Speaker 1: Welcome to Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager. Here thousands of
Speaker 1: hours of Dennis's lectures courses in classic radio programs had
Speaker 1: to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles. Go to Dennis Prager
Speaker 1: dot com.
Speaker 2: To be or not to be?
Speaker 3: That is the question?
Speaker 2: Why was God?
Speaker 4: Isn't God supposed to be good, supposed to love us?
Speaker 5: Does God want us to suffer ten years? You're not
Speaker 5: Dennis yet?
Speaker 6: Why did you come here?
Speaker 2: Who are you?
Speaker 3: Bruce? I'm God bingo yazi?
Speaker 5: Is that your final answer?
Speaker 7: Our service has God bing ding ding ding ding ding
Speaker 7: ding ding.
Speaker 5: Well, it was nice to meet you guys.
Speaker 3: Thank you for the Grand Canyon and good luck with
Speaker 3: the apocalypse, and welcome to the Dennis Prager Show. The
Speaker 3: Ultimate Issues our every week at this time I devote
Speaker 3: the hour to some great ultimate issue. I am very lucky. First,
Speaker 3: I'm lucky to have the guests that we have. But
Speaker 3: what I was thinking of originally is I'm very lucky
Speaker 3: that at a very early age I realize that the
Speaker 3: most important question in life is there a God. Everything
Speaker 3: flows from that. You talk about ultimate issues. There is
Speaker 3: ultimate issues, and then there's the ultimate issue. It's the
Speaker 3: ultimate including atheists who are honest acknowledge this. They have
Speaker 3: concluded there is no God. But that's the ultimate question.
Speaker 3: If there is no God, then this is all a happenstance.
Speaker 3: We are as irrelevant to the universe as the pebbles
Speaker 3: in a canyon, and that's it. And yet if there
Speaker 3: is a God, then everything matters, and then there's pressure
Speaker 3: to human life, etc.
Speaker 2: Et cetera.
Speaker 3: So this is the ultimate issue. And I can't think
Speaker 3: of anybody better. There might be people tied with him,
Speaker 3: but I can't think of anybody better to talk to
Speaker 3: about this than one of the most prominent rabbis in
Speaker 3: the United States. In fact, he was named number one
Speaker 3: pulpit Rabbi in America in Newsweek and he is David Walpy,
Speaker 3: the Rabbi of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, teaches Modern
Speaker 3: Jewish religious thought at UCLA, and he is quite well
Speaker 3: known to those who follow religious thought.
Speaker 2: Today.
Speaker 3: He has a new book out, Why Faith Matters, and
Speaker 3: you know it passes the Praeger test on many grounds,
Speaker 3: the first one.
Speaker 2: Being it's under two hundred pages.
Speaker 3: My theory, Rabbi Walpy, is if you can't say it
Speaker 3: an under two hundred pages. I mean, look at the
Speaker 3: creation story, will you there?
Speaker 4: You go, yes, I agree with you exactly. We're not
Speaker 4: allowed to recommend long books. It's not fair to people.
Speaker 3: It isn't fair, that's right, unless they need a door stopper, right, exactly.
Speaker 3: You know it's true. These new biographies, I mean, they
Speaker 3: tell you what the man had for lunch, you know,
Speaker 3: on April seventh, eighteen fifty six. I don't care.
Speaker 4: I agree so or you will not find in that
Speaker 4: book what God had for lunch on April seventh.
Speaker 5: I just want to put.
Speaker 3: That out there. Excellent. The book, again, is why faith matters.
Speaker 3: Why did you title it that? Why not why I
Speaker 3: believe in God or something.
Speaker 4: Like that, because I wanted to make both the case
Speaker 4: for God and along with science and so on. But
Speaker 4: a lot of it is why faith mattered to me
Speaker 4: personally through various things that I've gone through, and also
Speaker 4: why faith matters to society, and not just why I
Speaker 4: believe in God, but what difference that makes to the
Speaker 4: world if people do believe in God and if people
Speaker 4: believe in religion, because I'm not only pro faith, but
Speaker 4: pro religion.
Speaker 3: If you had been asked to write this book twenty
Speaker 3: years ago.
Speaker 2: Would it have been different.
Speaker 5: Twenty years ago? So I have to do the math
Speaker 5: in my head. It wouldn't. Yes, well, thirty I would
Speaker 5: have said there's no God. That's why I.
Speaker 4: Said, that's tchnlo. Twenty years ago it would have been similar.
Speaker 4: Thirty years ago would have.
Speaker 5: Been completely diferr.
Speaker 2: Okay, what really I.
Speaker 5: Was when I was in high school.
Speaker 4: What happened was when I was twelve years old, I
Speaker 4: saw a movie called Knight and Fog about the Holocaust,
Speaker 4: and I tell this story in the book, and that
Speaker 4: was it for me. It drained the world of all color.
