Sept. 16, 2020 - Dennis Prager Show
06:51
| 
| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| My last hope for America is the religious community of Jews and Christians. | |
| The mainstream Christian, Catholic, Protestant, the mainstream Jewish communities have failed. | |
| They're individually strong individuals, but it's irrelevant to the generalization. | |
| They are leftists with religious verbiage. | |
| So their last hope is the religious community. | |
| And that is why what Rabbi Mencken has done here is so important. | |
| Rabbi Yaakov Mencken, he's host of the Moral Heritage Podcast, organized a letter from a hundred rabbis denouncing the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is a hate group. | |
| It's a fraud, and people like Amazon rely on it for hate in the guise of fighting racism. | |
| Rabbi Mencken, I'm curious, have you gotten pushback? | |
| So far, not yet. | |
| We are waiting for it. | |
| We are anticipating it. | |
| The Coalition for Jewish Values, because we stand for rabbinic opinion in the traditional Jewish community, it's very hard to impeach us when we talk about anti-Semitism. | |
| That's certainly true. | |
| So they won't impeach you on anti-Semitism grounds. | |
| They'll impeach you on all the others that the SPLC is fighting racism. | |
| Which is ironic, given that many of its members have accused it of racism, and they got rid of their head last year. | |
| So, it is a certain irony. | |
| So, how much publicity has your letter gotten? | |
| Well, surprising enough, because Fox News picked it up, and it kind of went from there. | |
| Obviously, the more the better, because we do want Amazon and then other organizations to make the right choice and to stop relying on this ridiculous partisan hate list. | |
| But again, because we focused on the issue of anti-Semitism contained in that hate list, that's how we were able to add such a significant piece to this dialogue. | |
| So there are 100 of you in the coalition or 100 of you who have signed the letter? | |
| 100 signed the letter. | |
| We have over 1,500 rabbis already in the coalition. | |
| In a matter of days, we were able to get 100 of them to sign what was going to be a public letter. | |
| May I ask why didn't more of the 1,500 sign? | |
| There's a lot of rabbis in the traditional community who, because of the nature of their individual work, have to be rather quiet about which values they're pushing, even though they're things that we all believe, because they're trying to reach Jews who, as you described, have basically dropped their Jewish values for partisan, progressive leftism. | |
| And then when they're trying to draw them back, they say, you know, let's focus on the Judaism we all agree on first. | |
| And once we get you to understand that there's a thing about Sabbath and kosher and everything else, then we can get to those values pieces. | |
| So they wouldn't want to sign a public letter like this. | |
| So what is your answer to them? | |
| You did. | |
| Well, some of us have to speak up. | |
| I was told by a member of a very prominent outreach organization that we say what every member of their organization wishes they could say. | |
| Well, so, look, you obviously know how much I admire what you're doing, so that goes without saying. | |
| So let me tell you why I don't buy that argument. | |
| is tested at times in life. | |
| And ultimately, if fear of God is less than fear of the New York Times, I think your fear of God is wanting. | |
| Well, I think you have to look at it from a different perspective. | |
| We're trying to... | |
| the people working in that type of outreach, for example, are trying to reach Jews who do not share our values. | |
| If they speak up immediately on the values and these types of debated public policy issues, that audience will immediately run away from their synagogues and not return. | |
| Whereas if we're able to draw them in with real Judaism and the basics of Judaism, then they come to recognize that Judaism comes with a set of values that we all believe. | |
| And it's much easier to adopt that for a partisan leftist once they've understood what's really going on. | |
| But without question. | |
| But you haven't attacked the left here. | |
| You've attacked the SPLC. Our organization goes ahead and says the things that many feel that they cannot. | |
| Absolutely. | |
| Where are you located? | |
| Remember, we also only had a matter of a few days. | |
| Okay, that's fair. | |
| Where are you located? | |
| I'm in Baltimore, Maryland. | |
| Do you have a synagogue yourself? | |
| No, I always say that to be a synagogue rabbi, one has to have a loud mouth, no Torah, and like people, and I've only mastered the first one. | |
| That's an interesting attitude. | |
| Okay, that's fair. | |
| So are any of the signatories pulpit rabbis? | |
| Absolutely. | |
| They represent synagogues where the overwhelming majority of the congregants are themselves traditional Jews steeped in traditional Jewish learning. | |
| Given the obvious anti-Semitism on the left, not among liberals, but on the left, How do you account for the acceptance of the left by so many Jews? | |
| Not to mention the anti-Americanism. | |
| I'll get your response when we come back. | |
| Rabbi Mencken's Coalition for Jewish Values. |
Export Selection