There are many versions of the “interview with God” concept. One is even a cartoon, which I find quite entertaining. Here, God is a man with dark skin, dressed in white t-shirt and matching trousers, who is most of the time perched in a tree. A woman wants to have a “day in the life” interview with him, and is already thinking about the terrific scoop: a Day in the Life of God! This story, which also plays on philosophical concepts in an interesting way, is a part of a whole collection of Interview With God -stories.

On the other extreme, I have also encountered a version of the “interview with God” concept, where in a Flash presentation you run into a Fundamentalist, Old Testament, version of God, who threatens you with fire, brimstone, and eternal damnation if you are disobedient! Yes, since the Old Testament is still regarded as a holy text, although it mirrors the ideas of a rather primitive tribe who lived thousands of years ago, this is what you can expect to find. Some people are still attached to such views, although they are destructive and are causing much suffering all over the world.

Another, more likeable version of the “interview with God” concept, is built around a popular poem beginning with the words: “I dreamed I had an interview with God“. Here, God comes across as a nice guy who appears to smile at us humans and our little imperfections. Kind of entertaining, but I feel this text doesn’t really adress those eternal issues that we as humans are brooding over, such as the meaning of life an so on. In any case, this text seems popular since I’ve seen it in a couple of versions turned into a Flash presentation, with more or less beautiful accompanying images.

Finally, my personal favorite version (the cartoon version somes in as second for me) is the one based on the God who is speaking in the “Conversations With God” book by N. Walsch. This is a Flash animation which you can also download as a free screensaver; it includes very beautiful flower pictures as background to a deep and inspiring text. The soundtrack, a simple piano theme, also adds to the experience. You can find this version at www.dreaminterviewwithgod.com

Sad to say, the world today is becoming very toxic. Not only is this because of pollution, this is also because of the constant stress that people experience. At home, you are confronted with concerns on utility bills, children’s assignments, and other household items. In the workplace, the stressors are endless. This includes flaming emails from your clients or your bosses, deadlines that are not met, and employee concerns, among others.

Because of this, people resort to variouscoping mechanisms. Some people watch movies while others go shopping. If there is sufficient time, people travel and find a break from their normal environment. Some just stay at home, grab popcorns and flip through the channels in the television.

Sports is also another coping mechanism for a number of people. You may engage in basketball, tennis, volleyball, table tennis, or badminton. Some would preferthe less physical forms of exercise. This includes yoga and pilates and other “aerobic-like” activities.

You can even do yoga and pilates at home. For those who really want to enrol in classes, you may do so. The good thing about yoga is that you are spared from bringing those bulky rubber shoes. Doing yoga only requires a comfortable outfit and a yoga mat. This is the primary reason why it is very convenient for office personnel to have yoga even during a weekday. Some yoga venues even provide free use of mats. With this, you have more than enough room for bringing your usual office stuff. If you bring a laptop everyday, carrying a yoga mat will not be that much of a burden. You can also still bring with you your important files all enclosed in a leather envelope. Also, there is still enough room for your leather padfolios and leather passport holders. This is particularly applicable to those who are always on the go and who occasionally travel.

Whatever the form of your coping mechanism is, just be certain that it allows you to release your stress in healthy manner. Make sure that you’re able to address it upfront and not allow yourself to wallow into misery or engage in unhealthy lifestyle. Otherwise, you are not getting yourself out of that stressful situation. You are actually creating a more complicated state which would even generate more negative emotions.

No one can hurt you without your consent. It’s important to remember this as you go through a day full of danger - real and otherwise. That teenager you stand next to while waiting for your friend to drive by could be a robber. That nice old lady you sit next to could be a thief waiting for the right moment to pick your handbag. As you stand in some dimly-lit corner flagging down a cab, you could fall prey to senseless acts of violence. How do you protect yourself from all these and more? Look around, and learn to appreciate the value of the things you see - or don’t - as a secret weapon.

1. Umbrella - The umbrella is convenient for a rainy day and for self-defense, too. Transform it into a cane, and rain forceful blows into your assailant’s head and body. You may also use it to block your enemy’s punches or strike his hand so he accidentally lets go of his knife.

2. Glass bottle - You could be drinking soda one moment and using it to defend yourself the next. The glass bottle is widely popular as a street weapon, and for good reason. Before breakage, it packs a lot of strength as you use it to strike your opponent’s head. Once the bottle breaks, it becomes even more lethal. The bottleneck, with its jagged end, could lacerate whatever and whomever it hits.

