Dennis Prager Show - Timeless Wisdom - The Gods of Modern Men and Women

Dec. 6, 2025 - Dennis Prager Show

01:18:06

Timeless Wisdom - The Gods of Modern Men and Women

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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.
	The false gods of modern men and women, and that's exactly what I'm going to speak about.
	Let me tell you why it's so important and why it's so Jewish.
	We are the idol-smashing people.
	Any of you who have gone to Hebrew school, let alone to anything more intense like a yeshiva, as I did, must be familiar with the old legends of Judaism of Abraham, the first Jew.
	And what did Abraham's father do for a living?
	Anybody recall?
	Of all things, right, he was an idol maker, right?
	You know, it was a brilliant idea of the rabbis to make the first Jew the son of an idol maker.
	And what do you learn?
	That he became disenchanted with his father's mode of living.
	It struck him as a rather bizarre thing that it just didn't work.
	After all, they were man-made and it didn't work.
	And so the legend goes, he finally figured out that there was something higher and then something higher than even the sun and the moon and so on and came to the realization that there is a God.
	What is important about that are two things.
	One, that our origins are to smash idols, to smash false gods.
	The second interesting part, though, that is not usually noted, but I note because that is my own attitude, is that Abraham came to the one God by first ruling out the other ones.
	That is how this Jew comes to God.
	I have not been given by God easy faith.
	I am not a walking man of faith.
	I am a walking man of a rationality and therefore great tension with regard to God and with regard to faith and certainly with regard to the great mitzvah of loving God.
	I always say that I believe in God after Auschwitz, but I find it hard to love God after Auschwitz.
	And that's a problem unto itself, which is something that we can speak about, but I'm not going to get into right at this moment.
	What really brings me back to God all the time are the alternatives.
	In my book, The Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism, which is co-authored with Joseph Talushkin, we each wrote a short forward or preface.
	And in mine, I began as follows.
	People often ask me why I came back to Judaism.
	I saw the rest of the world, I tell them.
	That is how I begin my forward to the book.
	And it's the truth.
	It was not only the positive nature of Judaism which attracted me to Judaism.
	It was the alternatives were so glaring to me that they forced me back into taking Judaism seriously.
	I say this with some trepidation, lest it be misinterpreted as not enthusiastic enough, but my enthusiasm for Judaism is fairly well known, and certainly last night I made it clear.
	But on one level, I would say about Judaism what Churchill said about democracy.
	It's the worst form of government, except for all the others.
	In other words, there's no alternative to democracy.
	Democracy is filled with flaws.
	What if the people are stupid?
	They'll elect a stupid leader.
	But that's what democracy is.
	What is your choice?
	Have a smart dictator?
	No, I mean, think about it.
	I mean, this very seriously.
	There is no choice to democracy, but it's filled with flaws.
	Judaism, I don't know of a choice to.
	But I certainly deeply respect, deeply respect, not just tolerate, respect Christianity, as is practiced by very many Christians today.
	I have, in fact, I am a very big believer that Jews should help Christianity prevail because I am convinced that the alternative there, talking again about alternatives, and people rarely do that in life.
	I'm writing a book on happiness.
	And one of the key themes of my book is always think of the alternative whenever you're complaining.
	Right?
	You're angry with your husband?
	What's the alternative?
	Harry next door?
	I'm very serious about that.
	It is one of the most important things people should do in life.
	People never compare their bad situation with another situation.
	They compare it with a fantasy.
	And that's when everybody gets into trouble.
	Your wife isn't perfect compared to some fantasy woman in your brain.
	But next to Shirley next door, she's a princess.
	And the same thing with your husband, then your kids.
	Your kids are always compared in your mind to some ideal kid in your brain that you were never, you'll never be.
	No other kid is.
	But we have a fantasy.
	That is my argument with the left in the United States.
	They always dump on the United States.
	It doesn't take care of its poor enough.
	It doesn't do this enough and this enough.
	And then when you say, well, but look at other countries.
	They say, no, you shouldn't compare America to other countries.
	You have to compare America to an ideal.
	When you compare anything to an ideal, it suffers.
	Judaism isn't perfect.
	How could it be?
	It's formulated by people.
	I think its essence is divine, but it's human beings who put it into practice.
	So obviously there are going to be these problems.
	I think that looking at alternatives is a very important thing in life.
	Vis-a-vis your spouse, vis-a-vis your kids, vis-a-vis life, vis-a-vis suffering, vis-a-vis religion, and vis-a-vis God.
	And I have come to God more by realizing that without God we're finished than I have because I so affirm the existence and faith in God himself.
	This idea is not original to me.
	The first person to wake me up to the importance of denying the other gods was in fact Eric Fromm, who made a mistake.
	Eric Fromm denied the other gods and ended up affirming not the one God he was raised with.
	He was raised in a yeshiva to Eric Fromm, but ended up very much a socialist humanist.
	So he picked his religion in the final analysis, which I think was deeply flawed.
	But he got it from the Talmud.
	The Talmud says as follows in Chulin, whoever denies idolatry is as if he fulfilled the whole Torah.
	Wow.
	Doesn't that make you feel good?
	Well, you don't have to do anything.
	Just deny idolatry and you have fulfilled the whole Torah.
	That absolves you from high holy day services.
	The only trouble is you have to know what idolatry is.
	Most Jews think that the commandment not to have other gods or the commandment against idolatry is as noted here is not to bow down to Baal, not to have a statue in your living room to which you bow.
	By that definition of idolatry, you are all pure, beautiful monotheists.
	We are all that way.
	Who bows down to a statue today?
	But if idolatry is meant to mean any other God, we're filled with them today as much as they were when they had statues.
	Now let me therefore define a God so that you'll know what I'm talking about.
	This is the only truly complex part of this talk.
	So please bear with me and if you don't follow, don't worry.
	A, it's probably my fault.
	And B, the examples will make it clear anyway.
	But let me set out a theoretical premise.
	Judaism holds as follows.
	There is to be in life only one end.
	We are to have everything else in life ideally a means to this one end.
	What is the one ends in life or the one end in life?
	God and his will.
	Okay?
	That is it.
	That is what a God is.
	God is the one end.
	The one thing for which in the final analysis one devotes one's life.
	I give my life.
	I devote my best efforts to God and his will.
	In Judaism, God is not, there's no such thing as I worship God.
	What does that mean?
	Which God?
	What does God want?
	How do you know what to worship God is?
	God's moral will is what Judaism is about.
	And let me quote something that will be said constantly over the high holy days that are upcoming.
	It is from the prophet Isaiah.
	And it is an incredible statement.
	Ha'el HaKadosh nikdash bitzdaka.
