Timeless Wisdom: Weekend Torah Teaching: Genesis 18:1-18:33

Your dog and a stranger are drowning. You can only save one. Who do you choose? Dennis Prager says your answer reveals everything about how you define right and wrong. In his new book, If There Is No God, Prager exposes the danger of emotion-based morality and why, without objective truth, society descends into chaos. This isn't a religious book. It's a rational case for moral clarity in a confused age. If There Is No God, from Dennis Prager. Order now at PragerStore.com. 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.

I don't approach this solely as literature. I approach this as my Torah. It is my, my teacher. Torah means teacher. Torah does not mean law. It's a common misconception. It's understandable why it's made, uh, and therefore in Judaism it is a religious act to study Torah. However, I don't teach it as purely something of relevance to Jews. My whole attitude to Judaism generally and to the Bible's specifically is, if it doesn't have something to say to everybody, then it has nothing to say to anybody. Is that clear to you? Either it is completely irrelevant— if your background is Hindu or Muslim or atheist, it should not matter. This stuff should speak to you. If it only spoke to Jews, I wouldn't be here. I approach it as a human being first and as a Jew Jewish specifically, but first as a human. That is why I read it to try to find its relevance to our lives today. And if there is a unique aspect to my teaching of the Torah— Torah is the 5 books of Moses, the first 5 books of the Hebrew Bible, the first 5 books of the Hebrew or Christian Bible— then if I didn't find it relevant, or that would be, that would not be a unique thing. That is what I try to bring to it. What does it say to me? What can I learn from it? I never ask you to take anything on faith. If it's not in the text, then you point that out to me and I'll stop teaching it. That, that idea— is that clear to you? It's got to be there. You've got to look at it and say, wait a minute, based on the text, what you've just said doesn't make sense, or I read it differently. That's fine. Now the only thing I want to say is I like to try to get through a certain amount of material. If I made this a class of constant interaction, we would probably do 2 verses each night. As it is, we do about 8. But the fact is, we would really get nowhere. So I beg of you, and I mean this sincerely, I want your feedback. I want your questions, your alternate readings, and if something isn't clear, I need to know that as well. Mark it down, and I will leave time two times: at the end of each class and at the beginning of the next. Tonight I'm not, obviously, because there's nothing to ask about from a previous session. One final word: I have done the first 17 chapters of Genesis. Uh, just to bring you up to date in case you missed it, God created the world, was unhappy with what he ended up creating with regard to human beings because we turned out to do so much hurting of one another. So God decided to try again, destroying the world in the flood, saving only Mr. and Ms. Noah and their children. That didn't work out too well either, and so God, for reasons that are absolutely unmentioned in the Bible, picks one person through whom to make his will known to humanity. This is one, the one preamble idea that I want to share with you and then go into Genesis 8, Genesis 18. I view the Jews as God's final attempt to bring knowledge of good and evil into the world. Christians view Jesus as the final attempt. Muslims view Muhammad as the final attempt. But whatever your view, what were the earlier attempts? Let's not debate what the final was. Let's figure out how we needed a final attempt. I view God's attempts to have us do good rather than evil based on 3 attempts. Attempt number 1 is conscience. God's first attempt to have us know good and evil is by implanting in every human being a conscience. Wherever you are in the world, an aborigine in Australia or someone living in Cambridge, Massachusetts today, it wouldn't matter The belief, the Jewish belief, indeed the Judeo-Christian belief, is that we are born with some basic concept of good and evil. That, for example, to inflict unnecessary suffering on another human being, on an innocent human being, is wrong. How do I know this from the Torah? Very briefly, because I don't want to go over material, which reminds me, Parenthetically, if you are interested enough to really get into this, tapes of every one of these sessions are available, both video and audio. If you are television addicted, get the video