3. Ballpen - Believe it or not, that Cross pen set you bought could be turned into weapons. Those Cross century pens make the perfect weapon because of their material and size. They’re sturdy, durable, and so put them anywhere - inside your bag, in your front pocket, or stuck to the notebook you are carrying. Then, too, Cross pens are such classy writing tools it’s difficult to identify them with anything sinister. Your attacker might even scoff at you if you take one out and declare, “I could hurt somethin’ fierce with my pen, so you might want to return to wherever it is you came from.”

As a weapon, the humble pen is potent and powerful. You can use it to stab your assailant’s body or gouge an eye out, thus buying you precious time to escape.

4. Nail file - Not only for cleaning nails, you could use this to wipe the smug smile off that mugger’s face. Use this the same way you would use your Cross pens.

5. Hair spray - Aerosol is an irritant, so if you spray this directly onto your attacker’s eyes, it guarantees short-term blindness and disorientation. You will have thus time to scream for help as you run away.

Remember, you are never powerless. You are never unarmed. By being attuned to the dangers around you and the little ordinary weapons you can use to protect yourself, you might even live to be ninety!

If you have any drive toward astrology by obsessively checking your horoscope every day, you will appreciate the following weekday and then this Sunday’s horoscopes for Leo from Minerva, in the SF Gate.com and SF Chronicle:

WEEKDAY astrological birth chart/HOROSCOPE:
LEO July 22-August 21 - Gaining entrée is one thing. Making the most of it is something else. It’s time to switch from exchanging pleasantries to serious business.

WEEKLY astrological chart/HOROSCOPE:
LEO (July 22-August 21) - Tuesday’s full moon — coming now just as Mercury, Neptune and sun sweep through your hormone house — has moment of truth written all over it. Full moons — particularly eclipsed ones — are all about culmination. This one effects [sic] your wallet — both personal funds and those shared by others. Now, this could be a good thing — like a sudden windfall. On the other hand ….

I offer you the above examples as contest against those who don’t believe in the auspices of the astrology chart, against those who say the astrology chart and its accompanying tools are nothing more than hogwash for shamans and charlatans pushing a pseudo science, in response to those who use the cliché attack that those horoscopes in he paper are too general and could apply to anybody.

I did switch from exchanging pleasantries that day, and I did get a windfall.

In the past, too, my horoscopes (especially those from Minerva) have been so dead-on I have gotten chills: for example, Sunday Leo horoscope a few years ago said I would see a stranger cross a crowded room. (And the hackneyed was not lost on Minerva, either, so bear with me.) He would have initials the reverse of mine.

One night that week in December, at the prompting of charismatic (convincing) roommate, I went to a nightclub to show support for a mutual friend in a local (and promising) band. I don’t do the club scene much, so I brought along a notebook and was writing, occasionally stopping to be attentive to the band or to look up at the dancers, minglers, and guys. Many were attractive, some were handsome and hot as hell, but none jingled a jangle or whatever.

At one point I felt someone staring. I looked up, and across the room, almost ducking his head around the blur of dancers to keep a bead on me, was a gorgeous Rastafarian all in baby blues. He and I could NOT stop staring into one another’s eyes. It was almost unnerving, as I had come with no interest whatsoever in hooking up with anyone (having just left a great relationship going nowhere, etc., etc.). But he approached, we connected (on a number of levels and in a number of ways), shared comments about the band, and eventually made a date. Here’s the clincher: he turned out to be a trombonist for a world-famous band, in town for a few days, but he spent most of the rest of that time with me. His initials are M.R.. Mine are R.M..

Say what you will, but I will follow that astrology chart and believe in the destiny it affords…all the way to extremes just short of free will. For along with free will as impetus, it makes sense that the astrology chart, ancient and sagacious and often right, is what reminds me that besides business and work and responsibilities there is magic that supersedes coincidence. M.R. agrees with me. He’s a Leo, too.

The article below is from a series of mystical knowledge articles, tips, videos and information about Kabbalah …

Kabbalah symbols have an important meaning to the followers of the Jewish faith, much like Christian symbols mean something to Christian followers. The tree of life symbol and the Kabbalah red string bracelet are symbols that are recognized within the Jewish community as a part of Kabbalah faith. The Kabbalah talisman means something more than just a pretty item of a necklace. It has a standing all its own and a representation of a history within the Kabbalah faith that cannot be mistaken for sheer bling and glitz no matter what superstar wears it as decoration.