	The holy God is made holy through.
	Now what should the next word be, logically, on purely logical grounds following the construct of language?
	The holy God is made holy through, you figure the next word should be, holiness.
	If we act holy, we make the holy God holy.
	He played on words.
	He should have said, The Kadosh God is made Kadosh through being Kadosh.
	No.
	Ha'ela Kadosh nikdash bitzdaka.
	The holy God is made holy through Tzidaka, which means justice and righteousness.
	Wow.
	What an idea in Judaism.
	I arrive at holiness through goodness.
	That is what Judaism is here to teach, that the primary urge of God is how you treat your fellow human being.
	It's a remarkable teaching and very undesirable.
	It is much easier to placate God through ritual, to placate God through incantation, through the appropriate prayers.
	People think, for example, that the purpose of prayer is for God.
	The purpose of prayer is entirely for us.
	Which is not to demean it, it's to elevate it to what it really is.
	At any rate, this is what God is about in Judaism.
	One ends in life, God and his ethical will, which is called ethical monotheism.
	Okay?
	If that's not clear, believe me, it'll become clear as I give examples.
	What then is a false God?
	A false God is anything that we see as an end in itself, divorced from God and his will.
	Therefore, and this is the key point of the whole lecture, every false God is good.
	Everything I will enumerate is beautiful.
	We're too smart to have ugly false gods.
	Even the very wealthy don't worship money.
	They love it.
	They crave it.
	But if you'd ask any wealthy person, is money an end in itself?
	Of course not.
	I don't live for money.
	So nobody really believes money is a false God.
	That's why I said earlier, whereas everybody expects when a person lectures on false gods, people will say money, acquisitions, that will not even appear in my talk.
	That is not a false God.
	It's a false craving, if you will, or a foolish craving beyond a certain point, but it's not a God.
	All the gods I will list are beautiful things.
	But when they are ends in themselves divorced from God and his ethical will, they can lead to evil.
	Let me therefore begin with the one that may shock you the most, religion.
	Religion can be a false God.
	If religion is not regarded, is not a vehicle to God and goodness, to God and his will for his moral law, it can be a false God.
	I'll give you a Jewish example.
	I'll give you a Christian example.
	Jewish example is wherein you have the famous Hasidic Rebbe, Menachemendel of Kusk, who said, sometimes Jewish law can be Yavoda Zurah, can be idol worship.
	Here is a perfectly, that's a poor word, here is an almost completely observant Jew, utterly orthodox and religious, saying that religiosity could be idol worship.
	If it's not a vehicle to God and goodness, it's idol worship.
	Okay?
	This is not an argument against religion.
	I think that without religion, we're finished.
	It is an argument that religion, not seen as a vehicle to God and goodness, can be a false God.
	The Christian example is wherein faith is placed as more important than works, which is done among, only among some Protestants.
	That is not a Catholic belief, and there are many Protestants who have problems with that as well.
	But there are many Protestants who argue to this day that faith is more important than works.
	That is not at all Jewish, because that would be idol worship.
	It makes faith not a vehicle to God and goodness, but an ends in itself, and therefore would be a false God.
	So even religion can be one.
	For most of you, however, that is not a danger.
	I figured I would begin with one that you could sit there and go, yeah, right.
	Boy, there are some religious people.
	They are idol worshippers.
	So now let me hone in on good secular gods that might hit a little more home.
	And I begin with art.
	Art is a classic candidate for being a false God.
	Art, when regarded as a value in and of itself, divorced from being a vehicle to the sublime, to the transcendent, can easily be a vehicle to evil or, at best, amoral.
	In fact, my point is on all of these false gods, they are all amoral.
	If they are a vehicle to morality, they're moral.
	If not, they're amoral.
	Art is amoral.
	One of the things that we Jews should be teaching to the world as a result of the Holocaust and as a result of our idol-smashing occupation is this.
	There is no relationship whatsoever between artistic greatness and human greatness.
	None whatsoever.
	There is no more relationship between being a great artist or musician and being a good person than there is between being a great third baseman and being a good person.
	None whatsoever.
	There is no reason if you tell me someone, you have a child who is spectacularly gifted in ballet, I know nothing about his or her decency.
	Nothing.
	It is as irrelevant to his or her decency as if you told me the person played a great third base on the local baseball team.
	But you see, nobody confuses sports with morality.
	We do confuse art with morality.
	That is why for so many Jews who have dropped Judaism, art becomes something to be worshipped.
	I dare say that for many Jews in this country, it's far greater an honor to be on the board of directors of a museum than on the board of directors of anything else.
	Whether it is something Jewish or for that matter, something moral, like being on the board of directors of Big Brothers, board of directors of the Art Museum.
	Oh, this is a big deal.
	Why is it a big deal?
	Does it produce good people?
	No.
	It has nothing to do with goodness.
	And I say this as an art lover.
	I travel around America with a good, expensive CD player, compact disc player, and with my favorite selections of Mozart, Schubert, and Shostakovich on this particular trip.
	Next one, it'll be Sebelius and Beethoven.
	I am a deep lover.
	I thought of entering music.
	It is a very passionate part of my life.
	But at a very early time, I recognized something painfully, by the way, painfully, that after playing a Mozart sonata on the piano, I wasn't one bit a more decent human being than before I played the Mozart sonata.
	It has nothing to do with decency.
	Nothing.
	I say that the Jews after the Holocaust should be teaching this because my friends, the most artistically cultivated nation, made Auschwitz.
	Did you ever hear the question, how could the nation that produced Goethe, Schiller, and Beethoven produce Auschwitz?
	The question is stupid.
	It is like asking, how could a nation that produces great soccer players produce torture chambers?
	You look at the person and say, what's the Scheiches?
	For those of you who know Yiddish or Hebrew, what's the relevance?
	It's a non-sequitur.
	It should be seen as a non-sequitur.
	What kind of question is that?
	How could you produce Schiller and gas chambers?
	Why not?
	Why not?
	One has nothing to do with the other.
	Maybe, in fact, the nation that thinks because it does produce great artists, it is great, is more likely to produce evil because it forgot what greatness is about and it's about morality.
	The commandant of Auschwitz, after supervising the gassing of 6,000 to 10,000 Jews a day, not to mention the horrific medical experiments and tortures in that hell, played Schubert Leader on the piano.
	He was an accomplished classical pianist.
	His name was Hess.
	Not Rudolf Hess, just the commandant of Auschwitz.
	And he played Schubert.
	It particularly killed me because I love Schubert.
	I mean, if it was already, if it had been Strauss, I wouldn't have cared so much.
	Had to have picked on Schubert.
