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Dec. 5, 2025 - Dennis Prager Show
01:31:42
Timeless Wisdom - Faith vs Reason and Other Religious Conflicts
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Welcome to Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.
Here are thousands of hours of Dennis' lectures, courses, and classic radio programs.
And to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles, go to DennisPrager.com.
It is a pleasure to be here in London and for the final event of my Chabad Marathon, which has taken me from Los Angeles to London the first evening to Oxford for Shabbat, three lectures only inside of 36 hours.
Then a drive, driving to Manchester, two lectures that evening.
Driving to Leeds last evening, driving from Leeds here today, and speaking here this evening.
Tomorrow evening, well, actually, I will not let the Chabad rabbis know my plans unless they book me again for tomorrow evening.
But it's all right.
It ends in Philadelphia this weekend.
Then back to Los Angeles.
It is a pleasure to be here, and I am very happy, Rabbi Sudak, if you chose this topic.
I am both grateful to you and must tell you at the same time, not so grateful to you.
The gratitude is it is an extremely important subject.
The lack of gratitude is it's an extremely difficult one to speak about.
It is not one of these, not that I would trust any of mine are, but some sort of, well, just give me speech 802 and I'll supply you with the talk.
This is something I continually revise, have not given often, but it is extremely important.
And I'd like to share these thoughts with you, ladies and gentlemen, and then allow you to pose questions, comments, and offer alternate speeches at the end of my own this evening.
The topic is faith versus reason and other religious conflicts.
Let me tell you a little about my thinking about religious conflicts.
And it'll be a good introduction to the topic.
I'm writing a book.
I'm writing my third book.
My first two are on Jewish subjects.
My third is not.
It is entitled, Happiness is a Serious Problem.
And in this book, I note that one of the things that people often think militates against happiness is tension.
And I believe that many tensions in life are good and praiseworthy.
In fact, they make you the human that you are.
Only cows have no tension.
And while there are many people who, I think, aim to be like a cow, I don't believe that that is what the human is here for.
I like tensions.
I don't like nervous tension, which is for one reason I will probably not rent a car again in Britain.
But by the way, that is not because, just parenthetically, it is not because of the driving on the correct side of the road that I find problematic.
But rather, it is because outside of Beirut, where I was right before the Civil War, I have never been to a place with fewer signs telling you the street you were on.
It is a remarkable thing, and one has only the warmest feelings towards London while driving as a foreigner.
Actually, we love London, but that is the type of nervous tension we can do without.
The type of tension that I do like are the tensions that I will talk about this evening.
In fact, I must tell you, especially speaking at a Chabad house, where the essential work of Chabad is outreach, that in my own life,
in my form of outreach to Jews who are not committed to Judaism, and for that matter, to people generally through my radio shows in Southern California, I have found that just telling people that you are free to have tension with God has been among the most liberating things I have ever said to anyone.
It is okay to be angry with God.
It is okay to have tension about God.
It is normal.
Thinking, feeling people have those feelings.
How could you not?
It makes sense.
As I have often pointed out, including in my talks to the various groups this past week, when I have on one of my shows, my shows, I do a talk show in Los Angeles.
And I do all of my shows alone.
I comment on the news and then people call me.
But one of my shows is two hours, wherein I'm the moderator of a priest, a minister, and a rabbi, a Catholic, Protestant, and Jew.
Different ones each week.
And this subject frequently comes up.
Do you ever, are you ever angry with God, or better, do you ever have doubts about God?
And it will go like this.
Father, do you ever doubt God?
And generally the answer was, well, maybe in my early 20s I did, but no longer.
Pastor, do you ever doubt God?
Never.
Rabbi, do you ever doubt God?
Always.
It is very frequently it will go that way.
And by the way, this may sound to some of you as troubling.
Gee, why doesn't the rabbi come across as more a man of emunah of faith?
The fact of the matter is, that very humanity of the rabbi, in contrast to the seeming non-questioning of the other clergy, has always been a source of Kidder Shashem, believe it or not.
A sanctification of God before non-Jews.
That the rabbi was capable of saying, of course, I have real problems with God frequently, and that's fine.
As Elie Wiesel put it, and I like this, the solution to that problem is not terribly difficult.
As he has said, and I don't know if you've heard this quote, because the only time I ever heard it, was actually on a BBC show shown in the United States about religions.
And he was interviewed, among others, on Judaism.
And he said, it was asked about faith and doubt and so on.
And he said, a Jew can argue with God, a Jew can fight with God, a Jew can love God, but a Jew may not ignore God.
That's important, and that's an element in the teaching that I certainly do to Jews.
You can't ignore God.
Even if you're an atheist, you have to struggle with God.
But the struggle is a good thing.
Therefore, the end of my preface to the talk is, struggle is good.
These conflicts that I am about to say are the conflicts of thinking people.
Those without these conflicts, I think, are poorer in their lives in some ways than those who have them.
They are real.
They are part of being a serious Jew.
They are part of being a serious human being.
The first one is faith versus reason.
Now here, my own view is that faith and reason should never be a conflict.
That's the only one of these which I would say as a Jew, I never see reason for conflict.
But of course, it may depend on what your faith holds.
My faith, my Jewish faith, does not have elements that contradict reason.
That there is a God, to me, is more rational than the belief that there is not a God.
To hold that we came from paramecia to human beings solely by coincidence strikes me as less rational than it is rational.
To me, it is more rational that there is a creator.
To me, it is more rational that if God created me, he knows me.
I believe in a personal God.
Why would God create me but not care about me?
It's not a leap of faith.
There are leaps of faith sometimes.
These are not they.
These are in fact to me very rational statements, which are also faith statements.
Now, if you then go into absolute minute detail, do I believe that God instructed six hours between meat and milk, I would have to say to you,
it's based upon a Torah that is divine, but that God directly is involved in that mitzvah to the extent that he instructed six hours, okay, there there will be people of greater faith than I in Judaism who will hold that even there God is directly involved.
But on the bases of Judaism, I see no reason for conflict between faith and reason.
I'll tell you where there is conflict, though, and this is the more important part, and it will help explain a lot that takes place in contemporary religious life, not only Jewish.
And that is reason versus passion, not reason versus faith.
Here is the problem, wherein some people, their faith is so great, their faith is so total, that they have deep, deep passion.
But that deep passion does not come always with a deep sense of reason.
That is a problem.
That is a source of tension in modern religious life among Jews, among Christians, among Muslims.
Now, you may say, Lahavdil, well, whatever happens to us, you can never reply to any other group.
I don't believe so.
Well, obviously, I'm a believing Jew.
I don't believe that we are somehow spared the normative problems that face various groups.
Here there is a problem.
Can you be rational and passionate at the same time?
It's a problem because most Jews who are truly rational in their attitude toward Judaism tend not to be particularly passionate.
Those who are very passionate, and the more passionate you get, generally speaking, the less it is rooted in reason.
That is a problem.
That is a real conflict.
And here, I can explain it to you in any number of ways.
Let us take the Jew, for example, who cannot believe that God gave the Torah, but rather that it was compiled in documents known as JEPD, Jehovah Elohim, Priestley, and Deuteronomic.
How could you get passionate over that?
How could you get passionate over the belief that there are source documents that make up the Torah?
What is there to be passionate about?
That's obvious.
You can't get passionate over literature.
I know of no Britain, even though you are deeply proud of William Shakespeare in this country, I know no one, I've never heard of anyone who has a passion over Shakespeare as, let us say, Chabad has over the Torah.
And it is understandable because Shakespeare, though probably the greatest human writer in many ways, nevertheless, Shakespeare is human.
You don't get all that.
You don't commit your life to what you view as entirely human.
You need the divine to instill such passion.