and you'll think you're watching TV while learning. Otherwise, feel free to get the audio and play it in your car or wherever you would like. I developed these points at length then, so I don't want to do it at great length now. Very simply. I read conscience into the story of Cain and Abel. The children of Adam and Eve are Cain and Abel. And by the way, again, I always have to deal with some very basic issues. Do I believe that Adam and Eve actually existed as Adam and Eve? The answer is yes and no. I don't know, and it doesn't matter. To me, Adam and Eve are more real than the people who live 3 houses away from me. There are people, real people, who live 3 houses away from me, but they are not relevant to my life. I don't even know who they are, but they really exist. Adam and Eve may not have really existed, but they're very relevant to me. Do you understand, therefore, why the question doesn't interest me? Did they really exist as such, a guy named Adam and his wife named Eve? Who cares? Let's say the answer is yes. Does it make any difference? If the answer is no, does it make any difference? The purpose of the Torah is to teach, not to reveal geology or anthropology or any other scientific pursuit of history. That's how I read it. It's my teacher. So I don't know. When I say to you that Cain and Abel were the children of Adam and Eve, Can I prove it? No. But if I proved it, would it matter to you? Would it change what you did tonight when you got home? Would it matter tomorrow at work? What matters tomorrow at work is the idea of conscience that Cain and Abel teach. Now, how do they teach it? The first human beings after the first human beings are Cain and Abel. And what does one do to the other? Murders him. Not a very propitious start for the human species. As I pointed out earlier, and it's not my point, it's Rabbi Gunther Plaut's great, great point. He once asked the group, "Who is the most tragic figure in the Bible?" And people called out every conceivable person, and then he said, "You're all wrong. By far the most tragic figure in the Bible is God." And there's great wisdom to that. God had invested so much in the creation of the world and the creation of people, and what turns out with all the beauty God gives? It turns out that Cain murders his brother. Now here's my point for conscience. God says to Cain, "Where's your brother Abel?" And remember Cain's response? "Am I my brother's keeper?" Or, I didn't know if I'm my brother's keeper. Anyway, I went into that in depth because his response could be understood in many ways. But his response should have been, hey, I killed him, so what? If he had no conscience, he should have simply said, I killed him, why are you asking? Don't you know? What's the matter with that? Why are you— you seem to be annoyed, God. I don't understand why. I killed him. He didn't say that. It's clear he's guilty, and he knows he's guilty. How did he know? No Ten Commandments, no law from God. Thou shalt not murder. It's built in. It's called conscience, the still small voice telling you that's wrong, that's right. You can blunt your conscience unbelievably easily. When people make person-to-person phone calls and first dial through the operator just to get the other person to call back station to station, they have blunted their conscience. Everybody knows they're robbing the phone company. Who does that? But they have a million ways of getting around it. The phone company, those cheats! It's a mitzvah to cheat the phone company. Mitzvah is Hebrew for commandment, or good deed, as it's often called.

This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this. Your beloved dog and a stranger are both drowning. You can only save one. Who do you save? Every time Dennis Prager asks that question, his audience splits three ways. One-third chooses the dog, one-third chooses the stranger, and one-third aren't sure. Why? Because we live in an age where increasingly feelings define right and wrong. But if morality is based on emotion, then murder, rape, and theft are just opinions. And if people feel justified, why is rioting or destruction wrong at all? In his new book, If There Is No God, Dennis Prager explains why civilizations cannot survive without objective morality and why Judeo-Christian values shape the moral foundations of the free world.

If you claim that certain things are good, certain things are evil, independent of how you feel about it, you are in effect affirming God.

If There Is No God by Dennis Prager, available now at pragerstore.com. That's pragerstore.com. Now back to more of Dennis Prager's timeless wisdom.