	There's a story that's told about Tuscanini, the great conductor, who was a very great anti-fascist as well, that he met Richard Strauss, the composer, who apparently had been an early supporter of the Nazis, and said to him, to Strauss the composer, I take my hat off.
	To Strauss the man, I put it back on.
	Tuscanini knew how to distinguish between being a human and being an artist.
	So Jewish parents, yes, give your children piano lessons and cello lessons and ballet lessons and flute lessons and all the lessons.
	But please don't for a minute think you're getting a better human being out of it.
	You're not.
	And I said last night, we do everything except teach goodness.
	We teach flute.
	We teach biology.
	We don't teach people to be good.
	And then we wonder why societies fail.
	The next false god hits the most directly home for Jews.
	Education.
	Just as there is no relationship between, inherent relationship, between being artistic and being a good person, there is no inherent relationship whatsoever between being well-educated and being a good person.
	You know, this is the one where I truly feel when I speak to fellow Jews, I never get through.
	Because many of you are sitting agreeing, and you will still go crazy to get your kids into Harvard, Yale, and Stanford.
	That will still be Yiddish Anachas.
	Jewish pride in children will still be education, even though you know that there is no correlation between education and decency.
	Who do you think made the Holocaust?
	Dummies?
	Who do you think were the people who most supported Stalin in the West?
	The well-educated.
	Let me tell you a little about the Nazis, since that hits particularly home with Jews, and correctly so.
	Listen to this.
	Professor Peter Merkel of the University of California at Santa Barbara studied 581 Nazis.
	He found that Germans with a high school education, quote, or even university study, unquote, were more likely to be anti-Semitic than those with less education.
	If you like the reference, Political Violence Under the Swastika, published by Princeton University Press.
	Better educated, you are more likely to have anti-Semitic tendencies.
	That's true among blacks in America.
	The better the educated the black, the more likely he is to be anti-Semitic.
	Look at the black not study groups, but college groups, university clubs or whatever it is, black student associations on campuses, filled with anti-Zionist rhetoric, which is a camouflage for anti-Jewishness.
	The average black is not one whit more anti-Semitic than the average white in the United States.
	But if he went to university, especially an elite university, there's a better chance that he is.
	I have nothing against Harvard.
	It's possible to go to Harvard and be a mensch.
	It is possible.
	It's tough, but it's possible.
	Actually, I don't want to pick on Harvard.
	It happens to be the best of the lot.
	Stanford is much lower.
	It's actually making a war on Western civilization.
	So I don't want to pick on Harvard.
	But ladies and gentlemen, there is simply no correlation.
	I directed a Jewish Institute in California for seven and a half years.
	It's called the Brandeis Bardeen Institute.
	The founder was Dr. Shlomo Bardeen.
	He had a thick Russian accent, and he always used to say in speeches, Ladies and gentlemen, it is very possible to be a PhD and an SOB.
	That's right.
	Because on your way to a doctorate, there's no goodness talk.
	It's theory.
	Very important for those of us in Jewish life for whom where our kids go to college is the be-all and end-all.
	Do you want a successful lawyer or do you want a mensch?
	They are not mutually exclusive, but you have to have priorities.
	Mensch is low.
	It's just not up there.
	Brilliant is up there.
	And then we wonder why there's a disproportionate number of Jewish names in the crookedness on Wall Street.
	Their mothers were not proud of how successful their sons were.
	They were raised to be successful.
	They did exactly what their mommy and daddy wanted.
	They became very successful Jewish boys and crooks.
	So you say, what?
	A Jewish mother would want a child to be a crook if you never talk against being a crook.
	You want a crook?
	Well, at least don't get caught.
	These are very important things.
	It's a these, this is the mirror that we all have to stare into.
	What is it we most want?
	By the way, a very simple way for you to figure it out.
	Ask your kids.
	If they're 40 or they're 14, ask them the following.
	What do you think I, father or mother, most want you to be?
	And you give a list because they're used to multiple choices.
	Happy, successful, brilliant, good, Jewish.
	Put in order what you think I most want you to be in life.
	Fair question.
	It's worth the parent doing with a kid.
	It's worth the kid doing with himself.
	Then you will find out what exactly was conveyed.
	And if the kid says, well, Mother, you wanted all of them equally, you have raised a wonderful liar.
	They know exactly what you want them to say because it's not possible.
	Not all of them equally.
	I mean, there is.
	There are certain things that are more emphasized in homes than others.
	That's all.
	Find out.
	Especially if you are raising a child now and wherein there is still time to adjust what you really are teaching.
	But it is very important to know that there is no linkage between good education and good values, none whatsoever.
	And I can't emphasize too frequently that the craziest and most obscene ideas often come from the educated, from the well-educated.
	George Orwell once said about an idea, it's so stupid only an intellectual could believe it.
	I am accused when I give this talk at the few colleges that still invite me.
	Oh, I used to lecture, I lectured at Harvard, I lectured all over.
	It started to dissipate.
	I am accused of being anti-intellectual.
	No, I am anti-intellectuals.
	Not at all anti-intellectual.
	In fact, I devote a good part of my radio talk shows to intellectual issues and yelling at listeners to shut the goddamn television set, which is a moron box.
	In fact, I truly believe that watching television is only slightly above comatose.
	I really do believe that.
	If brainwaves were measured, I am not sure you would know on the chart if the person were in a coma or watching television.
	And I especially include in that the news.
	I especially include in that the news.
	Television news is a pure wasteland.
	It is entertainment.
	I am a commentator on news for a living on the most popular station in California, KABC Los Angeles, and I never, ever, ever, ever watch television news.
	I read the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the L.A. Times every day, and I read commentary and I read The New Republic, and I am very well informed in addition to the books I read.
	That's just a side issue that I want to bring home to you.
	I beg people to read to live the life of intellect.
	But I don't confuse the life of intellect with intellectuals who live in theoretical constructs.
	Paul Potter Hitler of Asia, who killed one out of every three Cambodians, slaughtering Cambodians.
	Two million out of six million Cambodians in the late 70s was educated in the Sorbonne.
	That's where he developed his great idea that in order for Cambodia to prosper, we must destroy all the cities.
	And so he destroyed the cities, including those who lived in it.
	And the people who come up with Marxist-Leninist ideas are all intellectuals and gave the world the Gulag Archipelago.
	Laborers were never supportive of communism.
	The working class always spat on communism.
	The AFL-CIO was the leading force against communism in America.
	It was intellectuals at universities who loved it.
	Disproportionately, I am sorry to say, with deep, deep angst, Jews among them.
	And the reason for that and why this speech is so important to me is because when Jews drop Judaism, they never drop isms, period.
