Timeless Wisdom: Weekend Torah Teaching - Genesis 9:18-12:4

Welcome to Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager. Hear thousands of hours of Dennis's lectures, courses, and classic radio programs. And to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles, go to DennisPrager.com. God created it for people. The purpose of creation was people. The purpose of it all was that we would enjoy what God has given to us, that we would lead good and holy lives. And what did we do? We didn't lead good lives. We hurt each other constantly. What bothers God is how we act toward each other. I have made this point in each episode. What bothers God most is when we mistreat each other. We cannot mistreat God. By the way, I think I gave you the analogy of a parent. The most painful thing for a parent is to see the children hating each other. Parents can deal— it's not pleasant— but parents can deal better with bad feelings from the child to the parent than of bad feelings of the children with one another. What are mothers always doing? Did you call your brother? Did you call your sister? Did you send a card? Did you remember their anniversary? I mean, it is a very common thing for parents to do that. We care how our kids kids treat each other. If we do, can you imagine, as it were, how God would feel, quote unquote, with regard to this? So God destroys the world and saves one person. Why is the one person saved? Should be obvious. Because this person was good. That's all. Not because this person prayed well. I mean, you would think that God might have saved the person, Noah, Noah, because Noah prayed well or sacrificed No, because Noah was a good human being. I contrasted that with contemporaneous accounts in the ancient Near East where they all had flood stories, and again somebody was saved by the gods. However, it was for utterly capricious reasons: handsome, did well for the gods. And why did they destroy humanity? You remember one of the episodes that I read to you from a one of the epics. I don't remember if it was the Epic of Gilgamesh or another, wherein the gods said, you know what, humanity's making too much noise, let's destroy it. Very different from humanity is hurting each other. We are now ending, we are now at chapter 9, verse 18, Genesis, wherein we are coming to the end of the Noah story. Noah is now on land. The flood is over. And let's read. I'll read it to you. I don't do every single verse, but when the story is told, it's necessary. The sons of Noah came out of the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth, or Shem, Ham, and Japheth, if that's the way the English of Japheth has been anglicized. Ham being the father of Canaan. It keeps mentioning that Ham was the father of of Canaan. The reason is obvious. Canaan is where the Jews are entering, and the Jews are warned constantly, don't act like the Canaanites. Remember what I told you, those who've been with me from Genesis 1:1. Remember that you must understand more than anything else the beginning of Genesis, and for that matter, the purpose of Judaism. As the destruction of polytheism, because polytheism keeps humanity down intellectually and most important, morally and theologically. Remember, multiple gods is multiple moralities. One God is one morality, ethical monotheism. The desire is to destroy the practices of the pagan world. Therefore, the villain of the story as it will now be related, is Ham. And who is he? The father of Canaan, of Canaan. Now remember, the world emanates from Noah and his children, right? Because these are the survivors. These are the only people in the world. So therefore, the world now, all the nations come from these nations. Obviously, the Jews would come from Shem, or that's where you get Semite from, from the name Shem. Shemites are Semites. Okay, the three— these were the three sons of Noah, and from these the whole world branched out. That's the next verse. Noah, the tiller of the soil, was the first to plant the vineyard. Now, if I have done anything with you, I have hope— I hope that I have shown you that the way I was taught to study Torah as a child in yeshiva is the best way to study not just Bible, but an article in your newspaper. Always ask, why are these words chosen? Now, why is it told that he was the first to plant a vineyard? You'll see, or you might not see, but I'll show you if you don't. Somebody showed me, so don't feel bad if you don't come up with it yourself. I didn't. But just remember, you should ask yourself that question. Why doesn't it just say Noah, the tiller of the soil, planted a vineyard? Why does it say was the first ever to plant the vineyard? You see, that's the way to ask the question. Always ask, why couldn't it have been in a simpler way? Why add that detail? All right. He drank of the wine and became drunk. And he uncovered himself within his tent. Ham, the father of Canaan. It's almost, it actually is somewhat funny. The way it keeps knocking you over the head in case you forgot in the last 3 sentences, we want to remind you, Ham is the father of Canaan. Those miserable no-goodniks. I mean, it is not subtle. There is no subtlety in this particular instance. So once again it's mentioned, Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father's nakedness and told his two brothers outside. But Shem and Japheth took a cloth, placed it against both their backs, and walking backward, they covered their father's nakedness. Their faces were turned the other way, so that they did not see their father's nakedness. When Noah woke up from his wine and learned what his youngest son had done to him, he said, cursed be Canaan, the lowest of slaves shall he be to his brothers. And he said, blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem, let Canaan be a slave to them. May God enlarge Japheth And let him dwell in the tents of Shem, and let Canaan be a slave to them. Noah lived after the flood 350 years, and all the days of Noah came to 950 years, then he died. This is the last episode in Noah's life. Very, very famous episode, and not an easy one at all. I wish they were easy. I would be able to go faster when I prepare the course. There are a lot of questions here which you may not realize at all. When you first read it. But here's one I would like to ask you. Noah's naked. Canaan sees him— excuse me, Ham sees him, one of his three sons, and tells his brothers. Brothers move backward not to see the father's nakedness and cover the father while backward so as not to see him. What happened? There is so much confusion here. Here, here is— let me give you some of the questions. First of all, what was Ham's sin that he gets this horrible, horrible curse? That's one. Here's another one. It said, um, in verse 24, when Noah woke up from his wine and learned what his youngest son had done to him, What did his son do to him? It doesn't say a word. There is not a word in the text about what Ham did to his father. Next question: how did he find out? What did he find out, and how did he find out? Here's another killer for you, which you wouldn't realize to ask probably if you read it 20 times. On the 21st, you might though. Why did he curse Canaan and not Ham? Isn't that odd? Where he says, uh, in 25, he saw what his youngest son had done to him. He said, cursed be Canaan. But it was Ham who did it, whatever it was. So we don't know what was done, we don't know how Noah found out about it, and we don't know why he cursed his grandson instead of his son who Who did what we don't know that he did? Other than that, it's clear. Now, do you see what I mean? Isn't it amazing how many puzzles there are in the story? There are so many puzzles in the story that there are biblical scholars who hold that it doesn't tell you the whole story. That in fact, in ancient Israel, they had a larger story, but it was so terrible that they didn't want to put it in the Torah. That God didn't want to, depending, you know, I don't want to get into that issue at all, but that the Torah didn't want it included. For example, there are those who say that it was very clear what Ham did, and it was probably incestuous. Probably some sexual violation in some way, which was awful. Perhaps he castrated his father, which is even more incredible. Because even if it had been a sexual act, how would his father know? Nobody saw. You, are you with me? How would— how would— it's a real puzzle. How would no one know what Ham did to him? So what did he do to him? By the way, the answer to— there is no great answer to this question. There are some answers to the question, but there is no absolute answer to the question. The puzzle remains to this day what exactly it is. This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this. Now back to more of Dennis Prager's timeless wisdom. There are 3 possibilities about what Ham did. It could be only a matter of seeing his father naked, meaning his genitals. That's, that's the particular issue, because the other sons didn't look. That's the implication. But then how did Noah know what had been done to him? 3 possibilities. One, his other sons told him, right? That is one possibility. However, what is the problem with that, which would seem to be very obvious? The problem with that is that the sons then would have shamed the father terribly. If you were If you are a father and your son sees you drunken and naked, and you are deeply embarrassed by that, which you ought to be, and you are another child of that father, would you tell your father, you know, you were in a drunken stupor naked and our brother saw you? And in light of the fact that