A Biography of Dennis Prager by Luke Ford (Part 4)

The Soviet Union

After his tenure at Leeds, Dennis visited a friend on a kibbutz in Israel. He was introduced to a wealthy man who sponsored brief trips by young non-Israeli Jews to the Soviet Union to smuggle in Jewish religious items like prayer shawls, and smuggle out information about Russian Jews. It was 1969, two years after the USSR had broken off relations with Israel. 

Dennis said in his January 2002 autobiography lecture:

I went to Israel in the Spring of 1969 for Passover. People who heard about me through friends, I was not famous at all, they heard he’s this Jewish boy who speaks Russian, Hebrew, English, let’s send him to Russia to bring in religious items for Jews since they’re all banned in the Soviet Union and let him bring out information such as names of people who want to get out, which was a risky thing to do under communism but when you’re 20 you think you’re immortal.

To make it even more alluring, not only were they going to pay for me to go to Russia to do this for four weeks, it was the longest four weeks of my life, they were going to send me with a girl from England. With my luck, she was very religious and believed there should be no touching prior to marriage. I had no chance.

I cried the whole flight on Pan Am coming from Moscow back to New York in October 1969. I’ll never forget the stewardess coming over and saying, ‘Can I help you? Did you just break up with a girlfriend?’ I said ‘No, it’s OK. I can’t explain.’

The explanation was that I had just spent four weeks in a totalitarian state and because I had this blue passport I could get out and I met all these people who couldn’t. And I was crying for all the people who couldn’t get out.

In his 2012 book Still the Best Hope, Dennis wrote on pg. 208: “I visited authoritarian fascist Spain and the totalitarian Soviet Union in the same year, 1969. There was no comparison between the two. For example, in Spain, I was allowed to stay at any hotel I wanted, and to receive Spanish guests (though they had to leave by midnight). In the Soviet Union I was told what hotels to stay at, and no Soviet citizen (except for Soviet officials) was allowed inside the hotel. In Spain, I could purchase and read publicly just about any foreign newspaper. In the Soviet Union I could purchase and read only Soviet and other Communist Party newspapers. The list of differences between life in fascist Spain and life in the Soviet Union is endless.”

Dennis Prager wrote April 19, 2011:

I became the national spokesman for the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, one of the most effective organizations for Soviet Jews in the world.

As such, I spoke before synagogues of every denomination, Hadassah groups, Jewish federations, Jewish groups on college campuses. If there was a Jewish organization, it cared about the plight of Soviet Jews. For decades, virtually every synagogue in America had a “Save Soviet Jewry” sign in front of it.

Over time, the plight of the Soviet Jews awakened me to the plight of all Soviet dissidents, whether secular ones — such as that great man, the physicist Andrei Sakharov — or Christian.

The latter were particularly persecuted. Though my work was with Soviet Jewry, I had no trouble acknowledging that Soviet Christians often had it worse. Few Soviet Jews were killed or locked away in dungeon-like conditions by the Soviet authorities, but Soviet Christians were.

At some point in my early years, it dawned on me that I had not seen a single church with a “Save Soviet Christians” sign. Even more amazingly, I encountered Christian clergy — Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox — at every one of the scores of Soviet Jewry rallies at which I spoke. But while these wonderful Christians were outspoken on behalf of Soviet Jews, they were nearly all silent regarding — or even simply ignorant of — the dire plight of Soviet Christians.

“Seeing the world [kills] naiveté,” said Prager Dec. 1, 2009. “Seeing life under communism. Reading about it is very important but experiencing it… When I had to meet dissidents in the Soviet Union, they would tell me at which tree in which park to meet them, to then continue walking. They would walk behind me, catch up, and we will only talk while walking, because if we stop to talk, it will be clear that they are talking to a Westerner. And any other kind of conversation could be recorded, so we never met indoors. I lost 14 pounds in four weeks in the Soviet Union. Biggest chunk of change I ever lost. Because of that. I never sat. To see the fear in people’s faces. To experience Checkpoint Charlie where the East German police would slide mirrors under your car to see if you were smuggling out a human. These things made indelible impressions on my life.

“When I was in Syria and a woman in Damascus walked toward me completely covered head-to-toe, the only thing I saw were hands, that was a very early experience in the degradation of women that takes place in parts of these worlds.”

Apr. 21, 2010, Dennis said: “I could not visit people in their apartments in the Soviet Union because it would’ve been obvious I was a Westerner. Even though I spoke Russian, they knew I was a Westerner. Not by my accent. They usually thought I was from the Baltic states. The reason they knew I was a Westerner — I was dressed better. And folks, if you knew me, you’d know I did not step out of Gentleman’s Quarterly. Dressed better meant a Lands’ End shirt. That’s what better was.”

In his 14th lecture on Deuteronomy (2003), Dennis said: “I have a very innocent face. I know I do because I got through communist customs all the time because I was bringing in bad things from their perspective.”

Dennis lived like a spy in the former Soviet Union, meeting with Jewish dissidents in parks at midnight and climbing over walls to avoid the cops. Until the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, Dennis kept this information secret to protect the ongoing information network.

In a 2005 lecture on Deuteronomy 17-18, Dennis said: “It was hard to smuggle in religious items into the Soviet Union because they wanted to make an atheist state and obliterate religion. On one of my trips, I went into the Soviet Union from India, I flew in from Delhi to Tashkent. I had come from Australia earlier on my trip where I gave some lectures to the Jewish community and when they heard I was going to the Soviet Union, they said, could you bring in this shofar? There weren’t many in the Soviet Union.

“The question is how am I going to get it into customs in Tashkent. I arrive at the customs. I have all this stuff. I speak Russian but not great. I carried a Russian-English dictionary. They start asking me, what is this? I was easily the most interesting person on the plane.

“So, for example, he looks at a pigs tusks. I look up in the dictionary and say in Russian, this is the tusk of a pig from New Guinea.

“He laughs. He picks up the shofar and goes, what’s this? I look it up and go, this is the horn of a ram from New Guinea. And he laughs. And that’s how I got it in, as another animal item from New Guinea.”

“The trip shaped my life,” Prager told the 11-17-91 Los Angeles Times.

Why would Dennis take such risks? Among many reasons, it was a way to impress girls. As a 2007 article noted, “A single theory can explain the productivity of both creative geniuses and criminals over the life course: Both crime and genius are expressions of young men’s competitive desires, whose ultimate function in the ancestral environment would have been to increase reproductive success.”

Returning to America, Dennis began lecturing to Jewish organizations on the state of Jews in the Soviet Union. In July 1970, the United Nations convened a World Youth Assembly. Bnai Brith nominated Prager as its delegate. Dennis wrote later:

I was the anti-Soviet, and anti-totalitarian spokesman, leading a walkout on behalf of South Koreans not allowed to speak, debating the Soviet delegates in the Security Council, and ultimately getting to speak in the General Assembly. The hatred of Jews, of Israel, and of the United States that I witnessed from many delegates left a permanent impression… (1998 Dennis Prager CD)

Said Dennis in a 2009 lecture “The Moral Case for Conservatism”:

When I was 21 years old, I was a representative to the only time the United Nations ever had a World Youth Assembly. They had five delegates from every single nation and delegates from all the NGOs (Non-Governmental Agencies). I was representing Bnai Brith International. I represented world Jewish youth because that was the non-governmental agency.

I participated actively in what happened. We took over the UN. We were in the security council. We had simultaneous translation. It was a real hoot. It was really something incredible.

One day the third world anti-American and pro-Soviet delegates said, ‘We want to charter buses and have them taken us to Harlem so we can see how the oppressed black impoverished American lives. So they did.

The results were astonishing. They came back and called a press conference. They said they were deceived. That they were taken to a wealthy black neighborhood and were tricked and told it was really Harlem because compared to what they were used to, they couldn’t believe the homes, the number of cars, the number of color television sets.

Prager wrote the UN experience “cemented an ability to speak calmly in the face of hostility.” (CD)

On his January 16, 2023 show with Julie Hartman, Dennis said: “I’m sitting there and the Soviet delegate was annoyed and he says, ‘I smell a conspiracy.’ I raised my hand, and I said, ‘To the Soviet delegate who smells a conspiracy, I can only say that there is a famous American saying, ‘He who smelt it dealt it.'”

Said Dennis June 24, 2010, “I am known for not getting angry. Almost Obama-like.”

Here’s an excerpt of an article written by the assistant director of the UN Office of the Bnai Brith International Council (quoted on MaxPrager.com):

But, the star of the West was the representative of Bnai Brith Hillel, Dennis Prager, 21, of Brooklyn. Challenging the Soviets, Prager led a spontaneous walkout of the Peace Commission when the Moscow-Cairo group, couched by members of their regular UN delegations, refused to allow Vietnamese and Chinese participants to speak.

Prager suddenly rose, 6’4” tall, and above the din of the desk-pounding cried out that all who wanted to protest the violation of democratic principles should follow him out of the room. About 30 did so. Although their actions did not necessarily reflect political sympathy with those who were excluded, under Prager’s leadership, they effectively demonstrated their commitment to the democratic way.

The next morning Prager appeared at the Education Commission and delivered a speech on the cultural deprivations suffered by Soviet Jewry. Back in the Peace Commission, he participated in an exchange which earned for him the reputation as the only man to embarrass the Russians.