On the other hand, if you say, therefore, I don't want any reason in my Judaism, I just want faith, don't bother me with reason, as by the way, I was raised.
In the Orthodox world that I was raised, reason was not given much credit.
You were just told, you asked the reason for kashrut, and you were told it's a chok.
It's a chok.
You cannot know the reason.
Well, I have always felt that that was one of the most destructive notions that I was ever taught in yeshiva.
It is still taught in some yeshivas, and it is still destructive in, I think, certainly in outreach.
Most Jews today need reasons.
Some Jews, it is enough to say to them, God said be observant.
End of issue.
They have the faith, they have the passion.
Most Jews today, as children of the Western Enlightenment, need reasons, and I am one of them.
I do not believe that God gave Kashrut, and the reasons are unknowable.
The reasons are profound.
We don't know all the reasons, but we don't know all the reasons for do not steal.
It doesn't say in the Torah why not to steal.
Well, you could say common sense tells you.
Well, I tell you, common sense tells you why to keep bakosher.
Common sense tells me that originally God wanted a world where we didn't eat meat.
That was the Gan Aden, Garden of Eden.
And then God eventually said, God gave in, as it were, to our Ta'aba, our appetite, our lust for meat.
And then there was a compromise called Kashrut.
I can tell you that there is as much rationale, there is as much reason in Kashrut in many areas, not the finest details, as there is in any other law in the Torah.
Therefore, let me summarize this part.
I believe that a thinking Jew must have both reason and passion.
That is difficult to have.
To me, it is very simple to do so in one way ultimately.
I believe that the Jewish people has a mission to humanity.
That fills me with passion.
I don't need every minute aspect of the Torah to be, or excuse me, of Jewish law, to be always pinned on God in order to be continually passionate.
On the other hand, I believe that God gave us the use of reason for a reason.
He obviously wants us to use it.
Why would God have said, that it is, that Judaism is your wisdom and understanding in the eyes of the nation if we weren't to use wisdom and understanding?
Two words that I know resonate well with Chabad.
Obviously, that is the whole point.
That we are to use our faculty of reason.
If God wanted halachic automatons, he would have created halachik automatons.
What is the point of all the learning?
Is it just to compile more facts or is it to use reason to understand what God wants?
So I therefore categorically reject a Judaism without passion or a Judaism without reason.
And let no Jew think that the two are in any way mutually exclusive.
Yes, there is often a tension.
Yes, I have tension over the fact that God told the Jews to destroy the seven nations, including the children and the women.
I have tension over it because my faculty of reason and the moral categories of the Torah itself make it a problem to me.
Is that a problem for a Jew to say he has a problem?
Why are we so afraid to confront that we have problems?
I don't overthrow the Torah because of it.
I don't overthrow Judaism over it.
In my own journal I wrote three years ago, Can a Good God Order Genocide?
And I explained how the conflict in me produced a rational understanding of how could someone retain his rational faculties and deal with the last chapters of the book of Numbers, of Bamitbar.
But just to say, well, beats me, that it's Geshriven, it's written, don't bother me with rational inquiry, is to really render 90% of Jewry out of bounds to Judaism because people need to use reason.
And even forgetting tactics, I just reject it as a Jew.
The greatness of Judaism, I would think, its unique greatness is you don't have to abandon reason.
I have deep respect for Christianity, deep respect.
But one of the differences between our two religions is that Christianity rises and falls on pure, absolute faith in a miracle.
If you don't believe that Jesus was crucified and died for your sins and rose after three days, forget it.
There's just nothing left for you in Christianity.
That is it.
That is not true in Judaism.
In Judaism, it rises or falls on what you do.
If a Jew says, I believe God gave the Torah, but please don't bother me with the mitzvahs, that is not exactly a normative Jew.
But if a Jew says, I will observe, and I don't know my own attitudes towards all the faith principles, you continue to go on.
As it says in the Talmud, Halavayotiya Zabu Vet Mitzvotai Shemaru, God says, is an amazing statement, unique to Judaism.
Better that the Jews abandon me, God, but keep my law, because through my law, they'll come back to me.
In other words, what is God saying?
Don't abandon reason in order to have faith.
Do the laws, which are inherently worthwhile, and then through the laws you will come back to me.
I'm a living example of that.
It is Judaism's excellence that brings me to faith in God.
It is not faith in God that brings me to keep Judaism.
I am exactly an example of what the Talmud speaks of.
None of this is theoretical.
So there is not a healthy development in Judaism if we think that there has to be this bifurcation between religion and passion.
One final word on the passion issue, incidentally.
People need passions.
And if they are not going to have religious passions, they will have secular passions.
One of my arguments for religion to secular individuals is precisely that.
Those societies which will abolish God as the source of their passion will create something else as the source of their passion.
It'll be Mao, it'll be Stalin, it will be Nazism, it will be the state, it will be art and beauty.
Secular society constantly creates religious passions, but they are on secular bases.
I far prefer, obviously, the religious God-based one.
The second area of conflict and tension is this.
It concerns the troubling issue of tolerance.
Can you believe that your religion is true and still tolerate other religions?
Indeed, respect other religions.
It's easy to tolerate others if you don't believe in anything.
That's what contemporary secular Westerners in Europe and in America feel.
I don't believe in anything, so I don't care what you believe.
That's easy.
It's easy to be tolerant when you have no beliefs.
It's easy to be liberal and tolerant.
It's difficult to be traditional or conservative or religious and tolerant.
And yet again, the two must live together.
You have to both believe in the truth of your religion and be tolerant of other religions.
To me, it's not a problem again as a Jew.
I am not here as a Jew to say to Christians, you're wrong.
That is not my Jewish business.
I am here to teach, as a Jew, ethical monotheism, or to be specific, the seven laws of the children of Noah, that there is a God and that this God demands ethical behavior.
If in addition to that you believe in Jesus of Nazareth, if in addition to that you believe that Muhammad, an Arab prophet in your religion, gave the Quran or actually wrote what he was recited by the angel Gabriel according to Muslim tradition, that is your business.
Tolerance should come easily to Jews with regard to other religions.
Because we are not asked by Judaism to say, you're all wrong.
We are asked to say, we have truth.
But we do not have to announce, you have lies.
It is not my business to assess the truth or non-truth of Christianity for Christians.
It's very different if a Jew wishes to have faith in Jesus, then I have things that I have to say to that Jew, and I've said it and I've written it on many occasions.
But to a non-Jew, I would go further than that.
And this is something Jews have to take seriously.
What do we expect if we don't missionize on behalf of Judaism?
What do we expect the 99.99% of the world that isn't Jewish to do religiously?
This is a question I have never heard discussed in traditional Jewish life.
And when I've asked this of traditional rabbis, Orthodox rabbis, let alone conservative and reform, there's generally been an admission we never gave it real thought.
But I'd like to pose that question to you, and I'd love to hear your comments afterwards.
What is the rest of the world supposed to do religiously?
You say, well, they should have the seven laws of the children of Noah.
Yeah, but that's not enough.
If anybody knows how much people love ritual and law, it's Jews.
Are Jews the only people in the world who are supposed to have commandments on how to live a good and holy life?
What are non-Jews supposed to do if you don't bring them Judaism?
This is not a rhetorical question.
I'm curious to know what you answer.
The trouble is Jews don't think about non-Jews enough.
With rare, rare exceptions, some of whom are present.
Jewish life ignores non-Jews.
The reason is very simple.
Most Jews are just happy if they're not being killed by non-Jews.
But that is a very, very primitive, non-correct attitude in 1990.
It was certainly correct for much of Jewish history in the diaspora.
It's not true today, and Jews must live in the present, not in the past.
In the present, non-Jews are open to hearing things from Jews.
In the past, it was not the case.
It was the case 2,000 years ago.
