Talkshow host Dennis Prager wrote four influential books: The Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism, Why The Jews? The Reason For Antisemitism, Think A Second Time and Happiness Is A Serious Problem.
Dennis Prager's parents were born and raised in Brooklyn. While in their late teens, they met in 1937 at an Orthodox Jewish dance.
Max Prager married Hilda Friedfeld on September 14, 1940.
Hilda (born in September 1919) gave birth to Kenneth on January 3, 1943 and Dennis on August 2, 1948.
When Dennis was six years old, Hilda left the house to work as a nursing home administrator.
Dennis has said on his KRLA radio show that he thinks he would've been better off if his mother had stayed home instead of going to work when he was young.
Max (born in July 1918) worked as a Certified Public Accountant.
"My parents are a fascinating amalgamation of modern American and traditional Judaism," says Dennis. "Both grew up with European Jewish parents. My father's parents didn't even speak English, only Yiddish.
"My whole family was in America during the Holocaust… If my grandparents hadn't moved to this country, I would never have been born. My parents would have been gassed." (CSPAN Booknotes)
According to a family joke, Max joined the Navy during World Way II to get away from the crying of Kenneth.
"My father baked challa, the special Friday night bread, on his ship," says Dennis. "And he was one of a tiny number of Jews on his ship fighting the Japanese. That ability to bake challa on your Navy ship, I think, I've translated into my own life with a very great deal of openness about my Judaism and yet an immersion in the larger world.
"…Within Jewish life I'm in the no-man's land, denominationally. I am equally comfortable, and yet not fully a member, as it were, although I attend, of course, services each week. When people find out that I won't broadcast on a Jewish holiday or -- in fact, it was a very powerful thing -- the night of the O.J. Simpson verdict, I was invited to be one of only two people on "Nightline," and I had so much passion about that verdict and I was so dying to talk, essentially, to a country. But it was Yom Kippur night, the holiest night of the Jewish calendar, and I turned it down. I don't broadcast on Jewish holidays or Saturday." (CSPAN)
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. I did however try Orthodoxy once again after my first child was born (1983). For a number of years, I lived an orthodox life to try it again as an adult. I'm quite observant but I always announce that I am not Orthodox because I never want to mislead anybody. Many Orthodox institutions have used some of my writings on Judaism, particularly my first book 'The Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism.' But I will drive to synagogue on the Sabbath for example."
Caller: "What about kosher? Is that important to you?"
Dennis: "Yes. But my level would be different from yours if you are Orthodox. I don't care, for example, about dishes at a restaurant. If a dish has touched bacon and then was washed, I will have food off of it."
Caller: "What would you advise young people, especially Jews, aged 12-25 about whether they should follow what you're doing?"
Dennis: "I am proud to say that I have brought a lot of Jews to Judaism. And they know, as my own children know, that I do not give a hoot if my children or any Jew I influence expresses a serious Judaism as an Orthodox, Conservative, Reform or Hasidic Jew. I am just as happy. I have zero preference."
Caller: "What happened after your Bar Mitzvah?"
Dennis: "I don't have an Orthodox temperament. For example, I never got into praying. Never. I love singing and Torah study. Davening essentially has bored me. In most synagogues, I am bored out of my mind. I'm sure that's a lapse in me. I was raised in a world where so much is actually said in prayer, that it is actually speed read."
Dennis is the only member of his immediate family who is not Orthodox. "I was born an adult," he told the 2-4-98 LA Times. "I couldn't bear parental coercion. I've always been in love with freedom."
While Max enjoyed an "I Thou" relationship to God, Dennis describes his relationship to God in more distant terms.
According to an old saw, we relate to God as we relate to our fathers.
Dennis has said that people of lesser fortitude would've broken under the moral rigor of Max's parentage.
As an adult, Dennis has organized his life to gain maximum freedom from authority so that he can say and write what he believes. He's never wanted to be dependent on one boss or on one form of earning a living. Thus, he's earned money for decades as a speaker, writer and radio host.
That Dennis's parents met at a mixed-sex Orthodox dance shows how far Jewish Orthodoxy has shifted to the right. You no longer see mixed-sex dancing under Orthodox auspices. Today one hears little talk of Modern Orthodoxy, the environment in which Dennis and his parents grew up. Now the new term for the most moderate form of Orthodoxy is "Centrist Orthodoxy."
American day schools, the key institutions of Modern Orthodoxy, were largely started in New York in the 1930s. Between 1934-1950, many Charedim (fervent right-wing Orthodox such as rabbis Aaron Kotler, Moshe Feinstein, Joel Teitelbaum) moved to America and by the 1980s the right wing Orthodox dominated Orthodox life.
As opposed to the moderate Orthodox, the right wing Orthodox generally scorn university education for any other purpose than earning a living, refuse to cooperate with non-Orthodox forms of Judaism, and denounce Zionism.
In the new century, though the numbers of Modern Orthodox and right-wing Orthodox are balanced, the enthusiasm and learning largely belongs to the right-wing.
In 1955, when Dennis was seven years old, sociologist Mashall Sklare described the American Orthodox as "a case study of institutional decay." Its rebirth has taken place with Prager outside the fold.
.........
Dennis did not begin to speak until he was almost four. Max remembers a Yom Kippur appeal at synagogue when Dennis was five. "People were giving thousands and hundreds [of dollars]. And this five year old child raises his hand and says, 'I want to give $5.' The synagogue broke up laughing. This showed the compassion Dennis always had." (Prager CD)
Rabbi Joseph Telushkin writes on page 35 of his book A Code Of Jewish Ethics:
My friend Dennis Prager told me that when he was six years old, the first words he learned to read in English were "pure vegetable shortening only." He added, "It was good training to learn at the age of six that I couldn't have every candy bar in the candy store."
Dennis began school at age six at the kindergarten of Yeshiva Rambam. "I disliked school from then until I left graduate school 18 years later," Prager writes in his autobiography which comprises part of his CD Rom available from www.dennisprager.com.
At age seven, Dennis flew on his own from New York to Miami to spend eight weeks with his Aunt and Uncle Corrine and Al Moskowitz. "From my earliest years, I craved freedom and independence." (CD)
"I vividly recall the moment when, as a boy in sixth grade, I heard the news that Caryl Chessman was executed.
"Because Chessman was executed for rape, the notion that rape is a horror stayed with me almost all of my life." (The Prager Perspective, June 15, 1997)
At age eleven, Dennis spent one year at the rigorous Rabbi Jacob Joseph School (R.J.J.S.), whose hours ran from 8-6 p.m. Monday through Thursday, and 8-1 p.m., Fridays and Sundays. When Max saw a mugging of a student in front of R.J.J.S., he returned Dennis for seventh and eighth grade to Yeshiva Rambam.
Around this time, Max served as president of his Orthodox synagogue. During his tenure, he regularly purchased Playboy. "He provided a model of integrity, religiosity, and common sense." (Think A Second Time, pg. 24)
Prager followed sports as much as other kids his age, attending New York Ranger hockey games in the cheap seats. When fights broke out on the ice, Prager would stay seated, to show his disaproval.
When his parents limited his TV watching, Dennis asked them what he should do with his evenings. They told him to take up a musical instrument. Prager looked up the Yellow Pages and settled on the first instrument he saw -- accordion. He took lessons from Peter Luisietti whose studio resided under the subway at Kings Highway. 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..
An awkward kid who resembled the Pillsbury Dough Boy, Dennis was always taller and rounder than his roommates. His parents, by contrast, with their charm and charisma reminded many of the Kennedys.
Ethnic pride has never been a big value for Dennis. At his Bar Mitzvah at Winsoki on 7/15/61, he received the book "Great Jews in Sports." He found the topic hilarious. Prager also had no time for superstition, choosing the number 13 when he played basketball. "And if you'd asked my coach, he'd probably say that I lived up to it."
The proverbial "why?" child, Prager was sent to the principal's office so often that they named a chair "The Dennis Prager seat."
"If I had the sense of parenting that I have today," says Max, "I could've spared myself an awful lot of anguish because in most cases Dennis was right." (CD)
Max says he's a perfectionist, and that he was too tough on his kids. He says that as he ages, he becomes milder and more accepting of others' foibles.
"Dennis's behavior in school was horrible," says Max. "He was extremely bright and found school boring. I should've been more accepting and forgiving. He went to four elementary schools.
"Dennis always knew what he wanted. And this is difficult for parents who usually want to discipline or guide the child. He was always respectful, but Dennis always did things his way." (Prager's CD ROM)
Dennis: "I talked in class… Took the girls' briefcases without permission and passed them around my room.
"I didn't feel secure enough at home to act out, so I did my acting out at school." (CD)
Hilda: "He was a rough guy in school. He'd read The New York Times [in class] and do other things that he shouldn't… After the PTA meetings, I'd come home and want to kill him because I heard some bad things. The poor kid was shivering…absolutely miserable when it came time for the PTA meeting.
"He was always a good kid," Hilda says with a smile. "He never fought with his older brother. They wrestled a lot in the basement." (CD)
At age 13, in eighth grade, Dennis met with a school psychologist, who asked him what he wanted. Dennis said he wanted his parents to never ask him about school. The psychologist relayed the request to Dennis's parents and they lived by it. Often they did not even look at Dennis's report card, which was usually crumby. (Relayed by Dennis on his radio show, 12/12/03)
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:
I have a friend who grew up harboring deep resentment toward his parents. He often lamented, "They never really cared about me. They had little time for me, they didn't take my ideas seriously, and they were always getting angry at me."
But one day, his attitude started to soften. It all happened when he became a parent, and found himself getting up at 3 a.m. to bring a bottle to his crying daughter.
"I realized then that my parents probably devoted far more hours to me than I had ever previously thought. The fact that I survived to my teenage years with all my fingers and toes intact means that they were watching me far more than I realized."
As a child, Dennis was impressed by the way his father regularly called his mother, even though she was a difficult woman.
"Her toughness strongly contributed to neither of her daughters marrying...and to other problems.
"After she was widowed in 1950, my father took it upon himself to see her every week and to call her every day...