At noon a day later, Prager called a press conference at which he presented a declaration signed by 40 delegations protesting “the cynical attempts to manipulate the conference by representatives of the Soviet-East European bloc and representatives of the undemocratic left.” During the final plenary debate, Prager withstood the threats and jeers of the Moscow-Cairo mob and demanded a vote on the validity of their one-sided Peace Commission report. When that was denied, the Jewish students worked to insert an amendment in the Soviet inspired final message to the UN General Assembly. Their single success came when the plenum, by a vote of 271-115 agreed to condemn the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and demand the restoration of democracy to that country.

Max Prager wrote in chapter 33: “I cannot express in words the tremendous pride that I have for my son to this day. Perhaps his strong desire for justice emanates from his home or perhaps it stems from his unflinching faith in his religion which teaches in the Torah the words tzedek tzede tirdof (run after justice).”

On a cruise to St. Petersburg circa 2003, Dennis Prager said in a lecture on Russia and communism:

I never changed money in Russia. I was too afraid. I did change money in Eastern Europe. I’ll tell you my trick. I thought it was foolproof. I was very proud of myself. I was a student. I had no money. I lived like a king when I visited Eastern Europe.

In Warsaw in 1970, I stayed at a palace. You don’t understand. I taught Hebrew school in Brooklyn. That was all the money I had. And I was a waiter at a summer camp. I had no money. And here I was, I lived three meals a day of unbelievably good food all because I changed money on the unofficial rate, the real rate. I would get 10, 20, 30 times the rate so I would live like a king.

Here’s how I did it. I’d be at a restaurant, let’s say, in Warsaw. The waiter would give me the bill. I’d say, ‘Gee, I’m so sorry, but I have no zloped. Can I give you some dollars and you’ll bring me change? And may I ask, how much change will you be bringing me?’

Or with taxi drivers, I’d say in Romania, ‘I have no more leu…’ I figured I couldn’t be arrested. I was a simple nothing student. I had no more leu.

After his cruise, Dennis said:

I’d like to tell you a story that really shook me up. I went to the Leningrad, that’s the St. Petersburg synagogue where I had gone 33 years ago to visit with the Jews who would attend a synagogue under surveillance. I went to make a statement that young Jews do know Hebrew. They do know how to pray the Jewish prayers. Just to be seen by the Jews there. I went on one of the Jewish holidays, the holiday of Tabernacles, Succoth.

I remember well reciting from the Torah and the astonished and overwhelmed reactions of the Jews present.

Here I was in the synagogue 33 years later. The synagogue had been beautifully restored. I felt no different than I would at a synagogue anywhere else in the world.

A man in his 70s walked in and he looked at me and he said in Yiddish to the rabbi showing me around, ‘That’s the tall young man who was here in 1969 and recited from the Torah.’

As I recount this story now, I have goosebumps. He just started to cry. He hugged me. It was overwhelming for all of us. I knew that I had made an impact by showing them that Judaism was still alive because they were told by the Soviets that it was dead everywhere in the world.

Feb. 5, 2010, Dennis said: “When I came back from the Soviet Union, I remember having dinner with the rabbi of my synagogue. At that time, when I grew up, there was a real distance between clergy and congregant… It was better… Better too remote than too chummy.

“He and his wife invited me to their home. I thought it was one of the great honors of my life. ‘Wow. The rabbi has invited me to his home, I am this 21-year old zilch.’ And I remember going there and I realized that I was the life of the dinner. He was a subdued type and so was she. And I realized maybe this is what I should do, I should be a live guy. It helps the conversation. It helps the dinner. If someone else becomes the live person, I retreat.”

Sept. 15, 2010, Dennis said: “The last time I felt physically unsafe, I was in my early 30s in the Soviet Union trying to escape on a train at midnight to Romania and with me were documents that the Soviets would not have been happy that I took out. That was it.”

Mar. 24, 2011, Dennis said: “When I think of the kids my age screaming ‘Ho, ho, ho, Ho Chi Minh’ and ‘Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?’ this is the world of the left I grew up with. It’s left a deep angry in me at the upside-down moral nature of the left. It called evil good and good evil. America the good was evil and communism the evil was good.

“One day I had an argument. I was standing on a street in Japan with an American student my age. We got to talking about politics. I mentioned how vile the North Korean regime was. He laced into me. ‘Who the hell are you to judge North Korea?’”

Making A Living

In his 14th lecture on Deuteronomy (in 2003?), Dennis said: “When I was a kid, I knew I wouldn’t be a doctor. A. My brother was. I knew I wouldn’t do the same thing my brother did just to individuate. B. I hated the site of blood. C. I didn’t find studying the names of nerves interesting.

“So I remember thinking, OK, I’ll be a lawyer. In my eighth grade Yeshiva Rambam graduation booklet, each kid had his picture and he’d tell the editor what phrase he’d like under his picture and mine was, ‘Dennis Prager, D.A.’ He had under his picture six years early, “Kenneth Prager, M.D.’

“Through high school, I just assumed I’d be a lawyer, but then I read a law book. By page 11, I decided I wouldn’t be a lawyer. And I remember thinking, what am I going to do? I’m a Jew.

“I remember saying to my brother, ‘Kenny, I’m not going to be a doctor or a lawyer. I’m going to be something different.’

“I thank God that I followed my gifts.”

Said Dennis in a 2008 lecture on universities: “I thought of being a professor. The idea of devoting one’s life to the mind is so appealing to me. It seems so wonderful. I’ve always had this idyllic vision.”

Said Dennis in his January 2002 autobiography lecture:

The next year [senior year at Brooklyn College] I began lecturing and that’s why my life turned around. I went all around the Eastern half of the United States lecturing on the plight of Soviet Jews.

I spent many trips to Eastern Europe visiting communist countries. I lived with families in Poland, Bulgaria, and Hungary. I was in Czechoslovakia the year after the Soviet invasion and you could still see all the massive gigantic artillery holes in the walls in Prague. It just made me hate communism more.

Three years into lecturing for free, giving all the proceeds over to the Free Soviet Jewry movement, my friend Joseph Telushkin said to me, Dennis, you have to start lecturing on other things and making a living.

And so I called up a Jewish place [a Hadassah in Queens] I had spoke to. I said, “Hi, this is Dennis Prager. I’m the kid who went to Russia and gave a speech.” The woman said, “Yeah, you were terrific.”

I said, “I’d like to come back and give a speech on another topic.”

And the woman said, “What else do you know?”

It was perfectly appropriate. I had no reputation other than being an expert in Soviet Jews.

I said, “How would you like to know why most young Jews are alienated from Judaism?”

She said, “Yeah. We would love to know that. Do you know why?”

I said, “I think I do because I’m a young Jew and I’m not alienated.”

She said, “How much do you charge?”

I was so nervous. There was never a time in my life when I was more nervous. I can’t ask for me well.

I was about to say $35 when Telushkin said, $75. So I said $75 expecting to hear it was too much.

She of course went, $75, that’s like free. She said that’s fine. They even paid my taxi fare. It was the first time people paid me to come to their place to give a talk. And it hasn’t stopped. It’s a wonderful way to make a living.

In April 2010, Dennis told the story a little differently: “How much do you charge? I was sweating. This was the first time I was asking for a payment for a speech for me. Joseph kept going ‘$35!’ I couldn’t do it. It seemed too much. I said $25. She said fine so quickly that I immediately added, ‘Plus taxi.’

“I started speaking on Judaism and all the time I got the same questions — do you have to believe in God to be a good Jew? How come so many Jews here are alienated? How do you account for unethical religious Jews?

“I said to Joseph, let’s devote a weekend to writing a pamphlet on the ten questions Jews most frequently ask about Judaism.”

Sept. 4, 2009, Dennis said: “I was so successful so early, meaning in my early twenties. I was inordinately successful. I began public lecturing at 21. Do you know how bizarre that is? That’s extremely rare. I was being flown around at least the Eastern part of the United States to give lectures at 23. The first time I was flown anywhere was to Nashville, Tennessee. I just remember thinking, how can life get any better than this? To say a high. I’ve never taken drugs [except for marijuana, which made him super-verbal]. I don’t know what the high is from drugs, but I believe that my high was higher than drug highs. And it lasted longer.

“As I got older, that early spectacular life… And it was spectacular in every way. I had no responsibility for family. I met women in different locales and had a great social life. It was easy to attract women because if you are in public, it’s much easier. Life was beyond belief. Flown to the West Coast five times at age 24, 25, to give lectures.

“You’re no longer a wunderkind when you’re 40. I began professional life with, ‘And he’s so young!’ That’s the way I would always be introduced. And, ‘Ladies, he’s single!’ And obviously over time, they stopped saying, ‘He’s so young.’”

Said Dennis in a 2008 lecture on the universities: “Something I encountered in my early speaking career that I didn’t know how to handle… I would give a lecture on some theme and someone would stand up, ‘I want you to know that I’m offended by what you said.’ For years, I would look at the person and say, ‘What did I say that was offensive? You disagree with me. Why were you offended?’

“I came to realize that is used far more by people on the left than on the right… What unites all left-wing views? Feelings. That is why you are reacted to in an emotional way when you talk.”