they are so blessed It doesn't fully make sense that they would have been the ones to have told him, that that's how he would have found out. That's no service to your father. There are times in life when ignorance is bliss. Not often, I generally think, but I think times there are. Let me ask you, I'll take a— we're in a voting mood tonight, I'll take a vote. You're in a drunken stupor, one of your kids sees you. Would you want the other kids to tell you that you had been seen like that? Raise your hand. Would you have wanted your other kids to tell you you had been seen like that? You're a kid, not a father, right? That's okay, I just want to make sure. That's the only one who voted that way, because he's a kid. Are you a father? You'd like to have known. Okay, out of this, there are 130 people here. 2 people, 3 people voted yes. 4. I mean, it's— even if 20 did, it would be a tiny number of you. The vast majority of us would not want to know that. We would want to retain our parental dignity. And knowledge makes dignity lost. Sometimes if a tree falls in a forest and nobody hears it, the question of whether it fell in the forest or not is really a philosophical one. If nobody heard it. If it's just not seen or talked about, about, then the shame is not nearly that great. So I don't, I don't know. At first reading this, I thought that the sons had told the father that what Ham had, uh, had seen and how wonderful they were. And Dad, Ham saw you, told us, but while he looked and didn't cover you, we, your beloved kids, did. I mean, all things considered, it doesn't even sound that noble, does it? The snitching, the embarrassing of the father, and then taking all the credit. That's why— well, let me— so anyway, that's option number 1 about what Ham did. Option number 2, Ham did something much more serious, and that is how Noah knew what had been done. But the Torah doesn't say what, and the reason we have reason to argue that he did something more serious to his father is because in Leviticus, in the third book of the Torah, in chapter 18, the word for sexual intercourse is, is, 'Lo tigaleh et ervach,' 'Do not expose the nakedness of,' and then it lists relatives. That, that's the wording that you have here, uh, in, uh, in Noah, where his nakedness was exposed. So Torah word on occasion, Torah wording for the sexual act is see the, the sexual nakedness, if you will, of somebody. So that argues that he did more to his father than merely look at him. Okay? But we don't have proof of it. And third, which might be, by the way, which might be the way he found out— this is my own thought— he found himself covered by a coat which he hadn't put on and realized that others had covered him. It doesn't take too much detective work to figure out that if you go to bed one way and wake up another way, somebody has intervened. Does that make sense to you? That strikes me, because the first one of the sons telling him doesn't bear credit to the sons at all. I think he saw what happened and probably asked questions. Otherwise, he still had to have isolated who did what. Or just assume it. Or, as I would have to say, maybe something even worse happened. And you know Greek tragedy is filled with patricide and with a desire to castrate your father as primal things so that you become the strong male. Who knows? Who knows if that may not have been a factor? I don't know. I truly don't offer offer it as definite, but who knows, something must have happened. By the way, would it be bad enough if it was just sight? Would it be bad enough just to have seen your father naked? I mentioned to you last week a writer, and ironically it was in the June 1992 issue of Commentary, which usually writes about cultural affairs, politics, etc., but it had an article, "Seeing the Nakedness of His Father, by a professor who was not a professor of religion, Leon Kass, who writes that the nakedness alone is definitely the issue, and that that is then the issue here according to him is whether or not you retain parental dignity, and that in the creation of the world, remember the world was being recreated through Noah. God, the Torah, wanted it clear at the outset that if you mess around with parental authority, you are subverting the bases of civilization. That is Leon Kass's argument. I'll read a little, I'll read a little to you. Uh, he writes, There was something— oh, let's see. Oh, sorry. Well, I'll tell you, here is the line that really gives it away. To put it sharply, Pam's viewing and telling is metaphorically an act of patricide and incest, of overturning the father as a father. Without disturbing a hair on Noah's head, Ham engages in father killing. It's a very interesting thesis and one that I don't discount at all. What he did— Ham, the sin that Ham did was not the looking, it was the telling. He destroyed his father's dignity to all the other children. That's why he said it's metaphorically father-killing. And that's the reason the curse on him is so terrible. The fact that that is what he did, as he writes, without disturbing a hair on his head. Now, on that basis, incidentally, this is, uh, this— his, his theory is that that is why Noah cursed Canaan rather than Ham. What he did was, you destroyed me as a father, or in his words, you unfathered me to my children, I will unfather you to your child. Makes a lot of sense. It— this new interpretation from this Leon Kass, makes a lot of sense. Does anybody have a problem with it? Is it clear to you that that is what has happened? Parental authority has been shaken. And he believes, he writes further, because this is a political journal after all, that that is a basic root of many of the ills of our society today, the destruction of parents as parents. And look, we certainly know in parts of our society, I mean, I'm not going to play games here, where it particularly afflicts black life, where you have 6 out of 10, 7 out of 10 children often born without a father, and the results are tragic. The results are tragic. Where it happens in white life, Hispanic life, the results are tragic. But by the way, you don't have to see it as obviously as that. As he points out, and it's an interesting theory, he says even when parents just act to be their children's pals, they have given up parental authority. And he takes this further, it's a very, uh, it's— let me read you his last paragraph. Modern times have produced a third human type, neither tyrant nor philosopher, Dennis Prager, who is also deaf to authority. His point is that if you don't have a parent as an authority, civilization collapses. That is where we get authority from in this world. And by the way, the Ten Commandments bears witness to that biblical belief. That is why honoring your mother and father— honoring your father and mother is in the Ten Commandments, because if parental Authority breaks, everything breaks, to use Freudian terms. God and your father, at least in the Western tradition, are very intimately related. God, A, is seen as "Our Father who art in heaven" to Jews and to Christians and to Muslims, so you have that clearly. But also, it's been pointed out to me first by an Orthodox rabbi and then by a psychiatrist, The way in which you see God is very, very related to the way in which you see your father. And I must tell you that I have asked this question of numerous people. I, I would say that it probably bears an accuracy percentage of 90%. 9 out of 10 people, and I wouldn't be surprised if 9.9 out of 10 people For them, it is true, unless they undergo tremendous self-change, in which they had a view of God as the Father, as their Father, but change. For example, if your father is absent from your life, there is a very good chance God will be absent or a non-issue in your life. If your father is authoritarian, you'll probably have an authoritarian image of God. If you love your father, there is a very very good chance you will love God. It's very interesting stuff that's going on in these few verses, isn't it? Why? Remember, remember, you've got to ask the question when you read the Bible: why does it put this story here? The man lived 350 years after the flood. This is all they wanted to report? That's the only thing that happened in 350 years? He never had a July 4th, uh, you know, uh, cookout? Nothing? Never went bowling the entire time? There's nothing else to report? Well then, it's got to be pretty darn significant, doesn't it? If the only event after the flood that it reports to you is he gets drunk, lies naked, his kids see him, and, and they get Who's cursed for it? The one who saw it. Well, then obviously Cass is on to something. The removal of parental authority, and in the Western world, in particular, fathers. Not that fathers are more important than mothers. Mothers and fathers have different roles. Father's role is the civilizing role, the disciplinarian, the authority. Mother's role is love and nurturance. It's just the way it works out. Ask single mothers what it's like to discipline a child as compared to having a father around. It's just no comparison. And when fathers abdicate that role, they abdicate what they're being a father about. That's not to say fathers can't be, uh, loving and should be loving. You can always take anything to an extreme and become authoritarian. But that, and I have to salute this Leon Kass, he made this story to me the clearest of any of the philosophers and commentators that I had read on it. You know what, please write them down, folks, okay? I will take them, I just want to take them after, but do please write them down because I will ask for questions and then