Radio talk show 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
Dennis Prager's father Max Prager (born July 18, 1918) published his autobiography at MaxPrager.com. It contains many pictures of Dennis. Here is a January 1958 photo of Dennis at his older brother Ken's bar mitzvah. Dennis was nine.
Based on all the genealogical sources that I searched, the family name “Prager” was originally established for those who inhabited the city of Prague, the capital of Czechoslovakia. Because of the usual anti-Semitism, the Jews fled to England and to Germany. In the eighteenth century, Poland had a king who looked favorably on the immigration of Jews to his land, partially due to the Jews’ expertise in finance. Consequently, the Pragers emigrated from England and Germany to Poland along with their co-religionists.
My father, Beresh, was born in 1878 in Yadow, Poland to Mendel and Chana Prager... My mother Ruchel was born in Ostrawa-Macziwesk in 1878 to Avraham Moshe and Sura Walberg.
Dennis Prager's parents were born and raised in Brooklyn a few blocks from each other.
Dennis has often said publicly that his parents met at a mixed-sex dance at an Orthodox synagogue. His father Max has different recollections. Max writes in chapter eleven that he met his future wife at a party in Boro Park:
...I found the mystery woman staring at me throughout the ride home. I must admit that I thought she was lovely but nothing beyond that feeling. I, later on, learned that she told her mother that night that she met a young man whom she would marry, and she did. This occurred in June 1936 when I was 18 and just finished my freshman year.
...On Simchas Torah 1936, I told my mother that I was going to change the place of attendance of hakofes (seven rounds of marching with Torah scrolls) by going to the Hebrew Educational Society. I had never attended hakofes at the HES so perhaps it was berschert (destined) that I do so now. When I entered the lobby, I met Florence Zivits who told me that she is awaiting Hilda Friedfeld for hakofes. I inquired as to who was Hilda Friedfeld. She replied that she was the girl who declaimed in Boro Park and I immediately remembered her. As we walked outside the building, Hilda’s sister Esther and her friend Esther Zomick approached us and informed us that Hilda was on her way to the HES.
When Hilda arrived, I was stricken with her class, clothing and demeanor. She was even more beautiful than when I last saw her. We went in for hakofes and, after about an hour, I asked her if she would like to take a walk with me. She said yes and we walked for about 30 minutes and finally sat down on a bench in a little park at the beginning of Pitkin Ave. At the time, I was wearing glasses and after staring at her for several minutes, I removed my glasses and said: “You are a very pretty girl.” She began to laugh, which she did quite often. Her laughter intrigued me, as I was accustomed to living in a very serious household.
Max Prager married Hilda Friedfeld on September 14, 1940 (picture). (Here's a picture of Hilda at age 18.)
Dennis Prager said on his radio show Oct. 16, 2009: "My father tells this story often. They were married 69 years. In the beginning, my mother, before my brother or I were born, would just stop talking to him if she got angry. After about a year and a half of marriage, he said, 'The next time you stop talking to me when you get angry, I'm not coming home.' She never did it again. They had a spectacular 68 more years together."
Max Prager writes in chapter sixteen:
I remember leaving for work with her every morning, stopping at a diner for breakfast, sitting next to her on the subway, arriving at our respective stations and not a word passed between us. When I returned home after a day's work, I was served my dinner in complete silence.
...Many times I would attempt to begin a conversation and was always rebuffed. Two or three weeks would elapse before we recommenced conversing.
After suffering for about one year and being completely at a loss of a solution to this very grave problem, I turned to her father for advice. I expected him to recognize the severity of our marital discord and tell me that he would speak to her and have her change her ways. He floored me when he laughed and said: "She is the image of her mother; I've been living with this problem all my life." I was in a less jocular mood and replied that if she did not change, his daughter would be returning to his household very shortly; since we were still childless I would not hesitate for one moment in seeking a divorce. In very emphatic terms I repeated this ultimatum to my wife.
Evidently, Hilda realized that Mac was very much in earnest and would not hesitate to enforce his threat. She immediately ceased her childish behavior and became the loving companion that she was prior to the marriage and has never repeated her silent treatment of me regardless of any disagreement or dispute that followed throughout our marriage.
...Fortunately, the episodes of our strong disagreements were very rare and our sons were spared a home filled with discord. In fact, they told us when they were teenagers that they hoped to emulate their parents' relationship when they married.
On his show Jan. 5, 2010, Dennis said: "Contrary to Freud, I never had the desire to kill either one of my parents."
Hilda (born October 24, 1919, died September 19, 2009) gave birth to Kenneth on January 3, 1943 and to Dennis Mark on August 2, 1948. (Baby pictures)
"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." (C-SPAN Booknotes, Nov. 21, 1995)
"My father is convinced that God willed the Holocaust," said Dennis on his radio show Jan. 15, 2010. "He says it is crazy to believe that God just watched it... It's a debate I've had with my father my whole life... I am of the position that God does allow these things to happen. I postpone God's interventions to the Afterlife. I never try to talk people into my position. I envy those who have my father's position, that whatever happened, God wills. On the other hand, it is logically difficult to hold that position and I am cursed and blessed to be very rational. If I am hit by a drunk driver, it does not make sense that God had me hit by that drunk driver."
According to a family joke, Max joined the Navy during World Way II to get away from the crying of Kenneth.
Sex
Dennis Prager related the following during a debate with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach on Jan. 13, 2010: "My father was in the Navy during WWII, three years in the Pacific, claims he was never with any other woman. He's no saint. He just didn't. He said, the guys loved their wives, but years away. These were prostitutes. This is male nature."
I've heard a lot of people complain that Dennis talks about sex too much on the radio.
Judging by Max's autobiography, Dennis inherits this frankness.
There were four shomer shabbos (Sabbath observer) families, including us. One was Pinchas who sported a beard and achieved notoriety by allegedly groping Mrs. Bodner who was well endowed. The latter related this incident to my mother within earshot of me. Many evenings she would come into our apartment to spend hours with my mother while her husband was working nights at the restaurant. While listening, she had a habit of placing her right hand into her dress and touching her left breast.
Max attended ninth grade at public school:
I was now blessed with one lady instructor, Miss Dalrymple, my English teacher, who came from the South. She, in my eyes, personified everything a Southern gal was supposed to look like. Possessing a beautiful face with a body to match, she aroused Mendel who had now reached puberty and whose hormones were working overtime. I sat in the rear center of her class and had a perfect vantage point in staring at her legs underneath her desk. This was my first sexual infatuation with a woman.
A plain girl named Dotty lived on top of Max's building. He taught her to swim. "She would lie down on her chest across my outstretched arms and my feeling her tiny breasts gave me quite a charge..."
At age 16, Max stopped wearing a yarmulke outdoors. He "went bare headed for the first time in my life. My sexual aggression that followed was a direct result of this incident."
Max got a girlfriend named Esther and when "her parents retired for the night, we would engage in “heavy” petting."
At age 20, Max became the manager at Auerbach’s Hotel in Spring Valley, N.Y. There were lots of opportunities for fooling around. In particular, there was one wife who was about 35 with around four kids.
She always eyed me up and enjoyed speaking to me. On one particular weekend, her husband did not show up. While dancing with me at our Saturday night dance, she asked me to please come to her room to fix the window, which, supposedly, was not functioning properly. Whether I was still a yeshiva bocher (boy) and unsophisticated or scared to lose my virginity, I said: “I’ll be glad to send up the maintenance man;” her reply was immediate: “Don’t bother.” She never had a broken window again.
This was not the only temptation that came Max's way. He writes: "Another experience that I had was with another woman who was very attractive with a body to match. I would say she was in her early thirties and married to a dentist who came out weekends. During the week she and I would sit at night after dinner in a swing for two and indulge in light petting."
Things got interesting when this woman's pretty younger sister came up and repeatedly tried to seduce Max.
When there were a lot of guests, the workers had to sleep on couches in the lobby. Max writes: "I remember vividly moans and groans emanating from the many liaisons between the waiters and guests."
Despite these many opportunities to wander from his girlfriend Hilda, Max indicates that he retained his virginity until his wedding.
Dennis Prager & Orthodoxy
"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." (C-SPAN)
On his radio show July 13, 2001, Dennis said: "I was raised Orthodox but after my Bar Mitzvah on I was never Orthodox [to his parents chagrin]. 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 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.
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.
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. They refuse to cooperate with non-Orthodox forms of Judaism and they often 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.
Dennis Prager's Infancy
Max Prager wanted to have more kids but Hilda did not, possibly because of the traumae associated with Dennis's first two months. (Max Prager's online autobiography, chapter 23)
Max Prager writes about Dennis in chapter 23:
Ten days after his birth, the practical nurse whom we engaged for 2 weeks, Mrs. Lehmann, a refugee from Germany, noticed his penis changing color to blue which, of course, signified a loss of blood flowing to his tiny organ. It seems that the mohel tied the bandage much too tight. We immediately called our pediatrician and fortunately he corrected a very negligent act that occurred at the circumcision.
A much worse and more life-threatening event occurred two days later. Fortunately, Hilda went into the child’s room to check on him and, lo and behold, Dennis’s lips were blue and he was gasping for breath. It seems our nurse was negligent in burping him after he was fed and the milk was closing his small and narrow trachea. Since we had no time to call our regular pediatrician, we called the nearest doctor to our home, Dr. Wollowick, whom we knew from the synagogue and whose office and home was on the next block.
When we informed him of the problem over the phone, he came immediately recognizing the severity of the situation and possible consequences. I remember him driving to our home, parking his car in the middle of the street and running up the stairs to examine our sick child. His next remark completely put us in shock. He stated that only the Police or Fire Dept. Emergency Squad with oxygen could save our son. He called them and in a very short time, the Fire Dept. arrived and placed an adult oxygen mask on our child’s face, not having a mask for an infant. God was good to us at that moment, as He has been to us throughout our lives, saving our new-born son’s life. Dennis immediately began to cry and his lips returned to a normal pinkish color. Kenny, standing outside with his friends kept repeating “That’s my brother.”
The nurse claimed that Dennis was allergic to cow's milk and had the Pragers put him on goat's milk. He began losing weight. After about a month, he was returned to cow's milk and thrived, eventually reaching 6'4" and 240 pounds. (Max Prager's online autobiography, chapter 23)
The Prager home when Dennis was born was located at 2705 Kings Highway in Brooklyn. In 1954, the Pragers moved to 1725 East 27th St. between Quentin Rd. and Avenue R. Dennis and Kenny had their own rooms. Max and Hilda eventually moved to New Jersey in 1997.
In the summer of 1953, when Dennis was five and Kenneth ten, their parents enrolled them at the sleepaway Maple Lake summer camp.
Max Prager writes in chapter 26: "What enters my mind now is my father-in-laws reaction to our sending Dennis who was not yet five to a sleep-away camp. On one of our visits we drove up to the camp with Hilda’s parents and when we were ready to leave, Dennis started to cry as he wished to leave with us. Papa Friedfeld then berated us in no uncertain terms telling us how cruel we were to ship off such a young child away from home. We, naturally, were not swayed and poor Dennis remained in exile."