"I vividly recall a nearly nightly ritual. After dinner, my father would call his mother, only to have her yell at him. My father possesses a particularly strong disposition, yet he found these telephone conversations so disconcerting that he would put the phone down on the kitchen table. I would hear the yelling, and watch my father periodically pick up the phone and say, 'Yeah, ma.'" (Think a Second Time, pg. 47)
Prager came early to the belief that his life mission was to promote goodness. "When people got hurt, I cried - and still do; it's as simple as that. I am doing today exactly what I wanted to be doing when I was five: fighting bad people.
"My wife says that I was born mature... I had thought differently early on and always in terms of good and evil. When kids got bullied at school, it bugged me. If an ugly girl was seated on the side in a dance, it bothered me. And I would go over and talk even though I was dying to be with the pretty girls. I can't stand cruelty. I have a visceral reaction against it." (CSPAN Booknotes)
"When he'd go to New York," remembers Hilda, "and he'd see a man selling pencils, he'd turn to us and say, 'I wish that I could buy all his pencils so that he wouldn't have to beg for money.'" (CD)
Dennis was raised to never take the easy way out. "I didn't like this idea when I was a child, and my family sometimes carried it to an extreme, but this principle has served me well as an adult.
"One day the thought occurred to me that being unhappy was easy… Anyone could be unhappy. True achievement… lay in struggling to be happy."
"I had an admiration for Batman," said Prager on his radio show June 16, 2006, "because he did not have super-power. I think I liked Green Lantern because nobody read him. I felt sorry for him. And then there was Wonderwoman who visually had a provocate effect on this 13-year old."
Kenny attended an all-boys yeshiva high school. In his senior year, he was class valedictorian, student body president, and starting center of his school's basketball team.
"I never competed," claims his younger brother. Dennis attended the coed modern Orthodox day school Yeshiva of Flatbush ("one of the two most modern and sophisticated Orthodox Jewish day schools in America") with such classmates as the writer Leon Wieseltier, composer Dr. Michael Isaacson and journalist Stuart Schoffman.
Given its liberal co-ed approach, Flatbush was much more of a day school than a yeshiva. Teenage boys and girls don't learn together in a yeshiva.
Screenwriter Robert J. Avrech remembers:
Back in the 50's and 60's there were quite a few violent teachers in the Yeshiva of Flatbush. Mrs. Katz, a nasty piece of work, used to make us lay our hands palm up and she would take her wooden ruler and WHACK us with it. Mr. Zilber would take an eraser and throw it at us, usually aiming for our heads. Mr. Weinstein would grab us by the neck and squeeze until it felt like our neck was breaking. We thought that this was normal behavior. It was not until I was much older--actually not till I got to college and had the chance to speak to kids who went to public schools--that I learned how backward my Yeshiva was. I make no excuses for these people. None of them were traumatized Holocaust survivors. They were just a bunch of nasty creeps who hated children. How Yeshiva Flatbush ever got its stellar repution for excellence is something of a mystery. My years were positively Dickensian. I still have nightmares that I'm back on East 10th street.
In tenth grade, while walking to a bookstore about half a mile from Flatbush, Prager met Joseph Telushkin. They became best friends.
"Neither Joseph nor I actually did school work. But we read all the time, and became inseparable, as we talked and talked about God, evil, Judaism, the Holocaust and girls." One day Joseph told Dennis, "I've done a survey and found that one out of every ten thoughts a guy has isn't about girls." (CD)
Flatbush put an end to mixed-sex dances in Prager's 10th grade.
The school divided its students into four tracks. Prager and Telushkin were assigned to the C-student track. Dennis and Joseph were smart enough to do better academically but they weren't interested in doing homework.
Since the age of 14, I have had a lifelong love affair with books and learning, but this was always despite school. I loathed my elementary school, I read non-school books underneath my desk all through high school, graduated 92nd in a class of 120 [Joseph finished 88th], and I skipped the majority of my classes in college. (Ultimate Issues, Jul-Sep. 1989, pg. 16)
Joseph struck his classmates as well read and articulate. He wrestled with big questions. Descending from a long line of rabbis, Telushkin surprised no one by becoming a rabbi.
Dennis was known as a loudmouth in highschool. He did not strike his classmates as particularly religious and few thought he'd go on to be a religious leader.
In late 1963, bored with school, Dennis embarked on an intense exploration of Manhattan's cultural attractions. One day he bought a $1 ticket to hear Alexander Schneider and his chamber group play Handel's Concerti Grossi at Carnegie Hall. Prager fell in love with classical music. The next day he spent two weeks lunch money and allowance ($32) to buy concert tickets at Carnegie.
For the rest of high school, Dennis spent two-to-three evenings a week in Manhattan, attending plays, concerts and book stores. He usually ate his dinner (tuna fish salad plate, apple pie and coffee for $1:50) at Dubrow's Cafeteria by the subway station on King Highway.
In his junior year, Dennis founded The Hendryx Society, named after a large stuffed frog in his home, which regularly published The Hendryxian. Prager used his newsletter to campaign against cheating on tests, which was widespread at his school.
Under pressure from his father to become more athletic, Dennis joined the Flatbush Falcons basketball team. At 6'4", he was the tallest kid in the school. While looking at Dennis, the coach announced that his new squad "scraped the bottom of the barrel." He was right.
Prager spent the summer of 1965 as a waiter and assistant counselor at Camp Massad in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains. "This camp provided the most positive Jewish experiences in my life. In addition, it was a Hebrew-speaking camp, and I became fluent in Hebrew. This began a life-long love of languages." Dennis had his "first serious romance. Life was getting better." (Prager's CD)
"I was a big talk radio fan during the beginnings of this thing," Prager recalled on his Feb. 1, 2007 show. "I would call in and get on pretty much when I called in. I would be in the upstairs and they'd [Prager's parents] be down in the basement and I'd scream, 'I'm going on the radio.'
"I wonder what I talked about? I have no recollection."
Dennis particularly liked WNBC radio and WOR host Jean Shepherd.
In Prager's final year of high school, he served as Senior Class President.
I left keeping kosher after yeshiva precisely because no reasons were given. I returned to kashrut after reading an article on the ethics of the Jewish dietary laws written by an observant non-Orthodox rabbi, Prof. Jacob Milgrom of Berkeley, in a non-Jewish philosophical journal.
[Around 1975] ...I was invited back to my yeshiva high school to lecture to the senior classes. I went to all six of them with the exact same approach. I asked the students if all Jews should keep kosher. Yes, they said. I then asked if it is the duty of observant [Jews] to bring other Jews to observing mitzvot. Yes, they said, All right, I said, make believe that I am a Jew who wants to know about Kashrut, and who is open to observing it. Can you offer me any reasons other than "God said so"?
In all six classes I received the same response. There are no reasons other than God and the Torah said so. (Ultimate Issues, Summer, 1985, pg. 10)
Prager attended Brooklyn College. At the end of his first year, shortly after the Six Day War of 1967, Dennis made his first trip abroad, touring Israel and Europe.
"I first went to Jerusalem three weeks after the Six Day War in 1967 [staying with Pinchas Pelli and his feminist wife]," writes Prager for Olam magazine in 2001. "I was just under 19 years old. For a Jewish boy from the New York yeshiva world, one who moreover also attended Zionist summer camps in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains, the experience was, not surprisingly, overwhelming. It is difficult to separate the power of Israel, the power of that uniquely heady time in Jewish history, and the power of Jerusalem. Each merged into the other to create a permanent impact on Jews such as myself.
"So deep was the impact, in fact, that I was certain that I would one day in the not too distant future make aliyah (live in the Jewish state). Indeed, three years later, after graduating from college, I applied to and was accepted by the Hebrew University in Jerusalem to study for a Masters Degree at its Institute on Contemporary Jewry.
"For various reasons, I enrolled instead at Columbia University, at its School of International Affairs, and consequently ended up staying in America. That decision came to be one of those life-shaping forks in the road that all of us at some point experience. Had Columbia not accepted me, this American patriot might well have ended up being an Israeli."
In 1968, Prager won a junior-year-abroad scholarship after impressing interviewers with his skills in English, Hebrew, Russian and French.
"During the first week of September, 1968, I set sail from New York to Harwich, England. If the day I won the Junior Year Abroad Award had been the happiest day, this week on board this student ship was the happiest week of my life. Free, independent, living on my own, far from home!" (CD)
Prager studied international history, comparative religion and Arabic at the University of Leeds. Many weekends he took a boat from Harwich, England to Bremerhaven, Germany, to visit his German-American girlfriend who he'd met on the ship to England. During Christmas vacation, Prager traveled through Spain, then Morocco, where he says he encountered anti-Semitism for the first time in his life. In Marrakech, he saw four Moroccan thugs on motorbikes beat Jews leaving a Jewish home after the Sabbath. Prager intervened, kicking the leader of the thugs. As they gathered to attack him, Prager yelled in French that he was an American, a friend of King Hassan, and that the thugs would be hanged if they hurt him. It worked. (CD)
During my junior year in college, which I spent in Europe, and during which time I traveled from the Artic to Morocco, I decided to experience life without the Jewish religious practices with which I was raised.
...I did not long for many of the abservances. I hardly missed keeping kosher; being able to order and eat anything on a menua was a semi-ecstatic experience. And being able to do anything I wanted on Friday nights and Saturdays -- go out, eat in restaurants, travel, shop -- also seemed exhilirating and liberating. (Ultimate Issues, Jul - Sep, 1990, pg. 16)
On Friday night, August 1, 1969, Prager's life forever changed.
He'd ridden all day on a train from Lapland to Helsinki, the capital of Finland. He arrived around 11 p.m. As he got off the train, he realized it was Friday night.
"...I felt as though I was losing the rhythm of life that I once had... Life was becoming biological; the holy and the distinct, and the day that let the other days have meaning and rhythm, were all disappearing." (Ultimate Issues, Jul - Sep, 1990, pg. 16)
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. Life was tough for Jews in the communist state.
Prager says that for thirty days he lived like a spy, meeting with Jewish dissidents in parks at midnight and climbing over walls to avoid the cops. Until 1991, Dennis kept this information secret to protect the ongoing information network. With the break-up of the Soviet Union, Prager felt free to tell his story.
"The trip shaped my life," he told the 11-17-91 Los Angeles Times. Returning to America, he began lecturing four times a week to Jewish organizations on the state of Jews in the Soviet Union. One day he decided that he could talk about more than just this one topic. Approaching one of the groups he'd addressed, Prager asked to lecture on why so many young people were alienated from Judaism.