One out of every 10 Roman citizens, one out of 10 of the whole Roman Empire was Jewish.
Because Jews were so, so, to use a Yiddish term, fabrenta, burning with a desire to bring non-Jews to Judaism.
And Judaism is very open to converts, very open far more than Jews generally tend to see.
My colleague and I went through every quote in the shas in the entire Talmud on converts.
And it is so overwhelmingly positive that it shocks Jews to actually hear the actual quotes of the Talmud on converts.
But let's say for a moment you say, well, but it's not our business to make the world Jewish, which indeed is true.
That's not our business to bring the world to God and his ethics.
What are they supposed to do religiously?
I return to that question.
What is a non-Jew supposed to do?
Not steal, not murder, set up courts of justice, not eat the limb of a living animal, not commit incest, not blaspheme and recognize one God, and then go to work?
What if he wants to touch the holy with his life like you Jews do?
What's he supposed to do?
For this, I must say, Jewry has no answer.
Not Orthodox, not conservative, not reform, nobody.
So you can't say on the one hand, what you have isn't true, but we have nothing to give to you, that is.
That's not fair.
It's not fair, and it's certainly not Jewish.
That is why tolerance should come easy to Jews with regard to non-Jews.
The problem in Jewish life with regard to believing you have truth and being tolerant is with regard to non-Orthodox Jews.
There comes the tougher part.
It's easier to be tolerant of Christians for many Jews than to be tolerant of liberal Jews.
Or vice versa, of a liberal Jew to be tolerant of an Orthodox Jew.
This is a tough, tough issue.
And I am not here to offer you all the solutions on it.
It is something I have not thought through as systematically as I need to.
However, generally speaking, my own attitude has certainly been that you have to bring a Jew to Judaism.
Where that Jew goes is between that Jew and God, is ban Adamla Makom.
And we have to start Jews in Judaism.
Where they go, we will try to make them as authentic a Jew as we believe authentic Judaism is.
But we obviously would prefer that a Jew do something non-Orthodox than do nothing.
I would assume that that is to every Jew's desire better.
Is it better that a Jew do nothing on Rosh Hashemna or go to a reformed shul on Rosh Hashemna?
Is nothing better than something?
To me, the answer is chasm's, of course not.
Is it better that a Jew lead the most authentic Jewish life possible?
That's the ideal.
But always something's better than nothing, always.
Again, being in a Chabad house, let me affirm what they so often say.
That is exactly it.
They are often laughed at by other Orthodox Jews.
Ah, you have a Jew put on Tefillin one day, big deal.
But it is a big deal.
One act, one mitzvah, one time, is a big deal.
Ten mitzvahs is a ten times a bigger deal.
37 is 27 more than that.
That is a good attitude.
Now, what does it mean then to tolerate the others and their movements?
This becomes more difficult.
After all, if I sit in a meeting with a conservative rabbi or an Orthodox rabbi, am I not therefore giving legitimacy to that movement and undermining my own?
So I'll just tell you for your information an interesting story.
My program is heard by about a half a million people each Sunday night and Saturday night.
And so, obviously, if that's on any given night over the course of a year, millions of people will hear it.
And among them will be many, if not most, of the 600,000 Jews in the Los Angeles area.
That is an enormous, enormous number of Jews.
Therefore, rabbis love to be the rabbi of the show that I do with the clergy.
It gives them a chance to have Jews who would never show up at a synagogue at a Jewish speech.
It gives them the one chance to talk to these Jews.
I have a lot of Orthodox rabbinic friends, including quite right-wing Orthodox, both Chabad and non-Chabad.
And in the case of the non-Chabad, it was a very interesting thing.
A few of them, black hat, to give the cosmetic scenario.
Dying to get on the show.
There's only one trouble.
I don't do the inviting.
The inviting is done by the respective religions.
The Board of Rabbis of Southern California invites the rabbis, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles invites the priests, and a Protestant organization invites the ministers.
So they keep calling me, my Orthodox black hat rabbinic friends.
Say, Dennis, when can we get on with dying to get to these people with what we have to say?
You have so many Reform and Conservative rabbis on.
We want to get more of a chance.
I say, you're right.
Call the Board of Rabbis and get booked.
He said, yeah, but in order to be booked by the Board of Rabbis, you have to join the Board of Rabbis.
And if you join the Board of Rabbis, you're a member of a board with non-Orthodox rabbis, and we can't do that.
So I said, well, then here is a very simple question.
What is to you a bigger aveira?
Sitting on a board with non-Orthodox rabbis or not, or not speaking to hundreds of thousands of Jews about Judaism.
Okay, I put it in language that is very direct.
And lo and behold, one of them contacted Rab Moshe Feinstein, may he rest in peace, and he gave them a specific heter, permission to join the Board of Rabbis with non-Orthodox rabbis to have the chance to be Makari, to bring Jews to Judaism through the vehicle of the radio.
That to me was a very pragmatic answer on the part of Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, but it gives you an idea of what can happen when you are so pure in your thinking that you end up hurting the very cause that you want to achieve.
So, ladies and gentlemen, this issue of tolerance and truth is a tough one.
I'm recording it, so you don't have to worry if the tape is a problem.
The third area is science versus religion.
And here, Jews should never have any problem.
And here, it is so simple, I will be extremely brief.
The only time that science and religion ever conflict is when science tries to teach religious values and when religion tries to teach science.
Then you have a problem.
But Judaism does not hold that Torah teaches science.
It is not a geology book.
Torah means teacher.
It doesn't mean geology text.
And therefore, the irony is, in religious life, you so frequently have Orthodox Jews as biologists, chemists, engineers, and so on.
Because that is the area where they find no conflict.
You never meet Orthodox Jews who are professors of political science, professors of sociology, of medieval literature.
It's almost unheard of anywhere in the world.
But all the time you have it in biology and medicine and so on, because there's no problem.
Whatever science proves to be a fact, a Jew accepts as a fact.
The signature of God is truth.
It is not possible for truth and Judaism to conflict.
This is not the case in other religions, where very frequently the most religious among them have a real problem with science.
We don't, and it should never be one.
It is as simple as that, and that's why I won't spend more time on it.
A fourth one is secular versus religious in terms of effort in society and individually.
This is a complex one.
Let me try to explain it.
First, I'll give it to you societally.
This concerns Christians in Christian countries.
It concerns Jews in Israel.
When do you use the secular government to force religious values?
It is an extremely complex question.
When do you do it?
For example, should Israel, to use our problem, should Israel not have El Al flights on Shabbat?
To many religious Jews, the answer is clear.
Of course not.
Okay, of course not.
Should Israel arrest adulterers?
What's the answer there?
Adultery is in the Ten Commandments.
How do you know where to draw the line?
And by the way, I don't believe anybody does.
I don't think that there is an answer to this question.
It is just a serious one for people to ask.
Do you have transportation on Shabbat?
Do you not have transportation on Shabbat?
What about radio on Shabbat?
Where do you, at what point are you willing to say religion should come from the individuals and not from government coercion?
This is true for Christians in the United States who are involved in wanting the government to induce certain of their values.
They hate pornography, so they want to ban it.
Okay, I understand that.
But where does that line end?
And I'm not saying there's an easy answer to this.
My own general approach, however, is this.
Generally speaking, coercion does not work.
Coercion breeds contempt or automatonish behavior that has no kavana, that has no sincere intent, which is one of the more important things in religious life.
Therefore, generally speaking, whenever religion tries to use government to coerce religion, it works for a while and then it breeds hatred of religion.
Certainly this is true in Israel.
Certainly it was true in medieval Europe with regard to Christianity.
Part of the Western world's secular holiday is in reaction to centuries of religious coercion.
Nobody is angrier at the church than a schoolboy or schoolgirl raised in a Catholic school who is cracked on the knuckles by a mean nun.