As far as Kabbalah symbols are concerned, the tree of life symbol signifies the basic thoughts and studies of the Jewish community that practices Kabbalah. It was first called the Etz haChayim and is believed to be a tool for understanding God and how He created all from nothing. The branches of the tree of life is a map of the steps of creation and how they are all linked together to signify one common root to which we are all bound together. Almost as if we are all one family under one creator.

The Kabbalah tree, known as the tree of life symbol, is called the diagram of the Sephiroth and is a drawing of how creation came to be. It comes from the texts of Sefer Yetzirah, Bahir, and the most widely known, the Zohar. It would be extremely impossible to explain without drawings how the tree of life symbols actually look since so many of the texts differ on the numbers, path and even plants that the Sephot actually represent. It is a matter of which representation of the books and beliefs that the tree of life actually takes on that make up the life pathways for the drawings themselves. You would need to look it up to know.

Christianity has its cross. Those who follow different religions each have symbols that they believe to be sacred. Kabbalah symbols, such as the tree of life symbol are no different. It takes on a life of its own to those who follow Kabbalah and truly believe in the representations of each of the branches that come from the words and inscriptions. The red string Kabbalah bracelet is more than just a piece of jewelry. It is a representation of history and a way to understanding the path to creation for the Kabbalah follower to reflect upon.

For more information on Kabbalah symbols, visit: Kabbalah

The Jewish Press reports:
Militant Judaism
JERUSALEM – A burgeoning bribery scandal threatens to bring down the government of Ehud Olmert, with Israeli law enforcement sources saying a development in the case is imminent.
Law enforcement sources said Tuesday’s development might lead to an indictment against the prime minister.

Torah Judaism

When the story first broke last week, Israel’s Channel 1 quoted a senior legal source as saying, “Olmert is in a grave situation. Separate court procedures related to the investigation and the gag order were held on Tuesday, with the court accepting a request by police not to lift the gag on the case.

Sephardic Judaism

“The investigation team must be given leeway.”
Though the near-complete news blackout on the case remains in effect in Israel, the New York Post on Tuesday disclosed that the “foreign national” mentioned in news reports is Long Island-based millionaire financier Morris Talansky, who allegedly passed money to Olmert while the latter was mayor of Jerusalem in the 1990’s.
Talansky was prepared to talk to Israeli authorities, the Post reported.
Talansky had been “questioned about the alleged scheme almost immediately after arriving in the country for Passover, and he implicated Olmert,” the Post reported.
Yitzchok noted that the difference between the current case and previous investigations of Olmert is that “here there is a witness who admits that something was done illegally, while in previous cases there was apparent proof that Olmert did something illegal but no one came forward.
Olmert tried to downplay news of the investigation, telling cabinet members Sunday that “a wave of rumors has been sweeping the country since Wednesday; some of those rumors are wicked and malicious.

Shlomo Greenwald writes:

The yeshiva and its affiliates also have a unique approach to teaching and learning Gemara. Students are encouraged to work at understanding the logical steps in any portion and to place a high value on the Gemara’ initial assumptions, even if these are later rejected.

Rabbi Leibowitz was intimately involved in many aspects of the yeshiva. For example, according to Rabbi Schwartz, several times a year he would personally travel to potential new sites for affiliated yeshivas.

Yeshiva Chofetz Chaim, which moved to Kew Gardens Hills in Queens recently, has 500 students between its high school and rabbinical schoo. A Queens elementary school that Rabbi Leibowitz started in 1957, Tiferes Moshe, has another 600 students. All the affiliates number another several thousand students.

Rabbi Dovid Harris and Rabbi Akiva Grunblatt will succeed Rabbi Leibowitz as roshei yeshiva.

“The rosh yeshiva is irreplaceable,” Rabbi Schwartz said. “It’s the combination of his warm personality, his level of Torah erudition, and his ability to develop students. He also represented a connection to the previous generation of gedolim.”

Rabbi Leibowitz’s first wife, Pesha Leibowitz, died in 2002. He had no children, and is survived by his second wife Danielle Leibowitz.

Rachel Heller writes:

Twelve months after her concentration camp was liberated, Ann Spicer, newly married, was leaving Germany for good. Spicer’s husband snapped a photograph. Spicer’s experience is not unique among the more than 100,000 Holocaust survivors who immigrated to the United States after the war.