	They pick up another ism.
	Jews develop isms like other groups, like Italians develop arias, like the British develop plays.
	That's our gift.
	We develop religions.
	Whenever we're bored, we come up with a new ism.
	You name it, we've done it.
	Humanism, socialism, Marxism, feminism.
	If it's an ism, Jews started it.
	And the one ism that Jews least pay attention to is Judaism.
	That's the tragedy of Jewish life.
	So that when Jewish intellectuals drop Judaism, I assure you they haven't dropped religion.
	They just develop a new one, which is taught at your local university.
	I'm all for education.
	But in and of itself, it is morally worthless.
	Well-educated people are not kinder.
	Let me just tell you, by the way, about the Einsatzgruppen, and then I'll move on to the next God.
	You know what the Einsatzgruppen are?
	Anybody know?
	You should know about them.
	The Einsatzgruppen were the way the Nazis killed the Jews prior to gas chambers.
	These were the groups of Nazis following the Nazi army into, especially Russia, would gather all the Jews, have them stripped naked, stand by a pit, and shoot them one after another into mass graves.
	A million and a half of the six million were killed that way.
	Been somewhat obsessed with the Holocaust my whole life, and I always wondered what sort of human being could spend all day long machine gunning parents and children naked at pits.
	Pretty incredible, no?
	And I remember thinking as a kid and even hearing they emptied the criminally insane asylums and said, Here, go kill Jews.
	Nothing of the sort.
	Let me read to you one study of who composed an Einsatzgruppe, 24 leaders of Einsatzgruppen.
	This is from Irving Greenberg in Auschwitz, Beginning of a New Era.
	Quote: One of the most striking things about the Einsatzgruppen leadership makeup is the prevalence of educated people, professionals, especially lawyers, PhDs.
	It included teachers, architects, etc., etc.
	Having given a very hard time to Jews, let me focus on to a Christian predilection for a false god.
	Love.
	Remember my definition?
	Anything that is an end in itself, divorced as a means to God and morality, becomes a false God.
	What could be wrong with love?
	Well, let me tell you what could be wrong with love.
	Love, too, can be amoral.
	Let me give you a good example.
	About 15 years ago at a restaurant in Southern California, young waitress was coming over to the table, must have been about 17 years old, and she was quite happy-go-lucky.
	And I remembered thinking then how happy she seemed.
	And I also remember since I had just returned from Israel how a happy waiter is such an oddity.
	So here she was coming to the table with great happiness to take my tuna fish order.
	So I always talked to everybody and I asked her, Are you really happy?
	She says, Yep.
	I said, How come?
	And she said, Because Jesus loves me.
	I appreciate that and respect that very greatly.
	But I didn't let it stop there.
	I asked her some questions.
	I said, Really?
	How do you know?
	And she was very happy that I was asking.
	It was clear because she wanted to spread the faith.
	So I said, How do you know he loves you?
	She said, He loves everyone.
	I said, Everyone?
	She said, Everyone, getting quite happy at my questions.
	I said, Does he love everyone equally?
	She said, Yes, feeling I was catching on now.
	I said, Equally?
	That's right.
	That's the beauty.
	I said, knowing that she was, or assuming that she had attended a typical American high school, I did not know what she would answer, so I asked her, Have you ever heard of Adolf Hitler?
	And she said, Yes.
	I said, Let me ask you, does Jesus love you and Hitler equally?
	She said, Yes, that's the point.
	And I thanked her, and I felt too, that's the point.
	There isn't a Jew from the most left to the most right who believes that God loves Hitler and that waitress equally.
	And I never met a Christian who denies it.
	It is one of the very interesting dividing lines, and this is coming from a deep sympathizer with Christianity.
	I tell all Jewish audiences, I write about it.
	We have much to be blessed for thanks to Christianity in America.
	Christians are generally our best friends in the world today, and we don't have an abundance of friends.
	This is not to cast aspersions on Christianity or Christians.
	It is to say, however, that from my perspective, and I said this to a thousand Catholic educators when I gave this very talk, I said, to me, you have made love a false God.
	When you say, as a copy of the New Testament that I have says, God is love, God isn't love.
	Love is one of God's characteristics.
	But if God is love, then love is God.
	And then you know what happens?
	What you have is a man whom I really do revere.
	I didn't know that waitress, but I really do like Cardinal O'Connor of New York.
	But Cardinal O'Connor asked to meet those six rapist torturers of the woman in Central Park, asked to meet them, and told them one thing according to his own report in his newspaper, Catholic New York, not let alone according to the secular media.
	He came to tell them God loves them.
	I was nauseous.
	One of my dear friend priests on the radio said to me, it was the only time in his life he ever thought I sounded anti-Catholic.
	I was so angry at what O'Connor had done.
	One of my shows is with a priest minister and rabbi.
	I asked the rabbi, what would you have said to them?
	And this was a left-wing liberal reform rabbi.
	And his answer was, Dennis, I would have met them and said, you're a bunch of thugs.
	Thank you, Rabbi.
	Every rabbi I ever asked that had a variation on that theme.
	First of all, they wouldn't have asked to meet with them.
	I'm writing an article for my newsletter on this issue, and you know what it's entitled?
	how to get to meet New York's Archbishop.
	As I said on my radio show, do you know how many Catholics devote their lives to good causes, helping the poor, feeding the homeless, and never get visited by Cardinal O'Connor?
	But if you mass rape a woman and slash her body and beat her with a crowbar, you get an instant visit to be told God loves you.
	God isn't love.
	God is many things.
	God is love, God is anger, God is punishment, God is justice, God's a billion things.
	The only postage stamp I never use is the love postage stamp.
	I use Christmas stamps.
	I use anything.
	I refuse to use the love postage stamp.
	The next one goes back to my fellow Jews.
	Law.
	The Jews love law.
	Oh, God.
	It's a love relationship.
	Religious Jews love religious law.
	Secular Jews love secular law.
	Jews love law.
	I've often said, it is so clear to me that there is a mirror image between the right-wing Orthodox and the left-wing ACLU Jews.
	They both are in love with law and seem not to ask, is there a higher purpose than the law?
	I always understood that law is a vehicle to goodness.
	It strikes me that on the far right and the far left, it is not.
	It's an end in itself.
	The purpose of the law is to observe the law.
	Consequences, schmansequences.
	It's not a question.
	The ACLU does not ask what is the consequence of this law.
	It only asks, what is the law?
	End of issue.
	Are you allowed freedom of speech?
	Yes.
	Therefore, men who purvey sexually explicit photos of children can't be prosecuted.
	The one who made the photo can.
	But not the purveyor.
	Freedom of speech, freedom, that's it.