They are the most bitterly anti-religious people, far more bitter than those who were raised secular.
Religious coercion doesn't work.
It only works for the little time that you can get the coercion.
Same in Israel.
I rather have half the Jews observing something, but observing it because they want to observe it, than because the government has rammed it down their throats.
It's part of the reason you have such sinachinam in Israel, such baseless hatred between secular and religious.
It's terrible.
It's a terrible thing.
And by the way, one thing I can tell you, you know, generally speaking, the United States is the most religious Western country of the Western industrialized democracies in terms of attendance at church, the number of people believing in God, and an afterlife, whatever.
Do you know one of the reasons?
It was one of the few countries without religious coercion.
Therefore, religion never could use the government to keep people religious.
It always had to make a good case, a good argument.
The very moment observant Jews in Israel can use the government to make Jews observant, they no longer need to make good arguments for Jews to be observant.
All they need to do is rely on government pressure.
When religion and government mix, it is religion that has hurt far more than government that has hurt.
Therefore, On the macro plane, the societal plane, those would be my suggestions.
But now let's talk about the individual.
You'd think for the individual is no problem.
If I'm very religious, I'll be religious all the time.
I have no secular interests.
Well, so let me ask you a question.
Again, a right-wing Orthodox rabbi friend of mine tells me that he gives his kids piano lessons.
He also tells me that in his little Orthodox community, he's looked at a little askance for giving his kids piano lessons.
It's Bitul Torah.
It's a waste of time of the kids when they could have been studying Torah.
I remember Bitul Torah from yeshiva too.
If you'd read something secular, Bitul Torah.
Is that true?
This is a tough question to ask.
Is that true?
Is a religious Jew's entire time to be spent in religiosity?
It's a serious question.
Again, I don't have any ironclad formula, but I want you to understand that it's a conflict that is worthy of asking.
Should the only people in the world who make music be Christians?
Is that what we're saying?
If we don't teach any of our kids piano, all melodies should be written and played by hired bands at our weddings.
Who's going to play this music?
Who's going to write the music?
Is it going to be true about everything in life?
The only thing our kids should know is Judaism?
Then who's going to invent the next vaccine for a disease that we inoculate our kids with?
Are you religious Jews not happy that Jonas Salk, a secular Jew, invented the polio vaccine?
I suspect you are since every one of your kids was vaccinated, got the dab.
Jab.
Sorry, jab.
Trying to learn British English during this trip.
Well, our kids got shot and your kids got jabbed.
And they did by the invention of a secular Jew.
You happy that he spent this time working on it?
Would it have been better if he only learned Torah?
These are real questions.
Questions that serious Jews have to grapple with.
At what point?
By the way, I grapple with it all the time because I happen to listen to classical music a lot.
And I read about it a lot.
And I want you to know, I ask myself all the time, since I make no pretense about being a finer human being thanks to my knowledge of Mozart.
This was the lecture I gave in Manchester, wherein I, it's an argument that I have made frequently and developed in my journal, which I hope you will read.
Wherein, let's not fool ourselves, it is possible to be highly artistic and highly disgusting.
Richard Wagner was a brilliant artist, a great composer, and a despicable human being.
Art does not necessarily make you any better.
On the other hand, did God not give us an ability to paint and an ability to make music and love music and cry at music?
Was it a bracha livatullah?
Was it Bitul Kishronot?
Was it a waste of abilities as well as a waste of Torah time?
These are very serious questions.
Ones that Jewish life doesn't, I think, frequently enough address, but they need to be addressed.
What about any time spent swimming?
How much is too much time for a religious Jew to spend swimming?
Is a half-hour a day okay, but an hour Bitul Torah?
Is 90 minutes Bitul Torah?
What if he's in great shape and doesn't need to swim?
So it's entirely recreational.
You can't even argue that it's in order for him to be in better shape to learn more Torah.
Purely for the sake of pure, sheer, absolute recreation.
No other purpose.
Is it wrong?
questions, serious questions.
I'll end with two more.
The tension between asceticism and hedonism.
I asked, when is too much swimming too much?
For a Talmud Chachim.
I have another question.
When do you spend too much money on yourself?
At what point?
For a man, is it on your fourth suit?
Is it on your 12th suit?
Is it on your fifth pair of shoes?
For a woman, how many skirts?
How many?
How many shampoos?
How many visits to the beauty parlor?
How much on a car?
At what point have you spent a hedonistic amount on a car?
And at what point is it appropriate?
Tough questions.
I don't have an answer to this, but I do know that it is important to ask these questions.
I did so on my show one night.
I said, well, when is it too much that you spend on a car?
Sure enough, man calls up from his car.
His Rolls-Royce.
Man calls up, give me his word of honor, and I had no reason to assume he was lying, totally sincere-sounding.
Man said, I'm driving in a Rolls-Royce dentist, and I want to speak to you about this issue.
And I said, well, let me tell you, I give a lot of money to charity.
I'm highly philanthropic.
And with the money I have left, I really like my Rolls-Royce.
Well, please, rabbis present, tell me if I have this wrong, but if I understand it correctly, we're not really supposed to give more than 20% of our income to Tzudaka.
There is an upper level, generally speaking, that the halacha gives as guidelines.
Well, is it true?
Should he give 50% away?
Did he spend too much on himself if he really did give 10% to Tzudaka and pay honestly his taxes?
The second usually rarer than the first?
Good question.
It's a tough one.
I don't know the answer for myself.
I drive a luxury car.
It's hardly a Rolls-Royce.
But it's also hardly a Subaru.
Tough questions.
But questions, these are the conflicts of life with which I began my lecture.
They are good questions to ask.
At what I smoke a pipe.
Do I need 20 pipes?
That's a joke.
Theoretically, theoretically, if I be truly ma'pi, really strict about pipe rules, I'd own seven.
So each give a day a week of rest.
In fact, in my case, six because I don't smoke shops.
So there you go.
So theoretically, I have six.
I think I have 18.
Do I have three times many?
When I'm in a pipe store, every other customer tells me they have 90, 100, 110.
Right, sounds crazy.
Sounds crazy.
And Meldon Marcos at 4,000 pair of shoes.
At what number did she overdo it?
Right?
At 206?
No, we all have it.
It's something fair to ask.
On the other hand, should we just argue, look, you got one suit, you wear it till it dies?
End of issue.
You repair it.
There are people starving, and you should live like that?
That's the ascetic view.
Both have legitimacy.
After all, does it not say that one of the first questions God will ask you, Judaism, hold this, when you die is, why did you not partake of all the pleasures that were permitted to you?
God wants you to enjoy this life.
There is an ascetic tradition in Judaism, but it died with the Essenes.
It's a long time ago.
It's okay to enjoy life if you're Jewish.
In fact, it's good to enjoy life.
Absolutely.
Sex between partners in Judaism, unlike many other religions, is for joy, not only for reproduction.
You're to enjoy life.
How much is too much?
From sex to shoes, how much is too much?
How much is too little?
A tough, tough conflict that at least I say in this arena, better to ask the question than even to come up with the answer.
Let it be a question in people's lives.
And it is something that Judaism could teach certainly to many Jews and others.
And finally, an unbelievably difficult conflict.
It regards raising children.
It is the conflict between giving them freedom and guaranteeing that they're Jewish.
Guaranteeing that they're religious.
Or better, guaranteeing that they're clones of us, which every parent wants, from baseball players, or in your case, football players, to secular people, to highly religious people.
Overwhelmingly, we want our children to be like us.
Said, Jews were hated because they were moneylenders.
Again, it is truly the cart before the horse.
The Jews were not hated because they were moneylenders.
They were moneylenders because they were hated.