Speaker 4: I was convinced that God didn't exist. And then I
Speaker 4: spent my teenage years reading Bertrand Russell, who was a
Speaker 4: British philosopher and for my money still the best best
Speaker 4: atheist writing. I mean, Hitchens and Harris and Dawkins and
Speaker 4: then at they're good, but Russell, I believe, outdoes them all,
Speaker 4: both in prose style and in argument. And so for
Speaker 4: at least a decade I was convinced there was no God.
Speaker 5: So I would have written a very different.
Speaker 3: Book What happened.
Speaker 5: I wish I could tell you a.
Speaker 4: Single thing happened but I actually think what happened primarily
Speaker 4: was I got old enough to distrust my own omniscience.
Speaker 4: I mean, I assumed, like a lot of teenagers, I
Speaker 4: think that everybody who didn't believe what I did was
Speaker 4: weak or thoughtless or irrational. Russell told me that you know,
Speaker 4: if you believed in this stuff, it's because there wasn't
Speaker 4: enough reason in your mind or in the world. And
Speaker 4: I started to see that even the strongest people were
Speaker 4: sometimes weak, and the smartest were sometimes not so bright.
Speaker 4: And I even read something of Russell's life, because the
Speaker 4: truth is, he wrote as though his life was perfectly
Speaker 4: rational and reasonable, but his life was a mess. He
Speaker 4: married numerous women, had endless numbers of affairs, was estranged
Speaker 4: from his children. And I was actually.
Speaker 3: Looking advocated that an Adam Bombie dropped on Moscow.
Speaker 4: On Moscow right, exactly, I was actually looking, And yet
Speaker 4: was a pacifist.
Speaker 3: And became afterwards, for he went from one stream to
Speaker 3: the others and.
Speaker 5: Looking for wisdom in life. I was looking for a guide.
Speaker 4: I was looking for and exactly what you asked at
Speaker 4: the very beginning, which is why does faith matter? Because
Speaker 4: faith is more than an abstract proposition it's how to
Speaker 4: live your life. And I was looking for a guide
Speaker 4: on how to live and Russell sounded like he was
Speaker 4: a guide, but he wasn't.
Speaker 3: So it was an evolution.
Speaker 5: It was an evolution. It was great.
Speaker 3: You have, like just about everybody, been tested by life. Yes,
Speaker 3: you want to speak about any of those, sure, I.
Speaker 4: Just talk about my immediate family. Right after my daughter
Speaker 4: was born, my wife had cancer, which leaves us with
Speaker 4: one child. She was unable to have more children, although
Speaker 4: she's considered cured. A few years after that, I had
Speaker 4: a brain tumor and neurosurgery, and a couple of years
Speaker 4: ago I came down with lymphoma and had chemotherapy and
Speaker 4: the lymphoma I mean remission, but I'm not cured, can't
Speaker 4: cure it at this stage of medical knowledge. What I
Speaker 4: tell my congregation is that I'm we're all in remission.
Speaker 5: Only I know it.
Speaker 2: So good line, good life.
Speaker 5: Through all of that.
Speaker 4: You know, you ask yourself all the normal questions, and
Speaker 4: as you know, some people come out with their faith deepened.
Speaker 4: Some people come out with their faith broken or shattered.
Speaker 4: But I really do think that the people by and
Speaker 4: large who come out of difficult circumstances with their faith.
Speaker 4: Broken are sort of victims.
Speaker 5: Of bad theology.
Speaker 4: They went in with a faith that wasn't the kind
Speaker 4: of faith I believe we're taught at at religion's best.
Speaker 4: They went in with a sort of magical faith, like
Speaker 4: if you just pray hard enough or do this right,
Speaker 4: everything will be fine. And I don't believe God's set
Speaker 4: up the world that way, and don't believe that faithful
Speaker 4: people should assume that the world is that way.
Speaker 3: So that's directly involved with the question of God's intervention
Speaker 3: in individuals' lives. Well, that's a tough one.
Speaker 5: It is a tough one.
Speaker 4: Well, first of all, I want to say something first,
Speaker 4: which is, you know, as a rabbi, I have people
Speaker 4: come into my office all the time and say why me.
Speaker 4: Something bad happens and they say why me. And what
Speaker 4: I've noticed about that question is it's very rare for
Speaker 4: someone to come into my office and say, you know,
Speaker 4: I was born in the richest country in the world
Speaker 4: and I've never gone hungry.
Speaker 5: Why me? Or I have loving parents? Why me?
Speaker 4: So part of it was that I felt, it's not
Speaker 4: like I've gotten a rough deal in the world for
Speaker 4: all the challenges that we've had, we've also had great blessings.