	It is so easy to be far-right Orthodox Jew and far-left ACLU Jew.
	You never have complexity.
	You have one question in life.
	What is the law?
	End of issue.
	What's the halacha?
	What's the law?
	What's the constitution?
	End of issue.
	By the way, a lot of people have this where they have absolutized laws.
	I have an ongoing debate with many of my Catholic listeners on the issue of lying.
	They were taught at Catholic school, you're never allowed to lie.
	You're never allowed to lie.
	Never.
	So what if a rapist is chasing a woman?
	And he asks you, where did she run?
	Say, what should you do?
	That's the example I always pose.
	And they say, well, what you try to do is tell the truth without letting him get the woman.
	I don't mean to laugh at them.
	I am just telling you what happens when you absolutize that which is supposed to be a means and not an absolute.
	You know what halacha, which is the word for Jewish law, means?
	Most Jews don't know this.
	It means the way.
	It comes from the word la lecha, to walk.
	How could the way be the ends?
	I often compare it to a map.
	There are two people who have a map, and they're traveling.
	One is, they're both en route San Diego Freeway, to give my example.
	Okay?
	You ask one, where are you going?
	Said, well, I intend to go to La Jolla.
	Fine.
	You ask the next one, where are you going?
	I don't know.
	I just know that I'm supposed to be on 405.
	Where are you headed?
	I don't know.
	I just know I have to follow 55 miles per hour.
	And that's it.
	That is what I often feel with people who follow either the secular law without asking what is its purpose.
	There are times when it is appropriate to censor, for example.
	I don't have a categorical law.
	Never ever censor.
	I ask, what is the price paid for society?
	Are we a richer society?
	Are we better for having certain things published, certain things pictured?
	Everybody has a God.
	Will Herbert put it, there are no atheists.
	There are those who worship God with a capital G, and there are those who have gods with a small G. For many secular people, censorship is an absolute.
	My absolute is God and his will.
	There's a censorship.
	Never censor.
	Never?
	What if the Nazis in the Weimar Republic would have been censored?
	Maybe 55 million people who suffered horrible deaths would be alive, the number of people who died in World War II.
	At least you can have it as a fair question.
	My general predilection is not to censor.
	Germany doesn't allow Nazis to speak.
	Is Germany an unfree country?
	The law is to be a means to something higher.
	Give you another ACLU example.
	Remember the Walter Polovchik, the 12-year-old boy who came with his Ukrainian parents to visit relatives in Chicago years ago under Brezhnev, not under Gorbachev.
	And the boy, jerk that he is, preferred freedom and affluence to poverty and imprisonment.
	Jerk.
	So he decided to stay here.
	His parents wanted to take him back.
	All of a sudden, the ACLU became big family supporters.
	Parents have absolute rights over their kids.
	It's interesting.
	They don't hold that with regard to abortion permission, but we won't get into that specific area.
	But even if they were consistent, they don't ask what is the consequence of sending the child back with the parents, namely a ruined life.
	The law is parents can take children where they want.
	And that's all that interested the ACLU.
	What is the law?
	There was a right-wing example in religiosity, which I won't dwell on because you not happen to be Orthodox.
	I try never to attack groups that aren't present in Jewish life.
	If you want to hear my problems with Orthodoxy, come to an Orthodox shule when I lecture.
	But I just want to give one example to show how it can go both ways and does.
	In Toronto years ago, a woman came over to me after a speech.
	She was very grateful because she had been removing herself from Jewish life.
	She told me the following story.
	She had become involved with an Orthodox group that was bringing people to Judaism.
	She has a retarded child.
	And one day outside of synagogue on Shabbat, she was carrying her child who needed to be carried.
	And one of the Jews that knew her and was bringing her back into the fold said to her, I'm sorry you can't carry your child.
	You're not allowed to carry in the public domain on the Sabbath.
	Which is a beautiful law, incidentally.
	To liberate yourself like that, not to even carry a purse or a wallet one day a week is very liberating.
	There's a very great beauty to the law.
	But I think the man who told her to put down a retarded child is an idiot.
	The consequences were not asked.
	He knows one thing.
	What's the halocha?
	What's the halocha?
	You can't carry.
	So she explained he's retarded, and she still doesn't matter.
	That's the halachah.
	I think the Talmud puts that the temple was destroyed because the Jews followed the letter of the law.
	This is no green light for you not to follow the spirit of the law or the law.
	You can't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
	Jewish law, as I said last night, is our genius vehicle to goodness.
	But it's a vehicle, not an end in itself.
	Reason.
	Just like all these other things are amoral, so too reason.
	A leading contemporary philosopher, Brad Blanchard of Yale, wrote this follows in The Humanist, the magazine for humanists.
	Rationality takes the place of faith.
	Take reason seriously.
	Let it shape belief and conduct freely.
	It will shape them aright, if anything can.
	The secularist drops God and substitutes reason.
	It's my ongoing argument for those who say, I don't need God and religion for goodness.
	I just use reason.
	But ladies and gentlemen, reason is as amoral as art or education.
	Reason doesn't necessarily lead to moral consequences, and I will prove it to you.
	What's more reasonable for a German non-Jew during World War II?
	Risk his life to save a Jew or do nothing.
	What's more reasonable?
	I didn't ask what's more moral.
	Our modern age so worships reason that it has made the word rational co-equal with moral.
	That's why whenever someone does something like murder, don't they say irrational?
	Nazism is irrational.
	Murders are irrational?
	Nonsense.
	Why is evil irrational?
	Only if you believe that reason equals goodness, then you can say it's irrational.
	It isn't.
	It is very rational to shoot your spouse to collect the insurance policy if you can get away with it and you don't particularly care for your spouse.
	It is irrational to do it if you are not the beneficiary.
	There are times when it's irrational.
	There are times when it is very rational.
	I mean, it is just, it is an absolute leap of faith nonsense that reason leads to goodness.
	Sometimes it does.
	Sometimes it's reasonable to be good.
	Sometimes it isn't.
	It's very possible to think very rationally and be evil.
	It is rational to kill everybody on welfare.
	Save the country a lot of expense, a lot of crime.
	It's rational.
	It's evil.
	It's rational.
	Why wasn't Hitler's policy of getting rid of all of the mentally defective before he did the Jews?
	Why wasn't that irrational?
	It was rational.
	Animals do it.
	They get rid of their defective.
	Why shouldn't we?
	Oh boy, this flirting with the belief that reason is co-equal with morality is ridiculous.
	If you use reason for God and goodness, fine.
	You don't need, by the way, Nazism and evil for such big examples of the use of reason to justify what's wrong.
	Give you a simple one.