Mount Sinai’s staff last year asked members of the L.A. Jewish community to create personalized squares for a quilt that would memorialize the Holocaust, its victims and its survivors.

“We wanted to do a quilt, similar to the AIDS Quilt, to commemorate the Shoah on the 60th anniversary of Israel,” said Len Lawrence, general manager of Mount Sinai Memorial Parks and Mortuaries. Word of mouth carried news of the project across the country.

Contributor Wendy Brogin of Sherman Oaks said she was thankful for the chance to tell the story of how the Holocaust affected her life.

Both her father’s and mother’s families were decimated in concentration camps, but they each found a way to survive, she said. Her father was able to escape Germany through an arrangement to teach tailoring on the Isle of Man.

“The Holocaust almost toppled our whole family, but we survived,” said Brogin, who translated that notion into an embroidered family tree with a chop mark at the base. She, her husband and their three children all helped sew their relatives’ names onto the tree. Preserving the legacy of the Holocaust ensures that future generations of Jews will know the value of their heritage, Rabbi David Wolpe of Sinai Temple told a packed Kamenir Chapel at Mount Sinai Simi Valley on May 4, before unveiling the quilts to a crowd of contributors, their families and guests. Even if we remember only a name, that is a powerful tribute.”

One square features a burning candle; another, train tracks; one has a dove with an olive branch; and near the blue silk border of the third quilt, a photo transfer of Ann Spicer and her husband, Edward, with the caption: “From martyrdom to freedom.”

http://www.revver.com/video/825121/bedikat-hametz-passover-with-your-moral-leader/
http://www.revver.com/video/807821/lunch-with-the-homeless/
http://www.revver.com/video/807801/heeb-magazines-hollywood-issue-at-von-dutch-v/

Assembling the vast collection of memories was no easy task, said Marlene Alonge, who designed the quilts.

Reform Judaism

Alonge, whose husband, Joel, is director of sales for Mount Sinai’s Hollywood Hills site, said she appreciated the chance to learn more about the Holocaust through other peoples’ lives.

Jewish Journalism

“Doing this project, I felt privileged. Lawrence said he hopes the Shoah Quilt project can become a teaching tool for children across the city, and he wants to take the quilts on a national tour to spread the message further.

Californian Judaism

Brad A. Greenberg writes for the Jewish Journal about academic Kevin MacDonald:

Traditional Judaism

Awaiting feedback from his publisher 15 years ago, MacDonald sent his manuscript to a colleague in the psychology department at California State University Long Beach (CSULB). MacDonald, 64, has been deemed America’s “foremost anti-Semitic thinker” by civil rights experts. A tenured psychology professor who lent his expertise to Holocaust denier David Irving, MacDonald has suggested restricting college enrollment and increasing taxes for Jews to mediate what he perceives as inequities with non-Jewish whites.

Reform Judaism

The books have become sacred scripture for white supremacists, and a growing number of MacDonald’s colleagues have urged the university to denounce his writings.

Feminist Judaism

“He is repackaging traditional anti-Jewish beliefs in contemporary pseudo-scientific language,” said Jeffrey Blutinger, a history professor leading the push against MacDonald. “Oshkosh was a great town to grow up in,” MacDonald said in a recent conversation. “There weren’t any Jewish families at all. Nobody talked about Jews. Almost three decades later, when MacDonald began connecting Jewish power and success to evolutionary strategies, he would identify his leftist years as the first time Jews used his gentile face to promote what he considered their group agenda. It wasn’t until the ’90s that MacDonald began to see Jewish communities as inimical entities slowly destroying their hosts.

http://www.revver.com/video/807801/heeb-magazines-hollywood-issue-at-von-dutch-v/
http://www.revver.com/video/807821/lunch-with-the-homeless/

“Jews are inevitably going to be an elite,” he said. MacDonald’s core complaint is Jewish influence on immigration laws. “European people in this country will be a minority in a few years,” MacDonald said. Tall and lanky, with white hair and a disarming smile, MacDonald hardly looks like America’s scariest academic. Until 2000, MacDonald was largely unknown on campus. During the past six weeks, the anthropology and history departments, as well as the Jewish studies program, all have issued statements denouncing MacDonald’s work as “professionally irresponsible and morally untenable”; the psychology department voted to disassociate from his writings because of their popularity with “extremist groups.”