We have an infinite ability to dull our conscience. You dull your conscience with repeated wrongdoing. It is very hard to cheat the first time. It's very hard to commit adultery the first time, I've been told. Make that clear at the outset. But the 10th time, apparently, it's a lot easier. Whatever wrong you do, it's easy to blunt the conscience through rationalization, repeated action, whatever. Cain kills his brother and doesn't say, "Gee, what's wrong with that?" Okay, what is God's second attempt at giving us knowledge of good and evil? Second attempt is through Noah. God realizes— and I put realizes in quotes— whether God actually learns or not is a philosophical question I don't want to get into. Because if you imply that God— if you state that God learns, you're implying that God doesn't know something before he learned it. Then God's not omniscient. Those are not things that I really like. That's fun theology. I'm not into that much. But God realizes, quote unquote, so that we understand how things develop, I have to reveal basic morality. It is not enough to implant it in the conscience. So God gives Noah and his children certain basic moral laws, which include not murdering. All right, basic Jewish belief that there were 7 moral laws that the entire world is responsible for. That doesn't work either. The world lapses again after Noah. Into hurting each other, into evil, which is what we're going to get to today. The third example of universal evil in Sodom and Gomorrah. And with— that's the most dramatic example, but we already have discovered it prior to this. Therefore, God gives one third, a third attempt, a final attempt to reveal knowledge of good and evil to the human being. It didn't work to implant conscience. It did not work to— we're getting a little— we are now. Is anybody up there where it's echoing? Thank you, sir. The second attempt is through the children of Noah. It's revelation, but it's universal. That doesn't work. The third attempt is, I will reveal my will to an individual group of people who will carry my will into the world. That people is known as the Jews. I'm writing an article for the next issue of my journal, Ultimate Issues, which is titled very simply, Why Are There Jews? Why? I, this committed religious Jew, regards the Jewish people as an ad hoc committee. That in effect, should the Jewish role ever actually be realized, there won't be a need for Judaism anymore. It may sound to some Jews as revolutionary or heretical, but it's not really. The world didn't start with Jews. Jews. Why should it end with Jews? The Jews have a task. If the task is completed, then you don't need them anymore. It's like, it's, it's like how I feel about the civil rights establishment. I don't think they're needed anymore. I think that the basic civil rights legislation was formed, and after that, it's just basically staying in jobs, like the March of Dimes would have done if they had continued to collect for polio after the Salk vaccine. Once you have a mission completed, you should retire. Now, the Jewish mission is not completed to bring the world to God and God-based ethics, ethical monotheism. So there's still this need. But the fact is that it is, as it were, God's third attempt. That's how I look at all of this, okay? That attempt is done through a man called Abraham. Why God chose Abraham, as I pointed out, is no way implied in the Torah. All of a sudden it says, 'And God said to Abraham as follows,' and that was it. We don't know why, but we're going to learn today what sort of human being it was that God chose. If you would like to bring a Bible with you and follow along, you're certainly welcome to. In some ways it could be distracting. You might just want to hear it, so there's no need to, but you're certainly welcome to in future sessions. We are up to chapter 18. And the Lord appeared to him, that is to Abraham, by the terebinths of Mamre. I always like— anybody have another word for Terebinths there? Trees. I prefer trees. I love when they give these English words. Yes, oaks. I like oaks too. I never met a terebinth in my life, so it's— I always get a kick out of that. Anyway, God appeared to him, and he was sitting at the entrance of the tent as the day grew hot. Now again, for those of you not studied with me, I learned in yeshiva, Jewish religious school, till I 18 years of age. And I learned there one of the greatest things that I could ever learn. When you read, always ask, why did they use this word and not another? Why did they give this idea when they could have dropped it? For example, in this sentence, couldn't it have been, the Lord appeared to him at the oaks of Mamre, and then, and then go to the next sentence? Why do we need— he was sitting at the entrance of the tent as the day grew hot. Why do we need either of those things? I think what we are— what the Torah is trying to show here is the sort of man that, uh, that he is, the sort of person that Abraham is. The one of the key characteristics of Abraham, positive characteristics, is