New Article: Dennis Prager: The Right Wing Ashkenazi Jew as Episcopalian Christian
David Shasha
Dennis Prager: The Right Wing Ashkenazi Jew as Episcopalian Christian
I recently wrote an article on the relationship between Trumpworld Fascism and Modern Orthodox Judaism:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/davidshasha/_0illkvhVco
There I discussed Rabbi Zev Eleff’s very revealing Lehrhaus article “The Modern Orthodox Vote and the Episcopalian Turn”:
With this “Episcopalian Turn” in mind, I watched a Dennis Prager lecture presented on C-Span’s Book TV that was recorded at the Rancho Mirage Writers Conference in California:
https://www.c-span.org/video/?420527-2/dennis-prager-happiness-goodness
At the same conference Prager also participated in a panel discussion attacking BDS as the new Blood Libel with The Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens, two veritable Neo-Con Jewish peas in a pod:
I have presented the bombastic Right Wing extremism of Prager on a number of occasions:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/davidshasha/prager/davidshasha/l6JDfmTIJr4/BbHSZ98-qoUJ
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/davidshasha/prager/davidshasha/bWj-vTwhAPM/xUvg1NOHxLgJ
More recently Prager has figured in the ongoing problem of Jewish supporters of Trumpworld Fascism:
In my discussion I cite the following article from The Atlantic which reviews Prager’s hypocrisies as a Trumpworld apologist:
The vaunted Prager religious “morality” got thrown out the window the moment he began to support Trump’s twisted nihilism.
What is deeply fascinating about his Rancho Mirage talk “Happiness as a Serious Problem” is just how clearly it makes the case for the transition of many Jewish Conservatives into the welcoming arms of Christian Fundamentalism.
As explained by Eleff in his triumphant article on the Trump electoral victory, many Orthodox Jews have indeed turned into Episcopalians.
Prager’s talk on Happiness was a perfect fusion of Dale Carnegie and Norman Vincent Peale.
In my aforementioned article “Three Ashkenazim against the Torah” I presented the rather complicated ways in which the new Right-Wing Interfaith alliance has set out to undermine and even erase the classical Jewish religious-intellectual heritage.
Our central religious texts, rooted in the Prophets and the Rabbis, are firmly predicated on the values of Justice and Wisdom.
Prager, freely deploying the “feel-good” behaviorism that is central to what has become known as the “Gospel of Prosperity,” sees Happiness, not Justice or Wisdom, as the primary human value.
It is of course fascinating to contrast Prager’s fierce support for Trumpworld Fascism and for the deeply Anti-Jewish values of Evangelical Christianity, both of which are connected to a very flawed understanding of Jewish Nationalism rooted in Christian Biblical literalism and its messianic eschatology, and his relentlessly aggressive articulation of “Good Moods” and cheerfulness in the face of adversity.
As we could see from the largely positive response from the affluent and apparently Conservative suburban California audience at the Rancho Mirage lecture, his message is one that resonates with many Americans.
Prager, like his many Christian counterparts, values behavioral norms over ethical values.
Biblical and Talmudic personalities were not distinguished by their “Good Moods” or their sunny disposition; in point of fact, the Prophetic figures, as so eloquently discussed by Abraham Joshua Heschel in his classic book The Prophets, were fanatical truth-seekers and utopian moralists – the very group that Prager roundly castigates.
The Jewish Sages proclaimed the end of the Prophetic era after the Romans destroyed the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE, and put in its place a concept of Wisdom that would eventually be yoked to the Humanistic curriculum by Arab Jewish rabbis like Se’adya Ga’on, Bahye ibn Paquda, and Maimonides in the early Middle Ages.
It was this evolutionary tradition that formed the Jewish Humanism that has become central to the Sephardic heritage.
Prager, as we see from his Neo-Con political radicalism, comes from the world of the Eastern European Shtetl which was animated by bitter feelings of persecution and rage. His reactionary politics are not in the least that of the “Good Mood” variety, which makes his embrace of Peale’s sunny optimism that much more ironic and paradoxical.
But, as he reminded us repeatedly in the talk, his lectures on Happiness have proven to be a cash bonanza; garnering national attention and a good deal of commercial interest from various media outlets and publishing houses.
As we learned from Dale Carnegie, it is all about “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” rather than preserving moral integrity and rectitude. It is expediency over dignity, pragmatism rather than honor, personal gain besting righteousness.
Given the long and complex history of Judaic knowledge, it is hard to categorize figures as disparate as Judah Halevi, Solomon ibn Verga, Grace Aguilar, Franz Kafka, Sigmund Freud, and Primo Levi as either “happy” or “depressive.” It goes way beyond such facile identifications.
It is, I suppose, theoretically possible to apply these categories to such intellectual luminaries, but is in the end not very helpful if we are to properly understand and process the Jewish heritage and its strong roots in the words of the Prophets and the Talmudic Sages.
Prager has not only adopted a political point of view from the Christian Evangelicals, but taken the “Good News” of the Christian Gospels which values Salvation above all else, and applied it to what he mistakenly believes to be an orthodox Jewish approach.
In this transformation of the traditional Jewish values we move from creative hermeneutics and the insights afforded by the Wisdom of reading texts, to the manifestation of a dogmatic behaviorism that is fixated on cheerfulness and a sunny disposition rather than on the relentless pursuit of Truth and Justice under the rubric of the Law.
It is little wonder in this regard that the victory of the dark forces of Trumpworld, where reality is of no consequence, and where every behavioral action is blissfully oblivious to the most basic elements of the human condition and its many complexities, has engendered in Episcopalian Jews like Prager and Eleff a euphoria that has cemented the ties between Right Wing Ashkenazi Judaism, Evangelical Christianity, and the dark forces of the New Fascism.
As Prager says, Jews must now reject the values of Intellectualism which have always been our identifying character trait, and embrace the Gospel of “Happiness” as a way of life.
In this manner, Orthodox Jews can more easily assimilate into Evangelical Christianity and in the process unite under the rubric of an eschatological messianism where Zionism and the second coming of Jesus Christ are one and the same proposition.
Contrary to Prager’s Episcopalian ideality, being “Happy” does not necessarily mean that one is Good. We can see that Trump and many of his supporters are quite happy, though they are quite delusional and quite nihilistic. In point of fact, their “Happiness” is cause for our Depression.
Rather than seeing God as representing Justice and Mercy, the New Fascists seek personal human fulfillment, along the lines of Christian Salvation history; a history that has left many persecuted and maimed in its wake.
The fabled Christian Caritas has often been used as a weapon against those who refuse to accept their “Good News” and its relentlessly sunny optimism.
So it is indeed eminently possible to be Happy, and still be able to victimize and persecute others.
Service with a smile indeed!
But, as Judaism has always taught, it is only in the preservation of the Law and its dogged insistence upon Justice, Equality, and Fairness that we can truly express all that we are as human beings.
Happiness is not the ultimate metric for the Jewish people and must never be used as a barometer of our humanity.
David Shasha