Max called Dennis "a poor traveler." (Max Prager, chapter 26)
When Dennis (his Hebrew name is Shmuel) was six (according to Dennis) or seven (according to Max) years old, Hilda, who hated housework, left the home to work at Garden Nursing Home. (Max Prager, chapter 27)
Dennis 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, who worked as a CPA, writes in chapter 27:
Since Dennis was now 7 years of age, his mother felt it was time to go to work. She hired a wonderful Negro woman named Ethel who had 3 sons; Dennis adored her and the feeling was mutual. In fact, until his teenage years, she was his confidante through his troublesome period at school...
Max writes in chapter 29: "She really was the surrogate mother to Dennis for many years. Since he was a problem child in school and a doll at home, he conveyed his most private feelings to her."
On his radio show March 15, 2010, Dennis Prager said, "You do a kid a favor [by threatening to hit him if he does not stop crying]. My mother used to say that. It was one of her great lines. Well, I don't know if it was great, but it was one of her fairly frequent lines -- 'I'll give you something to cry about'. And I stopped crying. And I learned at a very early age, I can control my emotions. I can control my behavior, which is about the single best lesson you can give a human being in terms of happiness and a good life, that they can control themselves."
Dennis and Kenneth suffered from bronchitis into their teens. (Max Prager, chapter 24)
Dennis Prager's Childhood
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 released in 1998)
Max Prager writes in chapter 26:
I remember Dennis at the age of three sitting next to Gal, Al’s German shepherd twirling the dog’s tail constantly with his mouth wide open. He still hadn’t uttered one word and although Hilda and I weren’t concerned, my father-in-law suggested that we see a “professor” to examine Dennis.
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 in first grade at age six at Yeshiva Rambam. "I disliked school from then until I left graduate school 18 years later," Prager writes in his autobiography on CD (available on Dennisprager.com since 1998).
Max Prager writes in chapter 27:
In this same year, 1954, Dennis started his academic career, starting in the first grade at Yeshiva Rambam. Also, although we were satisfied with our sons’ summer camp the previous year at Maple Lake, we decided to give Shelly Apfelbaum a break by enrolling both our boys at his Camp Winsoki near Renssellaerville in the Catskills.
...Kenny went there through the usual program; camper, waiter and counselor finishing his camping career as life guard; Dennis was a camper. When he arrived at the age of being a counselor, he opted to go to Camp Massad in the Poconos in Pa.
At age seven, Dennis flew on his own from New York to Miami and back to spend eight weeks with his Aunt and Uncle Corrine and Al Moskowitz. "From my earliest years, I craved freedom and independence." (CD)
"My parents did not have to sign any notes. Nobody walked me anywhere... They assumed that if your parents allowed you to fly you knew how to get from the damned gate to the luggage. You followed the sign that said luggage. It was assumed a seven-year old could do it. Today they don't assume a 14-year old could do it." (Radio show, Nov. 11, 2009)
Max Prager writes in chapter 27:
On Xmas day, Kenny and Dennis would go with us to the Home to speak to the patients and bring the Holiday spirit to their forlorn lives. The boys would take movies and still photographs and then show them the next year. I can still hear them exclaim when viewing the movies, “Paul is no longer with us; what a pity;” ”Look how nice Mary looked last year, too bad she died.”
Dennis writes: "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)
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)
On his radio show Oct. 12, 2009, Dennis said: "I didn't care that in school they didn't ask me, how do you feel? One of the great moments of my life, it helped shape who I am, was in fourth grade. The rabbi announced it was time for the afternoon prayer. I walked over to the rabbi and said, 'Rabbi, I'm not in the mood for mincha.' The rabbi thought for a few moments, looked up and said, 'Dennis Prager is not in the mood for mincha? So what?' It was one of the great moments of my life that my mood did not matter."
On his radio show Oct. 27, 2009, Dennis said he never spanked his kids. He now thinks that was a mistake. "I was corporally punished [by my parents] but it was only done once and it was done wrong. And that's part of the reason I came out against it. I was yelled at and I couldn't stand that either. I was a good kid. ...I was hit by teachers. Every time a teacher hit me, they were right. I knew they were right. It's a lot easier to be corporally punished by a teacher than by a parent. You don't expect your teacher to love you."
On his radio show Sept. 17, 2009, Dennis said: "When I was a camper, about ten years old, there was a boy (Robert) in my bunk who had a problem urinating while sleeping. And instead of gaining any sympathy, four kids one night, I was the bystander, they went over and put sheets over their heads like ghosts to wake him to induce him to urinate. And then thinking it was a great victory... I've been atoning for that my whole life. Part of the reason I fight evil is for what I did not do that one night."
At age eleven, Dennis spent the sixth grade at Manhattan's 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.
Max Prager writes in chapter 30:
Every morning, including Sundays, I would drive him to the subway station on Kings Highway and McDonald Ave. Lo and behold, after a few weeks at his new school, phone calls would be made to my office by Rabbi Schwartz advising me of his behavior. I really was in a dilemma as to what action to take. When Dennis informed me several months later that students had been beaten by young hoodlums in that area, I decided to reenroll him in Rambam at the end of the year.
Dennis: "There is one thing I do frequently think about from elementary school and that was in sixth grade taking the subway from Brooklyn to Manhattan. I went to school in Manhattan that year. That was a statement that I made to myself -- I am an independent human being. I can travel for an hour each way in the morning and the evening, go on trains, go on buses, on my own. I thought I could conquer the world."
"Sixth grade is all I remember from elementary school. I don't remember seventh and eighth. I went back to a school near the house so there was nothing to be proud of." (Prager's radio show, Nov. 11, 2009)
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," writes Dennis. (Think A Second Time, pg. 24)
Dennis 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, Dennis would stay seated to show his disapproval.
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.
Dennis says he was derided by his parents for lack of effort. "My father used to say: 'If Dennis can sit, why stand? If stand, why walk? If walk, why run?'" (Radio show, Feb. 4, 2010)
Bar Mitzvah
Ethnic pride has never been a big value for Dennis. At his Bar Mitzvah at Camp Winsoki on July 15, 1961, he received the book "Great Jews in Sports." He found the topic hilarious.
(Picture of Dennis's family at his bar mitzvah. Dennis with his parents and brother. Dennis in his late teens.)
Max Prager writes in chapter 31:
Dennis became a Bar Mitzva in August 1961 while he was a camper at Winsocki. Hilda and I, after getting Dennis’s permission, decided to celebrate at camp. Believe it or not, this was the first of four events which were held to commemorate our son’s becoming a “man”.
Unfortunately for Dennis, the portions of the Torah to be read that Shabbat – Matoth and Masse – were the longest in words of the entire Pentateuch and making it obligatory to read both because that year was a leap year in the Hebrew calendar. Despite this difficult task, Dennis’s rendition was excellent in both the pronunciation of the words and the cantillation; his reading of the Haftorah, similarly, was perfect.
Since we were members of two synagogues and Dennis was our last son to be honored in this mitzvah, we felt we could not get enough of celebrating. Consequently, upon his return from camp and after the High Holy Days in October, Dennis again obliged us by consenting to read from the Torah and chant the Haftorahs in Kingsway Jewish Center and Cong. Oheb Zedek. We invited the entire congregations to a large kiddish since all our friends were not invited to the camp festivities.
In November, we held the Bar Mitzva Reception on a Saturday evening at the Fifth Avenue Synagogue in Manhattan inviting our families and close friends.
Dennis 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."
On his radio show Feb. 18, 2010, Dennis said: "The thought that my father would've showed up to every one of my basketball games, I would've been embarrassed. I thought that I was already a man in some ways and mommy and daddy didn't have to watch me."
"They came to one game, which is its own story, my embarrassing one minute at Madison Square Garden before a Knicks game [when Prager got the ball and ran with it towards the wrong basket] in high school. My mother was yelling the whole time, 'Dennis! Dennis!' I hoped that none of my teammates heard this."
A caller to Prager's radio show Jan. 23, 2009, relayed a story she'd heard from a classmate of Prager's that during eighth grade, Dennis brought a ham radio on the school bus and announced to everyone that he would learn Russian by the end of the semester.
"That sounds like me. I was not a normal eighth grader," Prager responded.
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."
On his radio show Oct. 15, 2009, Dennis said: "My earliest years were strained with my mother. After late teens, it just got better and better every year until they were just wonderful. And that's why I miss. Thank God she and I had all those years."
"My mother told me that I would be in reform school forever." (Radio show Nov. 11, 2009)
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." (C-SPAN 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)
"I had an admiration for Batman," said Prager on his radio show June 16, 2006, "because he did not have superpower. I think I liked Green Lantern because nobody read him. I felt sorry for him. And then there was Wonderwoman who visually had a provocative effect on this 13-year old."
Problems At School
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." (Dennis Prager's CD ROM released in 1998)
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)
Max Prager writes in chapter 30:
When Dennis was 9 years of age in 1957, he became extremely bored with his academic career at Yeshiva Rambam and created an atmosphere in his classroom which was not very conducive to learning. He would crack jokes and make his fellow students laugh and his Rebbi or secular teacher exasperated.
...When parent-teacher evenings occurred each semester, we did not look forward to these events as the reports were always depressing. Also, my poor son went into a fearful state a few days before the meeting. When he reached the 7th grade at the age of 12, Hilda and I felt that, perhaps, a change of venue would rectify the situation. Since Dennis would always be greeted by a new teacher with the words “Oh, you are Elimelach’s brother. I am sure that you will equal his accomplishments.” They surely did not take Education 101. The worst thing a teacher can do is to compare his pupil with his sibling.
I certainly do not absolve myself for the gross error in placing Dennis in the same school as Kenny. I should have been wise enough to realize that since Kenny was an exceptional student and athlete, he should have gone to a different yeshiva. To compound my stupidity, I enrolled him in Winsocki where Kenny was the lead actor in the annual plays and the best athlete.
...Hilda and were at wits end and completely lost as to what options we had in raising our son. I have heard Dennis remark many times on his radio program, when speaking of this episode in his life, that a teacher at Rambam advised me as to the course of action that I eventually took. I dislike correcting my son, but his statement is erroneous.
The truth is as follows: since I always have a brief conversation with my spiritual Father before falling asleep, one night full of anguish and pain, I implored him to guide me in the correct parental path I should take with Dennis. Believe it or not, I awoke the following morning with a modus operandi. A day or two later, I sat Dennis down in my home office and the two of us were alone. I remember, as though it happened yesterday, the exact words that poured from my mouth.
I told him that, as his father, I loved him and will always love him. However, respect has to be earned and I could not respect his actions. I then took a risk in informing him that from that moment on, the word “school” would be taboo in our home. I would never ask him if he had homework, what his grades were, and, in fact, did not have to attend school.
From that moment on, he made a 360 degree turn in his academic life. What he needed was a hands-off approach from his parents that automatically eliminated the severe tension that had been building up throughout his school years. His grades improved substantially, he was elected president of his senior class and was editor of the yearbook.