you will have forgotten. This is the story. Anyway, let me read to you just this last paragraph I said from Cass. Modern times have produced a third human type, neither tyrant nor philosopher, who is also deaf to authority and who knows neither awe nor reverence: democratic man. For him, all hierarchy is suspect, all distinctions odious, all claims on his modesty or respect confining. Last names and even familial titles like uncle or aunt are much too formal. Honor and respect, fear and awe, and filial piety seem increasingly vestiges of an archaic world. Sex, utterly demystified, is now sport and chatter. Nakedness is no big big deal. Severed now from their source in what is truly venerable, the customs of respect and modesty become anemic. Increasingly petrified, they crumble beneath the avalanche of equality, explicitness, and the, quote, right to be myself, unquote. We are all pals now, but we should not be so self-deceived. The sins of unfatherly fathers are still being visited on the sons. Canaan will still and again be cursed to live like a pagan. If you need a monument, just look around. I get the chills when I read it. But now you understand too why Canaan is cursed. If your father is unfatherly, you are cursed. It's a curse. It's not fair. Life's not fair. The, the Genesis is not about fairness. It's about reality. When we see constantly, if you cheat, cheating comes back. If you act in a certain way, it will affect your children. It does. It's not fair, but it's true. Unfatherly fathers, fathers who have been demystified men who have been naked in front of their kids, exposed naked, lose it. And it can be lost. You can lose your fatherliness and just become, as he writes in another paragraph, another male. Powerful stuff in this story, and it resonates, as I said, because why else would the Torah take the time out to tell you one story before Noah dies. I think that that put it together as well as, as it's been put together again. Okay, by the way, you will notice another very interesting thing which I find impressive in the Torah here. You will notice in verse 27, you notice a fascinating thing. Ham commits the sin. Remember what the sin is. The sin is the telling of the brothers, defathering their father. Okay, at least as I'm understanding it, Ham is not cursed and Shem is not blessed. Look at verse 27. Blessed be the Lord God of Shem. Isn't that interesting? Now, why would that be? We, we, I think we figured out why the grandson's cursed in Ham's case, but why is God blessed and not Shem blessed in the case of Shem? Two possibilities. One, that he is giving credit to the fact that Shem believes in God and therefore acted the way he did. Okay? And there was another one. Remember, who do the Jews come from? Shem. Okay? All the Semites come from Shemites. Okay? Canaan is, as it were, the antithesis of what the Jew should be. The pagan. The polytheist. The doer of evil, etc. No sexual morality, no ethical morality, etc. But I think here is a very touching thing, that the Torah wants to give the credit for Shem's good act not to Shem but to God. There is a constant vigilance in the Torah, and I will show you another example today, and by the time we get to Deuteronomy in 2006. I will show you in Deuteronomy where it is, where it is absolutely just written right out. The Torah wants Jews to understand that it is not they who are special, it is God and the task that are special. The Jews are merely carriers of them. And that is why there's no blessing of Shem, lest a reader infer from it that God has favorites in this world. Isn't that powerful? It's the God of Shem who's blessed, not Shem. Just as you notice, I've told you until now there were no Jews. The Jewish Bible begins without Jews. And Noah is a tzaddik, a righteous person, and Shem too, and they're not Jewish. There is not a scintilla in the Torah of chauvinism, of Jewish chauvinism. You're Jews, therefore you're better. A Jew who holds that has no basis in the Torah. The Torah goes out of its way to block that, that thinking. It is God who is special. It is the task that is special. And here too, because the world is beginning here, this story is important. This is in some ways more important than Adam and Eve. Their progeny are destroyed. We're not the children of Adam. We're the children, at least from the story's sake, from Noah and his children. That's why all, every word here is so critical in how the Torah sees the world. Okay, so Noah then dies. Poor guy. You know, and it might be, by the way, it's interesting, I'm just thinking of it now, uh, really reading it again for God knows how many a time. Maybe it's not coincidental that Noah died right after the story. Who knows? Maybe it knocked his will to live. And when you live as long as he did, uh, why wouldn't he go on? It's not, uh, he lived quite a few, quite a few years. 950. Okay, chapter 10. I am, I am not going to read to you. I'm simply going to tell you what's in it. Chapter 10 is known as the tables, the, the nation tables, or the genealogical tables, the table of nations. And it is, uh, it really is just an attempt to tell you what happened to the children of Noah's children, who begat who, who begat who, and so on. But the one that continues in the story is the, the children of Shem. Okay, by the way, it describes 70 nations because in the Torah idea of the world there are 70 nations in the whole world. That is the way it is described. If you wish to read it on your own, obviously feel free to, but it's really almost overwhelmingly simply a delineation of names and the nations that, that came from them. Okay, chapter 11. Chapter 11 is the last pre-Jewish story, the last universal story of the Torah. And it is an absolute cracker. The more you read it, just like, just like the Noah story with the drunkenness, the more you read it, the more confused you get. I, if you would have asked me before I started preparing these courses what happened, I would have said as follows, because I mean, I practically knew it by heart. The only, oh, there are only, I think, 9 10 verses, I think 9 verses. It's nothing. I learned it from a child, uh, since being a child, and it's basic. Oh, these people wanted to build a thing, make war with God. God got angry and spread them around the world. That is how I understood it. I asked my wife today, I said, what did the people who built the Tower of Babel do wrong? Oh, they wanted to make war on God. That's what I thought. That's what everybody you would ask who knows the story will answer. That's what they did. Wrong. There isn't the slightest intimation of it. God isn't even mentioned in the building of the Tower of Babel. So let's read the Tower of Babel story and see what is exactly there. Everyone on earth had the same language and the same words, and as they emigrated, as they migrated from the east, they came upon a valley in the land of Shinar. And settled there. By the way, what is it migrating from the east? In the east is where Noah's Ark had landed. Get it? That's why we're continuing the story. People have been migrating since Ararat, which is in modern Armenia, and moving westward, okay, into the Valley of Shinar, which is, I believe, in Mesopotamia, if they could locate it correctly, and settled there. They said to one another, "Come, let's make bricks and burn them hard." Bricks served them as stone. This is a parenthesis. It's interesting. It's not often in the Torah, but here's a parenthetical statement. Bricks served them as stone and bitumen. Does anybody know what bitumen is? Is it bitumen or bitumen? Huh? It's like coal. And is it pronounced bitumen or bitumen? Thank you. It's not one of those things you come across daily, you know. Did you have your dose of bitumen today? And bitumen served them as mortar. And they said, "Come, let us build a city." By the way, everybody forgets that part. They didn't only build a tower. They built a city. I'm going to come back to that because that's key. "Come, let us build a city and a tower with its top in the sky to make a name for ourselves, or else we'll be scattered all over the world." By the way, if you think that that's a non sequitur, you're absolutely right. We'll make a name for ourselves and won't be scattered? What does one have to do with the other? We'll build a building that towers up to the sky, make a name for ourselves, that makes sense, and won't be scattered. What does that have to do? Well, we'll find out. The Lord came down to look at the city and tower. Remember, you see that? Little hint here, they didn't. From now on, the best for you to remember is the city and tower of Babel. Never just say the Tower of Babel because it's It's not accurate. It's the city and tower that's the issue here, which you will find fascinating. At any rate, the Lord came down to look at the city and tower that man had built, and the Lord said, "If as one people with one language for all this is how they have begun to act, then nothing that they may propose to do will be out of their reach. Let's then go down and confound their speech there so that they shall not understand each other's speech." Thus the Lord scattered them from there over the face of the whole earth, and they stopped building the city. Oh, notice it doesn't say stop building the tower, stop building the city. So what exactly ticked God off? And why would God get ticked at city building? That is why it was called Babel, which I'm sure makes total sense to you. That's why it was called Babel. Because there the Lord confounded the speech of the whole earth. Because in Hebrew, confound is balal. And this is