hospitality, a massive sense of wanting to do good to the stranger. How do we know? You know from this, and we know from the way he argued for Sodom and Gomorrah, which we'll get to tonight, one of the most dramatic stories in the entire Bible. Anyway, it's a very odd thing. Look at what happens here. And by the way, it's also in the heat of the day. Why is that important, that it's in the heat of the day? Because it's a time when you wouldn't expect to see people walking in the desert. It's the last time that you would expect it. So he has a particular sense of, of empathy for strangers walking in the heat of the day in the desert. Now it's a very interesting thing here about what happens. It says that God appeared to him, but look at sentence number 2. Looking up, he raised his eyes. So Sometimes I'll use my own translation. And he looks and he sees 3 men approaching him. This is extremely confusing. Where's God? The sentences don't flow one into the other. It says that God appeared to him at the Oaks of Mamre, and then the second verse is he looks up and you think you see— and he saw God. And he saw 3 men walking to him. It's very confusing. There are a number of possible interpretations, none of which are absolutely certain to be true. My sense is that the beginning of chapter 18 is for us. It's not for Abraham. Are you with me? I'll give you an example to— and I don't like to do this at all for foreshadow what's coming up, but I have to do this to make it clear. When God commands Abraham later to sacrifice his son Isaac, it says in the beginning of the story, 'And God tested Abraham.' That was not for Abraham. Abraham didn't know it was a test. It's for us later to know what's happening. Are you with me? It's for us after the event to know what's going on. God appears to Abraham. And now let's go— I'm telling you that, I the narrator, I'm telling you that. And now let's go back to the story. He looks up and he sees 3 men. He doesn't see God, he sees 3 men. So we are now aware that God is going to be entering the story, even though for Abraham it's men involved in the story, at least at the beginning. Is that clear? Okay. Abraham looks up and he sees 3 men approaching him. He looks and he runs to greet them from the opening of the tent and bowing to the ground.

All right, this episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this. Your beloved dog and a stranger are both drowning. You can only save one. Who do you save? Every time Dennis Prager asks that question, his audience splits three ways. One-third chooses the dog, one-third chooses the stranger, and one-third aren't sure. Why? Because we live in an age where increasingly feelings define right and wrong. But if morality is based on emotion, then murder, rape, and theft are are just opinions, and if people feel justified, why is rioting or destruction wrong at all? In his new book, If There Is No God, Dennis Prager explains why civilizations cannot survive without objective morality and why Judeo-Christian values shape the moral foundations of the free world.

If you claim that certain things are good, certain things are evil, independent of how you feel about it, You are in effect affirming God.

If There Is No God by Dennis Prager, available now at PragerStore.com. That's PragerStore.com. Now back to more of Dennis Prager's timeless wisdom.

This is a way of telling you the sort of man Abraham is, that he goes and he runs to them. It emphasizes his goodness. Let me read to you what Sarna, Abraham Sarna, one of the Bible experts of, uh, in our time, writes. Abraham's open-hearted liberal hospitality to the total strangers knows no bounds. As you will see in the next sentences, he has water brought for them to bathe their feet, a much appreciated comfort, as you can well imagine, to the traveler with his sandal-like footwear and the pervasive dust of the roads. He invites them to rest under the tree, probably one of the famous local terebinths. Famous, very famous, we all know. He promises to fetch a morsel of bread but prepares a lavish feast, and I will talk to you about that. And it tells— and he goes on to say how extraordinary Abraham is. These are strangers. Abraham personally serves the strangers this rich fare and stands close by, ready to attend their needs. Let's go on and watch. Remember, the reader of the Torah the first time, if you're an adult reader, the trouble is— you know what the trouble is? It's both a blessing and a curse that we learn these things, many of us, when we're children. It's like the classics. You learn Shakespeare when you're in high school, you read Dickens when you're in high school, and as a result, you read you know, junkie novels when you're an adult, right? Spy novels and, and gun— what is her name? Jackie Collins, right? So on. I mean, that's what happens. I think we should give kids Jackie Collins and say, don't you dare read Charles Dickens. Well, we'll punish you. You are grounded if you read Shakespeare. Then they will lust for to Shakespeare later. Maybe