more gracious and proud of his company.

I know all the reasons businessmen avoid taking public stands on controversial issues. Here are two comments posted on The Times Web site about the story. They pretty much capture the sentiment surrounding the plus and minus of speaking out: 

“Any smart business person will tell you that picking a public political fight is almost always bad for business. Good intentions rarely bring profits,” said Robert from Tuckahoe.

On the other hand, Rob from New York City said, “How sad more people aren't like Mr. Page and stand up for what is right. ‘All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.’” That quote is from Edmund Burke.

I wonder if Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana believes in that quote. Recently defeated in a Republican primary by a conservative candidate who has openly said he would not compromise with Democrats (actually, Richard Mourdock said his view of bipartisanship entails Democrats acceding to GOP positions), Lugar told CBS’ Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer Sunday he has no plans to campaign for Mourdock. As part of his explanation for being defeated, Lugar opined, “A large portion of the Republican Party of Indiana believed, apparently, in the idea of individualism as opposed to community, a sense of compromise, or a sense of talking across the aisle."

Fair enough, but if he were truly a patriot, Lugar would campaign against such narrow-mindedness. He’d put country over party. If he truly believes Mourdock and those similar to him, who have taken control of the Republican Party and turned it into a bastion of individualism versus community, how could he not support candidates who would embrace compromise, even if they are Democrats?

It’s taken me two weeks to get to it, but I’ve started to fill out the crossword puzzle from the May 13 Sunday NY Times Magazine. Lo and behold, I’ve uncovered an anti-birther bias. The correct answer to the clue for 41 Down, “Obama’s birthplace,” is “Hawaii.” 

Take that, you skeptics, including the secretary of state of Arizona (who just dropped his threat to keep Obama off the ballot if he couldn’t verify his birth certificate), Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona who has fielded a voluntary investigation unit into the matter in Hawaii, and Donald Trump who once again is stoking the fires of disbelief Barack Obama was born in the United States and qualifies to be president.

Ah, well, it’s Memorial Day, a time to reflect on the service and sacrifice men and women provided our country in support of the liberties we hold dear, including the right to challenge reality. Last evening Gilda and I had the pleasure of spending time with a veteran of World War II, Herb Bilus, and his family. Herb served in the Coast Guard and was part of a landing craft team that ferried troops to the shores of Normandy on D-Day. At 91, he’s slow afoot but still sharp as a tack. 

Memorial Day weekend has special significance for our family, as well. Twelve years ago, at the national collegiate Ultimate Frisbee championships in Boise, Idaho, our son Dan started dating Allison. Six years later they married.