Not being a psychologist, I cannot state definitely why Dennis behaved in the manner that he did. However, my guess is that since he feared not living up to his brother’s achievements, he preferred attributing any low grades that he may receive in the future to his poor behavior rather than being accused of stupidity.
On his radio show Dec. 12, 2003, Dennis said: 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 bad.
On his radio show Nov. 11, 2009, Dennis said: "I was quite unhappy at 13. It was my unhappiest year. Almost overnight, I know why, my parents stopped intervening in my life. I was an abnormal child. I taught myself Russian and how to conduct orchestras... To their credit, not only did they not ask me if I had homework, they didn't ask to see my report card. They allowed me to sign it for them.... They had no choice. I was going to leave the house. They knew it. I was always strong-willed.
"Around fourteen-and-a-half, fifteen, I blossomed. That blossoming is very powerful now in my remembrance and how it was in daily life. College is a blur compared to high school."
"High school [meaning tenth grade] was my turning point."
"High school was transformational for me in my last three years. I am who I was then. Massive details changed in my life since high school but not Dennis."
"I've had a very exciting post-high school life... It got more exciting. There was nothing exciting that happened to me in high school but it was transformational that period of time. I began to know Dennis and be who I am."
Happiness
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 when he was 15, Dennis decided to be happy. "I was on a New York subway train. I remember it vividly. It was a fairly empty car. My arms were outstretched on the two sides of me, leaning on the backs of the row. I remember saying to myself, 'It is very easy to be unhappy. Any jerk can be unhappy'." (Dennis Prager on the radio, Dec. 6, 2009)
"I don't get despondent over the bad stuff," Dennis said on his radio show Jan. 22, 2010. "I am very touched by people's kind words to me but I don't let it go to my head and I don't let the insults go to my heart. It's a great equilibrium to have. I trade in feeling great over the compliments for not feeling hurt over the insults."
"My temperament is even-keeled. And I thank God for it. I think people enjoy being with people who are even-keeled rather than being with people on some sort of emotional rollercoaster."
"As my wife puts it, 'I know how you'll be tomorrow.'"
Kenny graduated from Yeshiva University High School of Brooklyn in June 1960. In his senior year, he was class valedictorian, student body president, and starting center of the school's basketball team.
"I never competed," says Dennis, who 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.
Screenwriter Robert J. Avrech, an Orthodox Jew, 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.
On his radio show Nov. 11, 2009, Dennis said: "I can't believe...how often my high school years come to my mind. I'm amazed. I almost feel silly. That is not yesterday. It's almost as if my life is high school and today. I've gone from high school to right now. I know there are decades intervening but it beats me what happened. Oh yeah, I had kids. I've been married. I've got a radio show. I wrote four books. None of that. High school!"
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. Still, they had a senior prom, something no yeshiva would have today.
"I took the valedictorian to the Senior prom," said Dennis on his radio show Jan. 5, 2010. "And I finished in the bottom 20% of my class, which shows you how far charm can get a guy."
On his radio show Dec. 3, 2009, Dennis Prager tackled sexting (the sending of explicit images via cell phones). "What happens to people who are thrust into a world of pure sex at an early age? My prediction? Vast numbers of females will not enjoy sex in their marriage...based on talking to women on the radio precisely about this. The earlier and the more extensive the sexual behavior of the female, the less she identifies sex with joy and more she identifies it with being used, which she is. Whatever feminism has taught about male and female being the same and sex is as meaninglessly joyful to a female as to a male, the victims of that feminist idiocy have been female. The guys are scratching their heads about how lucky they got that a generation of females was raised to believe that they could enjoy sex without commitment like guys can. I don't think this is good for the guys either. One of the great joys of growing up is to work your way into sex and romance. To win over a female is the biggest single reason men achieve. If you can win over females by doing nothing, which is what is done when you are 15, you will not be ambitious. That will be one of the never-mentioned bad consequences to boys. When I was in high school, I believed I had to become something to get a pretty girl. I had to be a man in some way. I recall very vividly as much as I love music, I wanted to be good at piano to get a girl. Anything that made a girl go wow, I pursued. That's been true since caveman. Look at me, I killed lion better. And he got the women. The klutz who couldn't kill a lion engaged in auto-eroticism."
"This is a generation that has no thrill from the things that thrilled generations passed... If I got a telescope or electric trains, I was tremendously excited. Or a stereo. Or got a chance to go to a restaurant. That was a big deal when I was a kid. Or to go to a baseball game. Big deal. It's not such a big deal anymore."
"I am very aware of how I come across at any given moment... I was realizing as I said it that I sounded like one of these adults, not with it, you're just hung up about sex.
"Anybody who knows, who has read me, who has heard me, who has my four CDs on male sexuality, if there is anybody who is not hung up about that subject is yours truly. What I am hung about is protecting kids' innocence. I think it stymies the growth of kids to sexualize them so early.
"The hyper-sophisticated will say that even five year olds according to Freud play with themselves and explore and have sexual feelings. I'm talking about a consciousness in the mind. When I looked up girls skirts when I walked up the steps in kindergarten, I was not thinking about sex. I was thinking what's under that skirt. It was as innocent as it gets. Obviously it has sexual overtones but I didn't know that and that's what matters. The thought that when I was 14, a girl in my class would send me a naked picture of her, it's a new world, and it's not a better world for it."
The Yeshiva of Flatbush 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 he said was widespread at his school.
On his radio show Aug. 14, 2009, Dennis said: "When I was in high school, most of the kids in my class, virtually, cheated on tests. In a class of 120, 117 cheated. By the way, Joseph Telushkin was one of the others [who did not cheat]. I remember that one of the reasons I didn't cheat on tests was self-image, not morality."
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 lifelong love of languages." Dennis had his "first serious romance. Life was getting better." (Prager's CD)
One summer evening, Dennis got into a bad car accident. He and a lady passenger was hospitalized for a day or two and Max Prager -- the owner of the demolished car with the possibly faulty brakes -- was sued by the girl's father.
Max Prager writes in chapter 27:
When Dennis was a counselor at Massad one summer, we received a phone call around 1 a.m. one night informing us that our son was in a bad auto accident not very far from the camp; the call was from a hospital in Scranton, Pa. You can just imagine our fear of not knowing the condition of our son.
We immediately left in our car with much trepidation, again not knowing what is awaiting us. Arriving at the hospital about 4 a.m., we asked the nurse on duty for the room number where Dennis was lying; she replied that she would escort us to visit him. Instead of being in a room, he was lying on a gurney in the hall. The gurney next to him was occupied by a lovely young lady who was his passenger. His face was covered with bandages as he suffered a broken nose; the girl also suffered facial injuries.
Fortunately, despite his condition, he was able to relate to us in detail all the facts of the accident. The car he was driving was an old car that Hilda had given him when she purchased a new one. Perhaps the brakes were bad and that may have caused the accident. Dennis and his companion were counselors at Massad and on their day off decided to go visit the areas around the camp.
They were returning to the camp in the late afternoon and, at a very sharp turn on a narrow road, the car hit a concrete wall. We were not interested as to whether Dennis or the car was at fault; we simply were concerned with the health of Dennis and the girl. He told us that the car was totaled-completely destroyed-. He also told us that he picked up a young couple who were hitchhiking. Fortunately, they were let off a few minutes prior to the accident. Had they still been in the car, they would have been killed since the rear seats of the car suffered the most damage and the entire roof was shorn off and landed on those seats.
On his radio show Sept. 17, 2009, Dennis remembered his days as a camp counselor: "The first day of camp, the public address system at 7 am would play. These are 12, 13 year old boys. The first day of camp, nothing happened. There was no stirring. They just stayed asleep.
"I then said, 'OK boys', in the sweetest way possible, 'It's time to get up.' What I then got...was not exactly screw-you, but in that framework. 'He's going to get me up? Who's he kidding?'
"I'd say, 'Boys, I want you to be out of your beds in a minute.'
"They'd snicker.
"I'd go to the boy who's bed was next to mine and say, 'Barry, I'll give you five seconds to get out of bed or you will be under it.'
"Nothing happens. I count to five and I very sweetly turn the cot over on top of him so Barry is now on the floor and the bed is on Barry. A real 180 turned on poor Barry.
"I went to the next guy. I said, 'I'll give you five seconds or you will be under your bed.'
"He didn't quite believe me. Five seconds later, he is under his bed.
"Third guy, I give you five seconds, and amazingly, he got out of bed.
"The next day, the same thing. I walk over to Barry and give him five seconds and he gets out of bed.
"By the third day, I lay in bed and said, 'Everybody up.' And everybody got out of bed.
"I was known for having the easiest time getting my kids up than any other counselor from camp."
"I wonder if I would be prosecuted today for flipping a kid over in his bed. The notion that all physical interaction with kids in your charge is one of the many foolish notions that developed in the last generation."
"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)
On his radio show Nov. 11, 2009, Dennis said: "I remember writing in my diary in high school that I wouldn't want to take a girl to a movie on a first date because I wanted to be the subject of her attention, not the movie."
"Being old fashioned has nothing to do with how old I am. I was old fashioned at 22. I thought you honored the date, the occasion and the person, by looking special."
"I don't have many memories before I was 13," Dennis said on his radio show Dec. 14, 2009. "It's largely just a cloud. I think that my happiest single memory is the day at twelve that I got paid for three hours of work shoveling Mr. Klein's driveway. I got $8. It was a fortune of money. I think I got a herniated disc as well. I remember I immediately went and bought the board game "Clue" and two Hardy Boys books. I remember I never owned anything that brought me as much pleasure as what I bought on my own."
"The ability to read how others react to you is about as important a subject as there is in life," Dennis said on his radio show Dec. 11, 2009. "I think I am very aware of this. I think it was something I was aware of at an early age. I was always very sensitive to whether or not I was boring anybody. One of the reasons I was able to become an interesting speaker was that I was very aware even in private conversations in high school, whether or not I was boring the person I was with. I would see their face. I would see whether they had stopped concentrating."
Several of Prager's classmates in high school remember him as a loudmouth who was not particularly good at reading whether people were interested in hearing what he had to say.
On his radio show Jan. 14, 2010, Dennis said: "When I am with boys and I love being with boys, I do, I always have, I have an affinity, even an emotional affinity, little girls are cute but I must admit that if I could spend a weekend with ten-year-old girls or ten-year-old boys, I'd opt for the ten-year-old-boys because I feel like I have more to say to them... When I meet boys, I am extremely aware that I want to come off to them as an adult and not like a boy. We did this many years ago -- do you high-five a kid? And a lot of you who are wonderful parents and wonderful people say it's not a problem. And if the kid raises his hand for a high-five, I gave in on that, but I never initiate a high-five. I shake kids' hands, certainly when I meet them, I shake them, 'How do you do?' If they ever say Mr. Prager, I never say, 'Call me Dennis.' Never! If they call me 'Dennis', I never say 'Call me Mr. Prager'. I allow either way. I don't say to anybody except a peer. I don't insist on Mr. Prager at all, but if people call me 'Mr. Prager', I never correct them say 'Dennis'.