Speaker 4: And if you're going to give God discredit, so to speak,
Speaker 4: for the bad stuff, then first you have to give
Speaker 4: God enormous thanks and gratitude and benefit for all the
Speaker 4: other stuff.
Speaker 5: But the second part is.
Speaker 4: That I don't think there's any one on one correspondence.
Speaker 4: I heard you asking Dines Desuza yesterday. I think it
Speaker 4: was about prayer and whether God intervenes and does he
Speaker 4: pray for specific intervention. And I was thinking at the
Speaker 4: time of something that a seventeenth century rabbi said that
Speaker 4: if you saw a man pulling his boat to shore,
Speaker 4: you might think, if you were mistaken about mechanics and motion,
Speaker 4: that he was really pulling the shore to his boat.
Speaker 5: And that's what it's like in prayer.
Speaker 4: That you think you're pulling God to you, but if
Speaker 4: you pray, well, what you're doing is pulling yourself to God.
Speaker 4: And I have to say for myself, as I was
Speaker 4: getting chemo, I didn't assume that if I prayed hard enough,
Speaker 4: God would cure me. But I did believe I could
Speaker 4: pray for intimacy and for closeness, and that that prayer
Speaker 4: is granted, and it was. Yes, I didn't feel alone,
Speaker 4: and that's I thought. As much as I could really
Speaker 4: ask of God, I wanted more. But really what I
Speaker 4: want to be sure of was that whatever happened, it
Speaker 4: would be okay.
Speaker 3: When you prayed, was it the formal prayers of the
Speaker 3: Jewish faith or was it spontaneous statements of your own?
Speaker 5: It was both.
Speaker 4: It was both my own prayer and also formulated prayer.
Speaker 4: What happens in such circumstances is you find that the
Speaker 4: formulated prayers are deeper than you ever imagined. There's one
Speaker 4: paragraph for your Jewish listeners in the Ami Dah, which
Speaker 4: is the central prayer of Judaism, called the modem prayer,
Speaker 4: the thanks prayer, and I found that one enormously and
Speaker 4: enduringly powerful. But I also just prayed that the people
Speaker 4: in my life whom I love would have the strength
Speaker 4: to see this through whatever happened.
Speaker 5: So, you know, and.
Speaker 3: That's just Are you more at peace now than when
Speaker 3: you were in high school?
Speaker 2: Yes? Oh? Yeah.
Speaker 3: The book is Why Faith Matter, is a truly significant
Speaker 3: and easily read book. Will be back in a moment.
Speaker 3: I'm Dennis Prager.
Speaker 1: This episode of Timeless Wisdom we'll continue right after this.
Speaker 1: Now back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.
Speaker 3: Brager it is and it's the Ultimate Issues Hour. I'm
Speaker 3: the Dennis Prager Show. Every week at this time some
Speaker 3: great issue. There's no greater issue than this, obviously, God's
Speaker 3: existence faith. One of the greatest thinkers and writers on
Speaker 3: this is one of the most prominent rabbis in the US,
Speaker 3: David Wolby, and his book is Why Faith Matters under
Speaker 3: two hundred pages, and it's for people of every faith,
Speaker 3: which leads to a question, a sensitive question.
Speaker 2: I like to post to you what is posed to me.
Speaker 3: By listeners constantly because they know that I am a
Speaker 3: practicing Jew, and they wonder, and I give course give
Speaker 3: them my answer, but I want, obviously your answer here.
Speaker 3: Why are so many Jews so non religious?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 4: I think that there are at least two very powerful
Speaker 4: reasons why that is so. One is that I really
Speaker 4: do think the shocks of history took their toll.
Speaker 5: I think that the Holocaust.
Speaker 4: Dealt the body blow to Jewish religiosity, both demographically, that is,
Speaker 4: it wiped out the most religious portion of Jews, who
Speaker 4: were the ones who stayed in Eastern Europe. So, first
Speaker 4: of all, it did it demographically and second theologically, it
Speaker 4: was very hard for many Jews to come to grips
Speaker 4: with such I mean, the world Jewish population still has
Speaker 4: not recovered, it's still not at pre Holocaust levels. A
Speaker 4: third of all Jews were killed, and that's very difficult.
Speaker 4: And then the second part of it was that, for
Speaker 4: lots of reasons that we don't have to go into,
Speaker 4: Jews raced towards modernity and the modern world to some extent,
Speaker 4: jettisoned religion, and the more modern you were, the less
Speaker 4: religious you were. And this was a common ground where
Speaker 4: everybody could meet. You know, it was hard if you
Speaker 4: felt like an outsider. As long as you stay Jewish,
Speaker 4: you were still an outsider. But if you said, well
Speaker 4: everybody should just forget their religion and meet in the
Speaker 4: common ground of liberty, humanity, so on and so forth,
Speaker 4: then there's no distinctions between us anymore. I think that
Speaker 4: it was, as I'm sure you do, a historical mistake.