Oct. 23, 2009, Dennis said: “After so many decades of public speaking and thousands of speeches, I can’t say that I get nervous [before public speaking]… I certainly did in the beginning. In fact, I had a very odd way of getting nervous… I would get very tired. Before the biggest speech I ever gave when I began speaking at 21, I was in my friend’s dorm room at university and I fell asleep in the middle of the day. At 21, nobody does unless they have the flu. I didn’t realize that my way of getting nervous was my body conserving its energy and I got very tired. This lasted for years… Over time, that didn’t take place. At this point, I don’t get tired before a speech.”

“When I go on my listener cruise, it’s the only week or ten days of my life for the last decades that I don’t do a radio show. I realize that a certain weight is off of me. It is so ubiquitous, I don’t realize the intensity of it… My system goes into an intensity that I don’t feel, for instance, before having dinner with my wife. I get geared up.”

In a 1998 (?) lecture on Exodus 30-31, Dennis said: “I have a God-given gift to talk. How do you develop it? A talking course? I got a C in Speech in college because I found the teacher boring and she was very offended by that. I gave my final speech on the development of the eraser. I did not take the course terribly seriously.”

Nov. 20, 2009, Dennis said: “The first speech I ever gave publicly was at Brooklyn College. In my sophomore year, they started demonstrating for something. I thought it was totally narcissistic. I went over to the guy who was organizing it and I said I’d like to speak. He said, who the hell are you? I said I’m with the ad hoc committee and I just made up some name. I always knew their lingo. Ad hoc committee, woohoo. So I spoke and I looked at the crowd and I basically said, what are you doing here? Things are pretty darn good. We’re unbelievably lucky to have this college at such low tuition, virtually free. What is this whole thing about? I was on the WNBC local news that night. Student speaks out against demonstration. It was truly man bites dog. I know the date. I wonder if they have archives at WNBC in New York. I would pay a handsome sum for that video. How early my career was taking the contrary position of gratitude… All the themes I care about are tied together — people who are grateful are not rioting over student costs.”

As life rewarded Prager for exercising his gift of the gab, he realized that society’s greatest need was exactly what he was good at — moral education. 

An extrovert’s extrovert, Dennis was happy at last. He could take his giant brain and dissect the world, gaining prestige, money, and friends.

Nov. 4, 2010, Dennis said: “Young kids look up to you. Pretty girls look up to you. What else can you ask for? I taught college [Jewish history at the City University of New York and at Brooklyn College]. I know what it feels like except I didn’t take myself as seriously as the others because I knew what a bubble it was. I had the same accolades and the same young kids looking up to me. I was three years older than they were. I couldn’t believe it. It was like nirvana.”

At Grossinger’s Hotel in 1970, “Talk about blessed, I was invited to lecture at singles weekends. Is that luck or is that luck? I remember one holiday of Succot going up to this freezing succah and I’m talking theology to this Orthodox guy, I’m trying to find a woman and this guy is talking to me theology. I wanted to kill him.” (1995 lecture on Exodus 6)

On Nov. 21, 2013, Dennis said: “Gentlemen, if you want to get a good woman, speak publicly.”

Aug. 3, 2010, Dennis said: “I remember my 24th birthday as the happiest of my life. The 20s had every advantage of adulthood and not a single one of its disadvantages. I found them to be a blast.”

F. Roger Devlin wrote: “When a man is addressing an audience, it conveys subrationally to the female mind that he has status: he speaks, while others merely listen. The phenomenon has long been known to Hollywood script writers. Many old Cary Grant romantic comedies contain a scene where the heroine watches him addressing an audience. …[T]he podium effect is a principle reason for the erroneously termed ‘lecherous professor’ situation.”

After Prager’s speeches, men often feel invisible when they try to compete with women for Dennis’s attention. 

Society would fall apart if everybody had Dennis Prager’s number of romantic partners. As Adam Smith wrote in his 1776 book The Wealth of Nations:

In the liberal or loose system, luxury, wanton and even disorderly mirth, the pursuit of pleasure to some degree of intemperance, the breach of chastity, at least in one of the two sexes, etc., provided they are not accompanied with gross indecency, and do not lead to falsehood or injustice, are generally treated with a good deal of indulgence, and are easily either excused or pardoned altogether. In the austere system, on the contrary, those excesses are regarded with the utmost abhorrence and detestation. The vices of levity are always ruinous to the common people, and a single week’s thoughtlessness and dissipation is often sufficient to undo a poor workman for ever, and to drive him through despair upon committing the most enormous crimes.

Steve Sailer wrote in 2009:

In traditional Western cultures, below the rank of aristocrats, romantic and sexual impulsiveness was a major threat to social standing. The punishment in terms of class standing for out-of-wedlock births was so harsh that the illegitimacy rate among women in England in 1200-1800 was stable at around 3-4%, even though women didn’t marry on average until age 24 to 26.

The sexual revolution of the 1960s, which hit home in the 1970s, disrupted this traditional system of social sanctions…

And yet … the old logic that children need two parents to have the best chance to succeed in life still plays out even though we aren’t supposed to mention it.

So, by removing social indoctrination of the masses, the post-Sexual Revolution system selects even more than the earlier system for social success by individuals who are intelligent and cold-blooded. In contrast, people of impulsive temperaments and less ability to foresee the consequences of giving into their impulses are now much more on their own with far less guidance from the culture. Thus, the people in the upper reaches of society are increasingly of what you might call a Swedish or Swiss personality (or are Asian immigrants whose families never took seriously the 1960s).

But nobody is supposed to notice that publicly. So, the top level of our society continues to argue for the breaking down of old restrictions, whether on the idea that marriage is between a man and a woman or that their should be limits on debt and interest rates. After all, individualistic self-determination works fine for the upper middle class.

From this perspective, the 1960s cultural revolution look like an Elites Liberation movement, in which Unitarians, Congregationalists, Jews, Episcopalians, Christian Scientists, and similar products of centuries of bourgeois culture decided that they, personally, could get by without the old rules, which, indeed, many of them could. Moreover, they were tired of being expected to be role models of starchy behavior for the proles.

Keeping Kosher On An Interdate

In his second lecture on Leviticus 20 in 2009, Dennis Prager said: “When I was in my bachelor days in my twenties, I went out with women of all backgrounds. I intended to only marry someone born Jewish or converted to Jewish. My one criteria was — is it a woman?

“I kept kosher and still do. I was going to write a long article for Jewish publications titled, ‘Keeping Kosher on an Interdate.’

“I said this publicly at the time, I would tell Jewish audiences, ‘Folks, it is a little eery. When I am with a non-religious Jewish woman, she thinks that what I am doing by disqualifying many things on the menu because I am a Jew is absurd. Whenever I am with a non-Jewish woman, she has such respect for what I am doing. Every one has said, ‘I am not going to order anything like that either. What would offend you?”

“Of course it doesn’t offend me if a non-Jew has a BLT. I just salivate.”

Dennis Prager’s relaxed version of “keeping kosher” is outside the bounds of the Jewish tradition, as is his idea of “keeping kosher on an interdate.” Such practices do not lead to a stable life.

Prager’s second and third wives converted to Judaism to marry him. 

In a 2007 lecture on Leviticus 3, Dennis said: “A very prominent rabbi who I have been friends with since high school [Joseph Telushkin], during the days when I could influence him towards greater sinning, when I was in graduate school in Manhattan, I lived in Manhattan, there was a restaurant I ate at frequently. The one thing I miss from New York is the restaurants. I ate out all the time. If I had food in my own apartment, I would’ve died of botulism. A classic bachelor. I ate out every meal.

“There was a place near my house on Broadway that had the most delicious eggplant parmesan that I had ever eaten at in my life. What’s eggplant parmesan? It’s eggplant and cheese and marinara sauce, which is perfectly fine kosherly, but this was really delicious eggplant parmesan.

“I brought this man, a prolific author, we’re the same age, we were both in our early 20s, I said, Joseph, you have to have this eggplant with me. It’s delicious. I had eaten it 30 times.

“Joseph starts eating it and says, ‘Dennis, this is delicious but I think I know why — because it is a meat sauce.’ I wanted to kill him. I could never have it again.

“How come he knew immediately? Because he was more fastidious about observance than I was.”

In a radio dialogue with Adam Carolla Apr. 17, 2012, Dennis said: “A mere kiss was awesome when I was 18. If she gave me a kiss on the lips, I was in ecstasy for a week.”

Dec. 21, 2010, Dennis said: “[Going to Columbia University for graduate school] didn’t exactly bowl the women over. I had no good pick-up lines. I did well with women but it had nothing to do with good opening lines. I never did. I always believed that any opening was absolutely seen through by the girl and seen as another opening line.”

“A girl would ask me, ‘What are you interested in?’ ‘Ethical monotheism.’

“‘Ethical monotheism! Come to my room!’”

Jan. 25, 2011, Dennis said: “Do you know how many girls I picked up in bookstores when I was a kid in my 20s? It was a wonderful place. I didn’t like bars. You saw a pretty girl reading a book and you say, ‘What are you reading?’ People would just talk in bookstores. It was a place to meet. Where do people meet now? More and more is done at home.”

In his first video on “Men and the Power of the Visual” for in October 2009, Dennis gives this story from his twenties: “I was approaching a red light. And the guy next to me said, ‘Look at that girl in the next car.’ I did and I bumped into the car in front of me.”