MacDonald’s intellectual pursuits began innocently. The article made MacDonald think of animals.

My earliest research on the behavior of Jews focused on that, and you see wolf packs do that.”

MacDonald began to think of Judaism as the vehicle through which an evolutionary strategy was mechanized. “A People that Shall Dwell Alone” lays the foundation for MacDonald’s theory of Judaism as a group evolutionary strategy and briefly discusses other groups that he believes employ similar strategies: Gypsies, the Amish, Chinese living abroad.

Jews, he pointed out, are taught they are different — God’s chosen — and they are encouraged to live lives that benefit other Jews. “The incredible elaboration of Jewish religious law in these writings suggests that this mass of material is the result of intense intellectual competition within the Jewish community and that the resulting Torah then provided an arena for intellectual competition within the Jewish community.”

Journalism On Jewish Life
Jews invented Hollywood.
While Thomas Edison invented the motion picture camera, immigrant Jewish entrepreneurs (like Sam Goldwyn, Jack and Harry Warner, Louis B. Mayer) created Hollywood. Jews created the three major American television networks, William Paley’s CBS, David Sarnoff’s NBC and Leonard Goldenson’s ABC.
Today about two-thirds of leading TV and movie producers are Jewish.
The Jewish Press
Jewish domination of entertainment is little discussed in the mainstream media, which is also dominated by Jews, out of fears of arousing hatred of Jews.
Journalism On Jewish Life
In December 2002, the National Lampoon came out with the spoof The Hollywood Retorter, with Jews in Hollywood as the main joke. Even the L.A. Times, in a news brief, shied away from mentioning the “Jewish” articles. There’re a lot of Jews in Hollywood. Jews in Hollywood, like most Jews in the media, academia and pornography, tend to be secular Jews, rooted neither in Judaism nor in the majority Christian culture.
British journalist William Cash wrote about Hollywood’s Jewish cabal in an October 1994 issue of the British journal Spectator. The article drew hysterical reactions denouncing Cash and the Spectator for anti-Semitism.
William Cash writes:
Los Angeles. The Old Establishment was a club. As small-time professional incest it is probably no worse than, say, public schoolboys in the City (an analogy used by one senior Jewish executive to rebut the charge of Jewish favoritism in Hollywood). Hollywood Jews are not notably religious. ‘ The Wasp replied, ‘I’m trying to look Jewish.’
Jews, always compulsive story-tellers and talented negotiators, are extremely compatible with the executive side of the movie business.
_________________ LETTERS
THE SPECTATOR 5 November 1994
SIR:The total dominance of the American film industry by the Jewish Establishment, past and present, is admirably related by William Cash (Kings of the Deal, 29 October)…Cash illustrates the attempts by the pre-war studio bosses to copy the mores of the old East Coast Establishment, and he notes that this is no longer so.
SIR: William Cash worries about inevitable shrieks of anti-Semitism as a consequence of his anti-Semitism. SIR: William Cash’s article about Jewish influence in Hollywood has caused a great deal of offense and outrage. This language perpetrates the discredited old myth about a Jewish conspiracy and a Jewish monopoly of power which is allegedly used to disadvantage and exclude non-Jews.
Neville Nagler Chief Executive, The Board of Deputies of British Jews London
SIR: The reaction to my article pointing out that Hollywood’s feudal power structure is predominantly Jewish (’Kings of the deal’, 29 October) has been wholly misconstrued. Gabler asserts that the Hollywood Jews practiced ‘reverse discrimination” Those goyim!” That Hollywood is a Jewish-run town, despite only 4% per cent of the country being Jewish, is, indeed, always joked about.
William Cash Woodrow Wilson Drive, Hollywood, California 90046