Christians forced Jews to become moneylenders because they hated them and would not let them do anything normal.
Ethnic bigotry, ladies and gentlemen, I wish anti-Semitism were ethnic bigotry.
Ethnic bigotry does not produce Auschwitz.
In this country, I studied here for a year.
I recall jokes about the Irish.
Bigoted ethnic Jews.
Whenever a Jew says that anti-Semitism is a form of racism, I realize Hitler had a victory.
We're a race?
Since when are Jews a race?
Hitler says we're a race, and we Jews go, yes, we're a race.
Anti-Semitism has nothing to do with racism.
Can you convert to being black?
Gee, I'd really like to be a black.
Can I take a course?
How long do I have to study to be black?
Like to be a white.
Can you tell me what the procedures are?
There are Jews of every color, of every ethnicity.
God, look at the Israeli army.
It's a tough issue.
We want our children to be like us.
Do we want them to be clones?
Yeah.
Let's be honest.
Most parents, especially religious Jewish parents, but for that matter religious Christian parents, for that matter, Marxist parents, want their children clones.
It's a tough, tough issue as well.
At what point are you prepared to say, however, that I prefer that my child voluntarily accept these things than just to have it solely because they have no choice?
It's tough.
I'll tell you my answer for the Jewish people.
I would prefer that we lose 30% of our religious children to Judaism and have 70% utterly, volitionally choose to lead religious lives and capable of dealing with the secular world than to raise 100% as absolute automatonish clones of us.
That's not a traditionally offered answer, but it is certainly to me the answer that would most serve the Jewish people and Torah.
Because if it is true that we are here to touch the world, how will we touch the world if our children have no intercourse with it?
How can we touch the world if we don't know how to touch them?
This is a dilemma, by the way, I have posed to many of my dear Chabad friends because so many of the wonderful, and I mean that sincerely, I don't patronize groups, so many of the wonderful, extraordinary Chabad rabbis that I have met around the world, and I mean around the world, Guatemala, Sydney, Moscow, here, and of course in the U.S. and Canada, were not raised orthodox, let alone Chabad.
And they are so capable of touching other lives very much because they so understand where the rest of the world and the rest of Jewry is coming from.
What will be with the next generation though?
Will they be able to touch like their parents were?
It's an open question, open and very important question.
It's not only vis-a-vis Chabad.
Any of the outreach people that I know, there's a whole group called Esha Torah.
Every single, every single one of the rabbis in Esha Torah around the world was raised irreligious.
Every single one is a Baal Chuvah.
But their children never meet a non-Frum Jew, let alone non-Jews, let alone committed reform or conservative.
Will they be able to have outreach those children?
What language will they be able to talk with fellow Jews whom they never meet?
If the only purpose of raising our Jewish children is to keep them as Jewish as us, well, I got to tell you, you can do that, but you pay a price.
We can do that, but there is a price paid.
And the price paid is their ability to relate to the rest of the world.
The price paid is where is their own standing at Sinai and accepting God, as opposed to having it simply with their mother's milk.
It's a price.
You pay a price the other way if you have your children related to everybody.
There's a risk that they'll intermarry, a risk that they won't intermarry, but just not be Orthodox or not be religious at all.
There are risks.
My argument is: life is filled with risks and it's worth taking.
I don't like guarantees.
Excuse me, I love guarantees as much as the next person with my emotions.
But my brain doesn't like guarantees because guarantees closes off living real life.
These are some of the conflicts, my dear friends, that we have to face and not hide from.
This is a religion that is capable of dealing with the real world.
That is its great strength.
It is too good to hide.
The conflicts are real, but I believe that when a Jew understands Judaism correctly, when a Jew lives it authentically, with all the tensions that will be involved with the real world, that involvement with the real world will, in the final analysis, make us the horror la Goyim, the light to the nations that we are supposed to be.
Thank you very much.
All right, ladies and gentlemen, I'd be happy to take questions, comments, and alternate speeches.
And just brevity is the only thing I would ask, but you're certainly free to make a comment and not just ask a question.
While there's a little lull, I'd just like to tell you: if these ideas intrigue you, I've been writing for five years, a quarterly journal, applying Judaism as I understand it, which, by the way, is frequently reprinted in Chabad journals in a journal that I write, which you can subscribe to, which is up here, and as well as tapes of other lectures on many related issues.
That'll be afterwards.
My wife will be womaning the table.
And in America, we're very sensitive to these verbs.
Anyway, I'd be happy to take any comments or questions that anybody may have.
Please, go right ahead.
If I understood you correctly, and correct me if I didn't understand you correctly, you said that you'd rather see Chasm Shalom a 30% dropout, but the 70% of which remain should have arrived at their faith, let's say, voluntarily, than a situation to obtain where you had 100% clones.
That is correct.
Isn't there a conflict there between that statement and the statement that you drew upon, drew, that you drew down earlier, which says, keep my laws, and you'll find, through my laws, you'll find your way back to me.
What I'm saying is that if you have the 100%, as you say, clone, to give a cartooning statement, then those 100% who will be keeping the laws, they will find their way back through this same statement.
So why lose 30%?
The answer is, I'm not worried about their being lost to God.
I'm worried about their being lost to humanity.
That's why.
I have no fear about the 100% losing God.
Of course, they'll be God-intoxicated.
I'm worried about their ability to bring God to the rest of mankind.
And let me tell you why I'm worried.
Some of you may think, well, this guy's a real dreamer, and he's got billions of these big, high-falutin ideas about Jewish roles to non-Jews.
We've got more to worry about, about our own kashrut and our own kids.
I'd like to tell you why, therefore, let me bring it down to brass tacks.
Put it in one sentence.
If we don't influence the world, there'll be another Holocaust.
That's all.
When we hide from the world, we get hurt.
It's Inbrera.
The Amish.
I don't know if you're familiar with the Amish.
The Dutch Reform Christians.
Are there any here?
Well, we have communities of them in the United States.
These people can hide.
These people can hide from the world, but they don't have to worry about being put in gas chambers.
We don't have the comfort, we don't have the time, we don't have the privilege that the Amish have to ignore the world and just worry about keeping our kids perpetuating the group.
Because if we ignore the world, we will no longer touch the world with the values that will prevent another Auschwitz.
That's one of my most deep concerns why I adopt the attitude of the 70%er.
I want them to be able to touch non-Jews because when we do, we prevent Holocaust and when we don't, they take place.
Putting aside all theology for a moment, in real life, every study of rescuers of Jews in the Holocaust revealed the only thing that they had in common, only, was that they had had good, positive relations with affirmative Jews prior to the Holocaust.
That is the only common bond.
And the more we hide from the non-Jewish world, the more the non-Jewish world will ignore us at our peril.
So, I must tell you, I stick by my 70% rule without question, hesitation, or what have you.
Moreover, if we really think that the only way to keep most of our Jewish children Jewish is to hide them from the world, it is a statement of lack of faith in Torah that I personally do not share.
The Torah is too strong and too good for me to worry that we will lose most of our kids if we let them experience reality.
I disagree.
I know.
I don't want to feel partnership.
Nobody else raised their hand, so feel free.
Okay.
No one is saying hide them from the world.
That's not true.
No one is saying hide them from the world.
That's not true.
No.
First, you said we disagree.
That's fair.
Here, one of us is wrong.
You said cloning them.
Yes.
Say cloning.
You didn't say hide them.
That 100% hide them from the world.
Well, they're probably related.
That the basis has to be mutual respect.
You don't have to hide them from the world, but I don't concern.
I just find it strange that you feel that a greater degree of outwardness would in one iota have prevented or mitigated or minimized or slowed down the Holocaust,
whether that Holocaust was a Hitler Holocaust, whether it was a Stalin Holocaust, whether it's the type of thing that we're seeing happening in Baghdad with Sudan, because such a movement,
such an irrational movement based upon fear of the unknown, will not in any way, in my view, be influenced or affected by rationality or by any attempt to touch basic essential evil.