	One out of every three Americans, according to the New York Times, steals something from his or her hotel room.
	An ashtray, a washcloth, a towel, a television.
	And one out of every three Americans does not believe it is right to steal.
	Well, we now have what the psychologists call cognitive dissonance.
	On the one hand, the person knows it's wrong to steal.
	On the other hand, they just took a towel that they didn't walk in with.
	So what happens?
	Very simple.
	I didn't steal.
	I mean, you didn't steal.
	It didn't belong to you.
	Then you get 10 reasons.
	One, I've been told these.
	They overcharge.
	That's the first they overcharge.
	I'm getting back at them.
	Two, everybody does it.
	The most frequent example of all of this.
	Three, I've actually been told this.
	It is a service to the hotel.
	People will see a holiday in ashtray in my home.
	It is good advertising for holiday inn.
	It's a mitzvah to steal.
	It's not only not wrong, it's a mitzvah.
	The ability of the brain to use reason to justify what's wrong is so common, we have a word for it, rationalize.
	I am absolutely committed to using reason.
	But I don't believe that reason in and of itself leads to goodness.
	It too must be a vehicle and not a god, as it is for Brad Blanchard.
	Finally, life.
	Life too can be a false god.
	Anyone who regards life as an end in itself is worshiping a false God.
	Life too must be a vehicle to God and goodness.
	Otherwise, it too leads to evil.
	The moment you say that life is an end in itself, you have said the following.
	Life is higher than goodness.
	Well, if it is, please never ever blame any of the people of Europe who didn't help the Jews.
	They too said that life was more important than goodness.
	Preserving life is a great mitzvah in Judaism.
	It is not the greatest mitzvah.
	There are three things that you must not violate and be prepared to die for rather than violate.
	One of them is murder.
	If I tell you, go to so-and-so and kill him, you should try to kill me, but if you can't, you cannot in fact kill the person to save your life.
	Not an innocent person.
	You can kill the guilty.
	Indeed, you should.
	Life is not an end in itself.
	It has become worrisome.
	That is how pacifism has caught on.
	Pacifism says life is more important than morality.
	It is more important to live than kill Mengel.
	Life too is to be a vehicle to God and goodness.
	When you have this clear, life is a lot clearer.
	I was just discussing this with my wife recently when we were talking about what to allow our teenage daughter to do or not to do.
	And as I've often said on my radio show, the world is divided between two groups of people, those with teenage daughters and those without teenage daughters.
	And in effect, what I said on this, I don't even remember the specific issue, I remember saying, is it mean?
	Is it malicious?
	Is it destructive?
	Is it cruel?
	If not, big deal.
	Now, I don't have that for every single possible policy.
	It's not meaning malicious if you'd go to bed at 2 a.m. every night and it's not allowed.
	But in the final analysis, when you are clear about what is truly important, life is clearer.
	And I am a big believer that clarity is as desirable a thing in life as happiness.
	Probably the most desirable thing on a personal level.
	Life is very complex.
	And what I have said doesn't always lead to absolute simple clarity.
	But it helps a great deal to have that list that I said we should offer our kids for the multiple choice clear in our own minds what's most important for us and what's most important for those whom we raise and we influence, and when that is clear, a lot of things are helped.
	It's not such a big deal what the house is, what the car is, and it's fine to have luxury cars and luxury homes.
	That's why I didn't speak against money.
	Money's not a problem.
	What you do with money is a problem.
	It too is a means.
	Money is amoral.
	Think all poor people are nice.
	That's Marxism.
	That's that's the debased Marxist rhetoric of our time.
	The rich think the poor are beautiful.
	There's many poor bastards as rich bastards.
	There's no linkage.
	I know of no linkage between monetary state and human decency.
	This helps give clarity.
	And that is why Judaism is in the idol-smashing business.
	You get rid of those gods and you end up with Shemai Israel, Adonai Elohinu Adonai.
	There is one God, and the beauty and the greatness of one God is one moral will for everybody.
	That is our message to the world, and it's worth making.
	Thank you very much.
	Thank you so much.
	As I don't take orders today for my newsletter, which in which I have this published, as well as so many of the other things I spoke about, if you would just like to give me a business card or a name on a piece of paper afterwards, I will send you an issue and subscription information after the speech if you just want to bring it up to me.
	But I don't fundraise on the Shabbat.
	Okay, would anybody like to ask something and I'll repeat the questions.
	Yes, sir.
	And what I understand you're saying is whether the presence of God is good and correct and moral and ethical behavior.
	Can you compare what you said today with the philosophy of those who belong to ethical life?
	Yes.
	If I had said that the ultimate purpose of God was goodness, decency, etc., it would have made God a vehicle to goodness.
	God's not a vehicle.
	God's an end.
	I'm very happy you asked that because it's so easy to miss the nuances of what I'm saying.
	I said God is an end in himself.
	That is why God is the one who says what is good.
	That is why I have no problem with God saying to Abraham, sacrifice Isaac.
	God is the determinant of good.
	I know this is shocking to you.
	It would have bothered me if God would have allowed him to do it.
	You know the old philosophical problem, is something good because God said so?
	Or does God say so because it is good?
	To me, that is not a question.
	It is good because God said so.
	What is good otherwise?
	What my rational faculties, limited in space-time, can understand fully?
	Now, if God had said to a Jew after Isaac, sacrifice your son, the Jew should have argued.
	Wait a minute, you just declared it wrong.
	And God never did ask it again.
	But that's why I never had a problem with Abraham responding that way.
	Judaism doesn't want us to sacrifice children to God, obviously.
	But God is the end.
	But it's not just God.
	It is God and his moral will.
	Now, can two people differ on the moral will?
	Then you have complex issues.
	I'll give you one example, euthanasia.
	I never lecture on euthanasia because I'm totally ambivalent.
	I don't know.
	I'm not sure there is an answer.
	Unless God were to reveal his will in every single instance of a suffering, dying person, I don't know if we can know.
	But in most instances, moral clarity is not that difficult.
	What is the difference between ethical culture and Judaism, then, if it's to be a vehicle to God and goodness?
	Many differences, many differences.
	And in the nine questions people ask about Judaism, there's a whole chapter called, What's the Difference Between Judaism and Ethical Humanism?
	The difference between ethical humanism and Judaism is the difference between ethical humanism and ethical monotheism.
	In ethical humanism, ethics emanate from man.
	In Judaism, they emanate from God.
	That's one immediate difference.
	Another difference is ethical humanism has no community.
	Judaism has a community.
	What is your community ethical humanist?
	The ethical human is group.
	It has no holiness.
	The one thing I'm always saddest about when I do weekends in various cities is that I don't get a chance to talk about the other pillar of Judaism, which is Kiddusha, holiness.