A recent article in The Spectator has caused consternation in America. Mr. Weinraub appended to these exact extracts from Cash’s article his own comment: ‘Few in Hollywood could recall such an anti-Semitic article in a mainstream publication.’
I suspect he was most offended by William Cash’s remark that the New York Times was the ‘official mouthpiece’ of the new Jewish establishment. Mr. Weinraub’s own article was very well written. Self (after being told, at length, how offended le tout Hollywood was by Mr. Cash’s article): I am quite sensitive to the attitudes of Jews to this sort of thing. Self: Because I am Jewish.
Weinraub: Jews put Jews in gas ovens! The question is whether Jews should be as robustly unparanoic in their response to Cash’s article as Catholics have been to Mount’s deliberately provocative polemic. So: Jews are over-opinionated and money-obsessed. I accept that William Cash’s use of the word ‘cabal’when asking if any such thing existed in Hollywood was unfortunate. LETTERS _______________ THE SPECTATOR 26 November 1994
Arthur J. Magida writes in the Baltimore Jewish Times 11/11/94:
Hollywood movie executives are “outraged” and “disgusted” about an article in the British magazine, The Spectator, that revives a stereotype from the early days of failmmaking that a “Jewish cabal” controls the entertainment industry.
The article by William Cash, a Hollywood correspondent for the British conservative newspaper The Daily Telegraph, describes Jews as “fiercely competitive,” “clannish” “and compulsive storytellers and talented negotiators.” The “invidious and protective culture” they have created in Hollywood denies employment to non-Jews, according to Mr. Cash, who answered in the positive this question that he posed:
Neal Sandberg, former head of the western region of the American Jewish Committee and currently head of AJC’s Pacific Rim Institute, said Mr. Cash’s article was “overstated, even in terms of genteel anti- Semitism. The U.S. film business is almost completely controlled by Jews. Neal Gabler wrote in the 11/13/94 Los Angeles Times:
You call this a power structure!
Ignoring the facts to suit his myth of Jewish control, Cash is in a long tradition of anti-Semites who began smiting Jewish movie executives almost from the moment the Jews entered the film industry in the 1910s.
Jews didn’t subscribe to the same values. Anti-Semitism is as old as the hills. The latest addition comes from William Cash, Hollywood correspondent for Britain’s The Daily Telegraph. He has written an article for another British publication, The Spectator, titled “Kings of the Deal,” asserting that Jews control Hollywood.
Most Hollywood studios are owned either by foreign interests or New York banks. Mr. Cash convicts himself with his own words. The Hollywood hebes, he notes, prefer to wear white socks. Cash even has people in Hollywood trying to pass for Jews. Mr Cash, son of the right-wing Tory MP Bill Cash, claims that Hollywood is controlled by a “Jewish cabal” and suggests that it may operate reverse discrimination against outsiders, including blacks, Wasps and Britons. He characterises Hollywood’s Jewish leaders as vulgar (a “white-sock mediocracy”), “compulsive story-tellers and talented negotiators”.
“Few in Hollywood (can) recall such an anti-Semitic article in a mainstream publication,” wrote Bernard Weinraub, the New York Times’ Hollywood correspondent. Now, if you or I read an article about the Jewish domination of Hollywood, I think we would react sensibly by saying: ”Well, if the Jews are so clever and are so much in charge, how come Hollywood isn’t making any good films these days? Lawson admits that Jews do dominate the entertainment industry but this does not lead to our movie and TV screens filling with Jewish culture.
“Jewish movies - Crossing Delancey, Yentl, Brighton Beach Memoirs - have been relatively few. “In general, Hollywood movies reflect Middle American Christian values.