Speaker 4: And I also think that the coalition of people who
Speaker 4: are tolerantly but.
Speaker 5: Deeply religious is the coalition.
Speaker 4: I don't want to overstate this, but that's the coalition
Speaker 4: that will save the world. I think that it's the
Speaker 4: most desperately needed position in the world, which.
Speaker 5: Is why I'm so glad.
Speaker 4: You know that I have Rick Warren's name on the
Speaker 4: cover of the book and that he wrote a preface
Speaker 4: to it, because I do think that.
Speaker 5: Faith should cross denominations. If I can tell you a
Speaker 5: quick story.
Speaker 4: And in one of my debates with Christopher Hitchins, and
Speaker 4: I know that you've debated him as well, he said
Speaker 4: to me, Okay, a child is born today in Saudi Arabia,
Speaker 4: do you.
Speaker 5: Want him to be a Muslim or an atheist?
Speaker 4: And he was sure that I would say an atheist,
Speaker 4: But I said, I wanted to be a Muslim, but
Speaker 4: I want him to be a tolerant, pluralistic Muslim so
Speaker 4: that he could influence other Muslims in that country to
Speaker 4: enact the best of what faith is.
Speaker 5: And that's where hope lies.
Speaker 2: That is where hope lies.
Speaker 3: But his question was a powerful one, yes, because the
Speaker 3: odds are that in Saudi Arabia he's not going to
Speaker 3: grow up to be a tolerant person.
Speaker 5: Right, But I got to choose, well, I know, all right.
Speaker 3: Like for me to defend Hitchard's on religious.
Speaker 2: Matters is a rare moment.
Speaker 5: But I understand what you're saying. I mean, that's that's also.
Speaker 3: Do you feel do you feel that Christianity has been
Speaker 3: given a bad rap? Given how antagonistic the intellectual class
Speaker 3: is and and its history. Maybe it's in other words,
Speaker 3: one could say no, it wasn't given a bad rap,
Speaker 3: but it's terrific today. I saw I'm not moving you
Speaker 3: toward any answer.
Speaker 4: Well, I have a chapter on religion and violence, and
Speaker 4: I'm going to abbreviate it very much to say, and
Speaker 4: it's basically a defense of Christianity's historical record. And I say,
Speaker 4: if you want to know whether whether religion causes violence,
Speaker 4: you have to look before the monotheistic faiths and after
Speaker 4: and before I mean Rome, Babylon, Assyria, Greece. The historical
Speaker 4: record is abominable. It's much more savage than even the
Speaker 4: Middle Ages and after, as you know from the Enlightenment,
Speaker 4: on the French Revolution, the Enlightenment, World War One, World
Speaker 4: War Two, Nazism, communism. I'm sure for your listeners, I
Speaker 4: don't have to retail all the horrors that happened when
Speaker 4: you drain sanctity.
Speaker 5: From the world. It doesn't make the world better.
Speaker 4: And so I actually think that Christianity there are many sins,
Speaker 4: and this is coming obviously from a Jew. There are
Speaker 4: many sins in the Christian record, But has Christianity made
Speaker 4: the world better? I think it is unquestionable that it
Speaker 4: has made the world better.
Speaker 2: And.
Speaker 5: That today continues to do so.
Speaker 3: And I.
Speaker 4: Think that it's a shame that that isn't better understood,
Speaker 4: not only among non Christians, but even among Christians.
Speaker 3: Well, for that alone, I know many people will want
Speaker 3: to read this book because no Jew can challenge your
Speaker 3: bona fide as a committed Jew. And of course I
Speaker 3: agree with you, and it is it is a very
Speaker 3: worrisome to me, very worrisome the the de religionization of America.
Speaker 3: Does that worry you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it worries me.
Speaker 4: For for one one reason is the reason that of
Speaker 4: course you speak about, which is the moral component, but
Speaker 4: also because I actually see to some extent the lack
Speaker 4: of religion as a cutting off from the past. And
Speaker 4: you know, Cicero said, one who doesn't know the past
Speaker 4: remains forever a child. And the truth is this is
Speaker 4: our past, this is our collective past. And not only
Speaker 4: is there a lack of belief. There's a lack of
Speaker 4: knowledge and a lack of interest and the great religious
Speaker 4: heritage that's our that's our reservoir of culture. And it
Speaker 4: seems to me a shame not only from a moral
Speaker 4: point of view, but just from the point of view
Speaker 4: of the richness of life to lose everything that brought
Speaker 4: us to this moment, to sort of kick the latter
Speaker 4: out from under us in the assumption that we can
Speaker 4: still move higher.