Okay.
First of all, ironically, you answered, you gave my answer in your own second part of the statement when you said that you described anti-Semitism as fear of the unknown.
My whole point is to make us known.
And the more we are known, and the more we touch people, I'll give you a Hasidic legend from the Holocaust, which is to be found in Jaffa Eliach's superb compendium, she herself an Orthodox Jewess and a survivor of the Holocaust in this great Oxford work of Hasidic Tales from the Holocaust.
It's about a Jew who in Germany who every morning would pass this German gentleman and go, Good morning, Herr Weber.
For years it would be, good morning, Herr Weber.
Not obsequiously, just good morning, Mr. Weber.
Well, as truth and legend would have it, the Holocaust began.
The Jew was sent to Auschwitz, or to, I don't know which camp, to a camp, a death camp, and Herr Weber had become an SS man, also sent, as life would have it, to the same camp.
And one day, this starved and emaciated Jew was standing in a selection line for life or death before Captain Weber.
And as the Jew's turn came, he looked at Captain Weber and said, Good morning, Herr Weber, and was spared.
If that idea that how we relate to non-Jews can affect an SS man in Auschwitz can be told in a Hasidic tale, then I think that we can say in real life that if in fact you are right, that no matter what Jews do in this world, no matter how much we spread the seven mitzvahs of B'nai Noch, it will have the identical impact on the non-Jewish world,
that we are literally banging our heads against the wall, then everything that I understand of Torah, Talmud, and Rambam has been undermined by that belief.
If we are not here to touch the world, what are we here for?
I don't understand it.
I truly don't.
I would have to relearn everything because the premise would become so absurd.
I have chosen you from all the nations so that you may ignore the nations and they may ignore you.
That is what you just preached.
A preaching that I find so undermining of Torah that it is painful.
It is just painful.
And I say this with all respect, but it pains me as a fellow Jew that a Jew should think that way.
Of course we're here to touch the world, and of course how we touch them will affect how and whether they touch us.
The other attitude, no matter what that we do, they'll hate us, is a recipe for being hated.
And it is not Jewish.
But I find unacceptable.
I see your point, and there is a certain logic in it.
I don't want to take more issue because it will take up more time.
Let me just ask before you do.
I cannot accept the statement in any shape or form that I would rather see 70% of Jews have the right decision through a voluntary means, with 30% having gone by the board, that's the alternative scenario.
I just find it totally unacceptable.
Okay, you bet you said the first time, so I won't review my response.
Anybody like to say anything else on anything?
Please.
You said that there would be no conflict between Judaism and science, and that we spent very little time on it.
Surely when you come to somebody who's basically a non-Jewish Jewish secular Jews call him, they'll immediately start talking about Darwinism and evolution and six days of creation.
How would you deal with that?
Well, I deal with it the way it was dealt with in my yeshiva.
Now, I don't know what is currently being taught in yeshivas, but the way I was taught by highly traditional Rabbaim was that six days is not necessarily a literal six days.
I mean, if it is now being taught that God created the world in six 24-hour periods, you're right.
This is a very serious conflict.
But this is a teaching that, if it's true, that it's being taught that way, it's being taught that way in some.
And that is certainly not the only Jewish way, purely within the tradition, to teach it.
In Tehillim it says, I believe it's Tehillim, that one day to you is like a thousand years to us.
And also, how could it be a 24-hour day before the sun was invented, which I believe was the third day?
So even if one is literal, you could still have millions of years prior to the third day taking place.
That is why I just don't understand if there is a movement.
Truly, and I'm not playing a cat and mouse game, I am unaware of where that is taught.
If it is taught, then those Jews have that problem, but they have created a problem where Judaism need not have one.
My answer to secular Jews on this is always this.
evolution is far more problematic within scientific circles.
In France, in fact, it is actually, in scientific circles, a minority view.
At least the way evolution is taught in most universities in Britain and the United States.
But if in fact it is actually just as described, the only thing I have to say is why is it less of a miracle if the human being evolved the way evolution described it, then simply literally from the dust of the earth, puff-puff, spontaneous generation.
Why is that less of a miracle?
If I said to you, ladies and gentlemen, I have made this cabinet here from a splinter.
Someone gave me a little splinter, and I made this cabinet from a splinter.
Or I just went, ye he, cabinet, let there be a cabinet.
Would you say that the second was just an infinitely greater miracle?
On the contrary, I think you would even be more curious.
The first second one sounds too magical.
You'd say, what, from a splinter?
This I have to hear.
It's too incredible.
So I must tell you, even in terms of God's greatness, why is it to say that we went from paramecium to human, that God did it that way, that that's less of a kiddush hashem, the sanctifying of God's name than simply in a literal from dust description that's why I just why do we need to manufacture problems when they're not there to begin with That's the way I would offer it to you.
I can only tell you, my brother at Harvard Medical School, it is there, he told me, that he truly became beyond any doubt convinced that there is a God.
It was studying science.
My dear, dear friend Dr. David Weiss, I'm sure many of you know, at Haddada Dassa Medical Center in Jerusalem, one of the leading immunologists in the world, same thing.
He says it is precisely his study of biology and the cell that brings him constantly back to a belief in God.
He's written this up in various Orthodox journals.
That is one of the, I think, that's why I said I thought it was among the easier things that Jews have to deal with.
Yes, please.
Your talk this evening was builders talk on faith view reason.
And you've been refreshingly frank enough to say that you have been grappling with these problems and that there's nothing wrong for an Orthodox Jew to grapple with this problem.
You've also mentioned the question of the Holocaust this evening.
Could you please tell us how you grapple with the enormous problem of an Orthodox Jews belief in the Holy Ghost?
I mean how you can rationalize Jewish belief and God and the Holocaust.
Okay, I will, and please forgive me for what I'm about to say, but as commercial as it may sound, I don't care.
I am more desirous that you read the whole thing than to have your pound or two.
I have written this up in my journal called God on the Holocaust, and there is a talk available on it.
I want you to know, therefore, that at great length I have written on this and it's available.
I can only give you now, as we say, Roshi Prakim, chapter headings.
And they are as follows.
I believe that if there is a challenge to the existence of God, it comes from cancer, not from evil.
It comes from natural evil, not from man-made evil.
God is not responsible for gas chambers.
People were.
People created them.
And for reasons that go beyond our time framework now, people are loath to blame people.
People will try to blame everything except people for evil.
Social forces, economics, psychology, sugar in their diet, upbringing of parents, Margaret Thatcher, and of course God.
You have to.
Well, I like Mrs. Thatcher, so I know.
But that's probably always that way.
Far away, they're always more romantic.
At any rate, that desire to blame God is, in my view, a desire to exonerate man.
It's somewhat easier to go, ah, God, forget it, I can't believe in God, or don't bother me with God, look at the Holocaust, than it is to say, look at what a mess humanity is in, and we have to do something about it.
You can't do anything about God's existence, you can't create a God, but you can do something about humanity's evil.
Secondly, I don't understand what in Judaism the Holocaust challenges.
I've never quite followed this.
If God doesn't exist because of the Holocaust, why did he exist after the Hmolinsky pogroms?
I mean, this is, I've never had a satisfactory answer from a Jew who found the Holocaust denied God's existence.
God exists after six million Jews die under the Nazis, doesn't exist after six million Jews die under the Nazis, but he did exist after hundreds of thousands of Jews were tortured to death in the Hmolitsky pogroms in the 17th century.
Why?
I don't get it.
Because it's 6 million and that was only 700,000 or whatever it was?