On Nov. 23, 2011, Dennis said: “When I was in my 20s, I met a terrific woman. I adored her. We had a wonderful relationship and time together. She said to me that she was very wary of charming men and that I was the first charming man she trusted.”

On Nov. 11, 2010, Dennis said: “I had a girlfriend in graduate school, an attractive woman, who wanted to lose 10 pounds. I didn’t think she needed to. So she went on an ice cream diet and lost ten pounds.”

During college, Dennis regarded abortion as “a woman doing what she wants with her own body.” Over time, influenced by pro-life Christian activists, Dennis came to regard abortion as morally wrong in most instances (though he never came out for making it illegal in the first trimester of pregnancy). (April 26, 2010)

Columbia Graduate School

“One of the most fateful decisions of my life,” Dennis recalled Mar. 9, 2012, “was [deciding] whether I’d take Russian or Chinese [in college]. I really deliberated over it. It worked out well in my life that I took Russian but I wish I had taken both. Knowing Chinese now is such an advantage, such an insight into a way of thinking.”

“My graduate work was done in Soviet studies. I read Pravda almost every day. There was an interesting debate at the time and I may have been wrong.

“The debate was — was the Soviet Union a continuation of Russian civilization or was it a communist abrupt change of course? I argued that it was overwhelmingly an abrupt change of course brought about by the communists. When I see Russia today once again moving towards dictatorship, where journalists are murdered if they report things that disturb the government, when you see what is controlled by Putin’s party United Russia, which effectively controls regional governments, prosecutors’ offices, courts, police departments, and election commissions. They control the media.

“There were those who said that the Soviet Union, Stalin, Lenin, these were not aberrations thrust upon a Russian civilization but rather a continuum, obviously worse than anything that preceded it.

“I said no. This was just communism shoved into the face of the Russian people and I may have been wrong. The love of liberty does not appear to beat strongly in the Russian soul.” (Dec. 15, 2010)

In a May 2012 lecture, Dennis said: “I went to Columbia University graduate school and the only reason I mention it is that among Jews, that’s clout. ‘Oooh, he went to Columbia. Now I can take him seriously.’

“About 25 years at a Conservative synagogue in New Jersey, I was scholar in residence for the weekend. This elderly man kept asking me questions. He called me ‘Dr. Prager.’ I said to him, ‘I’m not a doctor. I have no PhD.’

“The man entered cognitive dissonance. It was clear on his face. On the one hand, he thought I was intelligent. On the other hand, I didn’t have a PhD. This disturbed him greatly. He thought for a moment and like King Solomon, he came up with a solution. ‘By me, you’re a doctor.'”

In the early 1970s, Dennis Prager lived for a time in a Jewish commune off the Columbia campus called Beit Ephraim. Judd Hirsch wrote:

[Michael] Oren—who changed his name from Bornstein when he made aliyah, though he retained it as his middle name, in deference to his father—and [Dore] Gold met for the first time at the Bayit, at a guest lecture by an Israeli author. They soon connected with Sokoloff, Fine, Cohen and others at the Bayit’s weekly Shabbat dinners and educational seminars. Eventually, they both moved in. They were joined by a remarkable cast of future Jewish luminaries who frequented the Bayit in the mid-1970s. Leon Wieseltier, the longtime literary editor of The New Republic lived there there, as did Rabbi Joseph Teluskhin, the Jewish author. J.J. Goldberg, a former editor-in-chief of the Forward…

Dennis paid $3,000 a year in tuition.

From 1970-72, Dennis attended the Middle East and Russian Institutes at the Columbia University School of International Affairs. Prager studied under Zbigniew Brezinski, who later served as the head of the National Security Council under President Carter.

“[Zbigniew] taught the advance communism seminar. There were nine of us around a table. The reason that was such a challenge to me was that normally in class I could read the newspaper or design railroad tracks (my form of doodling in high school and college).”

“When I get bored, I don’t tune out. I go nuts.”

Said Dennis in a 1993 lecture on Genesis 25: “Esau was a hairy man as I noted once in an advanced seminar at Columbia University in communist affairs. I was so bored in class, I mumbled over to the only other kid who had gone to yeshiva, at the desk was the former ambassador of India to the UN [Arthur Lall], and I whispered to him out of nowhere, I had lost my mind from boredom, ‘[David] Schimmel, Esau was a hairy man.’ The professor stopped the entire seminar on international negotiations, and said, ‘Mr. Prager, Esau was a hairy man?’ It was one of my great moments in graduate school.”

If Prager had been the lecturer, he would have booted the impudent student from the class. 

“Graduate school was a tough time for me,” Prager said Mar. 2, 2006. “Everything I believed to be true and good overturned. I had only pessimism for my country.”

Apr. 10, 2013, Dennis said: “I wrote a paper for a Marxist. One of my professors was Sidney Morgenbesser. He wasn’t a communist. I liked him personally. I’ll never forget I wrote a paper for him comparing Judaism with Marxism as philosophies of life. I knew that had he lived another 100 years, he would not have gotten another paper like that at Columbia. I knew he wondered how I got in — that I actually believed in religion and thought it was superior to Marxism. To his credit, he gave me a B. I’m sure he wanted to give me a D but it was too well-researched.”

Aug. 4, 2011, Dennis said after interviewing Amity Shlaes: “The older I get, the more I realize I have to unlearn from what I learned in college. Did you know that everything I learned at the Middle East Institute at the School of International Affairs at Columbia University, some of the most prestigious scholars in the world, former ambassadors to the Arab world, almost everything I learned was wrong?”

Sep. 12, 2011, Dennis said: “I learned during the Nixon era, and I did not like Nixon, that nobody hates like a liberal. Conservatives don’t have one-tenth of the hate of liberals.”

In a lecture on Deuteronomy 12 delivered in 2004, Dennis said: “I was in my twenties on an airplane. I was sitting next to a woman who had a vegetarian meal. I asked her if she was a vegetarian. I asked why. She said, we humans have no right to kill animals to eat them. After all, who are we humans to think we are more valuable than animals?

“That shook me to the core. That’s when I came up with the question I thought was rhetorical. I said, You don’t really mean that. If a dog and a human were drowning, which would you save first?

“And she thought.

“I’ll never forget the silence. I said, I’m sorry, did you hear my question?

“She said, I’m thinking.

“When she said, I’m thinking, I concluded at that moment, either I’m sitting next to a nutty woman, which I did not believe, or she reflects what is happening in our secular age.”

On May 31, 2013, Dennis said that for 20 years after graduate school, he didn’t go to movies because he was so busy. “I was never anti-movies. I was always anti-television.”

Dennis Prager wrote Aug. 18, 2009:

When I was a graduate student at Columbia University in the early 1970s, I came to the then-tentative conclusion that I would probably never encounter a morally weaker, more cowardly group of people than college administrators.

…What prompted this conclusion in the 1970s was seeing a handful of radical students take over classrooms at Columbia and shut down the university while professors and deans, individuals whose lives were supposedly dedicated to the open mind and to learning, did nothing. It is almost impossible for me, nearly four decades later, to fully convey how deeply this affected me.

I came to see the modern university as fraudulent. In theory it stood for learning and opening the mind. In practice it stood for appeasement of bullies.

Dennis wrote Dec. 3, 2003:

Since entering graduate school, I was preoccupied with this question: Why did so many learned and intelligent professors believe so many foolish things?

…One day, I received an answer to these questions. Seemingly out of nowhere, a biblical verse — one that I had recited every day in kindergarten at the Jewish religious school I attended as a child — entered my mind. It was a verse from Psalm 111: “Wisdom begins with fear of God.”

The verse meant almost nothing to me as a child — both because I recited it in the original Hebrew, which at the time I barely understood, and because the concept was way beyond a child’s mind to comprehend. But 15 years later, a verse I had rarely thought about answered my puzzle about my university and put me on a philosophical course from which I have never wavered.

…Since that day at Columbia, however, I regularly renew my faith through the back door — I see the confusion and nihilism that godless ideas produce and my faith is restored. The consequences of secularism have been at least as powerful a force for faith in my life as religion.

Dennis said in his January 2002 lecture on his ideological autobiography:

I attended antiwar rallies. I was very anti-communist but I did not believe that this was the place to make the stand. Even at the demonstrations, I felt no kinship with anyone else there because they were celebrating Ho Chi Minh. We weren’t villains. He was the villain. The North Vietnamese communists were villains. Here I am again alone. They’re going ‘Ho, ho, ho, Ho Chi Minh,’ and I’m thinking the man is vile. All communist dictators are vile.

So alone on the drugs. Alone on the attitudes. Alone on the politics. Alone on the music. I didn’t care for the music of that era. To me it was usually very self-referential. My angst type of music. Sit there with the guitar and talk about how life has screwed you up is how I heard a lot of that music. There was nothing I had in common.

And then there was dating. Here I am a Columbia university graduate student and the most logical woman to date would be a Barnard student but it was virtually impossible because they were so feminist. We had nothing in common. They thought they were the same as man. I’ve always believed men and women are very different. I had very few comfortable moments of dating [with women from New York].

I was doing a lot of lecturing around the Eastern half of the United States so I met women who did believe that men and women were different in St. Louis and in Columbus and in Miami so I ended up having a girlfriend in St. Louis, in Miami, which is not such a terrible thing that time of life.