Speaker 3: You and I both live in Los Angeles County, and
Speaker 3: I led an ultimately and ultimately failed at the battle
Speaker 3: to keep the little little Cross in the county seal
Speaker 3: of Los Angeles County. And my argument to the Board
Speaker 3: of Supervisors, the five person board was not religious. It
Speaker 3: was exactly yours. It was historical. It's Los Angeles, the
Speaker 3: city or the County of Angels It's not Los Zecularistas.
Speaker 3: If it was founded by Wickens, I'd expect the broom. Yes,
Speaker 3: you are erasing our history by erasing that cross.
Speaker 4: And you know, it's not as though we don't have
Speaker 4: some sense of what a secular society would be without
Speaker 4: serious religious commitment.
Speaker 5: We see it in America. If you call Hollywood, there.
Speaker 4: Are enclaves of our society that feel as though classical
Speaker 4: religion is is anethema, that they dislike it and they
Speaker 4: reject it. And I don't see that it's creating any
Speaker 4: you know, soaring culture or deep moral imperatives. It's just
Speaker 4: it's very hard to take a tradition of thousands of
Speaker 4: years and replace it overnight.
Speaker 3: Name by Newsweek the number one pulpit rabbi in America
Speaker 3: his book, Why Faith Matters, Rabbi David walp wo LPE.
Speaker 3: It's up at Pragerradio dot com. We'll take your calls
Speaker 3: and I.
Speaker 1: Configure this episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.
Speaker 1: Now back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.
Speaker 2: The name of the book is Why Faith Matters.
Speaker 3: And it's a wonderful thing when it's a Jew who
Speaker 3: writes such a book, because so often we think it's
Speaker 3: Christians writing on faith, and so many Jews have been secularized.
Speaker 3: And I thought the rabbi came up with about as
Speaker 3: concise and excellent an explanation for that phenomenon as one
Speaker 3: could have. It's something I think I'll devote an hour
Speaker 3: two once. It's trying to actually we had a series
Speaker 3: of shows explaining Jews, but in any event, it's one
Speaker 3: worth returning to. The book is Why Faith Matters? David Walpy,
Speaker 3: one of the most prominent rabbis in America. Wolp except
Speaker 3: but Praegeradio dot com at the blog area and of
Speaker 3: course available anywhere you get your books, but it's convenient
Speaker 3: for you through Prager Radio at the blog area of it.
Speaker 3: Let me take some of your calls one eighth Prager
Speaker 3: seven seven six, which is eight seven seven two four
Speaker 3: three triple seven six and Jared in New Orleans, Louisiana. Jared,
Speaker 3: Dennis Prager and Rabbi David Wilbe Hi, this.
Speaker 6: Is a question that's bothered me for a few months now.
Speaker 6: Would you say it's more important that God does exist?
Speaker 6: Or is it more important that people believe that God exists?
Speaker 6: If God exists but people are atheists, that would have
Speaker 6: a more destructive effect. And if God didn't exist but
Speaker 6: people believe that he did.
Speaker 3: You're you're a real thinker, Jared.
Speaker 4: All right, So I don't know how Dennis would answer
Speaker 4: this question, but I'll tell you what I think. I
Speaker 4: think in this world, given that it's already here, it's
Speaker 4: more important.
Speaker 5: That people believe God exists.
Speaker 4: If there's a world after this one, it's more important
Speaker 4: that God exists, or that world wouldn't be That would
Speaker 4: be my offhand thought. But I think it's a great question, Jared,
Speaker 4: and I have to give it more thought.
Speaker 3: Okay, all right, wonderful, Thank you. It's an excellent answer
Speaker 3: actually talking about that. What is your take on the afterlife?
Speaker 5: I'm all for it.
Speaker 4: I well, you know this was I think that the
Speaker 4: afterlife is a sort of assumption that you make if
Speaker 4: you really do believe in a God of love. I
Speaker 4: don't understand how you can believe in such a God
Speaker 4: and assume that God abandons us the moment we die.
Speaker 4: And in some ways what's hard for people about faith
Speaker 4: is faith in the eternity of human beings as opposed
Speaker 4: to faith in the reality of God. But for me,
Speaker 4: when I look into someone's eyes, when I really get
Speaker 4: to know someone, that's part of what convinces me that
Speaker 4: we are not just accidents of ancient chemistry. You know
Speaker 4: that we're something greater than that and deeper than that.
Speaker 4: And so I really do believe that we live on
Speaker 4: although I have no idea in what way. Part of
Speaker 4: what makes the afterlife seem silly at times is that
Speaker 4: people assume they know what it's going to be like,
Speaker 4: even though they couldn't know this world before they came
Speaker 4: into it, right and Mark Twain in Letters from Earth,
Speaker 4: he says, people think they're going to lie on green
Speaker 4: fields and listen to harp music.