"It is something we have lost in society. Every friend of my parents was Mr. and Mrs. When I finally called them by their first names in my mid-twenties, I can't tell you how awkward it felt... Even 20 years later, I wasn't fully comfortable. Of course I did because it would've seen ridiculously removed from them and I was very close to some of the friends of my parents. And seeing these males was good for me."
"I used to call myself Prager," said Dennis on his radio show Feb. 10, 2010. "Now I call myself Dennis."
Max Prager writes in chapter 32:
In June 1966, Dennis graduated Yeshiva of Flatbush and being the President of the senior class, he presented a gift to the school on behalf of his class at the commencement exercises. In May of 1965 and 1966, he was admitted to “Archon”, the honor society at the Yeshiva. Also, he received good grades in his Regents exams and was able to obtain a Regents Scholarship. Evidently, the advice I received from the Almighty paid off in dividends.
In his senior year, he applied to several colleges, including Columbia and one or two other Ivy League schools. His principal, whom I will not name, refused to forward his applications to any of the prestigious colleges. I was quite aware of the reason for this action since Yeshiva of Flatbush had an exemplary record of having its graduates accepted to these ivory towers. By refusing its students who did not have a high scholastic standing to apply to these colleges, it was able to retain this high record and used this as a vehicle to encourage elementary school graduates with high grades to enroll in Flatbush.
When Dennis informed me of the principal’s action, I saw red. I called the principal for an appointment to lodge my complaint. Incredibly, he refused to see me. I did tell him that if he continued to refuse to send my son’s application to whichever school Dennis wanted, I would be sure to disseminate his refusal to all newspapers in the city and his beloved Yeshiva would suffer the consequences.
I don’t remember whether he hung up on me; but I do recall that he did not reply. A few days later, Dennis told me that all his applications were forwarded. I knew quite well that because of his grades, other than the Regents grades he would not be successful in being accepted to any of the Ivy League colleges. However, no school official has the right to deny a student an opportunity to apply to any college he desires. Since, he was not accepted by these schools, he went to Brooklyn College.
Kenneth Prager Marries
On July 18, 1965, Kenneth Prager met his future wife Jeannie Gronich at Harvard.
Max Prager writes in chapter 32:
It seems that Kenny inherited a Prager syndrome which prevented our males from leading a girl into a false illusion that we are serious in the relationship when we are not ready to make a commitment. Thus, Kenny made it clear to Jeannie that, although he liked her, he was still a medical student and marriage was not yet in the cards.
Consequently, they stopped seeing each other for a few months and Jeannie resumed dating other young men. However, Kenny, being Mac’s son, repeated his father’s dilemma when I was courting his mother. ...Kenny, who was hesitant in committing himself, discovered that he was in love with Jeannie and called her for a date. From that moment on, neither one dated others.
Kenneth and Jeanie married in 1967. Here's a picture of Dennis at the wedding.
Dennis Prager's College Years
After high school, Dennis 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 Dennis 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."
On his radio show Nov. 20, 2009, Dennis said: "The first speech I ever gave publicly was at Brooklyn College. In my sophomore year, they started demonstrating for something. I thought it was totally narcissistic. I went over to the guy who was organizing it and I said I'd like to speak. He said, who the hell are you? I said I'm with the ad hoc committee and I just made up some name. I always knew their lingo. Ad hoc committee, woohoo. So I spoke and I looked at the crowd and I basically said, what are you doing here? Things are pretty darn good. We're unbelievably lucky to have this college at such low tuition, virtually free. What is this whole thing about? I was on the WNBC local news that night. Student speaks out against demonstration. It was truly man bites dog. I know the date. I wonder if they have archives at WNBC in New York. I would pay a handsome sum for that video. How early my career was taking the contrary position of gratitude... All the themes I care about are tied together -- people who are grateful are not rioting over student costs."
Dennis Prager's Junior Year Abroad
In 1968, Prager won a junior-year-abroad scholarship after impressing interviewers with his skills in English, Hebrew, Russian and French.
Max Prager writes in chapter 32:
While Dennis was in his sophomore year at Brooklyn College, Marvin Kratter, a real estate developer who built apartment houses at the site of the old Ebbets Field, former home of the Brooklyn Dodgers, created an annual scholarship for ONE student of the sophomore class at Brooklyn College called the Gideonse Foreign Study Scholarship. Harry D. Gideonse was the chancellor of the New School for Social Research and was the past president of Brooklyn College and Kratter wanted to honor him.
In addition to having good grades, and being held in high esteem of some of the teachers, students had to be interviewed by a panel of professors. Dennis, always having charisma and eloquence, was chosen to receive the $2,000 scholarship which covered sea transportation to and from any college in the world, tuition, and room and board.
Dennis writes: "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. The lousy climate aggravated his asthma. "I remember one day the professor announced, 'The sun is shining. Class dismissed'." (Radio show, Feb. 4, 2010)
Many weekends Dennis 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 observances. I hardly missed keeping kosher; being able to order and eat anything on a menu 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 exhilarating and liberating. (Ultimate Issues, Jul - Sep, 1990, pg. 16)
"It's a very personal autobiographical detail," said Prager on his radio show Dec. 15, 2009, "but it really shook me up and began my odyssey toward who I am today. I was 20 years old when I went for my junior year to England. During the Christmas break, which was about three weeks, like most students in England, I left England for warmer weather. I crossed the English channel, took a train down the western part of Europe, then to the bottom of Spain and then took a boat to Morocco. This was on my own. This was a very adventurous trip. I was in Morocco for Christmas that year. To my amazement, because I monitor my own emotions a great deal. I have a lot of feedback. I'm very fortunate in that way. I realized what's troubling me. I'm missing something. To my amazement, I didn't immediately realize it, but I was missing the Christmas season. It was not Morocco's fault. It's a Muslim country.
"I couldn't believe how I missed it.
"I was two years away from immersion in Jewish education. Of course I never had it, but it permeated my life. My parents, both Orthodox Jews, would watch the Christmas mass from Rome every Christmas eve. I loved it. My father, I and the Pope were all wearing yarmulkes."
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.
"Seeing the world is usually a highly beneficial experience in killing some naiveté," said Prager on his radio show Dec. 1, 2009. "I specialized in my studies in communist countries. I've been to many. That shaped me more than almost anything in my life, seeing life under communism. Reading about it is very important but experiencing it... When I had to meet dissidents in the Soviet Union, they would tell me at which tree in which park to meet them, to then continue walking. They would walk behind me, catch up, and we will only talk while walking, because if we stop to talk, it will be clear that they are talking to a Westerner. And any other kind of conversation could be recorded, so we never met indoors. I lost 14 pounds in four weeks in the Soviet Union. Biggest chunk of change I ever lost. Because of that. I never sat. To see the fear in people's faces. To experience Checkpoint Charlie where the East German police would slide mirrors under your car to see if you were smuggling out a human. These things made indelible impressions on my life.
"When I was in Syria and a woman in Damascus walked toward me completely covered head-to-toe, the only thing I saw were hands, that was a very early experience in the degradation of women that takes place in parts of these worlds."
Dennis Prager Visits The Soviet Union, Launches His Lecturing Career
Prager says that for thirty days in 1969 he lived like a spy in the former Soviet Union, meeting with Jewish dissidents in parks at midnight and climbing over walls to avoid the cops. Until the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, Dennis kept this information secret to protect the ongoing information network.
"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."
Here's an excerpt of an article written by the assistant director of the UN Office of the Bnai Brith International Council (quoted on MaxPrager.com):
But, the star of the West was the representative of Bnai Brith Hillel, Dennis Prager, 21, of Brooklyn. Challenging the Soviets, Prager led a spontaneous walkout of the Peace Commission when the Moscow-Cairo group, couched by members of their regular UN delegations, refused to allow Vietnamese and Chinese participants to speak.
Prager suddenly rose, 6’4” tall, and above the din of the desk-pounding cried out that all who wanted to protest the violation of democratic principles should follow him out of the room. About 30 did so. Although their actions did not necessarily reflect political sympathy with those who were excluded, under Prager’s leadership, they effectively demonstrated their commitment to the democratic way.
The next morning Prager appeared at the Education Commission and delivered a speech on the cultural deprivations suffered by Soviet Jewry. Back in the Peace Commission, he participated in an exchange which earned for him the reputation as the only man to embarrass the Russians.
At noon a day later, Prager called a press conference at which he presented a declaration signed by 40 delegations protesting “the cynical attempts to manipulate the conference by representatives of the Soviet-East European bloc and representatives of the undemocratic left.” During the final plenary debate, Prager withstood the threats and jeers of the Moscow-Cairo mob and demanded a vote on the validity of their one-sided Peace Commission report. When that was denied, the Jewish students worked to insert an amendment in the Soviet inspired final message to the UN General Assembly. Their single success came when the plenum, by a vote of 271-115 agreed to condemn the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and demand the restoration of democracy to that country.
Max Prager writes in chapter 33: "I cannot express in words the tremendous pride that I have for my son to this day. Perhaps his strong desire for justice emanates from his home or perhaps it stems from his unflinching faith in his religion which teaches in the Torah the words txedek txede tirdof (run after justice)."
On his radio show Feb. 5, 2010, Dennis said: "When I came back from the Soviet Union, I remember having dinner with the rabbi of my synagogue. At that time, when I grew up, there was a real distance between clergy and congregant... It was better... Better too remote than too chummy.
"He and his wife invited me to their home. I thought it was one of the great honors of my life. 'Wow. The rabbi has invited me to his home, I am this 21-year old zilch.' And I remember going there and I realized that I was the life of the dinner. He was a subdued type and so was she. And I realized maybe this is what I should do, I should be a live guy. It helps the conversation. It helps the dinner. If someone else becomes the live person, I do retreat. It's not for the attention. It's to have a better dinner."
On his radio show Sept. 4, 2009, Dennis said: "I was so successful so early, meaning in my early twenties. I was inordinately successful. I began public lecturing at 21. Do you know how bizarre that is? That's extremely rare. I was being flown around at least the Eastern part of the United States to give lectures at 23. The first time I was flown anywhere was to Nashville, Tennessee. I just remember thinking, how can life get any better than this? To say a high. I've never taken drugs. I don't know what the high is from drugs, but I believe that my high was higher than drug highs. And it lasted longer.
"As I got older, that early spectacular life... And it was spectacular in every way. I had no responsibility for family. I met women in different locales and had a great social life. It was easy to attract women because if you are in public, it's much easier. Life was beyond belief. Flown to the West Coast five times at age 24, 25, to give lectures.
"You're no longer a wunderkind when you're 40. I began professional life with, 'And he's so young!' That's the way I would always be introduced. And, 'Ladies, he's single!' And obviously over time, they stopped saying, 'He's so young.'"
In his first video on "Men and the Power of the Visual" for Prager University in October 2009, Dennis gives this story from his twenties: "I was approaching a red light. And the guy next to me said, 'Look at that girl in the next car.' I did and I bumped into the car in front of me."
