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May 11, 2021 - Dennis Prager Show
05:57
Why Judeo-Christian Values Are More Important Than Ever
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It's one of the advantages when journalists write knowledgeable books.
They're very readable.
The Unbroken Thread.
It's a great title, and I'll tell you why, and I know Sohra Abahmari will agree.
By the way, am I pronouncing your name correctly?
You're just pronouncing it like a Persian word, which I'm Iranian.
I've actually anglicized it, so I usually just say Sohra Abahmari, but I appreciate the authenticity of your pronunciation.
Do you speak Farsi?
I do, although it's declining because I don't have to use the kind of elevated literary Persian, so I can speak with my mom kind of day to day, but reading a novel would be a challenge now.
I feel the same.
I would find it very much a challenge to read a Farsi novel.
We have something else in common.
Though ironically, having said that, I could read it.
I wouldn't understand anything I read, but because I read Arabic, And I know the few Iranian letters that are different.
I could read it, but I wouldn't know what I was reading.
I do know one phrase.
Much more than most people.
Yes, well, most people didn't study Arabic.
I acknowledge that.
So I just want you to know, this is completely absurd, but I love the absurd.
I know one sentence in Farsi.
Let's go study with the Ayatollah.
Yeah.
What do you think?
Really good.
Really, really good.
But let's not.
My theory is, if I'm kidnapped, that is much preferable to where is the men's room.
That's right.
Unless you're kidnapped by Sunni jihadists who don't like the Ayatollahs.
Oh, that is a great point.
But I was thinking, yeah, but how many Sunni Persians are there?
No, no, that's true.
That's true.
Okay, so there we go.
I feel bad for you.
Come out to discuss your book and look at where I lead you.
Oh, I'm having fun.
Good.
Well, so am I. You are a gift to this country, actually.
So your book is called The Unbroken Thread.
All that we're seeing now is every thread being broken.
That's the point, correct?
Yeah, and in my case, a kind of personal one, because it's a book that I wrote for my son.
His name is Max.
When I started, he was two.
He's now four years old.
And the reason I wrote it is because I'm worried about what kind of a man our civilization would chisel out of him, and I felt I had to try to kind of lasso him and tie him to something better than just what his dad could offer, and that something is our broad Western inheritance.
And so the thread in the title is really about my trying to tie my son back to the thread that leads to tradition and ensuring that it's unbroken, even though certainly in our day-to-day it feels like we're just living very discombobulated, disordered lives too often.
And every thread is broken.
The thread to the founders.
The thread to 1776 for an American.
And not to mention Judeo-Christian threads, which leads me to an observation.
For all those who are intellectually or theologically uncomfortable with the term Judeo-Christian values, you are listening to the embodiment of Judeo-Christian values.
Of course...
Sohrab Ahmari and I do not have identical theologies.
Of course, he's Christian, in this case Catholic, I'm Jewish.
Correct.
But in values, they're essentially identical.
That's what Judeo-Christian values means.
So I thought it was worth noting that we...
I've never had an issue with that term.
I think there is...
Both sides can sometimes object to it, but I think it captures...
A real shared ground.
And it's valuable ground.
And if we lose it, it will be much worse for it.
And the second one says God gave the Ten Commandments.
One is engaged in Judeo-Christian values.
You believe that as a Catholic.
I believe that as a Jew.
That's what matters.
That's how I look at it.
Agreed.
There's an objective moral order.
Yes.
That's what brings us together.
And it could be found ultimately in the Bible and centrally in the Ten Commandments.
I don't know why that's not just, you know, yelled from the rooftops.
That's what we Jews and Christians need to do, is yell this stuff from the rooftops.
Agreed.
Well, your book achieves that, the wisdom issue.
How many kids do you have?
I now have two.
How old are they?
So Max is four.
That's the one that the book was for.
And then I have a daughter named Sarah Sina.
She's a year and a half.
Well, they're lucky to have you as a dad.
And I'm very touched because my father, my late father, was Max.
And I don't understand why Max is now in and Dennis is dead.
I don't get it.
Dennis is dead.
Is it?
Totally.
Absolutely.
I am the only Dennis in your life.
I am convinced of that.
In fact, my Persian friends have called me Dariush.
Dariush Pragerzadeh.
Poor Sohrab.
No, it's true.
Max is popular.
Max is popular?
God bless you.
It's all I could say.
The Unbroken Thread.
Sohrab Ahmari and follow him at the New York Post.
Thank you.
The book is up at DennisPrager.com.
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