Dennis Prager Show - Lead a Religious Life Even If You're Not Religious
Aired: 2021-05-26
Duration: 04:21


=== Why We Observe the Sabbath (04:19) ===

[00:00:01]  Science argues for a creator, but this hour is not to convince you that religion is true or that God exists even.
[00:00:12]  It is to convince you to lead a religious life even if you have doubts about God or doubts about the religion.
[00:00:20]  To find good people to have a weekly community with.
[00:00:30]  I have an essay in my book of essays called Think a Second Time.
[00:00:34]  There are 44 essays in that book on 44 subjects.
[00:00:38]  It's quite varied.
[00:00:39]  Can you believe in God after the Holocaust?
[00:00:42]  Can a good man go to a strip show?
[00:00:45]  I mean it's about all of life.
[00:00:51]  And I have an essay in there on what happened to me at the age of 21 in Finland.
[00:01:01]  I've been to 130 countries.
[00:01:03]  I started my world travels at a very early age.
[00:01:07]  So I went from the Arctic in Finland down to Helsinki.
[00:01:13]  And I arrived at the Helsinki railway station at around midnight.
[00:01:20]  And a very, very deep thing happened to me.
[00:01:29]  I realized it was Friday night, the traditional night of the Sabbath in Judaism.
[00:01:37]  And I, all of a sudden, having been raised with it, but now not observing it, it occurred to me that it's Friday night and there's nothing special in my life going on.
[00:01:54]  This special day is absent.
[00:01:58]  And I thought, I don't want Friday and Saturday to be just like Thursday and Wednesday and Tuesday and Monday and Sunday and so on.
[00:02:08]  I didn't want that.
[00:02:09]  I wanted a break each week.
[00:02:12]  It gave the other six days more meaning to have this meaningful break in the routine to do other things than work.
[00:02:29]  Or whatever else one does on a daily basis.
[00:02:35]  And that's when I decided I was going to observe the Sabbath.
[00:02:40]  There's a huge article in the Wall Street Journal on the Sabbath just a couple of weeks ago.
[00:02:44]  Huge article.
[00:02:48]  Maybe there will be a...
[00:02:51]  What was the word for the...
[00:02:55]  Reaffirmation of religion in American life in the 19th century.
[00:02:59]  The Great Awakening.
[00:03:00]  Maybe there will be another awakening in this country.
[00:03:05]  If the Wall Street Journal has a featured article on the significance of the Sabbath, and the loss it entails in people's lives, it is worth doing.
[00:03:24]  Again, the subject, whatever you believe or don't, it is worth leading a religious life.
[00:03:32]  Lewis in Jerusalem, Israel.
[00:03:35]  Hello, Lewis.
[00:03:37]  Hi, I was going to say Rabbi Prager.
[00:03:40]  Sorry.
[00:03:42]  Yeah, I think the letter of the law could be a very good framework to make good decisions.
[00:03:53]  That will make it likely that you can get to a good re-understanding, maybe of your particular religion, of God.
[00:04:03]  But ultimately, you have to go from the letter of the law, and it has to be the Spirit there.
[00:04:12]  That's my basic thing.
[00:04:14]  I live in Jerusalem, and I can't avoid the Sabbath.
[00:04:19]  Yes, that's certainly true.