That was, by the way, almost a third of the Jewish people, just like this was almost a third of the Jewish people.
So I don't quite understand it.
At what number does God's existence become non-existent?
282,615, 2,840,000?
So the number argument has never been persuasive to me.
Secondly, the argument, well, can't believe in God, he lets 6 million Jews die.
So here the operative word is Jews, not 6 million.
But again, I don't understand that argument.
God exists if he lets 10 million Ukrainians die under Stalin, but he doesn't exist if he lets 6 million Jews die under Hitler.
Why exactly?
What view in Judaism allows God to let non-Jews innocently slaughter to death, but not Jews?
Is there anything in Judaism that ever said that God will not let Jews be slaughtered?
I mean, if there is, someone has to tell it to me, but it would be such a revelation to me, I would just have to sit down and rethink everything I have learned.
I don't know of a God guarantee to the Jewish people, I won't let evil people hurt you.
I just don't know of it.
It doesn't exist.
Moreover, if you ask from a traditional Jew standpoint, a traditional Jew can say that God saves the Jewish people, not Jewish individuals.
A lot of Jews died in Egypt, but God took the Jewish people out of Egypt.
A lot of Jews died in Europe, but God, you could say, I'm not saying you have to say, God took the Jewish people out of the Holocaust.
You could also say God didn't take the Jewish people out of Holocaust.
We don't know what God did during the Holocaust, which to me is the fairest answer.
But you could also say God took the Jewish people out.
I don't, I'm not here.
I very rarely argue theology.
I personally don't know what God did.
Whether he had a hand, didn't have a hand, had a little hand, a big hand, I don't know.
I do know, however, that God hates what happened.
I do believe fervently that Adolf Hitler's posthumous fate will be different from the fate of his victims.
I deeply believe that God punishes the wicked and rewards the righteous, or I would not be here tonight.
And those are my conclusions.
In fact, if a Jew who went through the Holocaust says, I can't believe anymore, I hold his hand, I cry with him, and I hug him.
But if a Jew who didn't go through the Holocaust says that, I give them a very hard time because I have never found that that was the actual reason that they don't believe in God.
I believe they use the Holocaust as an excuse for their agnosticism or atheism.
I never met a Jew who didn't go through the Holocaust, who believed in God before the Holocaust and became an atheist afterwards.
And if they did, I would simply have to ask, what kind of view of God did you have beforehand that let this demolish God?
I don't have a celestial butler view of God.
Okay?
I don't think that God is up there answering all my requests, or half my requests, or a tenth of my requests.
I don't know if he does.
I don't know if he doesn't.
My view of God is very different from many people's.
My view of God, but I think very Jewish.
In my view of God, I'm much more interested to know what God wants for me than what God can do for me.
That is how I look at it.
But I certainly don't believe the Holocaust poses any new questions, vis-à-vis God, that were not posed the day the first innocent person was raped, murdered, or tortured.
A long, long time ago, named Abel.
Yes?
Can we take that one step further?
Where do you stand in the question, why do the righteous or the innocent suffer?
Well, again, why did the righteous or innocent suffer, depending on is the suffering natural or is the suffering inflicted by bad people?
What was God to do in the gas chambers?
Come down and remove all the good people from the chamber after the door was closed?
Obviously, righteous people will suffer at the hands of the evil.
Why do righteous people get cancer?
Well, as one gentleman whose theology I don't agree with but whom I personally adore, Harold Kushner, said in my journal in an interview or debate I had with him, he made a valid point.
He said if a Tsaddik walks outside on a very cold day without a jacket, he'll get a cold.
That's why the righteous suffer.
That's a very light and simple taking answer.
Well, why?
Do you want God to stop pneumonia from taking place with Tzaddikim outdoors?
I don't quite understand the question.
What is the question?
What should God do?
Whenever I pose a tough question, I try to pose all the alternative possibility.
Should only bad people have cancer?
Is that what you're saying?
Well, then please tell me, what is the alternative?
One sees, if you like, the wicked and the virtued colours succeeding at times.
One sees people who have no faith succeeding or living a happy life.
One sees people who have deep faith or religiousness, if you want to put it that way, suffering tragedies, illness.
Right, so why not?
Why not?
What rationale can one give to a person who is suffering in that way to ease that pain?
Oh, that's totally separate from your first question.
You want to know how to ease pain or do you want an honest answer?
No, I'm not dead.
Well, tell me, which do you want, and I'll give it to you.
I'd like an honest answer.
An honest answer?
An honest answer is the one I first gave you.
That cells metastasize in Nazis exactly the same way they metastasize in Raoul Wallenberg's or Beautiful Jews.
That's the answer.
And therefore, your question presupposes a view of God I thank God don't have.
I don't believe that anything I do religiously is in order to protect me from suffering in this world.
I don't have that one iota, and if any of you do, wow, this is fascinating to me.
Fascinating.
I thought that my fundamentalist Christian friends were the ones who had a monopoly on deals with God.
Hey, I'll believe in you and you save me.
Now I'm coming to realize I'm dead serious.
And I don't mean from your question only, obviously.
But as I have more, and I have a lot of this with fellow Jews, apparently a lot of Jews, including religious Jews, have the same sort of primitive deal with God.
I'll keep kosher, you prevent diphtheria.
I'll keep real kosher, you prevent cancer.
I'll wait six hours and fast even on Shivaser Batamus, and you really make sure I don't get bad colds.
I thought that the entire purpose of living a religious Jewish life was to lead a better life, a holier life, a more moral life, and to be a light unto the nations.
I am now learning that a lot of my fellow Jews don't have that.
They got a deal.
God, I'll keep mitzvahs, and you give me more jabs.
Mitzvahs for jabs.
You inoculate me against disease, and I keep mitzvahs.
Otherwise, the question makes no sense.
Why shouldn't righteous people get diseases?
Because they're righteous.
But if it worked like that, everybody would be righteous.
What's the point of being righteous?
You're being righteous in order to prevent cancer.
That's no big deal.
The whole point is you're righteous irrespective of the consequences that take place.
This is very big stuff.
And I tell you, I thank you for it because I always forget I have to write on this.
It is so, I hear it so often.
A friend of mine lost belief in God after his brother died.
And I just said to him afterwards, I said, after the comforting part, that's why I asked you, do you want a lie or the truth?
After the comforting part, I asked him, let me ask you something.
Did you really think that if you believed in God, your brother and you would live, because they were unbelievably close brothers in middle age, that you would just both live?
Yeah?
He says, I just assumed I had that deal with God.
I must tell you, ladies and gentlemen, I mean, maybe under psychoanalysis over years, daily, an hour with a major Freudian psychotherapist, something different would come out.
But to the best I know myself, I don't believe in any such deal with God.
I don't keep kosher because I think it'll protect me.
I don't give tzedaka because I think it'll protect me.
That's an insurance racket.
That's with the mafia you do that.
Hey, I'll pay X amount and you make sure nobody bugs me.
I don't even understand that view.
I keep it because of how wonderful it is.
And because God wants me to.
Two very good reasons.
Now, I do admit that there is a price I pay.
I admit it.
The price I pay in my scenario is never with regard to belief in God.
It's with regard to loving God.
That I find difficult.
That God created a world wherein cancer hits dynamous people.
That God created a world wherein people have such a desire to torture and to rape and to murder as they do.
This bothers me.
This bothers me.
I have answers to that.
Another article is God Lovable last year printed.
Now, what would I say to comfort, now that I told you the honest answer?
To comfort the person, if the person's pain emanated from I did all these mitzvahs and now I am suffering, I wouldn't have, to tell you the truth, I wouldn't have any words of solace that I would know how to give.
It's true.
If their pain was the human pain of suffering, I have a lot of things to say.
I do.
A lot of things to say about suffering.