There was fun in being single in that time of the sexual revolution where after 12,000 years of men trying women now said they could have sex as unemotionally as men could and I thanked G-d I was born in that rare time when women could delude themselves into believing something so stupid.

In a 1987 lecture at the University of Judaism on the differences between men and women, Dennis said:

Girls at Barnard, if they go on a date with you, they felt that they were giving in to the enemy. Shaving? Forget about it. To shave was to smack of bourgeois imperialist neo-fascistic thinking.

Thank G-d I started lecturing publicly at an early age, so it took me out of Manhattan frequently. I did all my dating in the Mid-West. I had dates Indiana, Chicago. The Jewish women of Manhattan were so feminist that you felt like you were on a war footing when you went on a date.

The age old difference that men were desirous of sexual relations without commitment just for the sake of the great joy of the physical contact, this was induced by society, women could do the same thing. I remember feeling wonderful that these girls believed that. Men had been trying to convince women of that for 42,000. That’s the oldest line in the history of male-female relations — hey, you don’t need commitment You’ll love it!

These brilliant idiots from Columbia were saying, that’s right. We can have as empty sex as you. It took us ethical guys off the hook. We were almost unethical if we did not offer them the opportunity to express their equality. It turns out that they were fooling themselves. Men were having their usual ball of using women’s bodies for pleasure.

I remember in my real dating days, I would interview women. …I was always shocked that they would not ask me reciprocal questions. Aren’t you curious about men? I’m terribly curious about women.

Said Dennis Oct. 11, 2010: “I lost one of my first girlfriends. I was in graduate school. I was dating her for about six months. Her last name was ‘Last.’ And we were at a party, and I introduced her as ‘Jennifer First.’ And that was it.”

Nov. 11, 2009, Dennis said: “I remember writing in my diary in high school that I wouldn’t want to take a girl to a movie on a first date because I wanted to be the subject of her attention, not the movie.”

“Being old fashioned has nothing to do with how old I am. I was old fashioned at 22. I thought you honored the date, the occasion and the person, by looking special.”

Said Dennis in a 1996 lecture on Exodus 12: “The woman I remember in the crazy ’60s — Stripper for Christ [Kellie Everts]. I’ll never forget it. It’s not the way to come to a Christian belief. I assume it was a little too easy. She to me was a metaphor for so much of our easy spirituality today.”

Dennis taught Jewish history at Brooklyn College from 1970-72.

In the overview course half the students were Yeshiva high school graduates who thought they’d get an easy ‘A’ taking this basic Jewish history course. Unfortunately, for them, however, I was not about to give easy ‘A’s’ to Yeshiva guys. I wanted them to learn and be challenged by Judaism.

I’ll never forget this story because I got into some hot water. A lot of them were quite Orthodox, so I said one day in class, “If you have been keeping Kosher since you were a child, in other words, your entire life, and have never ever deviated from it, I suggest that you go out and have a ham sandwich. And you should continue having ham sandwiches until you enjoy them. Then go back to keeping Kosher because in the meantime you are not refusing to eat ham out of any understanding of Kashrut but because you think ham is disgusting.” (Ultimate Issues, Spring-Summer 1986, pg. 16)

Oct. 19, 2011, Dennis said he never went to teacher’s college. “A degree in teaching? I taught college and I taught high school. I taught well and the kids loved me and they came to my class. I made an announcement to kids on the first day, ‘You don’t want to come to class? That’s fine with me. It is my task to make it so interesting that you will want to come. If you pass the test, you pass the test. You want to cut, cut. I’m not taking attendance.’ My classes were over-subscribed.”

Dennis wrote in the winter 1986 edition of Ultimate Issues: “When I taught at Brooklyn College it was privately acknowledged by faculty members that students coming from Jewish schools were more likely than other students to cheat on exams.”

Around 1970, Prager’s car was broken into and the stereo stolen. He filed a police report. Two officers stopped by his apartment to make a report. Dennis opened his door. The officers looked around and said, “Holy s—. Did they do a job.” (Dec. 28, 2006)

“I kept it clean but it was spectacularly messy. There were a lot of newspapers around. Do you know what I did before a woman came to my apartment? Do you know how much I would cover? I remember putting blankets on piles of newspapers.” (Mar. 8, 2013)

Jan. 26, 2011, Dennis said: “Taking care of a home is a good thing. When you have an apartment, somebody else takes care of it.”

“When I went to graduate school in Manhattan, I lived in the apartment next door to the super[intendent]. When I wanted something done, I told the kid, ‘Tell your father to come over.’ It worked like a charm. The kid loved me.

“I wonder if that kid who’s now middle-aged remembers me? Do we remember the adults who come into our lives and becomes something for two years?

“That kid would come over and I would play Beethoven for the kid. I love little boys. I actually well up with emotion taking care of a little boy.”

On June 2, 2011, Dennis said: “I remember in the ’60s, ’70s, how so many of my fellow baby boomers were doing things to find themselves. I remember thinking, ‘I never lost myself so there’s nothing to find.’ I never looked for myself. I looked for what was meaningful in life. Then Dennis would attach himself to meaning and build a life. I believed deeply in making a family and joining a community. I wasn’t given Dennis. I was given a set of values.”

In the summer of 1971, Prager traveled through the communist countries of Eastern Europe and later published his first articles in national magazines – a 1973 essay on Poland for the National Review (his thesis was that Poland’s leader Władysław Gomułka wouldn’t last in power, however, he ended up staying for another ten years) and a book review for The New Leader. Dennis wrote Feb. 8, 2011:

When I began traveling at the age of 20, I had one great goal in mind: I never wanted to hear the name of a place in the news and not be able to relate to it. Let’s be honest. Until you go to India or Honduras, they are abstractions. One can major in Indian history or Latin American studies, but two days in one of those countries makes that country more real than four years of reading about it.

One of life’s great moral challenges is to see the stranger as fully real. While travel does not guarantee that one will see all others as fully real — the father of modern Islamism, Sayyid Qutb, spent two years in America in the late 1940s and left seeing Americans as caricatures of decadence — it is very hard to do so without travel.

You also learn a lot about life. For example, I learned very early on, in the first of my four visits to India, that poverty was not the cause of crime I was taught it was at college. In fact, aside from abject, starvation-level poverty, it is not even the main cause of human unhappiness. In most of the poor places of the world, children seem considerably less jaded and laugh more easily than many American children.

I learned more about Islam in a week in Egypt than in two years at Columbia’s Middle East Institute. When the pretty young Egyptian waitress at the Nile Hilton in 1974 told me to read the Koran because once I did, I would become a Muslim, I realized that secularism was not, my professors notwithstanding, the wave of the Middle East’s future, and I understood how Muslims view the Koran and the non-Muslim world. When I offered to buy a beer for the Egyptian taxi driver who took me from Cairo to the pyramids on a very hot day, he politely declined, explaining that as a Muslim, he is not permitted to drink alcohol. I asked why he thought the ban was necessary. Because, he explained, if a man drinks and then goes home and sees his daughter lying in bed, bad things could ensue. That opened this 25-year-old’s eyes.

…After visits to about a dozen African countries, I came to realize that the spread of Christianity holds the best hope for that sad continent…

And I came to realize the overwhelming power of cultural values. How else to explain “honor killings,” the subverting of the most powerful instinct in the world — to protect one’s child — except through an understanding of the power of culture?

Feb. 27, 2014, Dennis said: “I arrived in Yugoslavia on my birthday, Aug. 2nd. Funny stories happen to you when you travel alone and I traveled alone all through my twenties. I arrived in Belgrade, capitol of then Yugoslavia. And this pretty pretty girl at immigration service stamping passports, I wanted to take her out. How do you take out an immigration agent? What are you doing for dinner tonight? I should’ve done that.

“So she looks at me and in English, she says, ‘I see from your passport, it is your birthday. One minute!’ And she brings me a big candy bar. I was touched.

“I bring the bar with me. It was the middle of summer. I left the candy bar in my hotel room. I came back later and I saw more ants in my room than I ever saw outdoors. It was like highways of ants that had found my chocolate bar. So this beautiful gift from a beautiful girl became a nightmare. You don’t want to sleep accompanied by tens of thousands of these little creatures.”

In a 2004 lecture on Deuteronomy 16, Dennis Prager said: “In Turkey when I was there in my 20s, they were selling ancient fertility gods. One of them was a little male god with an appendage that was about four times longer than him. He was very seriously fertile. I sent a postcard of that to my parents. My father I know got a big kick out of it. God knows what I wrote, probably ‘Self portrait in Turkey.’ I was a little wild in those days.”

“I was on safari in my 20s in Kenya and Tanzania. You’d go on these Volkswagen buses. I was the only serious theist in the group. I’d keep having these revelations. I finally realized that if I wanted to maintain cordial relations, I should shut up. I’ll never forget when I’d watch the lions would attack the weakest of whatever animal they were eating, such as gazelle or zebra. Anybody could tell you which zebra would die that day. If he limped, he was dead. But if a human limps, you take him to a doctor. We don’t kill the weak.”