bavel. So you have bavel and balal, and so it's a play on words. And you'll understand why there's a play on words here, because there's another intent in this story. Confounded the speech of the whole earth, and from there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth. Okay, got a lot of problems. Number 1, what did they do wrong? These poor folks said as follows: Hey guys, listen, let's build a tower that goes up into the sky, is that exactly a sin? Are any of you aware in the infinite number of Jewish laws, thou shalt not build a tall building? I am unaware of it. Not only that, you will say, well, but why did they want to do it? Because— and I'm back now with you on, uh, verse 4— to make a name for ourselves. So you'll say, aha, that was their sin, they wanted a name for themselves. Well, let me tell you something. In Judaism and in Torah Judaism, making a name for yourself is not considered a sin. Alright? Humility is a virtue, but modesty isn't. Which is certainly Jews live up to. Jews are not the most modest ethnic group in human life. It's— if you compliment the Jew, they normally ask you for more. I have it on Religion on the Line, 10 years of meeting people of different backgrounds, you know, you can generalize after a while. Jews have a fairly good sense of self, whereas if I compliment the Protestant minister or the Catholic priest, "Oh no, Dennis, no, not— what are you talking about? Not at all." And constant, you know, denial, they don't want to think well of themselves, it's the sin of pride, and so on. The sin— there is no sin of making a big name in Judaism. In fact, which you will find particularly interesting, please look at 12:2. This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this. Now back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom. When God blesses, when And when God blesses Abraham, which we're going to come to tonight, he even says to him, "I'm going to make you a great nation and I will make your name big." Right? So what's so terrible? That's exactly what they wanted. They wanted a big name. And God promises Abraham a big name. "Akat la'shamecha." I will make your name big. Okay, now it's too close to one another for it to be a big sin to want a big name. And by the way, let's say they wanted a big name and they were in that regard, they were arrogant. Okay, we want a big name. For that, God decides to give them all these other languages and, and, and in effect destroy the endeavor? It's, it's a, it's again just as complex and difficult as the, as the, uh, Ham story, uh, the Ham story with, uh, with Noah. Anyway, what is their sin? It's certainly not fighting with God. Please, does anybody there see even a hint that they were fighting with God and building the thing up to the heavens? If you do, say it. That I'll take. You see a hint of that? Where? Uh-huh. Well, you were the one person who did vote that natural suffering, so I think you have it in for God. I understand. That's a very cute answer. There's no basis for that, but it's a cute answer. Yes. All right, it's an interesting thesis where he says it's one thing for God to give you a big name, but you— it's a sin for you to want a big name. I can't imagine, I mean, off the top of my head, something that is sinful for us but okay for God, uh, in this regard. In other words, God could give you a big name, but if you give you a big name, I think there is a problem with the big name here, but I don't think that it has to do with fighting God. That's what my question was. Can you find something with the traditional understanding you all got in Sunday school or Hebrew school of fighting God? It isn't there. Okay, I'll just, I'll just move ahead and tell you it isn't there. God isn't even mentioned. Now, by the way, that's not insignificant that God isn't mentioned. The entire glory is human glory. My friends, the Tower of Babel story might as well have been done in the Soviet Union during socialist realism's period. It might as well have been done in Nazi Germany in the celebration only, uh, in Albert Speer's architectural grandeur celebrating the great physique of the human being the Aryan physical person. When you glory man alone— there's no problem with glory in the Torah. There's problem with glory to man without God. That's why, contrary to making war on God, the whole point is they ignored God. They have— they are building a power of glory to themselves. We're great, and you've seen it all. You know what, by the way, I will tell you from my own perspective, this is so relevant, it's frightening. I am convinced that the arts have sunk in the Western world as secularism has enlarged. When Bach wrote his pieces, he wrote for the glory of God Most High on most of his manuscripts. There was a sense of, I'm writing music to some— to the glory of something beyond man. Yes, the glory of man. There is no problem in Judaism with the glory of man. We are God's greatest creation. You should see yourself as glorious. You should see the arts as glorious. But when they are removed from God entirely, that's That's bad news. When it's only for the glory of man, when it's humanism as opposed to any religiosity, that's a problem. That's not the only problem by far. I just wanted to dispense with the issue of where the issue of God comes in. They're not making war on God, not in a direct sense. They didn't say, "Let's build a big one so we could go up to the skies and battle God." God was irrelevant. In fact, it would be better to battle God. Religion is far healthier in a place where there are people angry at God than in a place where people ignore God. If I may speak about contemporary America for a moment, that's the worry that religious people like myself have. Not that there are people angry at God. It's that God is a non-issue. You can't even say "God bless you" at a high school reunion. At a high school graduation, excuse me. I know all the arguments and I don't want to get into constitutional arguments. Constitutional or not, the fact is the statement in America today is: outside of your home and your church or synagogue, ignore God. If you think society is healthier for it, the Tower of Babel story is here I'm here to tell you, no, that's not what is wanted. Glory to man's creations is fine. Bereft of any sense of God, it is not fine. I tell you, if they would have said, let's go up and battle God, God wouldn't have been nearly as annoyed. Good, you take me seriously. I want people who want to fight me. Who fights him? In a few sentences, in a few chapters from now, doesn't Abraham? The whole, the whole thing is he fights with God. Of course God wants you to fight with him. They ignored God. That's the sin. And it's not the only sin. We've got a lot more here. It's a lot, lot heavier, just like the Noah story is with the unfathering of fathers. Now let's go back. There is another battle going on in the Torah here. What did I keep telling you? The major battle of Genesis, the early, the chapters till now, against polytheism. In Mesopotamia, I'm sure every one of you has seen a picture of what is called a ziggurat. Those were the great, great palaces built in Mesopotamia for the gods. You, if you, if you can picture it, it's a lot of steps built like a mountain. Because in the ancient world, mountains were where the heavens and the earth met. Okay? So they were replicas of mountains where you could meet God, as it were. There is here a sense of humor. Most people reading Genesis do not crack up. I fully appreciate that. I always get a kick, parenthetically, about when people speak about composers having a sense of humor. Did you see how funny Haydn was in that quartet? And I feel like an idiot whenever I read that. I didn't never laugh during a Haydn quartet. I could understand you'll miss the humor here, but there is. I'll show you part of the humor. There is a deep, deep mockery of Babylonian religion taking place here. The biggest mockery of all is, and this is, it really is funny when you think about it. Most people know the word Babel. Which is the same as Babylonia in Hebrew, from the tower, from this story about God confounding all of them. What was done here? First of all, please look at, uh, okay, please look at verse 5. Verse 5 says God came down and God said Hold on, whoops. Oh, excuse me, yeah. God came down, looked at the city and tower that man had built. Actually, in Hebrew it's even more irreverent. That children of man built. Nothings. In other words, not in other words, what is happening here is, in Mesopotamian religion, Who was it, hell, built the greatest of the ziggurats? The gods themselves. Remember, this stuff is very old. This is 3,000+ years old. You have to put yourself in the reader's mind then, not just today. I think both are correct. At that time, for somebody to be told people built those ziggurats, that the Mesopotamians say that God's built was incredible. It was heretical. This was heresy in the world of its day. God comes down and looks at the building which people built, which human beings, children of people built. What a— what kind of joke? This is just built by children. Joke number 1, as it were, or put down number 1 of polytheism. People built it, not the gods. Put down number 2: it's a play on the word Babylon, meaning mixed up. The Torah gives Babylon the name mixed up. Okay, play number 3. Remember I told you about the parenthetical statement about bricks? Let's look at that one again. They said to one another, come, let's make bricks and burn them hard. Now here's the parenthetical statement: bricks served them as stone and bitumen served them as