In his twenties, Prager found out that his father's sister (Irene) committed suicide before Dennis was born. (Radio show, Oct. 23, 2009)
After walking one block, they informed me that my sister Irene had taken her life during the night by leaping off the roof of the apartment building in which my family resided; Irene had her birthday that same week reaching the age of 32. Upon hearing this tragic news, I was not able to walk any further and immediately sat down on the stoop of the nearest building in complete shock.
On his radio show Oct. 23, 2009, Dennis said: "After so many decades of public speaking and thousands of speeches, I can't say that I get nervous [before public speaking]... I certainly did in the beginning. In fact, I had a very odd way of getting nervous... I would get very tired. Before the biggest speech I ever gave when I began speaking at 21, I was in my friend's dorm room at university and I fell asleep in the middle of the day. At 21, nobody does unless they have the flu. I didn't realize that my way of getting nervous was my body conserving its energy and I got very tired. This lasted for years... Over time, that didn't take place. At this point, I don't get tired before a speech."
"...When I go on my listener cruise, it's the only week or ten days of my life for the last decades that I don't do a radio show. I realize that a certain weight is off of me. It is so ubiquitous, I don't realize the intensity of it... My system goes into an intensity that I don't feel, for instance, before having dinner with my wife. I get geared up."
Prager graduated Brooklyn College with a double major in Anthropology and History. "I didn't bother to attend my college graduation," said Dennis on his radio show Sept. 4, 2009. "I didn't feel it was worth it."
On his radio show March 15, 2010, Dennis said: "My ability to mangle first names goes back to my twenties when I actually introduced a girl I was dating for eight months incorrectly at a party. I had a lot of explaining to do."
Columbia Graduate School
In the early 1970s, Dennis Prager lived for a time in a Jewish commune off the Columbia campus called Beit Ephraim.
[Michael] Oren—who changed his name from Bornstein when he made aliyah, though he retained it as his middle name, in deference to his father—and [Dore] Gold met for the first time at the Bayit, at a guest lecture by an Israeli author. They soon connected with Sokoloff, Fine, Cohen and others at the Bayit’s weekly Shabbat dinners and educational seminars. Eventually, they both moved in. They were joined by a remarkable cast of future Jewish luminaries who frequented the Bayit in the mid-1970s. Leon Wieseltier, the longtime literary editor of The New Republic lived there there, as did Rabbi Joseph Teluskhin, the Jewish author. J.J. Goldberg, a former editor-in-chief of the Forward, lived at a different Jewish collective, but he spent time at the Bayit.
From 1970-72, Dennis 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 believed 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." (C-SPAN Booknotes)
(Here's a picture of the June 1973 honoring of Dennis and Kenneth Prager by Yeshiva Rambam.)
Dennis Prager Publishes His First Book
"I don't understand morning people," said Prager on his radio show Jan. 6, 2010. "For me, the sun rising is depressing. I love sunset and I don't love sunrise. I've always been a night person. It is why I took a morning show to force myself to get up early. Most of what I have done in life that is constructive I have forced on myself. If I had followed my natural tendencies, which are entirely lazy and fun-oriented, I would've produced almost nothing. So what I do is take more and more obligations upon myself and then I have no choice but to be constructive. If I could, I'd get up at 11 a.m. and go to bed at 3 a.m. In fact, my first book, which I co-authored with my dear friend Joseph Telushkin, we would do that. We would write till 3 a.m. We'd sleep till ten or eleven. Then we'd go out to brunch and we'd start writing again about 3 p.m. It was among the happiest times of my life."
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 not usually addressed by books on Judaism, such as:
* Can one doubt God's existence and still be a good Jew? (The authors say yes.)
* Why do we need organized religion and Jewish Law? Isn't it enough to be a good person? (The authors argue we need organized religion for the same reason we need to organize to accomplish many different tasks. The Jewish task is to make a good world under the rule of God and His Law. 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, the book is not titled Nine Questions People Ask about Judaism but The Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism.
We sent the manuscript to the Jewish Publication Society of America (JPS), hoping they would publish it. I received a call from an editor at JPS who told me that they would not publish the book. I asked her why, and her answer taught me a great deal about Jewish life: “Because it is too advocative,” she said.
I was stunned. The Jewish Publication Society of America refused to publish a Jewish book on the grounds that it was “too advocative” of Judaism?
As it turned out, that rejection was a blessing. Joseph and I published the book on our own and sold so many copies that we lived off the sales of the book at lectures for years. Later Simon and Schuster published the book.
I came to realize that the JPS refusal to publish a book that was advocative of Judaism was symbolic of much of Jewish life. It seemed that almost no one outside of Orthodoxy was advocating Judaism (and even in Orthodoxy at that time, Chabad was largely alone in doing so and not nearly as well-known as it is today).
(I read Nine Questions in 1989 and found it so persuasive that I converted to Judaism in 1993. 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 wondered if they'd sold me a bill of goods. Then I learned to accept that they'd presented an inspiring vision of Judaism.)
Nine Questions received sterling reviews.
Reform Rabbi Paul Kushner wrote in The Jewish Week: "I would suggest that on a single afternoon every rabbi, YMHA director, Jewish college instructor and anyone who has contact with young Jewish adults should set aside three or four hours and read The Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism. They could then spend the next few decades recommending and quoting them this excellent book."
Novelist Herman Wouk, an Orthodox Jew, called it: "The intelligent skeptic's guide to Judaism."
Dennis and Joseph are secondary text guys, in the eyes of Jewish scholars (such as Rabbi David Hartman) who spend most of their Jewish study time with the primary texts of the tradition. Dennis and Joseph write popular books and articles, not scholarship. They don't advance original theses about Judaism and Jewish text. Instead, they assemble the insights of others and present them in a popular way. Judging by their writing and lecturing, Dennis and Joseph seem to spend most of their Jewish study time with texts about the primary texts of the Jewish tradition. Thus, they are not regarded seriously by many, perhaps most, scholars of Jewish text. Their work is regarded by the David Hartmans of the world as light and fluffy and about as serious as cotton candy.
"It's not Judaism," as many rabbis have told me about Dennis Prager's presentation of their religion. "It's Pragerism."
Dennis Prager learned a life lesson when he gave away copies of his book to camp counselors at Brandeis-Bardin.
On his radio show March 15, 2010, Dennis recalled: "I learned this when I was 27 years of age... I had just published my first book. Out of idealism. I was brought out to California to direct an institute. It had a summer camp as one of its many many ventures. I spoke to the counselors of the summer camp and out of sheer idealism and out of my own money, authors don't get any more than a handful of books for free, people don't know that, they always ask authors for books, but the author has to buy it from the publisher, but out of my own money, I brought in a box of my books, hardcover, and I gave each counselor at this camp of which I was the director of the whole institute, a part of which the camp was, a copy of the book. By the tenth person, I realized what a terrible mistake I had made. I knew not one of them was going to read it and that none of them treasured it. Had I charged one dollar for the book, they would've appreciated it."
Life
Of Brian (1979)
The Crowd:
Yes! We're all individuals!
Brian: You're all different!
The Crowd: Yes, we ARE all different!
Man in crowd: I'm not...
The Crowd: Sch!
Dennis: "That's one of the brilliant scenes from that movie. I know it disturbs some religious people, but I believe that we need to have a sense of humor about our religions and that God would laugh along with us." (Jan. 22, 2010)
Dennis Prager Moves To Los Angeles To Run The Brandeis-Bardin Institute
On his radio show July 10, 2009, Dennis recalled: "I was a kid in my twenties. I'd never been to Los Angeles. I remember I came out to give a talk. I remember standing at the American Airlines terminal at JFK [airport in New York] and I saw the flight number and then I saw 'Los Angeles.' I don't think there were five times in my life when I was as excited as I was to get a on a plane to go to Los Angeles. It's one of those times when you can cry."
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.
Max Prager writes: "Dennis also engaged our nephew, Elliot Prager as Social Director."
In 1976, Prager was interviewed on television for the first time. He was asked 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.)
"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 1981, Dennis and his best friend Joseph Telushkin met the Pope. (Picture)
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 was 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 there were few if any prohibitions on dating between Torah teachers and students.
Not happy with 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."
Max Prager writes about Dennis: "Several years ago [1983?], while still being a Democrat, he was asked to enter the Congressional primary against the incumbent. I, not caring for the sleaze of many politicians, tried to talk my son out of running. When he asked me to give him $ 1,000 for the application fee and to prepare a financial statement, I did so reluctantly. After a month or two, he had a change of heart and the fee went down the drain."
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..." (Prager CD)
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)
Janice Adelstein
Bachelors into their thirties, Dennis (who married at age 32) and Joseph (who 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)
Max Prager writes in chapter 35:
In the summer of 1980, Dennis met Janice Adelstein, a nurse at the Brandeis-Bardin Institute. Hilda and I were then visiting BBI and we both liked her immediately when our son informed us that he was interested in her as a prospective spouse. She was tall, pretty charismatic and wise; a perfect candidate to be our daughter-in –law. We met her parents, Malvina and Jack and found them to be ideal machitonim (in-laws). Ten months later, on January 15, 1981, they were wed in the House of the Book at BBI which was situated on a hill with the most amazing scenery. Since Dennis was the Director, he invited all the members of the Institute to the wedding which was held around 1 PM.
The total number of guests including family, friends and members totaled a figure in excess of 500. After the ceremony, a reception was held with plenty of food and dancing. The two families then retired to their respective homes to redress and prepare for another reception at the Sephardic Temple on Wilshire Blvd. To this event, we invited 200 guests and had a wonderful evening with catered food, music and dancing.
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. Then he met Janice.
Though beautiful, Janice did not have a reputation for brilliance. "Don't get sick, remember who's the nurse," was a joke at the time on campus.
I have the sense from listening to Dennis talk on the radio about marriage that his first marriage went bad quickly and that the couple hoped that having a child would revive their fortunes.
It did not. I sense that Dennis and Janice tried for years to make things work and that they did not divorce easily.
Max Prager writes in chapter 36:
On January 31, 1983, we were blessed with another grandchild, David, born to Dennis and Janice. Of course, we were delighted to travel to L.A. to participate in this great simcha (happy occasion) and bris (circumcision). I was honored to be the sandik (the person holding the child in his lap during the circumcision). I was extremely happy to have my brother Murry and Gert present at this enjoyable event in our lives.
Janice co-authored the children's book, Why Be Different: A Look Into Judaism.
In August 1986, after visiting Afghanistan and publishing an essay about it in Ultimate Issues, Janice initiated a divorce.
Many of Prager's Orthodox critics whisper that the moral leader was secretly an adulterer and philanderer and that his sexual sins caused his divorces and his alienation from Orthodoxy.
These accusations are always been presented to me without evidence and I know of no evidence for them.
"Of course I am committed to it [sexual fidelity]," said Prager on his radio show Dec. 9, 2009. "How could I do this show if I weren't?"
On his radio show Dec. 2, 2009, Dennis Prager said: "Conservatives read divorce statistics as an immediate indictment of the morality of a society. I see it more as tragedy than as evil. I don't have this image that people just divorce at the drop of a hat. Maybe they exist. I never met them. Everybody I know who divorced divorced after hell, after years of therapy, of trying and hell, including me."