In July 1970, the United Nations convened a World Youth Assembly. Bnai Brith nominated Prager as its delegate, and its later report described Dennis as "the star of the West."
"I was the anti-Soviet, and anti-totalitarian spokesman," writes Prager in his autobiography, "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…"
Prager writes the experience "cemented an ability to speak calmly in the face of hostility."
Prager graduated Brooklyn College with a double major in Anthropology and History. From 1970-72, he attended the Middle East and Russian Institutes at the Columbia University School of International Affairs. Prager studied under Dr. Zbigniew Brezinski, who later served as the head of the National Security Council under President Carter.
"Graduate school was a tough time for me," Prager said on his radio show March 2, 2006. "Everything I belived to be true and good overturned. I had only pessimism for my country."
Dennis taught 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)
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."
Dennis embarrassedly explained that it was his car that was burglarized. (Prager's radio show, 12/28/06)
In the summer of 1971, Prager traveled through the communist countries of Eastern Europe and later published his first articles in national magazines - an essay on Poland for the National Review and a book review for The New Leader.
On his radio show 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@webtv.net's 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 his best friend Joseph Telushkin. "He became a rabbi [Orthodox ordination from Yeshiva University] and I became a heretic." (CSPAN Booknotes)
First self-published in 1975 as The Eight Questions People Ask About Judaism, the book eventually added a question, and was published by Simon & Schuster in 1976. Nine Questions is the best selling introductory text to Judaism, used by rabbis from Reform to Orthodox.
Aimed at secular Jews, the book deals with questions that are usually not 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. Unlike the overwhelming majority of traditional rabbis, the authors make rational arguments for observing Jewish 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 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?
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.
(I read The Nine Questions in 1989 and found it so persuasive that I converted to Judaism in 1992. Then I found out that it's ideas are largely absent from Jewish life, even Orthodox Jewish life. Over the years, I moved from frustration that the ideas of Nine Questions were not more important in Jewish life to disillusionment with Mr. Prager and Rabbi Telushkin. For a while, I felt like they'd sold me a bill of goods. Then I learned to accept the reality that they'd presented an inspiring vision of Judaism.)
Rivkah Maccaby writes on Amazon.com:
Prager also asserts, with no support, that most people form their religious belief at a young age, and never examine them again as long as they don't become rabbis.
Further, his question seven accepts without examination the much believed, but as far as I know unproved, "fact" that young people feel alienated from Judaism. I read this book as a young Jew, a young Jew who read Torah on a regular basis, had been active in Hillel, observed ALL the holidays, and shomer Shabbes. I really resented his broad generalizations about young people.
But that's Dennis Prager. I haven't read anyone who takes himself more seriously since Rabbi Shammai. His narrative voice is so pompous, I keep waiting for him to declare himself infallible.
What's more, Prager has an agenda. I've read others of his works, and he has a very conservative political agenda, with some odd quirks, that he had tried other times to link with Judaism. I see him doing it here again. When he poses, then answers, these particular questions, he pretends to speak for Judaism (Judaism reified). I don't agree with him, and I resent what he is trying to do.
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. "He announced I'd be his successor and died that week." Rabbi Telushkin served as Education Director.
In 1976, Prager appeared on television for the first time. He was interviewed about Brandeis Bardin and asked what he was trying to achieve.
"We're trying to turn out leaders," Prager said.
"Why?"
"Because a society without leaders is a leaderless society."
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.)
Bachelors into their thirties, Dennis (who eventually married at age 32) and Joseph (married at age 40) often compared notes after dates. The recurring theme was the search for the Most Important Trait in a Woman. One night as Prager was about to tell his latest theory, the rabbi stopped him.
"I know exactly what you will say."
"How can you?"
"You're about to announce that the Most Important Trait in a Woman is whatever trait tonight's date didn't have." (Happiness is a Serious Problem)
In 1978, Dennis, who says on national radio that he has a high sex drive, was on a date with a pretty blonde. He sensed that she would go to bed with him. Then he thought, 'Is this what my life is about? Going to bed with pretty blondes?' Dennis answered in the negative. (Related by DP on his radio show 9/13/02)
After reading George Gilder's book, Men and Marriage, one of the five books he says that most influenced him, Dennis decided that he should marry quickly. In the summer of 1980 he met the Brandeis-Bardin Institute (BBI) nurse Janice Adelstein. They married in the beginning of 1981. Two years later, Janice gave birth to their son David.
"The [1980] election of Ronald Reagan affected my happiness," said Prager on his radio show March 2, 2006. "There was a chance to turn this thing around."
In 1982, KABC general manager George Green, a secular Jew, told educator Roberta Weintraub that he needed someone to host the public affairs Sunday night show Religion on the Line. She suggested Prager.
"I had my first tryout on radio at KABC Radio on a Sunday night in August, '82," remembers Dennis, "and I was so nervous, I was dripping [sweat]. And then, at 11 p.m., the program director [Wally Sherwin] slips me a note, "Tell them you'll be on next Sunday night" -- one of the happiest moments of my life, because I ached to get my ideas out. I'm like a cow who has milk to give and I've been dying to give it my whole life. So I was engaged in interfaith dialogue every Sunday night with a priest, minister, rabbi for 10 years, and it is one of the things that changed my life." (CSPAN Booknotes)
"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? The Reason for Antisemitism. They write in their preface: "Finally...our thanks to Janice Prager who, despite her time-consuming work on a book on Jewish moral values for children, was the single greatest source of suggestions, criticisms, and morale boosting."
While running BBI, Prager gained a reputation as a strict disciplinarian who kicked out students he found troublesome. Prager ejected musician Sam Glaser for playing non-Jewish music. Another college student, a philosophy major from Berkeley, was tossed for raising disruptive challenges.
This was an era when prohibitions on dating between staff and students were considerably relaxed compared to today.
Himself not happy with strict oversight, Prager chafed under the BBI board, frequently regarding it with contempt. Many on the board returned his hostility.
In his speeches since working at BBI, Prager mocks his BBI board. He tells one story of wanting to do singles weekends. Prager says the board was shocked. What would we talk about? Prager said that knowing how the board thought, he told them he'd take a week or two to study the matter. Then Prager returned to the board and said they'd done a study and found that the brains of single people were very similar to the brains of married people. Therefore, Prager proposed a similar curricula - study of Judaism. The board found his condescending manner obnoxious.
BBI hosted college students who would often put on skits. Shortly before taking charge, Prager witnessed one skit that was deliberately filled with the sounds of flatulence. Prager decided that once he took charge, all student skits would have to be cleared before performance to make sure they upheld Jewish norms of decency.
"[H]aving been a camp counselor and camp director for ten years," Prager writes on page four of his 1995 book Think A Second Time, "I know that few things come more naturally to many children than meanness, petty cruelty, bullying, and a lack of empathy for less fortunate peers. Visit any bunk of thirteen-year-olds in which one camper is particularly fat, short, clumsy, or emotionally or intellectually disadvantaged, and you are likely to observe cruelty that would shock an adult."
In September of 1983, Prager left the Brandeis Bardin Institute. He writes in his autobiography: "While the membership and I loved each other, the heads of the board of directors and I did not. Indeed, I left BBI largely because the president/chairman of the board [William Chotiner] made life miserable for me. I occasionally reflect on where my life would be today had he and others of the lay leadership treated me differently." (Prager CD)
Joseph Telushkin writes on page 104 of his book Jewish Humor about Prager and Brandeis-Bardin:
Several years ago, a friend of mine, who had directed a major Jewish institution in California, was considering running for the U.S. Congress. He met with a powerful Democratic congressman from Los Angeles [Henry Waxman?], himself a very committed and active Jew, who advised him in all seriousness: "If you've survived the political infighting in Jewish life for ten years, when you make it to Congress, you'll find the atmosphere there much gentler."
Prager and Telushkin portray Prager's experience at Brandeis-Bardin as that of the martyr. But some of those who had to work with Prager felt like they were the martyrs.
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.
Sheldon Teitelbaum writes in the March 14, 1986 edition of the Jewish Journal (the third issue of the paper):
At the time of Bardin's death, [Prager] was 27 years old. According to Dr. Victor Goodhill, a former institute vice-president, "He was almost a small, younger Shlomo."
Prager, now a talk show host for KABC radio, says that Bardin had actually asked him to succeed him as director of Braindeis-Bardin, mainly, he says, "because I articulated the values he himself held -- that the Jewish role in the world is to repair it under God's rule." [Michael] Harris [Bardin's assistant from 1961-71], however, argues that, "Dennis was simply there at a time when Shlomo was most vulnerable. He saw the end coming and he needed to pitch somebody." Prager's association with the institute was only a few years old and his appointment was not to everyone's liking. Indeed, says Goodhill, 'There were people on the board of directors who were violently opposed."
The sources of this opposition are numerous and complex. Goodhill maintains that Prager was too young to successfully move into the slot vacated by a man considerably his senior. 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. Nor was it Prager's personal style, alternately charming and abrasive, inspired and, some say, demagogic. Rather, implies [William] Chotiner [Brandei-Bardin's first president], perhaps Prager's most vociferous critic, the issue was nothing less than a fight for the soul and future of Brandeis-Bardin.
Chotiner's case against Prager was based upon his conviction that the type of Judaism Prager advocated was too rigid. If allowed to impose his values upon Brandeis-Bardin, Prager would ultimately betray Shlomo Bardin's vision of the institute as a place for all Jews to enjoy. In a sense, Prager concurs with this assessment, though he insists that Chotiner was motivated by great personal animosity toward him."
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. "I had the largest BBIs in history," argues Prager, "which raised more money in membership fees than ever before. I was a superb administrator, and under my own administrator, Bob Bleiweiss, the place ran like clockwork."
Even Prager's opponents credit him with some accomplishments, specifically the singles program which he initiated. But he had no staying power, they say. "Under Dennis's directorship," says Chotiner, "Brandeis was a swinging door. We were picking 200 members one year and losing 150 the next." Chotiner is not alone in his contention that Prager lacked intellectual depth. His critics argue that he was basically a "three-speech man," and the membership grew tired of hearing the same speeches time after time. Others grew weary of what they claim were repeated bouts of vindictive, almost paranoid behavior by Prager. But there are also those among Prager's detractors who did not share this view. Says Dr. Goodhill, "Dennis was a brilliant man. He was also very courageous -- there was never anything bashful about him. I think that's what bothered the older people on the board was the strong and rather major dominance at the institute that Dennis wanted and did exercise. We accepted that in Shlomo because it took that kind of personality to get things going. And Dennis did have to be a one-man show!"