mortar. There were two things here. One, to an Israeli/Canaanite writer, this is strange because they built things from stone. So it's a parenthetical statement. They built things differently. But there was another intent here. It was to laugh at it. You're gonna build a tower up to the skies out of mortar and clay? Who are you kidding? That is put-down number 3 of these great massive Mesopotamian achievements. There is more here in regard to what is being done about the religion, but those are the primary ways of saying to the Jews, "Don't take this polytheistic stuff seriously." Next. What was their sin? I argued that one of their sins is glory to man. There is no man only, not to God as well. Okay, that is my inference from reading this. But what are the direct sins? Remember I told you what keyword to look up every time it mentions the tower? What else does it mention? City. Okay, now Okay, 11:4. They said, come, let's build a city and a tower with its top in the sky to make a name for ourselves. Then I told you, didn't it seem like a non sequitur followed? Or else we'll be scattered all over the world. What does that refer to? It can't refer to the, to the tower. What is the tower? How will the tower prevent them being scattered all over the world? So what does it refer to? Right, cities keep you from being scattered. Ah, but what did God say to Adam and to Noah? What was the first thing God said? Be fruitful and multiply and what? And fill the earth. Oh, this is what appears to be another sin in what they had done. They didn't want to move around. God said be fruitful, they did, but they wanted to stay in a city. Thomas Jefferson and the Torah don't like cities. Oh, it is clear about that. It is absolutely clear. This is one of a number a number of places which in the course of the time you will see. There is a deep bias against cities, the belief that a lot of miserable stuff happens and goes on in cities, which I suspect all of us would agree with. There are certainly advantages to cities in some ways, much better shopping and a whole host of things, but there are massive moral disadvantages to cities. Anonymity means that you can act much worse Well, what was it my wife was just telling me about when you say hi to farmers? What was it? You say hi to a farmer— I'm sorry? Yeah, you wave to a farmer in a field, he and his kids, whoever's out there, will all stop, put down the hoe, and wave back to you. If you wave to somebody in LA, you'll be arrested. And there may be good reason to do it. Can you imagine waving to somebody on the street tonight as you drive home? It is inconceivable. They would run away. But if you wave in rural areas— oh, an acquaintance of ours told us of a trip that he had made through in my wife's home state, Kansas, where his car broke down. He needed a part, I believe it was, The next car stopped, asked him what it was, and drove 15 miles to get it and brought it back. Just the sort of thing you'd get in LA. And in New York, if you stop, they just take your carburetor. Well, you're very grateful that you're around to tell the story afterwards. I'm only exaggerating slightly. I'm not saying we should destroy cities. I am saying, though, that there is very good moral reason to worry about cities. And that is what the Torah's preoccupation is. They built the city. But I have more to this problem. There's so much going on here. They speak one language. They all have a common tongue. And then God diversifies the tongues. Why? I have a theory. God had said, "Go and fill the earth." They were not to live in one place. People should spread out. Perhaps this is an argument against congestions in cities. Let me read to you from Gunther Plaut's commentary on the Torah. This, related to the previous interpretation, is one that sees the city as the center of the account and all else is secondary. You hear that? Everybody here knows it as the Tower of Babel story. And he's saying that there is an interpretation of this story where that's totally secondary. It's the building of the city that's primary. The tower is merely the embodiment of the city, and when the story closes, it speaks only of the city. A brief notation reveals the whole purpose of the Babel story. Genesis 11:8: And they stopped building the city. Remember I told you no mention of the tower? This understanding reflects most clearly a pervasive biblical motif: the city is the ultimate expression of man's presumption. Babel was the city, and to the anti-urban tradition of the Bible, its downfall appeared as a proper divine judgment. Babel referred, of course, to Babylon, but it also symbolized symbolized all empire building, corruption, arrogance, craving to erect monuments, desire for fame. It meant the turning away from what were considered the primary occupations of man, agriculture and the tending of flocks. Farmers and nomads fill the earth, i.e., they live close to it and its creatures. City dwellers flee from the earth. Babel was an alienation of man from the simple life. And it is no accident that the Bible next turns to Abraham, a semi-nomad, as the source of all future blessings. This resonates, I know, deeply with my wife, who's probably thrilled to find biblical justification for her belief that we are far too far from the land. Listen to this one: with the city as its As a critical object, the Babel story has a particularly contemporary ring. Western urbanized man also struggles with his estrangement from God. He too reaches for and appears to achieve powers formerly ascribed to God. One may therefore find in the Babel tale a suggestion that ever greater urbanization, coupled with a concentration on technology and a reaching toward outer space as a step toward further conquests leads man not to unity but to division. To put it in other terms, will modern man drive God into deeper hiding and further dramatize his eclipse, or will his actions call forth, as they did in ancient days, a God who will come down and look and then confound man again? Isn't it true Isn't it true that the modern Western world is an urban technological marvel where God is absent? It doesn't have to be. I love my city and I love technology, but I am religious in spite of it, and by the way, you often have to think about rejecting it. For example, it is part of the reason that technology in religious Jewish life is rejected on the Shabbat. It is the day in which you can return to the ideal of closeness to the earth, closeness to the world, non-technological marvel, what it means to be a human being. I read an article in the Wall Street Journal about 2 years ago they are developing, and if you live to a normal lifespan, you will probably see this, as I will probably see it, where you will be able, through artificial intelligence with computers, actually feel your way through a building, through a room. You'll be able to move people around. Do you understand what I'm saying? You will be able, through touch, simulate reality. I am worried that at a given point. If people are addicted to television, which is unidimensional, what will happen when there's artificial intelligence and you could just play all day with your— there are people who play all day with computers now. What will be then? And I'm totally pro-computer, but by the way, that is one of the reasons I am so avid about a day of the week away from technology. It is what keeps me sane and human. It, it, it— the technology, this is not— when I sit at the computer, I have to remember to bless God and not the inventor of the personal computer. You see, these are very important lessons here, how technology and urbanization can make you human-centered rather than God-centered in your life. It's not so much a danger when you see a cow give birth. What do you say when a cow gives birth? "Aren't people great?" Of course not. When you play with your computer, you say, "Aren't people great?" When you see a big building, you go, "Aren't people great?" When you see a cow give birth, you go, "Isn't God great?" Big difference. Big difference. That's what happened here. The tower's nothing. It's just an expression of it all. We love technology. That's why you have this thing. Let me tell you how they built it. That sentence, it's so atypical of the Torah. The Torah is really concerned with how you build monuments, but they love technology in those days, and we love technology in our days. And I don't have a problem with technology. I know it's danger. I know it's danger. German companies could build Cyclone B gas. What was it used for? Not very godly means in gassing millions of Jews and others, right? But the technology was there. It's a double-edged sword. This comes from a person who has a 486 computer, 33 megahertz. And I'm upping it to 50 MHz. But I have my day of the week which is for God, and there ain't no computer on. It is a day devoid of the technological wonders. Something to, to think about. It means a lot to me. It doesn't mean a lot to everybody who observes it because they haven't thought it through. But it means a lot. Not done at all with this. The people began, the people who caused this whole little problem of technology and urbanization, what did they have? They had a common language. Now, isn't that interesting? They had a common language. Common language. They all spoke the same language. I assume that the vast majority of you, if not every one of you, would hold that it would be a beautiful thing if there was only one language in the world. I'm not sure. Let me read to you something from a traditional Jewish commentator, Seforno. The real crime of the builders was that they tried to impose one religion on mankind. This is an orthodox traditional— The Torah doesn't trust people. In case you missed the past sessions, God looked at what he created and got very sad. Why? Because we have a pretty strong will towards doing things bad and so on. Okay, very suspicious of human beings, and I am very suspicious of human beings. I don't walk around suspicious and paranoid, but I just know what people are capable of doing. But do you know what people are capable of doing the worst? Unified people. I have said, and it always goes against the grain of the clergy, even though I agree with them on so many issues, I will sometimes raise the issue on the radio of, uh, would you like to see the world hold your religion? And the, uh, the priest and the minister say yes. The rabbi says, I would like it, but it's not important, which is fair. Or even, I wouldn't like it, it's not necessary. 