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." (Prager CD)
After the divorce, it appeared that some sort of arrangement was made between the Pragers and the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC). Janice was immediately hired as a fundraiser and in exchange Dennis agreed to speak for the center. He had no money at the time and this helped him with the alimony and it gave them a speaker who attracts lots of people to attend cosponsored events at places such as the Stephen S. Wise temple.
Janice kept her last name of Prager. She dressed provocatively in her new role, to the delight of the YULA boys next door who'd ogle her. She particularly favored skintight pants that left nothing to the imagination.
Rabbi Meyer May had a guy by the name of Sidney Green who would groom Janice and the bimbo squad who worked with her. They'd dress sexy and go to parties and try to hook in male donors. They had a list to contact. The number one girl at this task was Janice. They would send her to Palm Springs or wherever there was money to be raised. She got a paid membership at a pricey workout place thanks to the SWC.
Janice loved to tell spicy stories about the men she met. Janice said that prior to her marriage she worked as a nurse in a fertility facility where her job was to distribute erotic magazines to the male patients and then collect the semen. It appeared she was doing a very similar service at the SWC.
Janice's relationship with Rabbi Meyer May was close. She could walk into his office any time without announcement or a knock on the door. He might be heavy at work as she stuck her head in but he was always glad to see her. She'd open herself up to him emotionally and physically, stretching her legs out over the sofa or chair. She'd open her mouth wide and say "Meyer, I am so thirsty." You felt like you were watching a porn movie.
At such moments, Rabbi May would say, "I've had enough of work. I want to play." And he'd stay with Janice behind closed doors.
They'd go everywhere together, including trips. At times Janice would appear to be high. Rabbi May got extremely moody and would gain and lose weight dramatically.
Rabbi May would change his staff like socks but Janice always stayed and she kept getting better salary and titles.
Rabbi May never wanted to go home. His frequent flier miles exceeded rabbis Hier and Cooper until Rabbi Marvin Hier told him to cool it.
Rabbi May would watch TV much of the day, favoring the girly crime dramas such as Charlie's Angels. He'd still be in his office at 1 am. At home he did not have a TV. At home he lived like a Hasid. At work, he could do what he liked.
At the time, Janice lived across the street from the SWC.
When she got money, she moved away and married a drug user from Hollywood. The marriage lasted a few months.
Janice kept the last name of Prager.
Despite being married to one of Judaism's most eloquent spokesmen, Janice did not go on from her marriage to lead an observant Jewish life.
On May 13, 1987, Janice Prager sued Dennis Prager (Case Number: D191749).
Following His Divorce, Dennis Prager Enters Therapy
In 1986, 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.
Dennis Prager's Public Career In The 1980s
President Ronald Reagan appointed Dennis Prager a US delegate to the October 1986 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)
Dennis Prager Publishes A Book On Happiness
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.
Dennis Prager Remarries
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 had joint custody of David with his ex-wife Janice. Normally open about his life, Dennis has said very little publicly about his divorces, though he often gives his views on the general 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 September 4, 1988... They did not go on a honeymoon for several months, abiding by Dennis's belief about honeymoons. Dennis did his radio show the Sunday night of their wedding.
In 1989, Dennis married Fran, a divorcee with a daughter Anya. Fran was born in Kansas whose parents were Lutheran. She was divorced from a Jew and, although it was possible that she converted to Judaism at the time of her first marriage, Dennis would not marry her unless she went through a year of study with an Orthodox rabbi. She consented and after a year she and Anya were converted according to Orthodox halacha (law).
The marriage ceremony was performed in the Young Israel of Century City by Rabbi Muskin, an Orthodox rabbi in Los Angeles. It was attended by many members of our family and Fran’s mother, brother and members of her family; her father had died many years ago. What amazed me was the joy and elation exhibited by her family at this very Orthodox 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 have been seated next to a female. The smokers put in the nonsmoking section are trying to make deals with the smokers in the smoking section. The rest of the passengers are either eating, davening or smoking.
Dennis Prager Leaves His Orthodox Shul For A Reform Temple
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 observant.
Bored with ritualized prayer, Prager would wander in to YICC 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 a minyan (Jewish prayer quorum) during the week.
In 1991, Prager spent the Sabbath at the University of Judaism where he gave 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 and other holy days). 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)
In an Oct. 31, 1989 lecture on Maimonides, Prager said:
"God doesn't need your prayer whatsoever. What? God sits up there and says, 'Oh wow, what a wonderful day. Harry Ginzberg has prayed to me and called me great. Now I feel much better because Harry thinks I'm great.'
"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 already. 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."
Prager often gave the sermon at Stephen S. Wise and he became a star attraction.
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.
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.
Dennis Prager In The 1990s
In April 1990, the US State Department invited Prager to conduct the Passover Seder at the US 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…"
For Goodness Sake
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 nothing that I know of beyond three videos. The first was a 24-minute training video about ethics (produced by Dennis Prager and David Zucker), For Goodness Sake, which initially sold for $700. In 2001, Prager's website www.dennisprager.com began selling the tape for $29.95.
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."
For The World
I wonder how many people with resources, aside from James Cayne, have offered Dennis Prager ways to reach a wider audience with his teachings. I wonder how Dennis Prager has responded to these offers.
In 2009, Dennis Prager created Prager University, a website offering five minute videos of good production quality on important issues.
Larry Elder
Dennis Prager met Larry Elder in 1990. Dennis had Larry on as a guest during a week Prager co-hosted an early morning TV talkshow in Cleveland. Larry, an attorney, came on to talk about sexual harassment in the workplace.
From the Dennis Prager radio show, July 30, 2009:
Dennis: "I've never pushed like I pushed to get Larry on radio. He was a lawyer who did a periodic guest appearance on a Cleveland TV show."
"Wasn't my co-host cute?"
Larry: "She was very attractive."
Dennis: "I only remember three things [from that week's shows]. The dogs, the CO-host was cute, and Larry Elder."
"I learned many years ago that I should not make quick first-impressions because I've often found that they were either too negative or too positive. On rare occasions, I've gone with the first impression. I thought this guy was terrific.
"I went back to Los Angeles and I told the [KABC] station manager, George Green, 'I found this great guy, who happens to be black and is awesome and he comes from LA... Nothing happened."
Larry: "I sent you a tape."
Dennis: "I invited him on the show. I said, George, you have to listen. It was one of the great hours of radio. Among the things you talked about was your lack of great adulation for black leadership in America [such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton].
"A black guy called up who liked me but couldn't stand you. The guy said to me, Dennis, where the hell did you find this guy?
"And you immediately answered:"
Larry: "Dennis was driving down the street. He saw me at the corner of Florence and Dinker holding up a sign, 'Will speak negatively about black leaders for food.'"
Dennis: "I laughed so hard and so uncontrollably that we had to go to a break. I've never lost control. That was the one time. I knew I was going to buy George forever until you got a show."
Dennis Prager's Second Marriage
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."
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)
Max Prager writes: "...Aaron was born to a young unwedded couple in the state of Washington. This event gave us our 6th grandchild."
"I wish I had more kids," Dennis said on his radio show Oct. 22, 2009. "It was not in my hands. If it had been in my hands, I would've had more."
Bruce Herschensohn
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 late-breaking 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)
Ultimate Issues In Financial Straits
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 -- I spent about $4,000 -- and sending it to my friends. In 1993, I donated $500 to the Micah Center for Ethical Monotheism.)
Prager wrote in the third issue of Ultimate Issues in 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.
The Oslo Accords
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.
Teaching The Torah Verse-By-Verse
In April 1992, Dennis Prager began teaching the Torah verse-by-verse at what was then the University of Judaism (now known as American Jewish University). On February 2, 2010, he finished.
A check of DennisPrager.com on Jan. 22, 2010, revealed that the price to buy all of the CDs for Prager's commentary on Genesis was $544 (if you download the content, it costs but $442). The price for Exodus on CD was $952. The price for the first half of Leviticus on CD was $320. The price for Numbers on CD was $476. The price for Deuteronomy on CD was $690.
I can only imagine the savings if you call the Prager Store (1.800.225.8584) and get all five books of the Torah. I expect it would be in the neighborhood of $3,000.
I'm unaware of other commentaries on the Torah that cost so much.
Here's a quote from Dennis on the AJU website: "I have been teaching the Torah verse by verse at the American Jewish University since April 1992. Why have I devoted so much time and effort to teaching the Torah? Because I believe that the Torah is the most relevant guide to life available to us. I believe that the most esoteric and even “boring” sections have secrets of wisdom that when unlocked give any of us a happier, deeper, wiser life. The Torah is not merely an ancient holy book. It is life-changing in every one of its chapters. I invite you to take time out from the intensity of daily life and spend four nights with me in one of the most intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually exciting journeys any of us can make. No background or previous study is necessary."
Dennis Prager's Broadcasting
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 canceled 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." (C-SPAN Booknotes with Brian Lamb)
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 to some of those who worked on it with him and they were glad to see it canceled.
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 publicly that he quit to spend more time with his family.
Dennis Prager's Family Life
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 Fran 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 said.
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.
According to a 1998 tax assessment, the Prager's Hidden Hills property land had a $516,350 market value. Assessed improvements are valued at $466, 827. The total market value was $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 (in zip code 90035) 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.
Until 1997, Fran sometimes accompanied Dennis to Stephen S. Wise temple. After 1997, she almost never did.
Judaism, Homosexuality & Civilization
In mid-November 1996, Dennis Prager told the editor of the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles, Gene Lichtenstein, that he wanted to submit an article on Judaism and homosexuality. Gene said he'd publish it. Two weeks went by and nothing appeared. Prager called Gene and asked what happened. Lichtenstein said that he so disagreed with the piece that he would not publish it without publishing a rebuttal in the same issue.
Gene sought a rabbi to write a rebuttal, but none of them would, despite their strong disagreement with Prager's ideas. So Lichtenstein wrote a rebuttal which he published with Prager's essay in the Journal's November 22nd issue.
The Jewish Journal then published a series of letters, almost all attacking Dennis. The most significant was signed by sixteen rabbis, four Conservative and 12 Reform. "Apparently," wrote Dennis afterwards in his journal The Prager Perspective, "Mr. Lichtenstein does not believe that the letters he publishes need engage issues or even approximate respectful dialogue. The letters… were of a level so low, so filled with invective and even hatred toward me that I wonder if Mr. Lichtenstein wonders about the moral level of his ideological allies. I wonder whether he was embarrassed by what he published week after week. Or perhaps, he took the high road in engaging me, while happily publishing all those who took the low road."
I remember the Sabbath morning at Stephen S. Wise temple after these letters were published. There was something completely different about Dennis Prager's demeanor. He was shaken and hurt in a way I had never seen before. It was the rabbis' letter that did it, I suspect. Two of the rabbis who signed it were friends of Dennis -- Neal Weinberg and Elliot Dorff. Dennis was so hurt that two friends would attack him publicly and personally.