Speaker 5: They wouldn't want to do it for five minutes while
Speaker 5: they're alive, but they think they're going to be happy.
Speaker 2: For he's a genius.
Speaker 3: The guy that is so funny, it's true. But so
Speaker 3: you know what that reminds me. By the way, you
Speaker 3: will love this as a rabbi, you will totally relate
Speaker 3: to this. When I was in yeshiva, which is for
Speaker 3: my listeners who don't know, an intense religious Jewish education,
Speaker 3: half your day is Jewish studies and half the day
Speaker 3: secular studies. So I was a kid and I was
Speaker 3: about no actually it was in high school in fact,
Speaker 3: and I remember the rabbi and somebody asked him about
Speaker 3: the afterlife and he said, I think it was in
Speaker 3: Hebrew when he said to the boys, just want you
Speaker 3: to know, or actually boys and girls, he said, in
Speaker 3: the afterlife, we learned Torah all the time, and I
Speaker 3: remember thinking, I don't want to go.
Speaker 5: I don't want to go.
Speaker 3: And I teach the Torah now and I love it.
Speaker 3: But THEA.
Speaker 8: And I thought of it in particular of studying with him,
Speaker 8: but I have him for each as long as you're
Speaker 8: not there. If you're there, it reminds me of the
Speaker 8: harp story though.
Speaker 2: That's all.
Speaker 5: So you know.
Speaker 4: I send out an email every week of about two
Speaker 4: hundred words, just a very short, sort of.
Speaker 5: Inspirational email, and.
Speaker 4: I try to encapsulate, and it's always hard to do
Speaker 4: just the same thing that you're doing. I try to
Speaker 4: encapsulate answers to significant questions in that One of the
Speaker 4: things that one of the emails that I sent out
Speaker 4: that got the most response and I reproduced it in
Speaker 4: the book, is this idea of the twins in the womb,
Speaker 4: which is, imagine that there are twins in a womb,
Speaker 4: and one believes that there's a world outside the woman.
Speaker 5: The other doesn't.
Speaker 4: Because the one who doesn't believe it says, you know,
Speaker 4: we've never seen another world, never experienced another world. Now
Speaker 4: imagine that the one who does believe is born back
Speaker 4: in the womb their morning of death, but outside they're
Speaker 4: celebrating a birth.
Speaker 2: Back in a moment. The book Why Faith Matters.
Speaker 7: Done.
Speaker 3: By everybody done it bring her hand the openate issues hour,
Speaker 3: and I'm very open, as you folks know. Indeed, transparency
Speaker 3: is a goal of mine, both personally and professionally. And
Speaker 3: I have to tell you there are times when I
Speaker 3: really don't think I deserve a salary, because if hard
Speaker 3: work is the definition of when you should get paid,
Speaker 3: sometimes it is such a joy and really easy, especially
Speaker 3: when you have a guest like doctor, like doctor, I was,
Speaker 3: are are you doctor?
Speaker 5: By the way, you know what I feel.
Speaker 4: Herst said when rabbis became doctors judas and became sick.
Speaker 3: And Jews got sick is the way I heard it. Yeah, yes, yes,
Speaker 3: that's so.
Speaker 4: But I'm not that's just a defense that we rabbis
Speaker 4: used for not paying.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, I love you for it. On the contrary,
Speaker 3: and you're not here with that anyway. But it's a
Speaker 3: it's a rabbi David waltp w O LP and his
Speaker 3: book is Why Faith Matters. But talking to him as
Speaker 3: as Densh de Susan whom you mentioned earlier, is another example.
Speaker 2: Certainly it is. It is.
Speaker 3: I've always felt uh and this is apropos almost of nothing.
Speaker 3: But when I'm when I'm with people like Desusa or
Speaker 3: Walpy and I and certainly others folks that you've heard
Speaker 3: on my show, I there are two types of people
Speaker 3: in a sense. There are those who love to star
Speaker 3: and there are those those who love to be on
Speaker 3: an all star team. It's just a temperament. I don't
Speaker 3: say one is better than the other. I much prefer
Speaker 3: to be a member of an all star team. That's
Speaker 3: my temperament. So when I'm when I'm with such people,
Speaker 3: that's how I feel, and it's say yeah, it's a
Speaker 3: it's a great feeling. The book, again is why faith matters,
Speaker 3: and it is of course up at the Prager Radio
Speaker 3: dot com. And let's take some more of your calls
Speaker 3: that you might have. You you were mentioning by the
Speaker 3: way that people can get an email from you, is
Speaker 3: that right?