	Judaism doesn't only want you to be ethical.
	Andrei Sakharov is about as ethical a human being as exists on earth.
	But he's not the Jewish model.
	He's a Jewish model of ethics, but he's not a Jewish model.
	You have to be two things in Judaism, ethical and holy.
	What's the difference?
	There are big differences.
	I'll give you an example.
	Promiscuity is not unethical.
	It's unholy.
	Sex is the most obvious arena wherein you could see the difference between ethical and holy.
	There is nothing unethical about sleeping with a hundred different people if you, in every case, neither of you is married, and in every case, you have clarity and permission from the other.
	What's unethical?
	For that matter, I'll give you a more dramatic example.
	What's unethical about incest between consenting adults?
	Brother and sister wish to sleep with each other.
	They're both 21.
	What's unethical?
	Nothing is unethical.
	It's unholy.
	Holiness is not the same.
	Ethics is, how do you treat your fellow human being?
	Did you cheat?
	Did you hurt?
	Were you cruel?
	Were you mean?
	Were you malicious?
	But if you're loving, and by the way, that is why there is, in the Christian liberal Protestant tradition, such a problem today, wherein, because they have made love the be-all and end-all of religion, anyone who is loving to anybody else is fine.
	Everything is acceptable.
	I had a gay pastor on my show once, and I said, are there any Christian criteria for what is a proper sexual relationship?
	He said, if it's loving, that's the only one.
	I said, what if brother and sister love each other?
	And he got very angry.
	But he had no answer.
	Because deep down he still felt incest was wrong.
	Homosexuality was all right, but incest wasn't.
	Why not?
	If consent and love are the only criteria, I don't think homosexuality is immoral.
	I don't think homosexuality is unethical.
	I think it's unholy.
	It's a very big difference.
	That's why I only have a religious argument against homosexuality.
	I have no social argument.
	That's why, on the one hand, I agree with gay liberation.
	There shouldn't be laws against gay people, except in very, very restricted areas where it is directly involved, as I don't think there should be gay big brothers.
	The ACLU does, by the way.
	The ACLU argues for gay big brothers.
	Right?
	Can't discriminate, can't discriminate.
	See?
	Never have to think.
	It's one of the joys of joining the organization.
	Thinking is removed.
	It's discrimination.
	You know the word discrimination.
	It ends the issue.
	Consequences are not an issue.
	Remember that.
	Gay man wants to be a big brother to a boy.
	Why not?
	So to which I've always asked, then why not allow a heterosexual man to be a big brother to a girl?
	Why do you allow to discriminate in that way?
	At any rate, that's a big difference.
	There's no holiness to an ethical humanist life.
	Yes, please.
	What you said is very, very provocative, and of course, it examines a lot of things.
	Can I hear you some problems?
	Sure, please.
	One is that initially, I'm trying to get to the point where you're talking about ends, these things and ends in themselves, are really particularly disturbing because you were confusing, I think, the producers of the pods, bad composers, bad educators.
	Incidentally, one of your educators, one of the people you mentioned was called hated intellectuals.
	And that was one of the principal reasons for this for the Holocaust.
	But these things as ends in themselves may be dangerous.
	But on the other hand, goodness without the abuse and education and reason and love and justice, I think won't go very, very far.
	If anything, I think if we take a look at this testament, the love of life, well, you only show one very limited example, and that is the love of one no mark.
	But goodness without the love of other people's lives, if these people from reading with your example love other people's lives, I think that would create some serious either problems or opportunities.
	I think what ultimately I personally see needs to be done is to address gray areas of the greater good, the lesser evil.
	I think those things have got to be addressed, and I'm convinced that you can address them.
	No, you address them.
	Give me a grayer area and let's address it.
	The greater good.
	Anything, whatever you think hasn't been addressed, address.
	Well, let's talk about the greater good, a situation where there is a greater good or the lesser evil.
	When you're faced with a horrendous, terrible choice, as people in the Holocaust were, as a mother with a child who is crying and thereby endangering the rest of the people hiding from the Nazi, at that point he has got to make a decision as to what is the greater good or the lesser evil.
	And I think in all of these things, you reach, unfortunately, gray areas where anything that is new to the God, including using the catch-all good and being good and seeking goodness, without understanding that that, too, potentially as an end in itself, is also dangerous.
	We don't disagree on anything.
	You said that goodness can't be achieved without, or goodness without reason and love and so on would not be attainable.
	I couldn't agree more.
	My problem is with using those things as ends.
	I was quite strict about that, and I couldn't agree more.
	I wish I had more of an irrational streak, in fact.
	I would have an easier time, I think, in terms of religion and faith.
	I am often accused of being too rational.
	I believe profoundly in the use of reason.
	I, however, understand that reason alone does not dictate goodness.
	It doesn't.
	That's very, very important.
	It was on rational grounds that Stalin killed the Ukrainians.
	He needed to collectivize the Ukraine.
	Primitive farming methods would not allow the Soviet Union to industrialize.
	So all I'm saying is that they can't be ends in and of themselves.
	And one final word, I'm not confusing the product and the producer.
	The product of music doesn't make good people.
	It doesn't.
	In fact, I would go further.
	I would say that the artist, as much as any other group with the exception perhaps of lawyers, that's just a joke, the artist probably needs religion more than any other single group that I can think of, precisely because it is so easy to deify art.
	The Greeks did it, and Western civilization is as much a product of Athens as it is of Jerusalem.
	The veneration of beauty is very deep.
	That is why, that's, by the way, it's a great and instructive thing, this whole debate about the Mapplethorpe exhibit, where the art world, what I call the art-industrial complex, is going crazy because the people who actually give the funds for these things had the chutzpah to say that a piece of art is garbage and to put their money where their tastes are.
	This drives the art industry crazy.
	But having a dildo sticking out of a man's anus and a picture of that, of a bullwhip coming out of the man's anus, was one of the photos.
	And of course, you know about the crucifix and the artist's urine.
	And public funds were supposed to support that on the grounds that it's art.
	Art is untouchable.
	And the whole argument is we must fund it, we must fund it because a society without more museums will destroy itself.
	It's not true.
	It's not true with all respect.
	It's not true.
	That is a Greek belief.
	It is not a Jewish belief.
	The Greeks worshipped beauty.
	The Jews worshiped God.
	There's a very big difference.
	Jews were never into beauty.
	With all respect, that was not our gift to the world.
	Beautiful art, you know, it's like the old riddle, you know, one of the shortest books in the world, Italian War Heroes.
	And then there are other things.
	I could name one.