'Cause it isn't necessary in Judaism. Judaism's goal is not that the world be Jewish, it's that the world be ethical monotheists. Is that the world believe in a God who demands ethical behavior. But for Christianity and Islam, it is an ideal that the world be one religion. It's not, believe it or not, from this reading of this commentator, and in other places I'll show you later, God's ideal. God wants to be God of all human beings, but it isn't necessarily good if there's only one way to come to him. Because when people speak the same language, they can do a lot of bad things to other people. Because as soon as you dissent from the language, you are a dissenter, you are a heretic. I think, I've said this frequently, why were democracies almost always the product of Protestantism rather than Catholicism in the Christian world? United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, whereas South and Central America didn't develop democracies in some cases not until today, and in most cases not until recently. It's not an anti- Catholic statement, God forbid, but there's got to be a reason. It's not a coincidence. I think that the major reason is Catholicism is unified. Protestantism, there are enough denominations in Protestantism to keep you counting forever. It is one of the glories of Protestantism. And that is why in my own religion, Judaism, I glory in the number of denominations. I don't glory I don't look for the day when all Jews are Orthodox, or all Jews are Conservative, or all Jews are Reform. I think it would be a tragedy. Aside from which, it wouldn't work. Because if— no, first of all, there's never such a thing as all. Usually it means most. What happens to the others? They're finished. I don't trust humans with power. Because as it says, "Al tiftichu bine divim biven adam she'en lo teshuah," in the Psalms, "Don't believe in princes," in politicians, in human beings who can save you. It's my argument to the Ross Perot people. It's a great idea to reject Washington, but all you did was look for another Washingtonian. The place to save America is at home, not in Washington's politics. Be a big brother, be a big sister, join a synagogue or church group to help people. But people don't think like that. It's all grandiose, putting faith in people. Well, I can't believe in Bush, or I can't believe in Clinton, so I'll believe in Perot. That's nonsense. It doesn't matter who the Perot is, it's nonsense. Don't believe in people. Don't believe in people power. Believe in diversity. Because the more centralized power, urbanized, technological, centralized power, the more it is skeptical, and God will have to scatter them. Maybe it wasn't a punishment that they got all different languages. Maybe it's a blessing. I think it's a blessing, all the languages of the world. It comes with a price. I can't talk to a lot of people except through an interpreter. But it comes with a great, great benefit. Different culture. Richness. Human variegated richness. Do you really feel as if you've visited a foreign country if you go to Canada or if you go to Australia or England? Oh, there are some foreign customs, like they drive on the wrong side of the road, but, uh, I lived in England for a year. Of course, I, I, I felt very much at home, except for the weather. Absolutely. You want to go to a foreign place and see other ways of living, you go to a place place where they speak a different language. I mean, it's a good thing. I don't trust anybody who wants world government. It's a big movement among secular people, among secular humanists, the movement One World, One Government. They scare the living daylights out of me. I don't want the UN to have the power that these people want it to I don't trust it. I don't trust the United Europe. I don't trust united anything. I trust diversity. I trust pockets of power. I don't trust religion alone with power. That's why I believe in separation of church and state in America and in Israel. If religion had all power, it would misuse it. That is why it's important It's important to have strong religion, strong government, strong schools, strong different religions, strong unions, strong companies. The more pockets of strength in a society, the better. That's what's going on here, believe it or not. I read to you from a traditional, totally traditional source. God scatters them. Now I got another lesson for you. What is their sin? What I wrote, it was self-absorption and foolishness. Building for no reason except to make a high building. Building just to make a name for themselves. Making a name, as I said earlier, is not a problem in and of itself. Remember, God promises that very Abraham. The question is, a name for yourself for what? Very relevant to Americans' desire for fame. The number of Americans who don't care why they would be known so long as they're known, from John Lennon's murderer to others who do horrible things to the people who went on the gun show to make fools of themselves. The biggest desire among millions and millions of Americans is not to do good, but to be known. To make a name for myself. Was it Andy Warhol said, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes? 15 minutes of immortality. That's the problem. It's good to want to make a name for yourself. The question is how. But a name for yourself as an end in itself, that's what they wanted there with their tower. This God doesn't care for. Make a name for yourself doing something good. And finally, my other final lesson is, there is a very good thing in diversity. God diversifies them and sends them away from the city. Do you remember what God said? God makes this great announcement about leaving your parents. Do you remember that? And therefore, And therefore a man shall leave his father and mother— I was not able to— sometimes said mother first. I'll often do it correctly. Father and mother, cling unto his wife, and they shall be as one flesh. Remember how I taught it? You can't cling to a woman until you leave your parents. So long as you're still mama's boy, you can't be a man. You got to grow up. The Book of Genesis is about growing up much more than it's about Judaism. Judaism is Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Genesis is growing up. You can't grow up till you leave what's comfortable. You know what they were with one language in one city? Two damn comfortable. Ladies and gentlemen, I will offer you as a thesis that all culture and civilization worthy of the name, that we consider to be higher culture, emanates from interacting with the other, with the different. There is no question that part of the Jews' growth as such a dynamic culture was because it was located in the crossroads of so many civilizations. Whereas the Japanese stayed the same century after century after century, and they had to be pried open to the world. And the same with other places. It's not anti-Japanese, this statement. Any place that would be isolated from the other would be like that. And nobody wants to come with the other. It's uncomfortable. You want to stay home where it's comfy, where they all speak the same language and say the same thing. That's the first sentence of the statement. It's not just that they spoke the same language. It's so powerful. It says with varimachadim and the same things. That's what they loved about each other. They all said the same thing. That was— that— what a great life. Same city, same language, same words. God, is that comfortable? Is the ultimate politically correct world. It was Stanford. There it was. It wasn't Babel, it was Stanford. Where you have a few words you're allowed to say and that's it. That's comfortable. Genesis and Judaism at its best is against comfort. It's for growing up, and they ain't the same. You've got a choice in life, friends. You either grow up or want, or stay comfortable. Most people want to be comfortable. They don't want risks. This is certainly true in America today. If it's got a risk, the FDA should ban it. If it's got a risk, then I have to sue if something goes wrong. I will not take risks. I will not pay for any options I make. I will not make a choice. That is the movement towards the more powerful government so that I am taken care of from cradle to grave. But what does it produce? It produces boring people. I was with a Danish woman in Washington. She was interviewing me at one of the papers. I said, "Why did you move?" She said, "Because It's more interesting in America. That's true, because it's so diverse and because you can fail. If you want to build a civilization with no risk, no cutting of ties to comfort, you can, but you won't be fully human. You will be taken care of in body. But you will