Unfortunately for the institute, strife and dissension within the board over Prager's leadership resulted in a brief but traumatic conflict, between 1979 and 1981, over the actual decision-making process at Brandeis-Bardin, which some called "elitist" and "un-democratic."
Prager has long despised the Jewish Journal, and regularly given vent to his feelings on this matter publicly, usually expressed in political terms. For example, "it is the most left-wing Jewish newspaper in the country."
David Margolis writes in the Jewish Journal in December 1992:
The seven years of Prager's tenure in Simi Valley, however, were filled with conflict between himself and the Brandeis board, whom he accuses of treating him "miserably." At Brandeis, Prager says now, not without bitterness, "I learned that many Jews are uncomfortable with paying another Jew to do something Jewish."
Or was the problem, as some board members complain, that he tried to make BBI into an Orthodox institution? Prager acknowledges trying to push individuals toward greater observance, in a marked change from Bardin's non-religious orientation that was sure to threaten and antagonize many. But he castigates the view, which he ascribes to much of the non-Orthodox community, that keeping kosher and not working on Shabbat define someone as Orthodox.
Even his critics acknowledge that Prager succeeded in exciting many young people about Jewish observance and bringing them into the Jewish community. But that enterprise had its down side as well. He developed "followers," explains one BBI insider during those years, but he turned off many people by leaving no room for "intelligent disagreement. His bullying antagonized a lot of people."
Some students back up that view of Prager as a bully. One believes he was tossed from the institute for his vigorous and public disagreements with Prager on intellectual matters.
Rabbi Telushkin writes about Dennis in his 1996 book, Words That Hurt, Words That Heal:
A friend of mine hosts a radio talk show. Although he passionately espouses often controversial political views, he makes it a point never to insult callers who dispute his positions. Rather, he listens carefully to what they say, and always responds courteously. He told me that he reads every letter from his listeners, particularly those written by people who clearly abhor his views.
If my friend sounds unusually open to others' criticism, that is an acquired trait. In his early days as a public speaker, he often fended off his critics with sarcasm, biting wit, and occasional anger.
In late 1983, Prager replaced the retiring Hilly Rose on AM 790 KABC from seven to nine p.m. during the week (except Friday night). Initially the station balked at giving Dennis Friday night off, but he refused to do the show if it would force him to violate the Sabbath.
Prager wrote a regular column for the now defunct Los Angeles Herald Tribune. He wanted to write a weekly column for the Jewish Journal but Editor Gene Lichtenstein thought Prager was not a good writer. Gene liked Dennis in person but found his writing pompous.
Dennis became convinced that he was turned down because of differing politics, even though Gene regularly published somebody far to the right of Dennis -- Orthodox Rabbi Dov Aharoni.
In 1985 Dennis launched his personal journal of thought, the quarterly Ultimate Issues, which never quite achieved 10,000 subscribers. It became the Prager Perspective in 1996 and folded in the year 2000. "I wrote it because I never wanted to be edited..."
In 1985 and 1986, Prager received commendations for his journal from, among others, William F. Buckley, Richard John Neuhaus, Martin Peretz, Rabbi W. Gunther Plaut, Rabbi Norman Lamm, and Rabbi Jakob J. Petuchowski.
Prager began selling cassette tapes and eventually VHS tapes of his lectures through Ultimate Issues. "It was actually the Ayatollah Khomeini who made me aware of the power of tapes. If he led an Islamic fundamentalist revolution through tapes, I figured, why not do the same for Judaism and ethical monotheism?" (Ultimate Issues, Jan - Mar 1991, pg. 11)
In August 1986, after visiting Afghanistan and publishing an essay about it in Ultimate Issues, Janice initiated a divorce.
Many of Prager's critics whisper that the moral leader was secretly an adulterer and philanderer and that these sins caused his divorces and alienation from Orthodoxy.
I've never seen evidence for these accusations nor any accusation that Prager has done something criminal or beyond the pale immoral.
Says Dennis: "The week my marriage broke up [8/86], I was fired from my daily radio job, I had no money to speak of and was living at my friend's [director Jerry Zucker] house because I could not afford an apartment."
Realizing that something was wrong with his life, Dennis entered therapy, which lasted almost a year, with the late psychiatrist Samuel Eisenstein. During his few intense sessions, Dennis at one point doubled up with pain. Another time, when he related a traumatic story from his childhood, Dr. Eisenstein replied that he doubted the story happened the way Prager described it. Dennis wanted to punch him. (Related by Prager at a Sabbath morning sermon he gave at Stephen S. Wise Temple in the Spring of 1998.)
Dr. Eisenstein published this letter in the Oct - Dec, 1990 edition of Ultimate Issues:
I read with great interest the article, "Judaism, Homosexuality and Civilization." I was very impressed by the Jewish aspect of your work and also the way you dealt with the psychological problem. You managed to convey clearly where the issue stands at present. Of course, there will be psychiatrists who will disagree with you, but this usually doesn't seem to bother you.
In the Summer 1987 edition of Ultimate Issues, Prager writes that his four year-old son David, in the six months during which his parents separated, became obsessed with making and shooting toy guns. David asked his dad if there were "bad monsters." Dennis said yes. David proceeded to kill them.
After six months, David said he did not have to kill any more bad monsters and showed no further interest in guns and shooting.
On May 13, 1987, Janice Prager sued Dennis Prager (Case Number: D191749).
President Ronald Reagan appointed Prager a U.S. delegate to the 10/86 Vienna Review Conference on the Helsinki Accords to negotiate human rights with the Soviet Union.
In 1986, after four years hosting Religion on the Line, "something dawned on me," says Prager. "And I said it on the air. 'The moment you realize that there are people in other religions whom you consider to be at least as good as you think you are, at least as intelligent as you think you are and at least as religious as you think you are, you will never be the same.' When I would meet Christians and Muslims and Catholics, Protestants and so on, and people whom I so respected and who so clearly were God- and decency-oriented, I could no longer say, 'There is only one true religion.' It in no way lessened my belief in Judaism, but I now see other religions as vehicles to God for other people." (CSPAN Booknotes)
"Over the course of the next few years, I was given an increasing amount of radio time. First, an hour on Sunday night prior to Religion on the Line, then another hour, and then yet another hour. I ended up broadcasting for five hours - 7:00 PM to Midnight - on Sunday nights. Then I was given three hours on Saturday nights - for a total of eight hours on weekend nights. KABC's Saturday and Sunday night listeners who didn't like me must have been quite annoyed with how much I was on." (CD)
During 1986, Prager began assembling material for his third book - Why Don't All Good People Hate Communism? But instead of doing a book on evil, he ended up writing one on happiness.
Shlomo Schwartz, the rabbi of the UCLA Chabad, called Dennis during 1986 to arrange for him to lecture to students at his Lubavitch synagogue on Gailey Ave.
"I assume you want me to speak on religion," Dennis said.
"Oh no," said Rabbi Schwartz, best known as 'Schwartzie.' "No one will show up if you do. I would like you to speak on a light subject."
"Like what?"
"Like happiness."
"But happiness isn't a light subject," said the newly divorced thinker. "Happiness is a serious problem."
"That's a great title," said Schwartzie. (From Prager's lecture on happiness to the UCLA Chabad)
Prager delivered a lecture on happiness to the UCLA Chabad, and immediately knew he was on to something. He listened to his lecture on tape, and decided to sell it through his newsletter Ultimate Issues. It fast became his best seller.
During 1989, Prager asked his listeners over KABC whether he should write his next book on goodness or happiness. Prager fans voted with their pocketbooks for happiness.
A Jewish radio station in New York broadcast a tape of his lecture, which was heard by an editor at Redbook magazine. She asked Prager to write an essay on happiness which Reader's Digest later abridged.
Book offers and lecture requests poured in. In the jacket of tapes that he sold, Prager predicted a publication date of 1990 for his book. He was off by over seven years. Writing Happiness is a Serious Problem became a serious problem.
During the struggle, Prager was helped by the love of his life.
In September 1986, a month after he separated from Janice, "I was looking for an apartment, and I couldn't find the landlord. I knocked on the first door in the apartment building to find out where the landlord was, and she opened the door. And I didn't let her close it. And she let me in after 20 minutes - a stranger. But that's the trust that was there so readily."
Prager had met the tall, blonde and beautiful actress Francine Stone, born in Kansas in 1947. Within minutes Dennis knew that he wanted to marry her.
"He kept asking me questions," she remembers.
They exchanged phone numbers that each claim they lost. A few days later, Dennis drove by and left a note on Fran's door. They talked on the phone and dated.
Fran was initially disappointed that Dennis worked in the entertainment industry, a business that the actress (mainly TV commercials) had tired of because of its nihilism and dishonesty. Raised Lutheran, Fran had married once before (to a secular Jew). They had a girl Anya (b. 1977) together, then divorced.
Prager has always had joint custody of David with his ex-wife Janice, who wrote the book Why be Different, a guide to Judaism for teenagers. Normally open about his life, Dennis has rarely talked about his divorce, though he often gives his views on the topic of divorce. Like his religion, Prager has always had liberal views on divorce.
Helped by Aish HaTorah Rabbi Nahum Braverman and others, Fran converted to Orthodox Judaism. She and Dennis married 9/4/88 in a Los Angeles synagogue, though they did not go on a honeymoon for several months, as is Prager's belief. Dennis did his radio show the Sunday night of their wedding.
During the Persian Gulf War at the beginning of 1991, Fran Prager flew to Israel to volunteer at an institution for the retarded. She published excerpts of her journal in the Jan - Mar 1991 edition of Ultimate Issues:
...I have never seen so many different kinds of Jews gathered together in one enclosed place. All acting very Jewish. ...Some of the black hats are also trying to change seats because they ahve been seated next to a female. The smokers put in the non-smoking section are trying to make deals with the smokers in the smoking section. The rest of the passengers are either eating, davening or smoking.