we do it backwards. It's like this with, I'm convinced, with the Bible. Because the Bible story's for children, so adults don't think it's for them. But if you're coming to this the first time as an adult, there's a blessing to it for you, because you can appreciate it for the depth that it is. I envy people reading it the first time, just like I envy people going to classical music for the first time. What a richness is in store for you to learn it as an adult. Anyway, if you would look at this, you have one overriding question. Who on earth is this Abraham that God would pick him? Well, why did he deserve this extraordinary honor that through him the world will be blessed? That's not— it's not right. Why? So we are now getting filled in with regard to the character of the father of this people that God chooses. Okay, we're not known as Jews yet. They're known as the seed of Abraham. Okay, so we're learning about this man. Let's continue. And he said, my lords. Now it's problematic here. There is one overriding problem that I'll just tell you at the outset. If Abraham knew that these were angels of God, messengers of God, then all of his hospitality is unimpressive. Believe me, any of you would have done at least as much. If you thought God was showing up at your tent. Okay, so, you know, I mean, that's very important. And that is why it is very important— you will understand now what verses 1 and 2 really meant. Verse 1 is God appears to him, but he looks up and sees men. Okay, if he would have said he looked up and saw angels, which is what Lot, his nephew, sees later. You'll see in this, in the next chapter, when Lot looks up, he sees angels. Lot wouldn't treat— or Lot in English, but we'll call him by the Hebrew name for absolutely no reason. I go back and forth. But Lot, Lot treats angels nicely, not people. Abraham treats people nicely. Anyway, he goes, my lords, 'If I have found favor in your eyes, please do not pass by me.' Okay, 'Don't go past me,' which implies to me that he doesn't know they're angels. If he thought they were angels, he would know they came to him, right? He would not have said, 'Don't go beyond to the next tent,' or whatever. Stay. So, 'Stay here.' All right. 'Let a little water be brought. You'll wash your legs, and you will rest under the tree.' And I'll bring a morsel of bread, and you will fill yourself up, that you— and you will— excuse me, you will refresh yourself and then go on, seeing that you have come your servant's way. And they replied, do as you have said. I get a kick out of that reply. It's not the sort of reply we would give would do today if somebody offered a great deal? If I'd say, you know, I'd like to give you a beautiful meal and have a seat here, and then you would say, yes, do exactly as you said. You know, isn't it funny? I mean, when you think about it, they should have— they should have said, gee, thank you, that's very kind of you. That's the way we would speak. In that culture, giving a person an opportunity to engage in hospitality for you was your way of being nice to them. You get it? I am giving you the chance to be nice to me, you lucky thing. It's different from us, obviously, but that's the reason for it. Don't think that these angels were a bunch of rude people. Do exactly as you say. After he offers all these things, okay, so what happens? It's very touching, the wording. Abraham hurries up into the tent. To Sarah his wife. Now again, notice he hurries up. He's really dying to help these people. It's a very touching thing. This is the sort of guy he is. And he says, hurry up and make 3 seahs. That's a measurement. We don't know what it is, of choice, or I don't know what it is. Maybe others do. Of choice flour, knead and make cakes. Now by the way, it is very funny if you'd only stop here there is a certain humor to it. He's all excited to help them and then has Sarah do the work, right? That's why it's very important to read the rest of the story. Oh, let me bring you a lot of food. Sarah, make it. Which has happened in homes, and it has been known to happen. Actually though, he tells her to make the cakes, but he does the other half. This is what we call a liberated man, Abraham. He tells her what to make, but he runs. Notice verse 7, the El Habakkar. Oh, well, I mean, most of you don't know Hebrew. It's unto the, uh, to the herd, uh, to the calf. Uh, he, he ran. Abraham ran. He's still running around. He's just absolutely beside himself helping strangers. For all we know, he was very lonely out there with Sarah, you know. I mean, who Who knows what was going on? It doesn't seem quite the sort of thing most of us would do. You know, can you imagine if Sarah— another group has showed up? You know, did not happen. So he runs out and he takes a, uh, he takes a calf, tender and choice. Tender and choice, takes best one. Gave it to servant boy, probably Ishmael, because it says 'nar' in Hebrew, and, and that is what Ishmael is called earlier the naar. It doesn't— we don't know who, but it's— since it's