The Burden Of Greatness

At the April 3, 2008 roast celebrating Prager’s 25 years in talk radio, Rabbi Telushkin said:

Another feature of Dennis is that he is always looking for the bigger truth. Nothing can ever just happen to him, there’s a major lesson to be learned. For example, Dennis as a young man liked to date. A lot. His relations though for a long period of time tended to be short and inevitably I would get a phone call. ‘I broke up with so and so.’ Why? ‘I realized that she really wasn’t a warm person and I realize now that warmth is the most important trait in a woman.’ A month later. ‘I broke up.’ Why? ‘No sense of humor. Humor really matters. It’s hard to be with someone who is humorless.’ Two weeks later. ‘I broke up. Not sharp intellectually.’ A week later. ‘Not concerned with moral issues.’ Six weeks later. ‘I broke up with so-and-so.’ I said, ‘I know why.’ He said, ‘How can you know why? You’ve never met her.’ I said, ‘I know that whatever trait she’s missing is the most important trait in a woman.’

Dennis felt out-of-step with authority everywhere he went. He was unhappy at home. He was unhappy at school. He was unhappy at university. At Brandeis-Bardin, he fought with his board. He was unhappy in two marriages that ended in divorce. At KABC, he struggled with management. He felt in no-man’s-land in Jewish life, not fitting into Orthodox, Conservative or Reform Judaism. 

Feeling distinctive is a big part of being Dennis. Greatness is a burden. He was Harry Potter before there was Harry Potter. 

Dennis Prager Publishes His First Book

In late June, 2003, Prager said he had “completed all of the course requirements for his [Masters degree] and had also finished his thesis, but this was during the days before word processors, and he didn’t like to type, so he simply bailed.” (Nelking email)

Frustrated with academia, Prager, to the dismay of his family, dropped out of graduate school in 1973 to write an introduction to Judaism with Joseph Telushkin. “He became a rabbi [Orthodox ordination from Yeshiva University] and I became a heretic.” (C-SPAN 1995)

Dec. 20, 2012, Dennis said: “My biggest heretical line in religion is that God has common sense. A lot of religious people in all religions have common sense but they don’t ascribe common sense to God.”

In his fourth lecture on Genesis in 1992, Dennis said: “I left after two years of graduate school. I had a choice — either to write a thesis on some totally irrelevant facet of Lenin or to write a book on Judaism that would actually touch people’s lives.”

May 1, 2012, Dennis said: “The evolution of my life can almost be seen in my books. The first one was called The Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism. This book Still the Best Hope is for Americanism what that one was for Judaism.

“Joseph Telushkin’s mother looked at us and said, ‘Boys, do you know how many introductions to Judaism there are? You’re 25 years old. You’re going to add to the body of knowledge of a 3,000 year-old faith? And I said, ‘Yeah. That’s exactly what we’re going to do.’ Joseph cheered me on. He couldn’t believe I had such chutzpah and I did. It became the best-selling book in the English language introducing Judaism… There are greater scholars than I and greater writers than I and greater everything than I, but I know how to synthesize. I know how to clarify. That’s my gift.”

In a May 14, 2012 lecture, Dennis said: “It was an amazing amount of chutzpah for a 25-year old to think that he could write a new introduction to Judaism, the oldest religion in the world, and that people would read it… I remember I approached my friend who became a rabbi. I said, ‘Joseph, we’re going to write an introduction to Judaism.’ He thought, ‘You’ve got to be kidding.’ I said, ‘We’ve got better answers.’… Joseph had a lot of faith in me. He said, ‘Dennis knows what he’s doing.’

“That was relatively easy compared to this [Still the Best Hope].”

“I don’t understand morning people,” said Dennis Jan. 6, 2010. “For me, the sun rising is depressing. I love sunset and I don’t love sunrise. I’ve always been a night person. It is why I took a morning show to force myself to get up early. Most of what I have done in life that is constructive I have forced on myself. If I had followed my natural tendencies, which are entirely lazy and fun-oriented, I would’ve produced almost nothing. So what I do is take more and more obligations upon myself and then I have no choice but to be constructive. If I could, I’d get up at 11 a.m. and go to bed at 3 a.m. In fact, my first book, which I co-authored with my dear friend Joseph Telushkin, we would do that. We would write till 3 a.m. We’d sleep till ten or eleven. Then we’d go out to brunch and we’d start writing again about 3 p.m. It was among the happiest times of my life.”

Dennis said in a 1998 lecture on Exodus 34: “We divvied up chapters basically. I handled God.”

April 3, 2008, Rabbi Telushkin said:

We’d each write different chapters and then critique each other. Dennis did most of the editing and he was a good editor. He claimed my style was too anecdotal, with too many digressions, took too long to make a point. Dennis loved to enumerate though the points he was making and if he’d had the book written the way he wanted, it really wouldn’t have been a conventional book, it would’ve been a manual. For example, one of the questions was — Who needs Jewish law/organized religion?

So this is how Dennis would’ve answered it: “There are 16 reasons which I will now enumerate A-P on why we need organized religion. Reason A: We need organized religion because religion isn’t only concerned with affecting the individual but affecting society as a whole. There are nine reasons why religion wants to affect society, which I will now enumerate in roman numerals. Reason one is because people can’t be trusted to be good on their own. There are nine reasons why people can’t be trusted to be good on their own, which I will now enumerate.”

Initially self-published (Dennis would later say he doesn’t trust self-published books) on Oct. 30, 1975 as The Eight Questions People Ask About Judaism, the book eventually added a question, and was released by Simon & Schuster in 1976. Aimed at secular Jews, it deals with questions that are not usually addressed by books on Judaism, such as:

* Can one doubt God’s existence and still be a good Jew? (The authors say yes.)

* Why do we need organized religion and Jewish Law? Isn’t it enough to be a good person? (The authors argue we need organized religion for the same reason we need to organize to accomplish many different tasks. The Jewish task is to make a good world under the rule of God and His Law.)

* If Judaism is supposed to make people better, how do you account for unethical religious Jews, and for ethical people who are not religious?

* How does Judaism differ from Christianity, Marxism and humanism?

* What is the Jewish role in the world? (Usually, the more religious the Jew, the less meaningful interaction he has with the wider world. The authors’ belief that Judaism has a mission to the world to promote ethical monotheism is thought kooky by most Orthodox rabbis I know.)

* Is there a difference between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism?

* Why are so many young Jews alienated from Judaism and the Jewish people?

* Why shouldn’t I intermarry? Doesn’t Judaism believe in universal brotherhood?

* How do I start practicing Judaism?

Dennis Prager recalls:

We sent the manuscript to the Jewish Publication Society of America (JPS), hoping they would publish it. I received a call from an editor at JPS who told me that they would not publish the book. I asked her why, and her answer taught me a great deal about Jewish life: “Because it is too advocative,” she said.
I was stunned. The Jewish Publication Society of America refused to publish a Jewish book on the grounds that it was “too advocative” of Judaism?

As it turned out, that rejection was a blessing. Joseph and I published the book on our own and sold so many copies that we lived off the sales of the book at lectures for years. Later Simon and Schuster published the book.

I came to realize that the JPS refusal to publish a book that was advocative of Judaism was symbolic of much of Jewish life. It seemed that almost no one outside of Orthodoxy was advocating Judaism (and even in Orthodoxy at that time, Chabad was largely alone in doing so and not nearly as well-known as it is today).

Nine Questions received sterling reviews. Novelist Herman Wouk, an Orthodox Jew, called it, “The intelligent skeptic’s guide to Judaism.”

Dennis and Joseph are secondary text guys. They assemble the best work of others and present it in an engaging way.

“It’s not Judaism,” many rabbis (such as Danny Landes) have told me about Dennis Prager’s presentation of their religion. “It’s Pragerism.”

Historian Marc B. Shapiro tells me in 2012: “I don’t think he has any influence [in Orthodox Judaism]. I don’t ever see him quoted by Orthodox figures (although Rabbi Rakefet quotes a line from Prager a lot). He doesn’t speak [often] in Orthodox shuls or write for Orthodox publications, and is not Orthodox. So is it surprising that the Orthodox don’t quote him? I was surprised and impressed that the OU a few years ago had him speak at the West Coach convention.”

I’m struck by the awe that the ignorant display towards Dennis Prager and the lack of awe shown to him by those who know something.

Enthusiasm for Dennis Prager is inversely proportionate to knowledge. Those who can pick up a gemara (tractate of Talmud) and read from the Aramaic rarely have enthusiasm for Dennis Prager while those who are illiterate in the languages of Judaism are the most likely to be excited about him.

I’ve hung around after Dennis Prager’s speeches and watched the crowd besiege him with questions. Few of the questioners seem scholarly. Those who wait the longest tend to know the least. I’ve never seen a Talmud scholar waiting around to pick Dennis Prager’s brain. 

Torah scholars regard Dennis the way historians regard popular writers of history such as Barbara Tuchman and Berel Wein — with contempt. Dennis has no influence on Jewish thought and practice. He’s like Martin Buber – widely cited by non-Jews and ignored by traditional Jews.

Conservative rabbi Arthur Blecher wrote:

Some rabbis take pains to keep people in the dark about Jewish traditions of Heaven and Hell. For example, a popular guide to Jewish belief, Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism, tells readers that the “notion of hell where sinners suffer eternally is foreign to Judaism and entered the Western world’s religious consciousness through the New Testament.” Its authors…have chosen their words carefully. Talmudic discussions about Hell do indeed agree that the average sinner remains in Hell for a limited period of time (typically either eleven or twelve months) before going to Heaven. However, some Talmud sages taught that other sinners remain in Hell forever.