Through 1991, the Pragers belonged to the Orthodox synagogue Young Israel of Century City located at Pico Blvd and Rexford St (presided over by Rabbi Elazar Muskin). The Pragers played in the shul's softball league.
A Jewish doctor remembers how Prager helped him. In 1989, the doctor phoned Dennis for advice on shepherding his kids through a divorce. Dennis invited the man to his office and gave him 90 minutes of his time. The doctor has never forgotten the good deed. Dennis told him about the type of woman he'd eventually marry and it turned out that Prager was right.
Largely under the influence of Prager, the doctor became an Orthodox Jew. Around the same time, Prager became less Orthodox.
Bored with ritualized prayer, Prager would wander in to Young Israel Saturday mornings near the end of the service. At 6'4", it was hard for him to be inconspicuous.
In his sermons on politics, Rabbi Muskin would frequently say, "I'm sure Mr. Prager would agree..."
Prager did not typically daven in minyan (Jewish prayer quorum) during the week.
In 1991, Prager spent the Sabbath at the University of Judaism where he was to give a speech. On Saturday morning, he walked up the hill to the "Mountain Top Minyan" at Reform synagogue Stephen S. Wise (presided over by Rabbi Mordecai Finley).
Prager fell in love with the minyan's singing and use of musical instruments (prohibited by Orthodox Jewish law on the Sabbath). He began driving there most every Shabbos morning. For about ten years previously, Prager would not drive on Shabbat.
I want to sing in synagogue. I am overcome with religious feeling when the entire congregation sings. A cantor who makes me sing makes me love going to shul. (Ultimate Issues, Spring 1985, pg. 12)
Prager often gave the sermon at Stephen S. Wise and he became a star attraction of the temple.
Dennis told his old friends at Young Israel that he'd been fooling himself for years by attending traditional prayer services. That pathway to God rarely moved him.
In a 10/31/89 lecture on Maimonides at the University of Judaism, Prager said: "God doesn't need your prayer. If you think that you don't need to pray, I ask you to consider on the rare occasions that you have gone to an organized prayer service in your religion, how have you felt afterwards? Identical to the way you felt before you went? I doubt it.
"I am bored by most of the services. Yet I go every Saturday morning, without exception. I go 99% out of obligation and 1% out of desire. But every single Saturday walking home from synagogue, I am very happy that I went.
"And most of the time, I don't pray, as is notoriously known. I read books on Judaism in my synagogue... And it is in good Jewish tradition to do that. I was raised in an ultra-Orthodox schteibl (a Hasidic little room). No cantor. No sermons. And these bearded elderly gentlemen would be sitting at tables during the prayer services studying Talmud."
Many of Prager's congregants did not accept his explanation for his move to a Reform temple. They speculated that at YICC and other Orthodox synagogues, Prager is surrounded by people of equal Torah learning, while at Reform and Conservative synagogues, Prager is the star. The macher. The maven. The big kahuna. The man who knows the most about Torah.
In April 1990, the US State Department invited Prager to conduct the Passover Seder at the U.S. embassy in Moscow.
"In 1992, George Green asked me if I would like to have a nightly show on KABC. I was, believe it or not, reluctant to say yes to this wonderful opportunity. I loved being home with my wife and children every day except when I went on the road lecturing; and I loved a life of writing, lecturing, and weekend radio. But I agreed, and in August, 1992, exactly ten years after doing my first Religion on the Line, I moderated my final Religion on the Line - alone with no guests. I took calls and delivered my valedictory address, telling my listeners how much Religion on the Line had meant to me (I still miss doing it). Not once in ten years - over 500 shows - did I ever not look forward to doing the show." (Prager CD)
Prager's harping on particular topics alienates many listeners. "I used to listen to his show, but I don't anymore," Abigail Van Buren (Dear Abby) told the 11-17-91 LA Times. "I got very tired of his knocking Stanford and the ACLU. I resent his using the airwaves to get back at people he doesn't like. He's very disparaging."
Prager's weekend show regularly outpointed the nearest competition by two to one. His 10 to 15 share more than doubled the overall average for KABC, LA's most popular AM station through 1992. Yet the station had trouble selling commercials. KABC station manager at the time, George Green, said sponsors worried that their product would seem trivial in the midst of philosophical debate.
"Dennis Prager is one of the few radio personalities whose intellect is clear," actor Richard Dreyfuss told the 11-17-91 LA Times. "It's his manner, his style, that I don't like. He has this pomposity of delivery that, after a while, makes you want to reach through the radio and slap him across the face. He takes these moral positions and does not bother to explain them thoroughly. In his arguments, I want to hear the I's dotted and T's crossed. Because when he does put forth an explanation of something, whether I agree or not, it's good."
Ghost Director Jerry Zucker says "Prager is a very clear thinker. Not that you agree with all his conclusions, but he thinks in a very linear, logical way. Sometimes he'll surprise you. You wouldn't think of Dennis as being in favor of so-and-so, but then you realize the lines of thought are completely consistent with his beliefs."
Zucker told the LA Times that his conceptions of good and evil were deeply influenced by Prager, and they affected the way he modified the script of Ghost to equate evil acts with eventual retribution.
The 11-17-91 LA Times writes:
It's Sunday night, 15 minutes before his 7:06 air time. Dennis Prager walks into the station holding a gag mirror that laughs as it's picked up. Laughing himself, he says he plans to use it on some callers (though he never does). He's in a good mood tonight, not least because his eight-year-old son David, the child of his first marriage, is in tow.
Prager takes his place at the microphone, replacing restaurant critic Elmer Dills. David, who's been watching his father work since he was four, comes in to share a Hostess cupcake he bought in the vending machine outside. He jumps on his father's lap, and for the minute before the show begins, Prager rocks him gently. As the opening notes of Prager's theme music can be heard through the monitor, David jumps off. They will continue to wave at each other and exchange signs of affection all through the show, whether David is in the studio or separated by the glass of the screener's booth.
…Call after call after call, no matter what the subject, Prager's response becomes a thread in a fabric that ultimately reveals his vision of a properly moral universe. With his grayish hair combed boyishly onto his forehead, his face reflecting the intensity with which he listens to every word, he is the portrait of sincerity; the man obviously loves his job.
..."My fondest wish," says Prager, "is the wish of the Jewish prophets: All mankind will be one group to do what God most wants - be decent to each other.
"One of the reasons that I have a different view of the world than a lot of people is that I assume rottenness is normal. I am amazed that societies have been created that are democratic, that have abolished a lot of poverty… Miserable conduct - mass murder, rape, torture… - strikes me as part of the human species. Democracy was created; abolishing slavery was created."
[In late 1991, Dennis launched the Micah Center for Ethical Monotheism.] The purpose of the activist educational center is to have "a place of activity" devoted to his life's mission of spreading ethical monotheism through every available means. One of its first programs will be "Dinners in Black and White" to combat racism on a grassroots level by allowing otherwise unacquainted blacks and whites to eat in each other's homes. Other aims are to develop ethics curricula for parochial and private schools; to defend Western culture against the "lies" propagated by multiculturalists; to battle religious extremism - as evinced by Khomeini-like Islamic fundamentalism; and to counter "secular extremism…"
As of year 2000, the Micah Center (largely funded by a $250,000 donation from James Cayne, president of Bear Stearns according to the Jan - Mar 1991 edition of Ultimate Issues) has accomplished almost nothing beyond a 24-minute training video about ethics (produced by Prager and Zucker), For Goodness Sake, which sold for $700. [In 2001, Prager's website www.dennisprager.com began selling the tape for $29.95.] Later, in partnership with his screenwriter friend Alan Estrin, Dennis made two corporate training videos on ethics: Character: Who Needs It? and Diversity Through Character. With a running time of 20 minutes, they sell for $700 each. (Mentor Media 1-800-359-1935)
Prager writes on his web site www.dennisprager.com: "Allen Estrin and I have written and, along with Richard Markey, have produced three very funny videos on character: For Goodness Sake, Character: What It Is and How to Get It, and Diversity through Character. The first was directed by David Zucker (Naked Gun), who was intimately involved in the production of the other two videos as well. Many famous actors and actresses appear in all three videos.
"We plan to produce a video on happiness to coincide with my 1998 book on the subject.
"The first video is a series of hilarious vignettes about goodness - from why babies aren't naturally good to what we really remember about people after they die.
"The second video defines character and explains how to get it. Ed Begley, Jr. almost steals the show with his rendition of a man who only fantasizes about doing kind things. He is in a straight jacket in a rubber room.
"In addition to my playing me (as I do in all the videos), the third video - on what diversity should really mean - features another talk show host, Larry Elder. Larry is black and I am white and we deal with the touchy subject of diversity in a very different way than it is normally treated."
In his fourth issue of Ultimate Issues in 1992, Prager wrote: "My wife, Fran, and I have each been blessed with a child from a previous marriage. But we have always wanted to have more than two children, and to have children together. By Fran's 44th birthday, and after a number of miscarriages, however, it became evident this was not going to be."
So the Pragers adopted. "In November, 1992, Fran and I were blessed with a son, Aaron Henry Prager. This beautiful boy was born on Friday, enabling me not even to miss a night of radio! The house was now quite a lively place, with a 16-year-old [Anya], a 9-year-old [David], and a newborn [Aaron]." (Prager CD)
In 1992, Prager sent out "my first and only political fund-raising letter. It was on behalf of Bruce Herschensohn, a close friend and someone whom I have admired for over a decade." (Think A Second Time, pg. 17)
In a close race, Bruce lost (possibly because of revelations that Herschensohn went to strip shows and bought porn magazines) to Democrat Barbara Boxer.
Dennis later wrote that he and almost everyone he knew had been to a strip show, including his wife and mother. "Many kind, honorable and honest men sometimes go to strip shows, sometimes use curse words in private, sometimes play poker or go to a casino, and sometimes buy sexually explicit material; and the truly dishonorable men and women are those who pry into the lives of honorable people to ruin their good names." (Think A Second Time, pg. 23)
In his second edition of Ultimate Issues in 1993, Prager said that financial issues could force him to close his publication. This despite charging $25 a year for a subscription to his quarterly journal and $10 per lecture on cassette tape.
(In 1990, I became Ultimate Issues' biggest customer to that date by buying almost everything it had available (about $4,000) and sending it to my friends.)