One of them, by the way, when push comes to shove and I'm with someone who's truly dying, one of them is, and there are many others, that I believe deeply in an afterlife.
If I didn't, I would probably crumble from the pressure of cognizance of evil, of how unfair the world is.
It is to me axiomatic that if there is a God, there is an afterlife.
The two go hand in hand, definitionally.
A good God could not create a world with so much injustice and not have some way in the final analysis of compensating for it.
But in this world, it is our task to minimize suffering, which is why Jews do end up so frequently inventing vaccines and don't say, well, it'll be okay in the next world.
Did I answer you?
Okay, I'm totally.
Fair enough.
All right, thank you.
Are the women allowed to ask questions?
Anybody on this side?
Going once?
All right, anybody on this side?
Yes?
Well, I am from that.
A lot of people say the reason why you carry out the mitzvah is because you'll get a reward in the world to come.
Who says that?
Not the Talmud.
The Talmud's ideal is that you don't do mitzvahs in order for reward, but rather because of, A, God said so, and you love God and you want to do what he wants.
B, schar mitzvah mitzvah.
The reward of a mitzvah is in its fulfillment.
And I believe that.
I believe that the mitzvahs uplift my life.
They are intrinsically rewarding to me.
Absolutely.
You know, by the way, this, and I don't mean to sound even quasi-heretical, but I'm starting to think when I hear that question in particular, I hear this not infrequently in Orthodox settings.
Apparently, a lot of Jews who are observant are not getting much satisfaction from their observance.
Because if they were, they wouldn't continually speak about how come we suffer, or B, at least I'll get the reward in the next world.
And it's something that religious Jews need to deal with.
Maybe there is something wrong in their observance because I have to tell you, that is not the ideal way to lead a Jewish life.
I can't stand it.
It's a pain.
It's a nuisance.
And so on.
And by the way, I mean, this is a whole topic unto itself.
This is the halachic system is so heavily weighted.
And by the way, there is a movement today to weigh it with more and more humrahs, strictnesses.
So that attitude will only have to arise.
It's a burden, it's a burden, it's a burden, so I better be rewarded.
Although, this is a very serious problem.
And those who constantly teach humrahs have to know the effect they're having on their flock is negative.
Negative.
can't do this and you can't do that and you can't do this and we'll figure out another way to make your life harder because harder is more Jewish.
Well, it's an interest.
There is an ascetic, it seems, almost an ascetic predilection within the Jewish psyche.
But I am reminded that half the Jewish people thought Shabtaitzvi was the Mashiach, and his motto was, Bitulashel Mitzvah Ki Uma.
Shabtaitzvi was recognized by half of Jewry, including half the great rabbis of the time, and his motto was that the fulfillment of a mitzvah is in transgressing it.
Which means that it's a very old thing in the Jewish psyche about a deep, deep love-hate relationship with the halachic system.
Another subject which I know is very frequently discussed in traditional life.
I said that tongue-in-cheek in case of battle is not clear.
Yes?
Don't you think that what you just said, going back to the clone situation theory, that if you bring your children up only as clones and not with any free thinking at all, that's it.
That mitzvah has become a burden, not a choice.
Oh, in other words, do I think that those two are related, is what the woman is asking about the clone upbringing and the burden element.
Yes, I think that they are related.
I don't think that it is inevitable.
I think that there are children raised in that environment who, and especially if the environment is filled with a great deal of love, come to identify very positive emotions.
So I don't want in any way to, because I don't believe it.
I don't believe that all children raised, even quote-unquote, clonishly, will walk around life feeling a massive burden, because if that's all you know and it was done with love, it could truly be a joyful experience in many ways, especially if you're never tested, especially if you remain insulated in the community that does exactly as you do.
But I have to add that there is a reality as well, and I think many here recognize this too, that in the halachic world, all isn't sweet.
It isn't as if the communities are just overjoyed with every other halachic member, because there tend to be very frequently halachic competitions in Orthodox life.
My humrahs are better than your chumras.
I'll show you my chumrah if you show me your khumr.
And this is a problem, and what happens is, and this is, by the way, I just have to say something, ladies and gentlemen.
I deeply respect Rabbi Sudak and Chabad for inviting me to speak on this, which I said was a difficult subject.
Mind you, my Jewish life is devoted to making the case for Judaism and to bringing it to others.
I think it's important that these things be aired, but please understand that I don't go through life just airing Jewish problems to fellow Jews.
But I do think it is critical that we do so.
But as I was saying, now I can return to airing critical problems.
Sometimes I have felt, not infrequently, that a lot of mitzvahs are kept more because of Yiratayemin than Yirat Hashem.
Fear of those who are to the right of me than fear of what of God.
The purpose of keeping mitzvahs is fear of God, not fear of what will they say about me if they see me walking with a skirt only up to my calves and not to my ankles.
To give one of any number of possible possible things.
And we have to answer to God, not to our neighbor who's looking out the curtains.
Or that's the way I understand it.
So that may be a burden on the children that we can't yet foresee, lest they even think at some point in a different way.
Yes, please.
The problem in either or, if I can see it.
Could you speak up so the man could hear you?
You're talking in the situation of either or, right?
As we said before, that it's got to be that it's better to lose certain setup and hold them with a real need, self, sincerity, and so on and so forth.
They come with their own delusions.
Why does it have to be either or?
If we have an educational system, which Jewish educational system, which brings our youth and our children from a quite a young age through orthodox commitment and chinoch,
but still nevertheless allows them and encourages them to reach out to people outside, whether they be Jews of lesser commitment or non-Jews, then we won't be faced with this either-or situation because we can have a potential of bringing up a hundred percent committed Jewish population who will still be able to relate both to the non-Jewish through the seven myths of Naya and to the non-committed Jewish people.
Yes, no.
Oh, I'm sorry, please, if you're not finished, continue, please.
Yes, I'd be happy to react.
Yes, there does not have to be an either-or.
In fact, in each of the things that I raised, I said ideally we will be able to blend all of them.
That was my ideal for every one of these conflicts.
I just don't want us.
I'll tell you why I raise it, even though I want your ideal just as you would like it.
We will raise our children differently if we adopted the outlook that I formulated.
If we adopt the outlook, look, the most important thing is that they could be Jews in the world, rather than the most important thing is that they be Jews full stop.
That's the difference.
If you add the words in the world, then we can come to the ideal that you would desire and I would desire.
But that's not how we're raising them in much of a from life.
And that's why I raised the issue.
The idea in the world is just alien to much of Jewish thinking today.
And we become more and more insular.
A Chabad rabbi in a city that I obviously can't mention tells me that the greatest obstacle for his Kirov programs, his outreach programs to other Jews, are Orthodox Jews on the campus.
They only relate to each other.
They never relate to other types.
And can't understand all of his inviting every type of person over to Shabbos's dinners and to talking with them and being with them and even, as he explained to me, having them as friends.
Isn't it odd?
I don't, how could your only friends be exactly like you?
No, that's something worth asking.
How many from people have as a friend, not as a prospective mitzvah doer, as a friend, a less religious Jew?
Period, and full stuff, as you put it.
We'd say, period.
Isn't that an interesting question?
I mean, you could say, well, we all like to be with people who are like us.
Is a Jew so different from you if they are a little less observant or a lot less observant but still feel profoundly Jewish?
Then you have to ask what has happened.
It's not true.
It's historically in Sephardi life.
One thing I have to say for Sephardim, generally speaking, the biggest issue in their lives, including the most punctilious observers, was not, are you as punctilious as I am?
This is, by the way, relatively new in Jewish life.
It didn't always work like this.
Jews are related to other Jews.
You were less observant.
You were less observant.
You're still a Jew.
You're still a person.
You're still a shepherd.
This has been Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.
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