hanar, the lad, then the assumption is we know which lad it is, and it's— and therefore it's overwhelmingly likely it's Ishmael. And he hurries up to make it. All right, see if I have any notes for myself. I'm sorry, they can starve by the time he finishes. Thank you. That's, uh, it's all right. They're not starving and they're angels. It doesn't matter. Don't worry about them. Okay. All right. So he prepares and it's the— what does he give them? It even tells you what he served them. Verse 8: He takes butter and milk and the calf which he had prepared, and he puts it before them, and he stands on them. I mean, in literal Hebrew, stands right by them, uh, by the— under the tree, and they ate. So he just stands there as the servant, as it were, of these guests who have shown up. Those of you who know Judaism will know that there's a very striking thing about what he served them, that he gave them milk and meat. And this has not gone over big, uh, in the yeshiva world. How could the father of Judaism serve milk and meat together? For those of you unaware, Jewish law bans the eating of milk and meat together at the same time. There are many reasons. I'll just give you one. I mean, I could literally— I have given a whole talk on this subject. Judaism constantly separates anything that represents death from anything that represents life. There it goes, all through Jewish law, and And this is a classic example: meat represents death, milk represents life. That is why a Jew is permitted to eat fish and milk, because fish don't produce milk. Therefore, milk does not represent life vis-à-vis fish. Some of you who are really into both Judaism and zoology will then ask, then why can't you eat chicken with milk? Chickens don't produce milk, yet you can eat the chicken of them. The truth is, in early Judaism, Jews did. There are rabbis in the Talmud who are recorded as having eaten milk and chicken together, like Rabbi Yosei Haglili. However, the rabbis made a fence, what the Hebrew calls a fence around the law, and said, lest a Jew ever confuse meat with chicken and therefore think it's chicken and have it with milk, chicken will arbitrarily be called meat. Okay, if you didn't follow that, don't worry at all. I'm merely explaining to you what the dilemma is here for traditional Jews reading this. The answer that the Orthodox give on this is that he gave the milk first and the meat later. If you read Rabbi Hertz's, uh, commentary on the Torah, there is now a— there is now an Orthodox conservative and reform commentary on the Torah. The Orthodox, which is the, the oldest, is Rabbi Hertz's, the former chief rabbi of the British Empire, published by Sonsino. The reform is Gunter Plaut's, and the conservative has different authors for each book, different commentaries. The Sarna, Nachum Sarna did the Genesis. Rabbi Hertz in the Orthodox commentary says there's no problem here because you can have meat, you can have milk and then meat according according to Jewish law. I have never found it necessary to argue that Abraham followed Jewish law. He lived quite well before Jewish law, so why stick it on him? Why not just understand what it says? He gave them both because Orthodox Jews would never give somebody today milk and then bring meat. It's not a practice that rabbinic Judaism would have would have— it would have allowed technically, but it wasn't done pragmatically. I have never seen a need to saddle the patriarchs or matriarchs with Jewish law when they lived before it. Be that as it may, just confronting something that— that Jews— okay, it's very— this stuff is very confusing. Where did God come in? God comes in out of nowhere. He's talking to 3 strangers, and then it says, "Vayomer Adonai," and God said. Is it clear that one of the strangers is divine? Or all of a sudden does God appear in some way to Abraham? Well, I can only tell you that there are those who hold that this entire thing was a vision where wherever God appeared in this chapter— and I'm talking Jewish, traditional Jewish commentators— took from number 1, remember, God appeared to him, that this was a vision. How God appears to anybody is unknowable. Unless any of you have had God appear to you— excuse me— it's not knowable. So God now speaks to Abraham. Now it gets even more confusing. I did part of this with some of you who were here, but I have rethought this, this chapter, and much more fully, and that's why we're doing some of these things again. Sarah then in verse 15 says— it says then in verse 15, Sarah lied, saying, I didn't laugh. Why did she say that? Because she was afraid. It says that in the Torah, okay, literally. And Sarah lied, saying, I didn't laugh, because she was afraid. And he said, and he replied, no, you did laugh. Who's he? God. It can't be Abraham. Abraham didn't know she laughed. She laughed inside of herself. So now Sarah is talking. Gotta write it down. Sarah is now talking to God. So did Sarah know who these three people were? These are very difficult things to understand here— where God comes