An April 29, 2023 Google Scholar search on Dennis Prager revealed 1500 results, few of them serious. 

Without scholarly interest, Dennis Prager will be flushed down the toilet of history. 

Dennis believes that it is our bad luck that he does not receive serious attention. July 3, 2012, Dennis said: “I’m going to do an hour on David Blankenhorn. We choose the wrong people to defend the male-female definition of marriage. I don’t care if this sounds arrogant. I should’ve been chosen. I know the amount of hate and vitriol that might’ve been poured on me. I happen not to care. He cares. [Justice John] Roberts cares. They both changed their minds because of left-wing intimidation. People prefer to be liked than hated.”

“For conservatives and for liberals, if you don’t live in the New York – Washington corridor, you don’t come to mind for these matters.”

The Holocaust

Dennis regularly teaches “the lessons of the Holocaust.”

These lessons invariably coincide with Prager’s pre-existing worldview. 

On April 9, 2013, Dennis devoted a column to “Lessons for Holocaust Day.“

Yesterday, Jews around the world observed Holocaust Day. This day ought to be universally observed because the lessons of the Holocaust are universal. Here are some of them:

1. People are not basically good…

2. The Jews are the world’s canary in the mine. When Jews are murdered, it is a warning to decent non-Jews that they are next. Because Western nations dismissed Nazi anti-Semitism as the Jews’ problem, 50 million non-Jews ended up dying. If the world dismisses Ahmadinejad’s Iran as primarily the Jewish state’s problem, non-Jews will suffer again. Jew-haters (or, if you will, Jewish state-haters) begin with Jews but never end with them.

6. Secular education has proved morally worthless… Pacifists in moral societies are morally worthless…

9. God is indispensable — but not a celestial butler…

Dennis insists the Holocaust is unique. 

Like every event in history, it is unique in some ways.

American Jewish historian Peter Novick wrote in his 1999 book The Holocaust in American Life:

…the decline in American of an integrationist ethos (which focused on what Americans have in common and what unites us) and its replacement by a particularist ethos (which stresses what differentiates and divides us). The leaders of American Jewry, who once upon a time had sought to demonstrate that Jews were “just like everybody else, except more so,” now had to establish, for both Jews and gentiles, what there was about Jews that made them different…

What does differentiate American Jews from other Americans? On what grounds can distinctive Jewish identity in the United States be based? These days American Jews can’t define their Jewishness on the basis of distinctively Jewish religious beliefs, since most don’t have much in the way of distinctively Jewish religious beliefs, since most don’t have much in the way of distinctively Jewish religious beliefs. They can’t define it by distinctively Jewish cultural traits, since most don’t have any of these either. American Jews are sometimes said to be united by their Zionism, but if so, it is of a thin and abstract variety: most have never visited Israel; most contribute little to, and know even less about, that country. In any case, in recent years Israeli policies have alternatively outraged the secular and the religious, hawks and doves — a less than satisfactory foundation for unity. What American Jews do have in common is the knowledge that but for their parents’ or (more often) grandparents’ or great-grandparents’ immigration, they would have shared the fate of European Jewry…

At bar and bat mitzvahs, in a growing number of communities, the child is “twinned” with a young victim of the Holocaust who never lived to have the ceremony, and by all reports, the kids like it a lot. Adolescent Jews who go on organized tours to Aushwitz and Treblinka have reported that they were “never so proud to be a Jew” as when, at these sites, they vicariously experienced the Holocaust. Jewish college students oversubscribe courses on the Holocaust, and rush to pin yellow stars to their lapels on Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day)…

Another, parallel development in contemporary American culture has furthered this development. There has been a change in the attitude toward victimhood from a status all but universally shunned and despised to one often eagerly embraced. On the individual level, the cultural icon of the strong, silent hero hero is replaced by the vulnerable and verbose antihero. Stoicism is replaced as a prime value by sensitivity. Instead of enduring in silence, one lets it all hang out. The voicing of pain and outrage is alleged to be “empowering” as well as therapeutic…

The historian Charles Maier of Harvard…has described modern American politics as a “competition for enshrining grievances. Every group claims its share of public honor and public funds by pressing disabilities and injustices. National public life becomes the settlement of a collective malpractice suit in which all citizens are patients and physicians simultaneously.” All of this…meshes with the new emphasis on separate group identity rather than on “all-American” identity. In practice, the assertion of the group’s historical victimization — on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation — is always central to the group’s assertion of its distinctive identity.

American Jews were by far the wealthiest, best-educated, most influential, in-every-way-most-successful group in American society — a group that, compared to most other identifiable minority groups, suffered no measurable discrimination and no disadvantages on account of that minority status. But insofar as Jewish identity could be anchored in the agony of European Jewry, certification as (vicarious) victims could be claimed, with all the moral privilege accompanying such certification.

The grounding of group identity and claims to group recognition in victimhood has produced not just a game of “show and tell,” with members of the class waving their arms to be called on to recount their story. In Jewish discourse on the Holocaust we have not just a competition for recognition but a competition for primacy. This takes many forms. Among the most widespread and pervasive is an angry insistence on the uniqueness of the Holocaust… “Your catastrophe, unlike ours, is ordinary; unlike ours is comprehensible; unlike ours is representable.”

Matter-of-fact references by blacks to their “ghetto” (a century-old usage) are condemned as pernicious attempts to steal “our” Holocaust. Let Ted Turner, denouncing what he regards as Rupert Murdoch’s autocratic behavior, refer to Murdoch as “fuhrer”, and the ADL (I’m not making this up) sends out a press release demanding an apology for Turner’s having demeaned the Holocaust. The greatest victory is to wring an acknowledgment of superior victimization from another contender. Officials of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum tell, with great satisfaction, a story of black youngsters learning of the Holocaust and saying, “God, we thought we had it bad.”

Aaprt from being our ticket of admission to this sordid game, American Jewish centering of the Holocaust has had other practical consequences. For many Jews…it has mandated an intransigent and self-righteous posture in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As the Middle Eastern dispute came to be viewed within a Holocaust paradigm, that tangled imbroglio was endowed with all the black-and-white moral simplicity of the Holocaust. And in this realm the Holocaust framework has promoted as well a belligerent stance toward any criticism of Israel: “Who are you, after what you did to us (or allowed to be done to us), to dare to criticize us now?”

…Judaism has consistently disparaged excessive or overly prolonged mourning. Cremation is forbidden because it would dispose of the body too soon, but also forbidden is embalming, because it would preserve the body too long. Mourn, to be sure, is the message, but then move on: “choose life.” One of the things I find most striking about much of the recent Jewish Holocaust commemoration is how “un-Jewish” — how Christian — it is. I am thinking of the ritual of reverently following the structured pathways of the Holocaust in the major museums, which resembles nothing so much as the Stations of the Cross on the Via Dolorosa…

We are not just “people of the book,” but the people of the Hollywood film and the television miniseries, of the magazine article and the newspaper column, of the comic book and the academic symposium. When a high level of concern with the Holocaust became widespread in American Jewry, it was, given the important role that Jews play in American media and opinion-making elites, not only natural, but virtually inevitable that it would spread throughout the culture at large.

Whatever its origins, the public rationale for Americans’ “confronting” the Holocaust…is that the Holocaust is the bearer of important lessons that we all ignore at our peril… Individuals from every point on the political compass can find the lessons they wish in the Holocaust; it has become a moral and ideological Rorschach test…

If there are, in fact, lessons to be drawn from history, the Holocaust would seem an unlikely source, not because of its alleged uniqueness, but because of its extremity. Lessons for dealing with the sorts of issues that confront us in ordinary life, public or private, are not likely to be found in this most extraordinary of events. There are, in my view, more important lessons about how easily we become victimizers to be drawn from the behavior of normal Americas in normal times than from the behavior of the SS in wartime. In any case, the typical “confrontation” with the Holocaust for visitors to American Holocaust museums, and in burgeoning curricula, does not incline us toward thinking of ourselves as potential victimizers — rather the opposite. …And it is accepted as a matter of faith, beyond discussion, that the mere act of walking through a Holocaust museum, or viewing a Holocaust movie, is going to be morally therapeutic, that multiplying such encounters will make one a better person.

Life Lessons

Dennis said in a 1998 lecture on Exodus 27: “I was given an opportunity many years ago to have an audience with the Lubavitcher Rebbe. I was honored, but being a big rationalist, I missed the opportunity to be in the presence of a holy man.”

In his 20s, Dennis went to see the late Rabbi Wolfe Kelman, the leader for many years of America’s Conservative rabbis. “As a young man, I sought advice from him, and he offered this piece of wisdom: ‘I pretty much have my bad inclination [yetzer hara was the well-known Hebrew term he used] under control; it’s my good inclination [yetzer hatov] that always gets me into trouble.” (Still the Best Hope, pg. 76)

Dennis Prager learned a life lesson when he gave away copies of his book to camp counselors at Brandeis-Bardin.