die in spirit. You need the chance of risk. You need the chance of cutting off. That's what we gotta do. It's twice now in the first 12 chapters of, uh, of the Genesis that it's telling you don't get comfortable. Leave your parents. Now, what is it here? Leave the city, leave the same language. And what's the first thing God says to Abraham? Leave it all. Leave your father, leave your upbringing, leave your geography, leave everything. You can't be my man if you're going to be comfortable at home. The first words of God to Abraham— and that's the purpose of Genesis up till now, is to lead you to God and Abraham— is, get out of here. Leave your father. Leave your roots. Go. Be a man. It's tough to be a man, and I obviously include women totally in the idea. It's not a genital-based statement. It's tough to be a grownup. That's better, I guess. Peter Pan. We all want to stay young and comfortable, say the same things, think the same things, and feel comfy. And, uh, it's not what it wants. Genesis is a It's about growing up. That's the incredible story of the City and Tower of Babel. Rather different than I learned it as a kid. Too bad. All right, we are up to 11:10. Took time out. Remember I told you what chapter 10 was? The, uh, the table of nations that came from Noah. Took time out to give you the last pre-Abrahamic story, the story of the city and Tower of Babel. And now in chapter 11, right afterwards, it continues. This is the line of Shem, because this is the only line that matters. The other ones don't matter. Just as you remember, we only learned the line of Abel, uh, and so on. Not— excuse me, not the line of Abel. He had no line. Uh, we learned the line of— hmm, of Seth. Exactly, exactly. The lines that matter leading to Noah. And here, the lines leading to Abraham are what matter. So here we have the lines from Shem the son of Noah, to Terach, which you will find at chapter 11, verse 32. This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this. Now back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom. The days of Terach came to 205 years, and there— uh, oh, but let me tell you before— excuse me, let's do here, 31. Chapter 11, verse 31. Terach took his son Abram— first mention of Abraham, who is known now as Abram, gets a name change later. Terach took his grandson Abram, his grandson Lot, or Lot as it's anglicized, the son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai. That's Sarah's name before her name was changed. She's married to Abram, the wife of his son Abram. And they set out together from Ur of the Chaldeans, which is in about modern Iraq, to the land, for the land of Canaan. But when they had come as far as Haran, they settled there. The days of Terach came to 205 years, and Terach died in Charan. The next sentence, I'll never forget when Leonard Bernstein gave a lecture on Beethoven at Harvard. I think it's the unanswered question. But I heard him say, all of music was changed with the first the first chord of the Third Symphony of Beethoven. All of a sudden you have this relatively calm and ordered world of classical and baroque, rococo music, and then all of a sudden in the Third Symphony, boom, boom, to the land that I will show you. See, he had stopped in Haran. If God wasn't pleased with that, he shouldn't have stopped. Get up and go. Leave everything. By the way, guess how old Abraham was when God told him to move on? I would assume most people would think he was a young or young middle-aged man. 70 75. I have something to say about that in a moment, but this is the point that I wanted to make, or I did make earlier. This is the only way to grow, is to get up. By the way, it's a problem. Does that mean your kids should move to New York? Milwaukee. I'm serious, it is a problem. I don't have the answer. I can tell you though that all of you moved to California. I would say the percentage of you born here is very, very small. I'll never forget, this was one of the priceless calls in 10 years of radio. Woman calls up, says, "You know, Dennis, I went back home to Indiana." And I'd say the woman, I think, was about 35, 40 years old. I went back home to Indiana, Dennis, and I saw the family and the life back there, and it's really better. You know, everybody knows each other, and it's just, it's a beautiful thing. So after she waxed euphoric about it, I said, I'm just curious, why'd you move? Well, my mother totally ruled my life. And then she goes in as if she forgot every word she had just said about how miserable it was back in Indiana. I started laughing. Don't you hear what you're saying? She said, you're right, I forgot. She had forgotten why she moved. I'm not saying everybody Everybody has to move. I don't— my kid moves, I'll kill him. But it's a very tough issue. It's tough emotionally. But we are supposed as parents not to raise our children. We're supposed to raise adults. That's a tough thing for a parent to do. Parent to swallow, because if they're adults, they leave. That's the way it works. The adults don't stay home. And if your kid does stay home past a certain age, it's— you're not so thrilled. It's not the way the order of the universe was made to be. And so with the ultimate unique individual thus far, Abraham, the statement is made: Get up and start anew. Leave to the place that I will show you. Here's the $64,000 question of the whole Torah: Why did God pick Abraham? And if you know that, you're better than me. I have been battling with this issue as long as I have been thinking about this stuff, which is my whole life. You know, the Jewish tradition also battles with it, to the extent that when I was a kid, I didn't learn Torah straight from the Torah. I learned it from stories, as most kids do early. You don't go straight to the source. You get Bible stories storybooks. Well, unfortunately, and I say that with, I say that understanding what I'm saying, in traditional Jewish education, Orthodox Jewish education, they put in rabbinic Agadot, legends of the rabbis, in with the Torah story, and you don't know which is legend. And legends are very, very deeply powerful and worthwhile. They're just not literally true. They are ways of understanding the text, filling in the gaps. There's no greater gap in the Torah than the gap between Terach lived to 205 and God said to Abram, "Get out of your father's land, house, etc." It's almost like, hold on, I don't know, where's, you know, you look at Numbers that's missing. Where is the Mishnah? Okay, why did he— why did he pick Abram? Why not— why not Nachor? Why isn't Nachor the father of Judaism and the father of monotheism? Why? Why Abram? So I have some thoughts. Thought 1: the text is silent now, but not afterwards. We learn about Abraham later, and the more you know about him, the more you have an understanding as to why he might have been picked. Okay, we'll talk about that when we get to it. It's the opposite, by the way, with Moses. God picks Moses, but you know exactly why God picks Moses after his terrific 3 things that he does. Which, killing the Egyptian, helping the girls, and, uh, and, uh, oh, and getting in when two Jews were arguing and stopping the fight. In other words, you find out things about him, but you know nothing, nothing about Abraham. Now, you also, by the way, know why God chose Noah. It says because he was a tzaddik. If it just would have said one sentence, "And God saw that Abram was a tzaddik, a righteous man," and then said, "Leave," we'd have no question. It says nothing. The silence has to be deliberate. So, this is my thought: Why did God choose the Jews? Is a similar question. It's not because of intrinsic merit. In fact, the Torah says, as I cited earlier, the Torah says, "It is not because of anything you did that I have chosen you." Therefore, too, I think that we can understand why there is a sense of arbitrariness in choosing Abram. If Abram were a truly righteous person, person, and the Jews come from Abraham, the Jews could have said, "We're better than non-Jews because we come from the best ancestor." And I am convinced— I never read this anywhere, but I am convinced that that is the reason that he is simply picked. Nothing positive is said about him. Nothing is told about him. He's a human being who was chosen. Could be totally randomly as far as the text is concerned. That is how deeply— I already showed it to you earlier— when Shem is not blessed, only God is. That the Torah doesn't want Jews to think they're intrinsically better than anybody. Isn't that something? We're told that Noah was good because the whole The world comes from Noah, but the Jews come from Abraham. And no Jew can ever walk around and say, "Oh, our ancestors are better." No way. He was picked for no reason whatsoever, is exactly what the Torah is bending backward to say to us. I love that. I love the idea, and I love the Torah for doing it. The total loathing of the idea of any intrinsic superiority or inferiority of any group. Because there is no more evil doctrine than racial supremacy. None. Because it means that the people who are not a member of your race can never change. They are intrinsically bad. Whether it is white racism, black racism, or any racism, it is the worst possible idea. You are intrinsically inferior, I may therefore destroy you. Auschwitz was impossible without racial antisemitism. Regular antisemitism didn't produce extermination. You need racial antisemitism to produce it. Check my book, Why the Jews. I make a big chapter on what the difference between Nazi antisemitism and all previous antisemitism was. In all previous antisemitism, if a Jew converted