Dennis Prager's friends at the Mountaintop Minyan were stirred up on his behalf. I saw a furious Dr. Stephen Marmer go to Prager's defense, pulling outside one of Stephen S. Wise's rabbis (Tova August) to have a long talk. The Stephen S. Wise rabbis had signed a letter to the Jewish Journal calling for respectful dialogue by both sides on the issue of Judaism and homosexuality. Prager's friends said that only side in the fight had frequently demonstrated a lack of respect.
The 16 rabbis signed this letter:
Recently, the Jewish Journal provided coverage to a diatribe by Dennis Prager, who attacked gay and lesbian rabbis. We Los Angeles-area rabbis feel that we can respond more fully and more appropriately within our own constituencies to the specifics of Prager's poorly argued, homophobic, indeed cruel, reading of Jewish values.
We are rabbis, male and female.
We are rabbis, heterosexual, gay, lesbian and bisexual.
We are rabbis, discharging holy tasks that we feel called upon to do.
We are rabbis, serving in different movements.
We are rabbis, serving various constituencies.
We are rabbis, reflecting diverse theologies.
We are rabbis, embodying tradition in distinct ways.
We are rabbis, committed to teaching and perpetuating our glorious heritage.
We rabbis affirm one another in the work that we do.
We rabbis support each other in our personal lives.
We rabbis glory in the diversity of the rabbinate.
We rabbis honor the different talents that we each bring to our ministries.
We rabbis recognize that each bring strengths to our people.
We rabbis acknowledge that each rabbi is a bearer of Torah.
We rabbis celebrate that we include so many who are so qualified and so caring.
May every Jew find the rabbi who best suits his/her needs. May every Jew be grateful that other Jews find rabbis who meet their needs. May every rabbi be granted the insight, wisdom and sensitivity to meet the spectrum of religious, educational, cultural, social, intellectual, emotional and spiritual needs of our people, to the best of our capacities.
Rabbi Leslie Bergson, Claremont Colleges
Rabbi L.B. Sacks-Rosen, Congregation Shaarei Torah
Rabbi Elliot Dorff, University of Judaism
Rabbi Don Goor, Temple Isaiah
Rabbi Moshe Halfon, Temple Ami-Shalom
Rabbi Avi Levine, Temple Beth Israel
Rabbi Jane Litman, Kol Simchah of Orange County
Rabbi Debra Orenstein, Wilstein Institute for Jewish Family Policy
Rabbi Arnold Rachlis, University Syngagogue }
Rabbi Joel Rembaum, Temple Beth Am Rabbi
Steven Carr Reuben, JCC of Pacific Palisades
Rabbi Lisa Edwards, Beth Chayim Chadashim
Rabbi Rafael Goldstein, Los Angeles Jewish AIDS Services
Rabbi Steve Tucker, Temple Ramat Zion
Rabbi Neal Weinberg, University of Judaism
Rabbi Bridgit Wynne, Leo Baeck Temple
Dennis Prager writes in his journal The Prager Perspective:
By the end of January [1997], the Jewish Journal had published my one essay on homosexuality and rabbis, and then published an editor's rebuttal, a statement on the low moral level of my ideas signed by 16 rabbis, seven letters attacking my decency, and one letter agreeing with me.
Had I written that Israel should make Jerusalem a bi-national city; or that Jews should consider adding Buddhism to their Jewish identity; or that Jews should observe the Sabbath on any day of the week that best suits them, I would not have received more opprobrium.
There are a number of reasons for this:
First, Los Angeles has a particularly large concentration of left-wing rabbis.
Second, the Los Angeles Jewish Journal is the most monolithically left of any mainstream big-city Jewish newspaper. That is why the editor would not publish my piece unless accompanied by a rebuttal. While pieces from the Left are published every week without rebuttal, a piece against the Left cannot be published alone.
Third, while most practicing Jews agree with me, most Jews, like most non-Jews, have been rendered publicly silent by the ferocity of leftist invective on the gay issue. No decent person wants to be called "homophobe."
Fourth, few people know either the need for, or the importance of, making the case for preserving the heterosexual ideal. I have been writing on Judaism for 25 years, and have only recently come to understand the heterosexual revolution that the Torah and Judaism wrought.
I had decided not to reply to any of the letters that maligned me (not one dealt with issues I actually raised), but when the 16 rabbis maligned me, I knew that a response was necessary.
Prager's response was headlined on the Journal's cover page as: "Dennis Prager: Firing Salvos at his Rabbinic Critics." He writes:
Sixteen "heterosexual, gay, lesbian and bisexual" rabbis signed a letter to The Jewish Journal, calling my piece on homosexuality and Judaism "cruel," a "homophobic diatribe" and "poorly reasoned."
Concerning the charge of "cruelty," my article did not contain a harsh word, let alone words of cruelty. In fact, I wrote that a homosexual Jew is, of course, as much a Jew as any of us, and that gay-bashing is a moral offense. I wrote that Judaism is rooted in the ideal of heterosexuality, but there is not a shred of cruelty in that. The only cruelty in this whole issue is in the rabbi's letter.
As for "homophobic," shame on these rabbis for emulating the McCarthy right by giving someone they disagree with a horrible label instead of responding to arguments. The rabbis did not quote me once. They wouldn't, because if they did, it would be obvious that they engage only in ad hominem attacks, not intellectual or religious responses.
"Poorly reasoned"? Andrew Sullivan, a prominent gay spokesman and former editor of the New Republic, publicly lauded my arguments as a model of fair debate on the issue. And if my article was so poorly argued, why didn't any one of these rabbis write a response showing the world just how poor my arguments are?
And, now, bisexuality is defined as Jewish too. I thought the argument on behalf of Judaism holding homosexuality as just as Jewish a practice as heterosexuality as just as Jewish a practice as heterosexuality rested on homosexuals not having a choice. But don't bisexuals, by definition, have a choice of which sex to love?
What depressed me about the letter was not the name-calling instead of dialogue. I experienced that when I debated the Jewish rightist, the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, and I experience it from the Jewish left. I am used to being attacked, since, unlike these rabbis who work and live among those who agree with them, I am used to debating my positions and being attacked every day, three hours a day.
What is most depressing is to see three respected Conservative signatories to the letter. With my friend Elliot Dorff's signature on this letter, and that of the Conservative movement's teacher of prospective converts, another friend, Rabbi Neal Weinberg, and the signature of one of the seminary's former heads, one wonders what has become of Conservative Judaism. Does it only differ from the left wing of Reform in its commitment to religious rituals? Does Conservative Judaism actually now hold that drinking milk after eating chicken is religiously wrong, but a person having sex with both sexes is religiously acceptable? Does Rabbi Weinberg teach prospective converts to Judaism that Judaism doesn't care whether a Jew has sex with the same sex or even with both sexes? Would Rabbi Rembaum perform a same-sex marriage? If he would perform such a marriage, has he told his congregants? And if he wouldn't, why isn't he labeled a "homophobe"?
Most Jews, myself included, were appalled at the hate-filled descriptions of the late Yitzhak Rabin that emanated from parts of the Jewish right. In what way do the hate-filled descriptions of me by these rabbis and all the other nine letters you published against me differ?
I am disappointed by something else - the absence of public support from the many rabbis who I know agree with me. Hopefully, The Journal will now receive a letter signed by twice as many rabbis in support of what I wrote. But if the Los Angeles Jewish community and its rabbis do not find maintaining the Jewish male-female ideal worthy of their attention, I do not want to be a voice crying in the wilderness, while those arguing for acceptance of bisexual behavior among rabbis are considered mainstream.
Five of the 16 rabbis (Orenstein, Dorff, Sacks-Rosen, Weinberg, Wynne) issued this response:
We signed the substantive portion of the original rabbinic response…[that] affirmed our desire for a pluralistic and inclusive rabbinate, made up of…various sexual orientations…
We neither saw nor approved, and from what we have gathered, at least a few other colleagues neither saw nor approved, a preamble that characterized Dennis Prager's position in unfortunate and unjustified terms. While we disagree profoundly with Dennis Prager's argument, we regret that out names were attached to those personal remarks and, more important, that they were printed at all.
We hope that people on all sides of this issue will avoid provocative rhetoric and engage in this important communal discussion with respect and civility.
One rabbi, however, did apologize to Dennis Prager. Rabbi Neal Weinberg called and faxed Prager saying that he wanted to repent. Prager forgave him.
Is God In Trees?
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 nontraditional 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.
Dennis Prager Online
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.
DennisPrager.com opened in Spring of 1998. Aside from offering Dennis Prager's materials for purchase, it didn't contain much content.
Only in August of 2009 did Dennis Prager say for the first time that he was happy with his website.
For a man who publicly yearns to spread his ideas as widely as possible, Dennis Prager did nothing special with the internet until 2009 when he created Prager University.
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."
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 nondenominational. 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.
Dennis Prager's Employees
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. Says one source who worked with both of them, "Mark hates Dennis."
While some former employees and work associates of Dennis Prager are happy to trash Prager to me privately, they are not willing to go on the record with their criticisms for fear he will sue them. Prager is quick to threaten lawsuits to defend his reputation.
People who've worked for and with Dennis Prager seem evenly split between those who hate him and those who love him.
I had a job interview with Mark Wilcox in April of 1994. I did not get the job.
Mark and I talked for about two hours that afternoon. Mark said that Dennis was not an easy man to work for. Mark recounted offering some unsolicited feedback on one of Prager's essays in progress and that Dennis had crumpled the paper up in front of him and thrown it in the trash.
Mark said that he was responsible for getting Dennis to change his party affiliation to Republican in 1993.
As a moral leader, Dennis Prager offers a big fat juicy target for those who want to allege he does not live up to his ideals. As someone who has followed Dennis Prager closely since the fall of 1988 and has always been as open to hearing bad things about him as good, I've never seen any evidence of serious wrongdoing on Prager's part. According to the best I know, Dennis Prager lives up to his public ideals in his private life about as much as is humanly possible.
Happiness is a Serious Problem
"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.
By that time, such print publications seemed quaint.
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 November 10, 2000 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 via his cell phone.
In 2003, Alan Estrin became Prager's radio show producer. He provided the show with a sharper focus. He insisted Dennis get enough sleep. He says he can tell a drop in the quality of the show when Dennis does not sleep enough.
"I have basically married Alan," Dennis said on his radio show Nov. 11, 2009.
Prager earns near a million dollars a year from his radio show.
Dennis Prager In The Courts
On January 17, 2007, I shelled out $4:75 to search "Dennis Prager" on the LA 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. I assume there was a settlement.
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.
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.
Dennis Prager & Orthodoxy II
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.
Dennis Prager Divorces For The Second Time
In 2004, Dennis cited personal reasons for not running for the Republican nomination for the US Senate to oppose Democratic incumbent Barbara Boxer.
Dennis has always opposed gossip. He doesn't want journalists scraping through his life looking for scandal. He's said on the radio that he doesn't have anything shocking in his past that he wants to hide.
Max Prager writes in September 2004:
Although our other son Dennis lives 3000 miles from us, he phones us several times during the week inquiring as to our health and what’s going on in our lives. His wife, Fran, never neglects to e-mail us with info regarding their lives and what is going on with Anya and Aaron, their children. David, Dennis’s son by a previous marriage has given us joy since he was born.