Speaker 4: Yes, they can write to our Bagan that's our b
Speaker 4: e g I n at Sinai Temple dot org r
Speaker 4: bagant or our begin at Sini Temple dot org. And
Speaker 4: I send out two hundred words once a week and
Speaker 4: you won't get anything else, No ads, just about two
Speaker 4: words a bunch of week WHI seems to me about
Speaker 4: a readable, bite sized inspirational email.
Speaker 3: That's right, and they are inspirational. I see them in
Speaker 3: various papers. All right again, let me let me go
Speaker 3: se some of your calls. Here, here's a here's an
Speaker 3: interesting one. Decatur, Georgia and Joseph Hi, Joseph, Dennis Praeger
Speaker 3: and Rabbi Wolpy from.
Speaker 7: A devout Catholic Shalom from the bottom of my heart.
Speaker 2: Thank you, sir, God bless you.
Speaker 5: I play.
Speaker 7: I'm seventy three years old and I played trumpet in
Speaker 7: a concert band, and we recently had a piece called
Speaker 7: Rhapsody for Hanukkah. And there's four or five Jewish friends
Speaker 7: of mine, all about our same age, old uffers, and
Speaker 7: they gave me a yamako, so I put it on
Speaker 7: while I played the solo, and it came out all right.
Speaker 7: But I'd really like to know from the Rabbi.
Speaker 3: What do you mean came out all right? It should
Speaker 3: have come out a little better.
Speaker 7: Well, I'm kidding, all right. It had a little hard party.
Speaker 2: There, Okay, So what's the question?
Speaker 7: What is the history of the how far back did
Speaker 7: it go? And is it okay for Christians to wear it?
Speaker 7: Is a beautiful symbol and a very deep symbol, I believe.
Speaker 4: Okay, I'll give you a real quick one on this.
Speaker 4: The truth is that in the Tumut, it's not clear
Speaker 4: that people wore them, which goes back a couple thousand years.
Speaker 4: In the Bible, there's no mention of it, but it
Speaker 4: became a distinctive garb of Jews.
Speaker 5: In fact, it.
Speaker 4: Really is only in very modern times that Jews took
Speaker 4: to wearing it all the time, which some do. I
Speaker 4: wear mind as a sort of clerical color. That is
Speaker 4: some you know, I wear it as a sort of
Speaker 4: means of identification. People will look at me sometimes and
Speaker 4: they'll see amakom my head and they'll.
Speaker 5: Say, oh, you must be a rabbi Wolpe.
Speaker 4: But there's nothing against Ananjo wearing it, and there's nothing,
Speaker 4: by the way, sacred about the Yamaica itself. It's just
Speaker 4: a head covering. The idea is this sort of reverse
Speaker 4: idea of taking your hat off when you come into church.
Speaker 4: It's just considered a mark of respect before God and
Speaker 4: a last point which I once heard a person in
Speaker 4: Israel say to me when someone asked him why he
Speaker 4: wears a yamaka, he nudged me and he said, I
Speaker 4: wear a yamaka so that I know where I stop,
Speaker 4: which I thought was a nice idea. That is, it's
Speaker 4: a mark of humility.
Speaker 3: Excellent, excellent, Thank you. All right, we have listeners around
Speaker 3: the world, so we'll go to Norway and Eric in
Speaker 3: Friedrich Stott, Norway. Hello, Eric, Dennis Praeger and Rabbi Walby.
Speaker 9: Hi, all right, thanks for taking my call. I'm sitting
Speaker 9: here in a country that's, you know, one arguably one
Speaker 9: of the most secular in the world, and I'm constantly
Speaker 9: made aware of I think it's a GK. Chesterton quote.
Speaker 9: When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing,
Speaker 9: they'll believe in anything. And right now they're dealing with
Speaker 9: a lot of immigrant immigrants coming in from largely Muslim countries,
Speaker 9: and I think that I wanted to get your perspective
Speaker 9: on this. You know, I think that perhaps a person
Speaker 9: from a religious background has a greater ability to understand
Speaker 9: both the benefit and dangers of a strong faith, and
Speaker 9: right now, the secular Europe I don't think really understands
Speaker 9: these things very well, and it feels like the US
Speaker 9: is racing to catch up in that direction. I was
Speaker 9: wondering if you had any prective no matter, any thoughts.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Eric.
Speaker 4: I would say this, first of all, I really do
Speaker 4: believe that when I wrote this book, I wrote it
Speaker 4: better because there had been a long period of my
Speaker 4: life when I didn't believe in God, so that mindset
Speaker 4: is not alien to me. But if you've grown up
Speaker 4: either always believing or never believing, it's true that it's
Speaker 4: hard to sort of vault into the other person's mindset.