Author Dennis Prager

Dennis Prager’s parents were born and raised in Brooklyn. Max Prager married Hilda Friedfeld on September 14, 1940.
“My parents are a fascinating amalgamation of modern American and traditional Judaism,” says Dennis. “Both grew up with European Jewish parents. “…Within Jewish life I’m in the no-man’s land, denominationally. Prager discussed his abandonment of Orthodoxy on his radio show July 13, 2001:
Dennis: “I was raised Orthodox but after my Bar Mitzvah on I was never Orthodox. Dennis: “Yes. Dennis: “I don’t have an Orthodox temperament. Never. Dennis is the only member of his immediate family who is not Orthodox. That Dennis’s parents met at a mixed-sex Orthodox dance shows how far Jewish Orthodoxy has shifted to the right. This showed the compassion Dennis always had.”

Dennis Prager

Dennis began school at age six at the kindergarten of Yeshiva Rambam.
(The Prager Perspective, June 15, 1997)
When fights broke out on the ice, Prager would stay seated, to show his disaproval.
Around the same time, Dennis developed a decade-long hobby of listening to shortwave radio broadcasts.
During summer vacations, Kenny and Dennis attended Camp Winsoki, a modern Orthodox summer camp located in Rensellaervile N.Y..
Ethnic pride has never been a big value for Dennis. The proverbial “why?” child, Prager was sent to the principal’s office so often that they named a chair “The Dennis Prager seat.”
Dennis said he wanted his parents to never ask him about school. (Relayed by Dennis on his radio show, 12/12/03)
Dennis Prager
Dennis Prager’s best friend, Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, wrote three paragraphs in the Summer 2001 issue of Olam magazine that seem to be about Dennis:
Prager came early to the belief that his life mission was to promote goodness. Dennis was raised to never take the easy way out. Kenny attended an all-boys yeshiva high school. Flatbush put an end to mixed-sex dances in Prager’s 10th grade.
Prager and Telushkin were assigned to the C-student track. Dennis was known as a loudmouth in highschool. Prager fell in love with classical music. “This camp provided the most positive Jewish experiences in my life. Dennis had his “first serious romance. (Prager’s CD)
Dennis particularly liked WNBC radio and WOR host Jean Shepherd.
In Prager’s final year of high school, he served as Senior Class President.
(Ultimate Issues, Summer, 1985, pg. 10)
Prager attended Brooklyn College. Prager studied international history, comparative religion and Arabic at the University of Leeds. Prager intervened, kicking the leader of the thugs. On Friday night, August 1, 1969, Prager’s life forever changed.
Approaching one of the groups he’d addressed, Prager asked to lecture on why so many young people were alienated from Judaism.
Bnai Brith nominated Prager as its delegate, and its later report described Dennis as “the star of the West.”
Prager graduated Brooklyn College with a double major in Anthropology and History. “Graduate school was a tough time for me,” Prager said on his radio show March 2, 2006. Dennis taught at Brooklyn College from 1970-72.
Around 1970, Prager’s car was broken into and the stereo stolen. Dennis opened his door. (Prager’s radio show, 12/28/06)
* Why are so many young Jews alienated from Judaism and the Jewish people?
As is typical of Prager’s personality, the book is not titled Nine Questions People Ask about Judaism but The Nine Questions People Ask about Judaism.
Then I found out that it’s ideas are largely absent from Jewish life, even Orthodox Jewish life. In April, 1976, Shlomo Bardin, the 76-year old founder and director of the Brandeis Institute, invited the 26-year old Prager to take charge. In 1976, Prager appeared on television for the first time. “We’re trying to turn out leaders,” Prager said.
“Why?”
Prager’s friends teased him about this remark for years afterwards. (Related by Prager on his radio show on Jan. 24, 2006 during his first hour.)
One night as Prager was about to tell his latest theory, the rabbi stopped him.
Dennis answered in the negative. “The [1980] election of Ronald Reagan affected my happiness,” said Prager on his radio show March 2, 2006. “I had a feeling that if I did well [on his radio debut],” remembers Prager on his radio show January 3, 2006, “that it would change my life.”
In 1983, Prager and Telushkin published their second book: Why the Jews? Prager ejected musician Sam Glaser for playing non-Jewish music. In his speeches since working at BBI, Prager mocks his BBI board. Prager says the board was shocked. In September of 1983, Prager left the Brandeis Bardin Institute. (Prager CD)
Joseph Telushkin writes on page 104 of his book Jewish Humor about Prager and Brandeis-Bardin:
Prager and Telushkin portray Prager’s experience at Brandeis-Bardin as that of the martyr. While Prager claims he quit, a Jewish Journal cover story in early 1986 indicated he was pushed out. Many on the board said Prager was a lousy administrator.
At the time of Bardin’s death, [Prager] was 27 years old. As Prager himself observed, “Some of the people on the board had children who were older than me.”
But it was not simply Prager’s youth inspired controversy. Chotiner’s case against Prager was based upon his conviction that the type of Judaism Prager advocated was too rigid. Dennis Prager served as institute director for seven years, despite the existence of a virtual split within the executive board as to his efficacy. During this time, claim both Prager and his adherents, he quadrupled the BBI membership. “Under Dennis’s directorship,” says Chotiner, “Brandeis was a swinging door. Chotiner is not alone in his contention that Prager lacked intellectual depth. Says Dr. Goodhill, “Dennis was a brilliant man. At Brandeis, Prager says now, not without bitterness, “I learned that many Jews are uncomfortable with paying another Jew to do something Jewish.”
Even his critics acknowledge that Prager succeeded in exciting many young people about Jewish observance and bringing them into the Jewish community. Some students back up that view of Prager as a bully.