...Dennis as well has given us a great deal of joy and pride in his many accomplishments. Listening to him on the radio for three hours 5 days a week when he broadcasts nationally over close to 70 cities, reading his weekly articles on “World Net Daily” and “Town Hall”, listening to his many tapes of his lectures given throughout the world, viewing him on the most popular TV news shows and, last but not least, emcee ing the 7 hour annual Chabad telethon gives his parents nachas (joy and pride).
Fran Prager filed a petition for divorce (Case Number: BD431230, attorney was Larry Allen Epstein) on August 11, 2005.
After the divorce, Fran Prager remains active in Jewish life (in particular with Chabad).
During the second hour of his show Dec. 30, 2005, Dennis, crying, read an announcement that he was getting divorced.
He said he did not regard the marriage as a failure. They had many good years together and they raised good kids.
Dennis said he was worried that his listeners would take his moral teachings less seriously because of his divorce.
After telling his kids about the divorce, Dennis 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.
"That's a very tough phrase, by the way, 'Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved'," said Dennis Prager on his radio show July 10, 2009. "It's a tough one. I have believed that. I think it's true, but it's a toughie."
On his show Jan. 5, 2010, Dennis said: "Let me give you a realization I came to about life that I did not know 20 years ago. The role of luck in good marriage. I am now convinced that the vast majority of long-term good marriages are good because they're lucky that they found the right person for them. Period. End of issue.
"Had you asked me this 30 years ago, I would've said, shared values and a lot of noble-sounding things. People who worked hard on their marriage.
"I look at my parents who had 69 years of marriage. And they would be the first to tell you that they had a great marriage...because they were unbelievably lucky. They met the right person for themselves. People in happy marriages should be very humble about judging people who are less happy or are in divorce situations."
Dennis has suffered from sciatica since he was 20. He was due for back surgery in 2007 (?), but found a controversial drug that enabled him to skip the operation.
Dennis says that he has never experienced antisemitism in America.
Dennis Prager Marries For Third Time
From PragerRadio.com, on Jan. 5, 2009:
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 full-time 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 Prager'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.
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On his radio show Jan. 6, 2010, Dennis said: "I am prepared to say, and I don't think it compromises my male persona, that I don't like going to bed alone. I think one of the great perks of marriage is precisely those moments. And I am not talking sex."
Dennis Prager For President
By the mid 1970s, Dennis Prager was getting asked when he was going to run for political office. In 1983, he filed papers to run for the Democratic nomination for Congress but dropped out. Since then, Dennis has usually said that he would only run for president.
On his radio show July 31, 2009, Dennis was asked why he didn't run for president.
He replied: "Number one, I have no personal desire to run for public office. I have however an idealistic desire because...I am certain that I can articulate conservative values better than almost anyone in the Republican party... It is very distressing to me that the finest values do not have the finest spokesmen. That is what draws me to the idea of running for any public office.
"However, in the United States at this time, for example, US Senate in California, entails a minimum of $40 million. I could raise $40 million if Democrats and some Republicans did not sign a bill limiting the amount of money people could give. Now all you can do is spend all your life, unless you're a multi-billionaire, is to raise money from tens of thousands of people and I would not have my job to live on."
On his radio show Nov. 9, 2009, Dennis said: "I am sitting in awe, in depressed awe. Ehh, I don't get depressed. I sit here in angry awe."
"I have regrets about my past, but I don't get depressed over them," said Dennis on his show Feb. 5, 2010.
On his radio show Dec. 14, 2009, Dennis said: "When I see some of these people on TV, there's no doubt in my mind, I'm sorry if this sounds self-serving, that I would have a more entertaining, let alone more intelligent TV show, than the vast majority of those who have them today, but I don't come with the correct perspective."
Dennis Prager's 2009
Dennis spent his 61st birthday (Aug. 2, 2009) with two gay men and their baby. (Radio show, Dec. 11, 2009)
"I have a gay niece," Dennis said on his radio show Feb. 10, 2010. "I adore her. I adore her partner."
On his radio show Aug. 11, 2009, Dennis said: "I am the recipient of a lot of love and I am very appreciative of it, but that's not what I seek. I am touched by it but that is not what I seek, and, ironically, I think that's why I get a lot of it. If you don't seek it, you are more likely to get it. You can't go into your [work] day and say, how can I be loved today?"
Dennis Prager's Mom Dies Sept. 19, 2009
Dennis Prager's mother Hilda died at home surrounded by loved ones on Rosh Hashanah, Sept. 19, 2009. In his column about her death, Dennis wrote: "From my late teens onward, the relationship between my mother and me improved steadily. As the years progressed, I enjoyed her more and, yes, loved her more. Unless either an adult child or a parent has serious psychological issues, I am convinced that what I experienced is quite common. There is an enormous amount of luck -- good and bad -- in life; and one of the greatest pieces of good luck for a parent (and child, for that matter) is for parents and children to have the time to work things out."
From the DennisPrager.com blog Sept. 22, 2009:
Dennis's mother, Hilda, passed away this weekend. Blessed with good health her entire life, she had been struggling with health issues for the past few months. Recently, things took a turn for the worse and the end came quickly.
Many of you might have heard the hour last year when Dennis interviewed his mother on her birthday. If you did, you know that she was a charming, vibrant woman who was very proud of her son. She will be deeply missed by all who knew her.
Dennis will be observing the traditional seven day Jewish mourning period. That means he won't be on the air this week. When he returns a week from Tuesday, he'll be full of thoughts about his mother, about life and death and, of course, about world events.
If you'd like to express your condolences, the best way is to email Dennis at DennisPrager.com. For anyone who you might wish to send flowers, the family requests that you instead make a contribution to your favorite charity in the name of Hilda Prager.
Dennis Prager For President
In the fall of 2009, Dennis started talking on his radio show about how much he'd love to run for president of the United States.
From his radio show, Dec. 21, 2009:
A man calls. "You'll remember me. I'm the one who always pulls you aside and tells you you should be president of the United States."
Dennis: "I agree with you right now. It's the first time. I don't know what I've said in the past, but I agree with you, only because the Republicans don't have somebody who can articulate American values well enough right now, or at least I don't know who he is. It's something I'll talk to my listeners about. It's been in my mind."
From his radio show Jan. 15, 2010: "If I went to Iowa and just started saying these things, and I love people, and I love shaking hands with a lot of people, I like meeting people, I like saying over and over what I believe in, in that sense I've given it thought."
Prager Misc
"I am the only male I know of who's transfixed by the different types of shampoos," said Dennis on his show Jan. 12, 2010.
On his show Feb. 8, 2010, Dennis said: "If the environmentalist could run society, you saw your future in that ad [by Audi mocking green rules]. They are as committed to environmentalism as the Iranian regime is to their version of Islam and they would arrest people for exactly those things -- 'Are you using styrofoam cups sir? Please step out of the car'. 'Could we come in and check the temperature in your house? We're coming in.'
"They've already passed these sorts of things where they want to monitor the temperature in people's homes. In California, no new house can have a fire place. That's reason 84436 not to move to this state. I say it even though it hurts me because my real estate value will decline if you don't move here."
Dennis Prager bought his home in the Glendale area around 2005, the peak of the real estate market. Since then, the value of his home has plunged.
Dennis: "I can not think of a good reason, given what the left has done to California, for you to move here. I have a dear friend who would love to move here but he won't because of the taxes compared to the state he now lives in. You can't build a house with a fire place? Is that sick?
"Maybe that will increase the value of my place because I have a lot of fireplaces."
Dennis Prager Communities
Have there been any communities run on Dennis Prager principles? Any synagogues or businesses or non-profits? Are Dennis Prager's ideas a practical way for building community? Do Dennis Prager meetup groups do anything aside from socialize?
Dennis Prager's Legacy
One Sabbath morning in 1996 at Stephen S. Wise temple, I told Dennis Prager that I wished his ideas were more influential in Jewish life. He replied that it might take a thousand years for his contributions to be adequately recognized in Judaism.
Dennis often says on the radio that he wants his shows to be of lasting importance, and to be as interesting for a listener ten years from now as for a listener today.
When I read Dennis Prager or listen to him, I get the sense that he is speaking as much to history as to the present. He believes, as do I, that his teachings will be widely studied for hundreds of years.
Within a couple of years of encountering Dennis Prager in August of 1988, I started telling people that I believe Dennis to be the the most important intellectual of the 20th Century and the most important Jewish thinker since Maimonides.
I yearned for him to run for president of the United States.
F. M. Alexander
The teachings of F.M. Alexander have had more influence on my life than those of any other teacher (aside from Dennis Prager).
Reading the book F. Matthias Alexander: The Man and His Work by Lulie Westfeldt, I was struck by some similarities between Lulie and the typical high-commitment Dennis Prager fan (I include myself in this group).
F.M.'s teachings changed Lulie's life for the good. She gathered her savings and became a part of his first teacher-training group, which began in London in February 1931.
She writes:
We were all starry-eyed... We admired FM uncritically and wholeheartedly, and he basked in our admiration. We were indeed a mutual admiration society with everyone admiring himself and everyone else and FM most of all...
At this time all of felt that 'der Tag' -- the day when Alexander's work would be universally recognized, appreciated, and used -- was just around the corner. To our inexperienced eyes there were sound grounds for this. A number of very promising opportunities seemed on the verge of coming to a head, and there were people of fine quality impressed by the work and anxious to promote it...
Still another opportunity that seemed most promising was the interest of an American foundation in the work. FM had been talking about this for some time. He said the foundation wished to donate money to further the work, in what way we did not know. He said it was a great opportunity and that he might have to go to the United States to see the people there and work out plans. He spoke vaguely about it, and his vagueness increased, but we did not recognize this as a danger signal, for we did not at this time know that FM had a way of killing an opportunity, although in the beginning he apparently accepted it and rejoiced in it. His rejoicing had every indication of being genuine... When a promising opportunity came, he would suggest that we all drink sherry together in honor of the occasion, but shortly after that a veil -- an ever-thickening veil -- would be dropped over the whole affair, and it would be practically impossible to find out what actually happened, except we would finally know that in some way the opportunity no longer existed. (Pg. 50, 51)
His attitude towards us was very much like that of an uncle, but an uncle with no responsibility. As long as we caused him no trouble and did not cross him in any way, he liked to have us about. He liked us as an audience and as an inner circle which would always give him admiration and support. But when it came to a showdown, it was not likely that we would have any say whatsoever.
...[H]e was a genius, going his own way with strength, impervious to the opinions of others, thinking in a different way from most men, having different values as to what was important, attending to different things...
We began to suspect that we were to be on our own. We would have to hold ourselves responsible for learning his work as best we could. (Pg. 63)
I've never heard Dennis mention FM Alexander.
While they are both great men, I see enormous differences between Prager and Alexander. Alexander's interests, for instance, were narrow, while Prager's are wide.
FM didn't have friends, he only had followers. Dennis has friends.