to the antisemites' thinking, he was accepted the next day. The next day. But in racial antisemitism, a Jew can never change. That is why it is so dangerous when you have a Jeffries teaching black racism, that melanin determines the content of your character, the amount of skin melanin that determines your blackness or whiteness, because you can never change, and therefore you have nothing to do do. Just as the different race can never be good, you can never be bad because of your race. It undermines everything God wants in this world, that values be supreme, that people be better. That's why I am convinced nothing is said about Abraham. Next question: How did God speak to Abraham? With this I'll conclude tonight. How did God speak to Abraham? And by the way, it helps look at the question slightly differently of why did God choose Abraham? Why did God speak to Abraham and not his brother Nachor? I would argue the following: God speaks to those who are capable of hearing. If there is an intrinsic worth to Abraham, it is totally to be inferred. It is not stated by the Torah. Here was a person who could hear hear God say, "Leave everything comfortable at the age of 75." Most people don't hear those things. And if they hear it, they would check their hearing. They would go to a psychiatrist. Does God speak to people? I can't answer it absolutely yes or no. But it strikes me that God does speak to people. And the question: can we hear? I would say to you it is very analogous to music. When I play Haydn, my favorite for the last 5 years, the dogs are often around me in the house, the 2 dogs. They hear it too. Dogs have very good hearing. I don't think they hear Haydn. They hear noise from the speakers. I would say that a lot of us are like that. We hear noise or static or nothing. But if you can really, really listen, maybe you can hear God in your life. That's how I would have to argue on this basis. I would also argue one other thing, that God will particularly directly speak to not everyone the same. As a dear friend of mine, a Catholic former priest, once said to me, God is not a democrat, small d. He's not making a Republican message. God does not get voted in. God does not vote, have people vote what he should do. He picks as he wishes, and he picks certain people for certain roles. And if you are going to affect many, you are picked. By the way, you all know that even if you're an atheist. Jonas Salk was picked by by genes to find the polio vaccine, right? That's not democratic. Why didn't he pick me? Why didn't genes pick me? Didn't work out. Picked somebody else, and believe me, you are all happy as I am that at least somebody was chosen for the role of finding the polio vaccine. So God spoke. 2 more verses and we're done. 12:3, let me just read them in English. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you. I will make your name great, and you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and curse him that curses you, and all the families of the earth shall bless themselves by you. And Abram went forth as the Lord had commanded him, and Lot went with him. Abram was 75 years old when he left Haran. A few words on these sentences and we're done. First, God challenges Abraham's faith a number of times in Genesis. This is the first. Leave everything you're comfortable and go where I tell you. You need a lot of faith in God that you're hearing God in order to leave everything that you're comfortable with and just move on, especially when you're 75. It's easier to move on and hear God and leave roots when you're 25 than 75. I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you— excuse me— and curse him who curses you. One's in plural, one's in singular. I would argue to you that that is exactly what has happened in history. Those who have blessed the Jews have been blessed by God, and those who have cursed the Jews have been cursed by God. I would say that generally speaking, very few Jews believe that, but evangelical Christians nearly all believe it. God bless them. I will never forget when Jerry Falwell said during the Arab oil embargo after the Yom Kippur War in 1973. I heard it with my own ears on television when people were buckling under the Arab oil embargo and worried, "What'll happen? We won't be able to use our cars. We'll have to go without oil." And he said to his church on television, or almost memorized it. It's virtually like this: I will much sooner and happily ride a bicycle than give in to the Arab oil embargo, and I will tell you, my fellow Christians, why. And he cited Genesis 12:3: I will bless those who bless you and curse him that curses you. And that, my dear friends, has in history. You know why you know about Babel? Because of the Tower of Babel. Is that a joke? The strongest country in the ancient Near East at the time. And what, how do you know about it? By and large from this tiny group of Jews who wrote about it later. The bigger joke is Pharaoh. The only reason that Pharaoh was a household word is because the Jews made him a household word. The group he wanted to get rid of. This tiny little group is the only reason everybody in the world heard of Pharaoh today. Only Egyptologists would have ever heard the name Pharaoh, and, you know, those who were interested in ancient Egypt. The Jews put Pharaoh on the map, but as a bad guy. Not as a demigod, which he thought he was. Nebuchadnezzar, the only way you know about him, Jewish history. And in the modern times, the Nazis cursed the Jews. Germany was virtually leveled in good parts of it, divided for— let's see, what is it, 45, almost 50 years, 45 years, divided, find it very difficult to assimilate its other half now. The name Germany will be for generations, the first thing many people will associate is still Hitler and the Holocaust. No matter how many nice Germans, and there are plenty of nice Germans, there will be. It has been a cursed name, a cursed name. Spain for 500 years, 500 years. Spain was the leader of Europe at the time that it expelled the Jews, and it sank for 500 years after the expulsion. The King of Spain just mentioned that, not this Jew. The Soviet Union, communist antisemitism, the most prolonged attempt to destroy Judaism in any one period from 1917 to 1990? And boy, am I proud. I wrote in the Russian edition of my book, The Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism, years ago. I wrote, and it's in Russian, and it was in Russia when when Marxism will be studied as a 20th-century totalitarian aberration, Jews will still be living Judaism. I had no idea it would happen so soon, but I had no doubt that it would happen, that the Jews would survive the Soviet Union. It was cursed. And, uh, I'll give you one more contemporary example: the Arab world. The most anti-Semitism today, in organized fashion, is to be found in the Arab world. It is the only part of the world today not moving to democracy. And I swear to you, as life goes on, the two are intrinsically related. If they make peace with Israel, there will be unleashed forces of democratization in their own world. You cannot be— you cannot hate the Jews and run a good society. It has never happened. It will not happen. So it's come out true. Through you all the families of the earth will be blessed. Not through you your families will be blessed, Abraham. All the families families of the earth. The Jewish role is entirely a universal one. Make me, God, known to the world, and through you all humanity will be blessed. I am not just the Jews' God. By the way, it was a big act of faith. Imagine how Abraham felt at the age of 75 hearing that it'll be a big nation, and he had no kids. It wasn't like he was married to a 45-year-old, excuse me, 35, 25-year-old. She was his contemporary. Final word, he was 75 when God gave him the call. May I tell you one of the things that I I find singly, uniquely annoying as I speak to people all over. It's when an older person will come over to me and say the following: "I really like what you said, but it's the youth that has to hear you, because we're too old to change." Let me say publicly to any older person who feels that: if you ever meet me, please don't say that. I find it depressing and contemptible. I find it depressing because I intend on getting old, and if I will not be able to change when I am old, I ask God publicly to remove me at the age I can't change any longer, because then all I will be doing is consuming and relieving myself. I find it Contemptible because it is an anti-human statement. It means that you're an animal who is simply a little more sophisticated. Animals can't change and the elderly can't change. Is that what you're telling me? Why do you think it said that Abraham was 75? What's the point in saying it the verse after he's told to leave everything? Of course it's never too late. The rabbis of the Talmud say the same thing. You know when he became Jewish officially? Circumcised? Age of 99. It's quite a time to undergo circumcision. And they did not have local anesthetics in those days. And the Talmud says it's to teach that no one should ever say, "I'm too old to become a Jew." It's never too old. What kind of nonsense? I will say this: I am convinced that a person of 75 who says it's too old to change was incapable of change at 35. I don't believe that you could lead a life capable of growth and then one day stop being capable of it. I find that it is not logical, and things not logical don't happen. That is a great lesson. This has been Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager. 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