Mar. 15, 2010, Dennis said: “I had just published my first book. Out of idealism. I was brought out to California to direct an institute. It had a summer camp as one of its many many ventures. I spoke to the counselors of the summer camp and out of sheer idealism and out of my own money, authors don’t get any more than a handful of books for free, people don’t know that, they always ask authors for books, but the author has to buy it from the publisher, but out of my own money, I brought in a box of my books, hardcover, and I gave each counselor at this camp of which I was the director of the whole institute, a part of which the camp was, a copy of the book. By the tenth person, I realized what a terrible mistake I had made. I knew not one of them was going to read it and that none of them treasured it. Had I charged one dollar for the book, they would’ve appreciated it.”

On April 15, 2010, Dennis said: “I remember years ago during inflation and high taxation, there would be times, I don’t even know if I should be saying this publicly, and I would be invited to give a lecture somewhere and I realized it wasn’t worth it.”

On Aug. 3, 2010, Dennis said: “What’s the first birthday that is not an unalloyed joy? It’s 30. At 30, it hit me that I am not a kid anymore. You can delude yourself in your 20s.”

Dennis said in a 1995 lecture on Exodus 6:

There was a humanistic synagogue. In my more firebrand years, I am mellow compared to what I was 20 years ago, I would walk into gladiatorial combat with anyone. I remember going to Detroit to debate the founder of Humanistic Judaism, a rabbi in Birmingham [Sherwin T. Wine], Michigan.

I’ve come close to knowing what it is like to go in the ring with trainers behind you massaging you and getting you ready with towels and a bucket of water. This evening had thousands of Jews coming to scream on the one they were rooting for — the humanist or the religious one. I had my backers. He had his backers. It was like a prize fight. It bothered me in some way. I don’t think anyone came to be enlightened but just to see major gladiatorial combat.

Do you know what he did in his synagogue? They would get together Friday night. And do you know what they would read? Philip Roth. They had a Torah — it was in the library.

Dennis said in a 1996 lecture on Exodus 16:

I have to leave because I’m giving a lecture in the [San Francisco] Bay Area very early in the morning. I’ve been lecturing since I was 21. I made a living lecturing and selling my books at my lectures.

I said, why don’t I bring my book to my lecture in the morning? And then I realized that I’m not as hungry as I was in my 20s. I used to shlep cartons of hardcover books to every lecture I gave. I worked like crazy just hauling books on airplanes and off airplanes and into rent-a-cars to my speech to make another $100 or $100. I don’t do that shlepping now.

Life Of Brian (1979)

The Crowd: Yes! We’re all individuals!
Brian: You’re all different!
The Crowd: Yes, we ARE all different!
Man in crowd: I’m not…
The Crowd: Sch!

Dennis: “That’s one of the brilliant scenes from that movie. I know it disturbs some religious people, but I believe that we need to have a sense of humor about our religions and that God would laugh along with us.” (Jan. 22, 2010)

Dennis Prager reminds some people of Jesus. Both came from non-prestigious communities (Nazareth and Brooklyn). Both had solid if unspectacular Jewish educations. Both started public speaking at a young age (Jesus in the temple at age 12, and Dennis in the temples at age 21). Both preached a simple version of Judaism that gave greater weight to ethics than ritual. Both preached with messianic fervor and moved thousands (Dennis autographs Bibles). Both were not known for their humility (Jesus claimed to be God’s son and Dennis said his contributions wouldn’t be recognized for a millennia). Both were largely rejected by the Jewish leaders of their day. Both had non-prestigious professions (carpenter and talk show host). Both had devoted followings among the common people while the intellectuals despised them.

On Sept. 14, 2010, Dennis said Airplane! (1980) is one of the three funniest films ever.

In a speech Jan. 24, 2007, Dennis said: “The two funniest genres of humor in my life have been Soviet dissident jokes and American lawyer jokes. …Bitterness causes humor. Happy people are not that funny. If you look at comedians’ lines, they are generally miserable. Lawyers cause misery here and the Soviets caused there.”

From Prager’s Oct. 31, 2014 radio show:

Buck calls: “You speak Russian and you traveled several times to the Soviet Union. I was wondering if you were ever contacted by the FBI or the CIA or debriefed?”

Dennis: “I should have been. The first time I went, it was Israel that sent me because of my knowledge of Hebrew and Russian. They debriefed me because I had met with so many Jewish dissidents.”

“I went back again about ten years later. I had a very scary episode at the border leaving the Soviet Union going to Romania at midnight. I experienced terror. It was the only time in my life I experienced terror. I was sick for months. It did something to my immune system. It was a terrible hour. I was smuggling out Soviet dissident literature. It was in Russian so if it would have been caught, they would have understood it. I hid it in the battery drive of my Nikon camera. They saw the camera. They were fascinated. I was shmoozing with them in Russian, thinking that the more I shmoozed, the less suspicious I would seem. They shmoozed back but then said, ‘We’d like to see your camera.’ When they took the camera, I believed I was doomed. And I had very good reason to believe it. I could easily have been beaten up or beaten to death and the Soviets could have said anything. America was not going to war with the Soviet Union over a 30-year old American. I was certain I would be caught. That’s the stuff they hate the most — anti-Soviet work. They don’t like if you smuggle in dollars, that’s a monetary crime. But a propaganda one, that’s the worst. I remember thinking, ‘There’s no way they’re not going to find it.’ That’s the only thing they took.

“They took it away. They didn’t go through it in front of me. They had it for about an hour… It’s pitch black. Completely silent.”

“As it turns out, they never opened up the battery pack. They just wanted to see a brand new camera.” “What did I do during that hour? I packed a little case thinking I might be sent away. A toothbrush and soap.”

“I remember thinking, there’s no way I am not doomed. I could not think of a scenario [where I turn out OK]… I panic intelligently. I don’t lose my brain. Where you were going to run on the Soviet – Romanian border. They’d shoot you.”

Betty Friedan

On his February 20, 2023 Youtube show with Julie Hartman, Dennis said: “I was in my 20s when I had a public dialogue with Betty Friedan. No man ever did this with me, but at one point, she gets up and leaves the stage because she’s so insulted by me. And I’m polite. She stormed off because of things I said. I was half her age. She said, “You’re a male chauvinist piglet.” All I did was continue talking. I said, ‘Either she will come back or she won’t come back.’ And she came back.”

South Africa

On Dec. 6, 2013, Dennis said: “To those with ambivalence about Nelson Mandela… There is a reason for his greatness — Zimbabwe. You had a Rhodesian white apartheid government overthrown as it was in South Africa and you ended up with sheer misery for the vast majority of its citizens. A bread basket was turned into one of the poorest places on earth… South Africa could’ve been Zimbabwe. He could’ve cultivated anger.”

“I haven’t spoken about apartheid almost ever. I wrote about it. I visited South Africa in my 20s [during the 1970s]. I debated, would I go to South Africa? Anybody with a conscience was opposed to apartheid.”

“I remember how I felt. I wrote it home. I felt when I got there, there was a certain jolt to my system. I was always strong-willed. I saw two bathrooms. One said ‘Europeans Only’ and the other one said ‘Colored.’ I remember thinking, ‘I want to go into the Colored.’ I didn’t. I went into the Europeans and I felt dirty. I felt like I had compromised.”

“I then traveled to Kenya and I felt more normal in a black society than I did in an apartheid society. It was a bad system.”

“It stayed with me. It gnawed at me. I’ve always wondered. Did I do the right thing? Should I have gone into the colored? I would’ve done it as a statement of my anger, not because it would’ve accomplished anything. It has always hung in the background of my conscience. Did I facilitate something I knew to be bad?”

Nicholas Kristof wrote from Zimbabwe for the New York Times Mar. 23, 2005: “The hungry children and the families dying of AIDS here are gut-wrenching, but somehow what I find even more depressing is this: Many, many ordinary black Zimbabweans wish that they could get back the white racist government that oppressed them in the 1970’s.”

Feb. 17, 2014, Dennis said: “Blacks really needed a Civil Rights movement. There was something terrible called Jim Crow. There was real genuine racism and genuine non-racism… Since then, all status acccrues from being a victim. If you can be a member of some victim communities… WASP males made the best country in the world.”

Apr. 17, 2014, Dennis said: “It was completely reasonable to pass a civil rights law. I supported it. But there were people like Barry Goldwater, who founded the NAACP in Arizona, but voted against [the 1964 Civil Rights legislation] because he understood that this is just going to mutate. He turns out to be right… Could anybody have imagined what it would be stretched into by the left? On the basis of sex, of national origins, of Vietnam era status, sexual orientation, sexual identity.”

Black economist Walter Williams wrote:

In 1960, only 28 percent of black females between the ages of 15 and 44 were never married. Today, it’s 56 percent. In 1940, the illegitimacy rate among blacks was 19 percent, in 1960, 22 percent, and today, it’s 70 percent. Some argue that the state of the black family is the result of the legacy of slavery, discrimination and poverty. That has to be nonsense. A study of 1880 family structure in Philadelphia shows that three-quarters of black families were nuclear families, comprised of two parents and children. In New York City in 1925, 85 percent of kin-related black households had two parents.

In April 2014, cattle rancher Cliven Bundy said about American blacks: “They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”

Apr. 25, 2014, Dennis Prager called the Cliven Bundy remarks “absurd and morally wrong,” “extraordinarily stupid,” and “moronic.”