Prager wrote in the third issue of 1993:
I was overwhelmed by your financial response. Enough orders came in to almost enable UI to erase its debt.
And I was overwhelmed by your words of support.
When I wrote the letter, I didn't know whether I would continue writing UI, for, as I explained, it has been a financial sacrifice.
But your response made me aware of how important UI is to you. It may sound strange, but I didn't know this.
Dennis supported the Oslo Accords. He wrote in the third issue of UI of 1993:
The moment I saw the prime minister of Israel and the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization emerge from the White House on either side of the American president, I began to cry.
...Peace, not territory, has been my most fervent wish for Israel since the Six Day War oin 1967.
In the 10 years that I have been writing Ultimate Issues, I have never commented on Israeli foreign policy. I have believed that Jews living 10,000 miles away from the Middle East, whose sons would not directly feel the consequences of Israeli policies, should not tell Israel what to do.
Now that peace accords have been signed between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, however, I want to explain why I strongly support the policies of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
Prager has often said that he's right of center in American political terms and left of center in Israeli political terms.
In July of 1993, Prager began broadcasting on KABC during the day, from 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM, Monday through Friday. "This was tougher - five days a week is very different from four days a week," he writes on his web site www.dennisprager.com.
"In 1994, I added a daily one-hour morning talk show [rated number one in its time slot] on WABC Radio in New York. To broadcast on the station I grew up listening to, in the city my family lives, was very moving to me. There was a problem, however. I now had to broadcast four hours daily, and much worse, the New York show was on at 10:00 AM New York time, which meant that I had to broadcast at 7:00 AM every day. For a night person, and for someone who wants a lot of free time to write and be with his family, this was becoming problematic.
"Things soon got more problematic. In September 1994, Multimedia (syndicators of the Rush Limbaugh, Jerry Springer and Sally Jesse Raphael TV talk shows) created the Dennis Prager [television] Show. It was broadcast daily throughout the United States (at different times in each city).
"My weekdays therefore went like this: broadcast on WABC to New York at 7:00 AM; broadcast from 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM on KABC in Los Angeles; then go to CBS Studios and tape my television show.
"Though I am generally very healthy, this schedule quickly wore me down, and I repeatedly got sick - not to mention the price my family and I paid by having much less time together.
"So, in January, 1995 I made the very difficult decision to leave WABC Radio. And by the spring, my TV show had been canceled (in my book Think a Second Time I wrote an essay on what I learned from my time on national television, and why my show didn't stay on).
"So, by March, 1995, my media career was back to three hours a day on KABC Radio (now shifted one hour earlier to Noon to 3:00 PM)." (CD)
For much of 1994, Dennis hosted a nationally syndicated TV talk show that was cancelled after one season because of low ratings. The highest rated episode featured lingerie clad models. "I can't think of a funnier thing in TV-land than me having a daily show. They would ask me to have guests who I had never heard of...
"To do a TV talk show on serious themes, like I do on the radio show, is almost impossible. Here is an example where conservatives have to be aware that free enterprise is not always on their side. When ratings are the only determinant, you don't have much time to do much quality on commercial television. They give you, on radio, more time, but on TV you get about three months. You didn't hit the ratings, goodbye. I got six months…
"…Local station owners look at me and they look at "Geraldo"; look at me and they look at "Jenny Jones" or whatever and say, "Hey, this guy is good." I was told at National TV conventions, "Dennis, love your show. Finally, something quality." But Jenny draws the numbers.
"Excellence is not enough. Gold, if it's not found, is worthless. And I now realize that I have assumed my whole life, "I'll just keep writing and talking, and then it'll be good enough that, just on its own, it will find its larger and larger audience.' But if you don't publicize, it takes eons. The book will be buried without a book tour." (CSPAN Booknotes with Brian Lamb, 2/96)
Though he always comported himself in a classy way, say those who've worked with him, Prager's numerous moral demands for his TV show were exasperating and many were glad to see it cancelled.
In case number SC 033536 filed November 7, 1994 (EARL KORCHAK, ET AL VS LIGHT MANAGMENT SERVICES, INC ET AL) Dennis Prager was one of four plaintiffs in this lawsuit that would be dismissed August 2, 1995.
On December 23, 1994, Dennis Prager along with MULTIMEDIA ENTERTAINMENT INC. were defendents in the case (BC 118757) TIM STEPHEN VS MULTIMEDIA ENTERTAINMENT INC ET AL. The plaintiff asked for dismissal of the case with prejudice on September 9, 1996.
During 1994, Prager hosted an hour long radio talk show on WABC in New York. Against his will, he got caught up in the controversy over insensitive racial comments made by Bob Grant. To the dismay of Grant and WABC, Prager refused to support Bob's stance, and Dennis eventually decided that the frequent hassling he took from management and Grant was not worth it. He quit WABC in early 1995. Prager says publically that he quit to spend more time with his family.
No one in Prager's extended family divorced. Growing up Dennis had a rosy vision of family life that was destroyed by his 1986 divorce. He felt like a failure. Even after he remarried, he couldn't shake his unhappy feelings over having divorced.
One day Prager confided in his wife that aside from the pain of only being with his son David half the time, he thought his new family life was wonderful.
"Then why don't you celebrate it," she asked, which is exactly what Prager came to do.
In his July 1995 introduction to his collection of essays Think A Second Time, Prager wrote about his wife: "…Every word in this book reflects her wisdom. She has taught me so much - about courage, patience, authenticity, women and being a father - that I can date a significant part of my intellectual and emotional life as Before Fran and After Fran."
Fran called Prager's show about once a year. Once she called to argue with Dennis about his taking out a muffin from an all-you-can-eat restaurant. Another time she publicly reprimanded him for chasing a dangerous driver. In the fall of 1999, she called to talk about David's desire to be "the head of the house" when he marries.
On January 1, 1996, Fran and her daughter Anya appeared on Prager's KABC show for an hour. A woman phoned in to get their reaction to Prager's liberal stand on pornography. Fran offered an ambivalent response while Anya, in effect, said that Playboy was cool. Fran hated the 1997 movie Boogie Nights (about the porn industry), and an hour through asked Dennis if they could leave. He said no. On his radio show, Prager said he found the movie pointless.
Fran speculates that many of Prager's lower interests are a reaction to his yeshiva upbringing.
Prager frequently lists on the radio the vices that are not attractive to him. They include drinking, gambling, violence, and fame.
The Pragers lived in the Pico-Robertson neighborhood of West LA on Canfield Avenue until moving to Hidden Hills, in the San Fernando Valley, in June of 1997. Fran particularly likes the country.
In the Spring of 1997, I sat near Dennis Prager on a Saturday morning at Stephen S. Wise temple while he took furious notes (it is a violation of Jewish law to write on the Sabbath and Prager rarely breaks this law except when he's pushed to sign an autograph, etc) on the sermon by atheist professor Daniel Matt on the Big Bang. Dr. Matt saw spiritual significance and ultimate meaning in such natural phenomena.
Prager disagreed and devoted the June 1, 1997 edition of his newsletter The Prager Perspective to the question, "Is God in Trees?"
Dennis wrote:
I recently heard a Jewish professor/author lecture on the Kabbalah. Like many other non-traditional Jews, he uses the Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism) to sustain his nature-centered views. "God is in the bark of a tree," he told the audience.
Many non-traditional Jews and Christians, not to mention followers of New Age thinking, maintain as this professor does, that "God is in the trees" and "Trees are divine."
There are three problems with this view: theological, logical, and moral.
According to a 1998 tax assessment, the Prager's Hidden Hills property land has a $516,350 market value. Assessed improvements are valued at $466, 827. The total market value is $983, 177. The Pragers bought the property on January 13, 1997 for $945,000, taking out a loan for $750,000. On December 16, 1997, they sold their Canfield home for $575,000.
"I'm one of the lucky ones who can change his mind," Fran told the LA Times in February 1998. "I'm relentless in getting him to look at emotional issues in terms of what he's feeling, not thinking. I think I've helped him get out of his head more and into his heart."
Prager told the LA Times that he's easy to live with. "I'm even-tempered. My wife doesn't lose me to sports or drink. I'm kind to her, but I do have all the quintessential male attributes that drive women crazy, including not remembering every conversation, and not yearning, quite as much as wives do, to confront all emotional issues.
"At a dinner party, I'd rather talk to women. The men are either talking about politics, the economy or sports, which bores the daylights out of me. I'd rather talk about babies' feeding habits. Women think that's a put-down and I'm blown away by that. Why is what my baby likes less elevated than how the Lakers are doing?"
The most embarrassed that I've heard Prager become on a phone call to his radio show came in 1995, when a woman asked him what his chief vice was. He stammered out something about sex.
Dennis Prager never bothered to register dennisprager.com. In 1997, when he decided he wanted it, he had to bargain with its owner, eventually letting the guy sit in on his radio show in exchange for giving Dennis the domain name.
Prager did not bother to register the other variants of his name and in January of 1998, I bought dennisprager.net. I operated it as an unauthorized website on Dennis Prager. Despite having a disclaimer on every page of the site that it was unauthorized, people kept confusing it with Prager's site, so I gave the domain name to Prager in August of 2001.
In January 1998, more than seven years behind schedule, Dennis published his fourth book Happiness Is A Serious Problem. "My wife Fran has had to endure my preoccupation with happiness for some times," Dennis writes in the introduction to his book. "She has also graciously sat through many of my lectures on the subject, including four consecutive nights in four South American countries (in slower English, no less) and has read every word and made critical suggestions. She and our wonderful children, Anya, David, and Aaron, are already happier people - thanks to my finally finishing this book.
"…My wife is often dissatisfied with the level of communication in our marriage. In her view, we could almost always be more open and honest about our feelings and spend more time together. While she is happy in our marriage, her dissatisfaction with the level of our communication ensures ever greater intimacy and therefore a better marriage."
Shannon Cream reviews Prager's Happiness book on Amazon.com: "One only has to listen to Dennis' talk radio program to have a sense that this is a man for whom happiness is elusive. Often disparing of the direction in which his society has taken, Dennis routinely sounds resigned and frustrated. Inhabiting a world of one-dimensional polemic caricatures, Mr. Prager is incapable of believing that happiness can be achieved without faith in divine retribution for evil doers. It is never made clear in Prager's treatise, exactly how and why the religionist remains faithful and happy knowing that his god will take action against evildoers in the afterlife, though sit mute and unmoving against evil acts commited in in the here and now. Rather than maintaining that happiness is obtained only through application of his prefered philosphy, Prager might benefit himself by sincerely inquiring: "How is it that people that do not share my belief system maintain happiness?" Ultimately Prager is to happiness what the Titanic captain was to navigation."