	Great Jewish art would be a very, very slim book compared to great Italian art, great Greek art, great Roman art, great Egyptian art.
	But that is not what the Jews came to give to the world.
	That's why I say we're hitting gods.
	And I love art, but it's not moral.
	It's amoral.
	Yes, Rabbi.
	I wonder if you could go further on the floor an idea that you raised that really is and that is, and you suggested in your opening remarks that one must consider the alternative.
	If you take issue with something, you have to consider the alternative.
	What about that survey that thought that's true?
	That the greater the level of attainment, educational attainment, the greater the level of anti-semitism.
	So what then would you suggest as an alternative?
	You have a real problem here.
	The ACL and other organizations in the United States and abroad are raising funds and producing material to educate the public about Judaism.
	So how can we diminish the level of anti-semitism?
	Well, that's one of the $64,000 questions.
	My argument is not anti-education.
	It's anti-believing that education automatically makes decent people.
	I want to educate people morally.
	That's one of the things the ADL wishes to do with these materials.
	But that is why one consequence, Rabbi, for all of this, which is very deep in me, is that I don't understand why Jews are in the vanguard of arguing and fighting for value-free public school education.
	I ask you to leave with nothing else than with this little aphorism that I have developed.
	A value-free education produces value-free students.
	Is that what we want?
	After the Holocaust, the only question worth asking is: how do you make good people?
	That is my belief.
	It's an obsession.
	I admit, with all the bad parts of the word obsession, I'm obsessed by that.
	How do you make good people?
	Value-free education is not such a method.
	Therefore, we have to put our heads together and see what can do it.
	I would much prefer if more of these kids, I spoke about blacks at colleges, I wish more of those blacks had gone to Catholic parochial schools.
	The chances are they would have been a lot less anti-Semitic.
	There's one very down-to-earth suggestion.
	The ADL published a statistic.
	Catholics who go to Catholic schools are less likely to have anti-Semitic sentiments than Catholics who go to public school.
	How's that for all the Jewish mythology about parochial schools and bigotry?
	I've been invited to speak at two Catholic schools' graduations as a Jew on values and God and my own religion.
	I've never been invited to a public school graduation in 13 years in Los Angeles.
	And I'm pretty well known in Los Angeles.
	I just got invited the first time, I just got the call yesterday, the UC Irvine, Verse California Irvine Medical School.
	And I'm sure it wasn't even a Jew.
	It was probably a non-Jew, was a non-Jew who invited me, who listens to the shows.
	No, I am very afraid of this value-free stuff.
	You know why?
	A vacuum is created.
	People need values.
	Not on bread alone can man live.
	We need values.
	If it's not going to be the good values that Jew folks love, it's going to be other values.
	And leftist values have taken over the intellectual zeitgeist, the spirit of our time on campuses.
	That's my fear.
	Okay?
	Thank you.
	Yes?
	You had someone this morning, and I know it would take 10 hours, but could you say how do you talk to me written about your feelings about God after the Holocaust?
	How do I reconcile my feelings about God after the Holocaust?
	Yes.
	Well, let me just tell you, though, and it's a reminder for me to remind you, to give me your name if you can, to get my newsletter.
	I did write a whole essay on God and the Holocaust where I poured both my heart and reason out.
	And it's really a talk unto itself.
	Very briefly, it is clear to me that God allows evil to take place.
	God never promised that he will save people from evil.
	I said in my talk this morning, he did promise that he would never allow the Jews to be destroyed.
	He never promised he wouldn't allow Jews to suffer.
	And, or I'll put it to you in a somewhat bitter way.
	There is a covenant between God and the Jews, as you know.
	The covenant is a very interesting one, and in effect, it goes like this.
	We have a deal.
	We keep God alive in the world, and he keeps us alive in the world.
	And we're both doing a lousy job.
	That is exactly how I see it.
	And they're not uninterrelated.
	I also believe that if Jews don't spread Jewish values to the world, there will be another Holocaust.
	And there has been, the Cambodian, as an example.
	And certainly one against us.
	And that is why I will repeat the tragedy of modern Jewish life.
	The Jews who know most about Judaism hide from the world.
	The Jews who know least about Judaism speak the most of the world.
	So who is on the op-ed page of the New York Times?
	Major Jewish thinkers like Woody Allen?
	Norman Mailer?
	William Kunzler?
	It's unbelievable.
	Unbelievable.
	And the Jews who were hiding in the seminaries from Reform to Orthodox, hide in the seminaries.
	They're either doing more research on the Jewish interrelationship with the Huskalah movement in the late 1800s in Western Prussia.
	That's if they're Reform or conservative.
	And if they are Orthodox, they're finding a new reason for something not to be kosher.
	It is a hobby.
	It is an Orthodox hobby.
	I am convinced of it.
	It gives pleasure.
	Why raisins?
	I think raisins are the next.
	I don't know why.
	I don't know why.
	Maybe they will have found lobster bits in one package.
	I don't know why.
	And I am adamant about Jews keeping kosher.
	I think that it is un-Jewish not to keep kosher.
	It is.
	But everything beautiful is warpable.
	The human capacity to warp the beautiful is infinite.
	I have learned that in the course of time.
	It is very important through all of this, including that, not to go crazy.
	That is why I found Gallo's humor to be very helpful in my own life and Schubert.
	What I do, however, is very avidly, I never read about these composers' lives.
	By and large, they were not a lovable bunch.
	Unfortunately, the New York Times just published two weeks ago in the music column that Schubert was a pederast.
	He was into little boys.
	I was so unhappy to read it because I don't want to know anything about him.
	It's never good.
	It's never good.
	You know, what are they going to unearth?
	Schubert was really devoting all his non-musical time to the poor of Vienna.
	Give me a break.
	So I try to learn nothing about them and use the music for the incredible emotional perks that it gives me.
	But, you know, that is why, ironically, my next book is on happiness.
	I was going to be on evil.
	But then I realized I was getting suicidal.
	But it's entitled appropriately, Happiness is a Serious Problem.
	All right, my friends.
	Thank you very, very much.
	Shout out to see you tonight.
	Hello, I'm Dennis Prager.
	This lecture, The Gods of Modern Men and Women, was delivered for the Jewish Federation Leadership Development in Columbia, South Carolina, on September 16th, 1989.
	I hope you enjoyed it.
	If you would like a complete listing of my lectures and/or information on the quarterly journal that I write and publish, Ultimate Issues, please write to me at Ultimate Issues, 6020 Washington Boulevard, Culver City, California, 90232.
	Or just call Area Code 213-558-3958.
	The list of lectures is constantly incorporating new titles.
	Thank you, and I look forward to any reactions that you may have.
	This has been Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.

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