Speaker 4: And I think that the more secular countries, although I
Speaker 4: might must say that even in Sweden and Denmark, the
Speaker 4: vast majority of people still get married in churches have
Speaker 4: their kids baptized, So there's a sort of disconnect between
Speaker 4: people's professed disbelief and their conduct. But in those countries,
Speaker 4: the test of their belief system will be when it
Speaker 4: comes in contact with another passionate belief system. And I
Speaker 4: don't know I share your concern with how Europe is
Speaker 4: going to do.
Speaker 3: Over the next fifty years, as or as I've put it,
Speaker 3: it's hard to be You can't contend with those who
Speaker 3: believe in something by believing in nothing. We return final
Speaker 3: segment with Rabbi Wolby.
Speaker 1: This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.
Speaker 1: Now back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom. If
Speaker 1: you have a friend on whom you think you can lie,
Speaker 1: you are lucky man.
Speaker 7: If you found the reason to live on and not to.
Speaker 2: Die, you are lucky man.
Speaker 7: He chose a poets scans no toys ten Wossen using
Speaker 7: Steve Woo. If you've got the secret, just tied out
Speaker 7: the poet's tale.
Speaker 2: Duggy Man.
Speaker 1: Lucky.
Speaker 2: The book is why faith matters.
Speaker 3: It's for people of every background and no background, whatever
Speaker 3: your religion or no religion. And he's very open, this
Speaker 3: distinguished Rabbi Wolpe about his own non belief for many years.
Speaker 3: I'm going to ask you a question that may seem
Speaker 3: odd to some of the listeners. I don't think it
Speaker 3: will seem odd to you, but you know, I'll take
Speaker 3: the risk. Your faith in God? How much is it,
Speaker 3: David is the Hue Woman's faith in God? And how
Speaker 3: much is it, David the Jews faith in God? How
Speaker 3: much is Judaism a medium to that faith?
Speaker 4: I see religions as languages. They're the languages that we
Speaker 4: talk to God.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 5: I know that this may offend some of your Jewish listeners.
Speaker 4: When people ask me why is Judaism better, I always
Speaker 4: tell them it's my job to argue Judaism's excellence, not
Speaker 4: its superiority.
Speaker 5: I haven't been every religion in the world.
Speaker 4: I've only been a Jew, and I know that Judaism
Speaker 4: is a very powerful means of communicating with God. I
Speaker 4: have no doubt that other religions are as well. The
Speaker 4: fundamental reality over any religion is that God exists. The
Speaker 4: religions are the paths by which we seek to reach
Speaker 4: towards God. So I would say that God is prior
Speaker 4: to Judaism. The Bible makes that clear. Judaism doesn't come
Speaker 4: along for long after the world is created, and I
Speaker 4: always thought that that was a wonderful thing. That what
Speaker 4: the Jewish New Year celebrates is not the beginning of
Speaker 4: Judaism doesn't celebrate the new year when Abraham was born.
Speaker 5: It celebrates the new year when the world is created.
Speaker 4: Because fundamentally, human beings are gifted with the reality of
Speaker 4: God and given the task of reaching towards God. They
Speaker 4: will always find different ways to do it. But as
Speaker 4: long as their faith is inacted, that is, as long
Speaker 4: as they do goodness with their faith. Because what you
Speaker 4: feel is of much less importance to me than what
Speaker 4: you do with.
Speaker 2: What you feel.
Speaker 4: As long as their faith is enacted, it seems to
Speaker 4: me worth honoring and cherishing.
Speaker 3: If you can answer this is, give me and my
Speaker 3: listeners the thing that is most likely, at any given
Speaker 3: moment to make you feel God centered, a sunset, your daughter,
Speaker 3: prayer at synagogue?
Speaker 1: What is it?
Speaker 2: If there is one?
Speaker 4: This may sound funny, I would say tragedy and great joy.
Speaker 4: In other words, the extremes of life. You know, they
Speaker 4: break open a part of you at times of great love.
Speaker 4: And the part that's broken, let's God in.
Speaker 3: Now you know why people are reading Life Faith Matters
Speaker 3: by Rabbi Wilpy. Rabbi, thank you so much for your
Speaker 3: time and for your book.
Speaker 2: Thank you You're very welcome.
Speaker 3: And Jim and Katie and Ned and David and Rabbi
Speaker 3: Dan from Cleveland, Evelyn.
Speaker 2: I wish I could take your calls.
Speaker 3: It's always painful, but I hope you enjoyed this Ultimate
Speaker 3: Issues Hour.
Speaker 2: I'm Dennis Prager.
Speaker 3: This has been timeless wisdom with Dennis Prager.
Speaker 1: Visit dennisprager dot com for thousands of hours of Dennis's lectures, courses,
Speaker 1: and classic radio programs, and to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational
Speaker 1: Bibles