Prager's KABC radio show attracted 300,000 persons who tuned in at any one time during the course of a three hour show. Its ratings trailed those of Dr. Laura Schlesinger, whose nationally syndicated show from KFI aired at the same time. A careful listener to Dr. Laura will note that many of her ideas and stories come from Dennis.
The Disney years (beginning 8/5/95) at KABC were not a happy time for Prager, nor almost anyone at the station. New program director Maureen Lesourd called him in to reprove him for using the word "thesis. Use view, theory, not thesis." He had similar run-ins. He was ordered to talk about the Eddie Murphy picking up a transvestite hooker story and he refused as it was gossip. A religious Jew is not allowed to gossip.
"Everybody hated it when Disney took over," says a former KABC employee. "[Program director] George Green left after running the show for about 35 years. Maureen Lesourd came in. Nobody liked her. She lasted 18 months. 'Synergy' is the word for Disney. It means that everybody supports everybody. It means that everybody is a tool for everybody. Disney only bought ABC as an outlet for their programming.
"It was a smaller, more friendly company, before Disney bought it. Then it became just another arm of a huge corporation."
"Dennis Prager is angry," writes the 11-24-95 Forward, a Jewish paper out of New York. "The Los Angeles radio talk show host, author and pop theologian is on the air, discussing the effects of the O.J. Simpson verdict. 'The fomenting of black anger is a direct road to self-destruction,' he tells his KABC audience… 'I say this with tears because I ache for a multiracial, multiethnic democracy to succeed: This will be a major turning point in American history. Black moral capital has been spent on a cause that virtually every non-black thinks was evil.
"The performance is vintage Dennis Prager: bristling language, quick ripostes, instant empathy - but underneath, the zeal for promoting morality that has been his longtime crusade and stock in trade.
"A large, silver-haired man many describe as 'charismatic' and 'self-assured,' Mr. Prager, 46, has made a career of taking bold stances on the issues of the day, not only on his 13-year old talk show but on Op-Ed pages across the country and as writer-editor of his own quarterly journal…"
The father of neoconservatism, Irving Kristol, calls Dennis "our Jew on the West Coast."
Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz says of Prager, "To the extent that he portrays conservatism as the Jewish way, he's misleading the public. Jews are entitled to pick and choose from the political spectrum. I hope no young people believe that to be a good Jew you have to believe Prager's politics. That's Pragerism, not Judaism."
From the opposite end of the spectrum, many Orthodox rabbis declare that Prager's presentation of Judaism as ethical monotheism is Pragerism, not Judaism.
"Orthodoxy has tended to ignore the world," says Dennis, "Reform has tended to ignore the soul, and Conservativism has ignored both. It [Conservative Judaism] is now almost as halachically preoccupied as Orthodoxy and as liberal socially as Reform."
Prager says the Conservative University of Judaism's 1995 decision to ordain rabbis is a "terrific idea. I'm a great believer in the diffusion of power. There should be 50 denominations because it is exceedingly rare that power is used morally."
Rabbi Jacob Petuchowski, "a Reform Jew who criticized Reform," and Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits, "an Orthodox Jew who criticized Orthodoxy," influenced Prager's Jewish thinking along with Conservative Rabbi Harold Kushner. Even more influential were such Christians as C.S. Lewis, Richard John Neuhaus, Michael Novak and George Gilder. "They, more than contemporary Jewish writers, have made me aware of how to bring God into the public square."
Elliot Dorff, a Conservative thinker who turned against his friend Prager during a debate over ordaining openly homosexual rabbis, says Dennis "raises important questions and stimulates people to think... But the very advantage of his approach is also its drawback. He portrays issues in black-and-white ways… If your goal is to get people to think, his approach may be the right one. If your goal is to portray Judaism and morality accurately, then it seems to me you need to be more attuned to the grays in life than his work generally is." (Forward 11-24-95)
Regarding his child-raising philosophy, Prager says: "I drive them crazy on character. I only get angry if I see meanness, if I see a lie or something like that. And if they don't get great grades, they don't get great grades.
"I give up a lot of things to be with my children. There is one time in life where your children are aching to spend time with you. If you don't then, then they won't spend time when you ache to spend time with them later. When they say, 'Daddy, watch,' I get up from my comfortable chair and I do watch. I'm on a book tour now. I brought my whole family to the East Coast for the weekend to be with me. It's the best investment… to be with your family." (CSPAN 1996)
Frequent listener George Burns said that if he ever filmed a sequel to "Oh God," Prager would get the title role.
Dennis typically goes to bed by midnight and rises by seven AM. He claims to read six daily papers - "the LA Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, the editorial page -- USA Today, editorial pages of The Orange County Register and Valley Daily News. You will find me reading anywhere. There's no one place -- so long as I have one of my trusted, beloved fountain pens to mark up the article. I write almost everything straight off the computer. I use the fountain pen to mark things up and I also keep a note of every phone call on my radio show. That's my greatest use for the fountain pen. I tape every show.
"One of my dreams in life is to make Haydn more popular. Haydn is the glory -- and I love Mozart; love Beethoven; love Bach. I love him so much that I would like to thank him. I mean, you know, I would like to give him a hug, the amount of joy he has brought to me. And I was just reading in Fanfare magazine, a magazine that classical nuts like me get -- because it's 500 pages of classical record reviews -- and they had a letter from Haydn. They reprinted a letter where he said to someone that all he lives for is, in this difficult, difficult world, to bring people some measure of joy. And I thought, 'My God, that's what he does in this difficult, difficult world. He brings people joy.'
"Americans have forgotten what America is about, and I would like to write a book something like that, The Nine Questions People Ask about America, to make the case for America like we [Joseph and Dennis] made the case for Judaism." (CSPAN Booknotes)
Beginning in April 1995, Dennis devoted about six weeks of his radio show to nothing but the Baby Richard controversy.
Prager stands 6'4" and weighs about 250 pounds. He drives a luxury car and frequently wears sandals to synagogue. He usually does his radio show while wearing a suit and tie, believing that it would be unfair for him to work at KABC during the day dressed casually while everyone else at the station has to conform to the dress code.
In person, Dennis tends to be more low key and goofy than his talk show. He loves to hug. Prager contributes to the music at his Reform synagogue, often playing the accordion or piano after lunch on Saturday.
Dennis cries easily (according to the second hour of his show, Feb. 2, 2007). He says he's teared up at least half a dozen times during lectures.
Prager's best friends in Southern California include Stephen and Ruth Marmer, Allen and Susan Estrin, Izzie and Rita Eichenstein, Robert and Amy Florczak, and former priest Michael Nocita, now married and running a business in Los Angeles.
Dennis's brother Kenny, a lung specialist at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, publishes in the Wall Street Journal and other forums. At times he envies his brother's talk radio job, for he too would like to take his values to the world.
Kenny's son Joshua, who was severely crippled in a 1992 (?) car accident, writes for the Wall Street Journal.
Dennis's best friend Joseph Telushkin has garnered acclaim for his books Jewish Literacy, Biblical Literacy, Jewish Wisdom, Jewish Humor and Words That Wound, Words That Heal.
Both Dennis and Joseph served as mentors to the first Russian Jew ordained as a rabbi - Conservative Leonid Feldman who introduced Joseph to his wife. Leonid received smicha (rabbinic ordination) from the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York where he was a classmate of Tova August, the sister of Joseph's future wife.
In 1997, Joseph's wife Dvorah published a memoir (Master of Dreams) about her twenty years working as a secretary and translator for Yiddish novelist Isaac Bashevis Singer. Dvorah's blonde sister Tova gained rabbinic ordination through JTS and worked for years at Stephen S. Wise temple in Los Angeles.
Though largely observant of Orthodox Jewish Law, the Telushkins regard themselves as non-denominational. Their three children attend a Modern Orthodox day school in New York.
Rabbi Telushkin says that Prager's 1993 essay condoning driving on Shabbat was written to him, and that he remains unconvinced. Joseph, a more traditional man than Dennis, does not drive on Sabbath, even though he serves as the rabbi for the liberal Synagogue of the Performing Arts, which meets the first Friday night of every month. Rabbi Telushkin uses a microphone at the synagogue, which is a violation of Orthodox Jewish Law.
A voracious student of life, Rabbi Telushkin studied and experimented with hypnotism during the 1990s.
During 1996, Joseph almost died from diabetes.
Slender blonde Laurie B. Zimmet, born in June, 1963, served as Prager's personal assistant from 1995 - 2000. The former mountain climber taught for several years at the day school of the Pacific Jewish Center, founded by Michael Medved. She met Dennis and Fran at Brandeis Bardin in 1991, establishing immediate rapport. The Pragers' boy Aaron calls her "Aunt."
"My assistant, Laurie Zimmet," writes Prager in his introduction to Think A Second Time, "is more than my right arm, she is a source of ideas, a proofreader; and a one-person support system."
Almost all of Prager's employees over the past 15 years have been attractive women including a lesbian proofreader. It's ironic that Dennis has had long platonic friendships with many of them while saying from the microphone that men and women can't be friends.
Dennis would respond that there are varying degrees of friendship and the type he considers impossible to maintain on a purely platonic basis demand spending much time together alone.
Nobody has ever come forward with any public allegation that Prager's relationships with his female employees, or with any woman but his wife, have been anything but proper. For a public figure who crusades for morality, Dennis has engendered few rumors about purported immoral behavior.
Prager's one prominent male assistant was Mark Wilcox who developed the Micah Center for Ethical Monotheism for Dennis. Prager and Wilcox left on bad terms in late 1994.
Even people who hate Prager fear him and his lawyers. People who've worked with Prager are not willing to go on the record with their criticisms of him for fear he will sue them. Prager is quick to defend his reputation.
"Religion is supposed to give you moral standards and peace," Prager told the 1/22/98 Washington Times. "If you walk around distraught, your religion has failed."
But why are people more unhappy than ever?
"I think the expectations are simply greater," he says. "People expect just about everything, and they don't stop to do the things that make them happy.
"People would be happier if they asked, before they do anything, `Will this make me happier?' If they did, they'd watch less TV. They'd learn an instrument, spend time with friends, read books, get deeper, do things that last. Happiness comes with doing things that last."
Prager says that writing Happiness Is A Serious Problem was a serious problem, his most difficult professional accomplishment. Dennis says that if he was naturally ecstatic, he could never have written the book because he would not have thought up most of his happiness tips.
Prager's friend Joseph Telushkin helped edit his book. "Joseph scrawled on every page: 'Good point. Bad point. Dumb point. Simple point…' And he was always right."
How does Dennis cope with grave disappointments? "At least I have God. I can still study my Torah. I can still listen to Bach," he says. "I have to feel that I am growing. I argued about this on my talk show. People were saying they'd be dead rather than in Christopher Reeve's position," referring to the popular actor whose fall from a horse made him a quadriplegic.
"There isn't any part of me that'd rather be dead than a quad," Prager says. "There's a lot we have, and I love life." (Washington Times 1/22/98)
To reinvigorate the world's most populous synagogue, Stephen S. Wise, Prager began preaching most Saturday mornings from its pulpit in January 1998. Attendance at the Sabbath morning "Mountaintop Minyan" at the formerly Reform temple in Bel Air has declined since the end of 1993 (with the departure of Mordecai Finley).
Prager enjoys the spirited singing at his temple which is usually led by Cantor Linda Kates, who is married to pianist and composer David Kates.
Prager's renewed commitment to his temple signals greater effort on his part to reinvigorate non-Orthodox Judaism in general, which he says is "the greatest Jewish need."
After living 79 years of their lives in Brooklyn, Prager's parents moved to Englewood, New Jersey (near Dennis' brother Kenny) in 1997. On the day before his 80th birthday (7/17/98), Max spoke via telephone on his son's KABC radio show.
Max began speaking every year on Prager's radio show.
When Prager's radio show went national in 1999, Zimmet sought and achieved the role and title of producer. But when Prager was dropped by his powerful syndicator (Jones Radio Network) in late 2000, and picked up by the Christian organization (Salem Communications Corporation), the new syndicator balked at picking up several of the expenses of their predecessor, including Laurie as producer. Prager's biweekly newsletter, The Prager Perspective, also ceased publication because the new syndicator did not want to pick up the tab.
Zimmet took other work, eventually serving in the National Guard in Iraq.
KABC radio in Los Angeles decided in 2000 that they wanted all local programming. With the choice to drop either national syndication or KABC, Prager moved 11/10/00 to KRLA 870 AM in Glendale in November, a less prestigious Los Angeles radio station (owned by a conservative Christian group who take ads from Jews For Jesus).
KRLA has the weakest signal of any of LA's talk radio stations.
With a longer drive to work, and with a tendency to arrive at the station just a few minutes before going on air, Prager got caught in traffic several times and did not make it to his show on time. Either somebody would fill in for him or Prager would be patched through to his car phone.
I hear Prager earns $700,000 a year from his radio show.
In a case filed May 15, 2000, Bank of America sued Dennis Prager for not paying back a loan of over $30,000. The plaintiff filed to dismiss the suit in September, 2000. I assume there was a settlement.
Around 1999, Dennis met Scott Webley, a former actor on General Hospital (1977-1978) who owned a production company (ShowBiz Studios) and several internet businesses (Showbiz.com, etc).
According to Los Angeles Superior Court case BC 357131 (in an Oct. 5, 2006 filing by Scott Webley's attorneys, responding to this August 6, 2006 filing by Dennis Prager's attorneys), Prager and Webley agreed orally in late 2000 or early 2001 to operate The Prager Perspective Limited Liability Company to sell Prager's writings, radio show, and talks via dennisprager.com, etc, and split the revenues.
17. Beginning, in or about January 2001 through in or about late 2003 or early 2004, Prager and his assistant Alan Briese delivered the master tapes of the Radio Show to Prager LLC's office. During this time, Prager and his assistant Alan Briese represented to Cross-Complainants that these master tapes were lawfully taken from the Radio Station [KRLA] and Cross-Complainants [Scott Webley and TPP] were to transfer these recordings onto cassette tapes and/or CD for sale and distribution.
18. Salem, with Prager's knowledge, consent, and/or direction, knowingly and intentionally, and to further the business of Prager LLC, Salem uploaded electronic feeds of each daily broadcast from the Radio Show directly onto the Website in or about late 2003 or early 2004. ...to on or about January 13, 2006. Prager LLC made the Radio Show available to its customers by way of electronic downloads...
21. ...Prager LLC offered a membership subscription for a variety of services.
22. Cross-Complainants...believe...that Salem discovered in or about the summer of 2005 that Prager LLC was a successful and profitable business venture....
23. At this same time...Cross-Complainants learned Prager had entered into an agreementwith Salem regarding the Radio Show... Salem contended Prager had transferred all production and syndication rights to the Radio Show... Salem wrongfully demanded that Prager LLC, including its members Webley and Prager, turn over the Website and anything related to the Radio Show to Salem...
24. On or about January 13, 2006, Salem discontinued the uploads of electronic recordings of the Radio Show onto the Website.
25. Shortly thereafter, customers contacted Prager LLC and complained that they could not access the downloads of the Radio Show. Because the downloads of the Radio Show ere no longer available, Prager LLC was forced to refund membership subscriptions...
27. On or about June 14, 2006, Salem Radio filed an action in the Ventura County Superior Court entitled Salem Radio Network Incorporated v. The Prager Perspective, LLC and Scott Webley...transferred to Central District of the Los Angeles Superior Court...BC 358558. The Salem Lawsuit alleges in part:
a. Salem Radio and Prager entered into an agreement on or about November 6, 2000 that only Salem Radio would produce and syndicate the Radio Show.
c. Webley and Prager LLC, not Prager, wrongfully copied the Radio Show from 2001 to January 2006 onto the Website. Webley and Prager LLC then marketed, sold, and distributed electronic and tangible expressions of the Radio Show on the Website and collected $300,000 in revenue without compensating Salem Radio.
34. Prager breached the Agreement [with Scott Webley] by entering into the Salem agreement...conspiring with Salem to stop the electronic downloads of the Radio Show onto the Website, and conspiring with Salem to sue Webley...
41. Prager made these representations with knowledge that they were false when made...with an intent to deceive Cross-Complaints to market, sell and distribute such materials.
44. Prager's misrepresentations were willful and malicious...
The dispute was settled in early 2007.
In 2000, Prager rejoiced in Democrats' nomination of Orthodox Jew Joseph Lieberman for vice-president.
Dennis wrote in the September 2000 issue of The Prager Perspective:
If Senator Joseph Lieberman is indeed Orthodox, it is an Orthodoxy that is considerably more elastic than the modern Orthodoxy...that I studied and saw practiced 12 years of yeshiva...
...Had I been cut this much slack growing up in the Orthodox world, I might still call myself Orthodox.
In 2004, Prager cited personal reasons for not running for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate to oppose Democratic incumbent Barbara Boxer.
Prager has always been staunchly opposed to reporting on private lives, including the private lives of public figures. He doesn't want journalists scraping through his life looking for scandal.
Francine Prager filed a petition for divorce (Case Number: BD431230, she was represented by Larry Allen Epstein) on August 11, 2005.
During his "Happiness" hour (December 30, 2005), the second hour of Friday's show, Dennis, crying, read an announcement that he was getting divorced.
He said he did not regard the marriage as a failure. That they had many good years together and had good kids.
Prager worried that his listeners would take his moral teachings less seriously because of his divorce.
After telling his kids about the divorce, Prager said his next priority was to tell his listeners.
There was a stipulation and order on child and spousal support on April 3, 2006.
Dennis was represented by attorney Tina Schwartzba Schuchman.
Dennis says that he has never experienced antisemitism in America.
1/17/07
I shelled out $4:75 to search "Dennis Prager" on the L.A. Superior Court website and found nine cases.
Here's Dennis Prager (Aug. 6, 2006) vs. The Prager Perspective. Here's the TPP cross-complaint for breach of oral contract and misrepresentation (filed Oct. 5, 2006). Dennis Prager answers were filed Nov. 8, 2006.
The dispute has since been settled.
In a case filed May 15, 2000, Bank of America sued Dennis Prager for not paying back a loan of over $30,000. The plaintiff filed to dismiss the suit in September, 2000.
1/5/09
/dennissue.jpg)
Dennis and Sue were married December 31 by Rabbi Michael Gotlieb at his synagogue, Kehillat Ma'arav, in Santa Monica, California.
The former Susan Reed, known to all as Sue, was raised in the Los Angeles area, graduated from Occidental College, obtained her law degree from Loyola Law School and was admitted to the California Bar in November 1994. After a half-year practicing business transaction law, Sue left her career to be a fulltime mother to her two boys, one of whom is autistic, and shortly thereafter also to raise her two nieces after the death of their mother, Sue’s 35 year-old sister, Cyndi, from cancer.
Sue met Dennis at a speech he gave for the Jewish organization Chabad in San Diego, where she lived until 2008 when she moved to Los Angeles.
Here is Dennis's statement:
As many listeners and my friends and family know, my divorce after 19 years with Fran was a very painful period of my life. Happily, Fran and I remain friends and share the raising of our son, Aaron.
Many people advised me against marrying again. After all, they argued, I had no plans to have more children. And we live in a society that hardly demands marriage, let alone the remarriage of middle aged individuals. More than a few men additionally argued that I would come to value my “freedom.”
To be honest, I understood these arguments, but I believe that marriage is the greatest of all social institutions; I happen to agree with God who said in Genesis, “It is not good for man to be alone.”
Nevertheless, with all my belief in marriage, I would not likely be getting married at this time were it not for Sue, whose goodness, love , intelligence, and emotional stability have been a blessing to me and to all those who know her.
Through all that I have experienced, I believe I can fairly say that I have learned a great deal about men, women, and marriage. It is one reason I began the “Male-Female Hour” – to help others in relating to the other sex and in their marriages.
Over time, I hope many of you will get a chance to meet Sue.
I thank all of you who have shown me such warm and loving support over these past few years. You have no idea how much that has meant to me.