in, where the three men are at this moment. Is any one of the men representing God, and that is God? It's not truly possible for us to know. It is understandable though that Sarah would laugh. It's understandable that Sarah would lie. And as I have pointed out frequently, and God knows in Genesis it is as clear as anything, the Torah goes out of its way to portray its heroic figures as human beings with flaws. I mean, if you're looking for a president without character flaws, Please know that the Bible didn't even look for patriarchs and matriarchs of the Jewish people without flaws. And some people running for office have fewer flaws in some, some cases. So it's very important to be tolerant of flaws, not of evil, but of flaws. There's a difference. It's not an evil that she laughed, and it's not presented that way, nor does God get— nor does God punish her. He simply says, is there anything that God can't do? Now let's say she knew it was God even saying this. Would you not laugh? Even if it was God talking to you, you'd still laugh. Understand that God is real to these people. So of course there was a sense— Moses argues with God. See, Moses, Moses and God meet at the burning bush and God says to him, I want you to go and take the Jews out of Egypt. Moses says, are you kidding? Moses says, I can't do that. They won't, they won't believe in me anyway. I stutter anyway. And he gives a whole series of arguments. It's very different, their relationship to God, than what we think it would be. As I've often said, we would be appreciative if just God sneezed in our presence. We so yearn to touch God directly in our lives. We are very different from these people for whom God's reality was so much more vivid, at least for these people certainly. And so they would have normal reactions. Pardon me. They would simply react. And so even if God says you're going to have a child next year, she'll laugh inside of herself. So she denies it, but God said, no, I know you laughed. And who is this God? Is it the— is it the man in name of God, or God? We cannot know. At any rate, verse 16, the men got up from there and they looked upon Sodom And Abraham walked with them to send them away. 17. And God said, obviously, I assume, to himself, am I going to cover, conceal from Abraham that which I do? And after all, Abraham is going to be a great nation, a great— and awesome nation, and through him all the nations of the earth will be blessed. And I'm going to hide from this person this blessing to humanity, what I'm going to do? And then it says why God chose Abraham, why there will be the seed of Abraham. This is the raison d'être of the Jewish people in verse 19 of chapter 18. Okay, why are there Jews? I have known him in order that he will instruct his children and his house after him, that they may follow in God's way. And what does that mean? To do righteousness and justice, or if you will, compassion and justice. A word about this: the world rests on two pillars—justice and compassion. In a sense, I can almost give you the division politically and philosophically today that exists in our society rooted on these two things. Conservative people tend to emphasize justice. Liberal people tend to emphasize compassion. They are both right. However, One without the other is impossible. Justice without mercy is cruel. Compassion without justice will have anarchy. Either, either will ensure a world of evil. You cannot have only justice, and you cannot have only compassion. Whenever you tip too too much to one, you will get a very cruel society. And both need to understand this. Both need to know this, this balance. That's what God is saying here. You must do both. And that is why I have known you, and that is what you Jews are to teach to the world of justice and compassion. Also, you notice, that's what God wants Jews to teach not faith, not faith alone, but faith in a God who demands goodness. And that is what is called ethical monotheism—ethics that derive from one God, goodness that derives from a God. It is a religious mission whose task is human goodness. Verse 20, God said, the cry, the outrage of Sodom and Gomorrah is very great, and their sin is very heavy, very, very grave. I am going— 21. I am going to go down and I am going to see if her cry that has come to me has ended. And if not, I will know. What does that mean? What does it mean God will go down and check it out? This is a very important concept. Remember, anything God does is to teach us how to behave, not to tell us about God. Okay, it means that you, before you cast judgment, you check it out very well. It also means that just in case they have gotten better in the last couple of days, I won't do what I plan to do, Abraham. I'm going to check if the screams have ended. By the way, in Hebrew It is her scream. Do you all have that in your English? 21? Yes, according to the outcry. No, that's different. Um, oh, you have an outcry that has reached me. Okay, it's literally her cry. Has her cry stopped? Her could be Sodom, although I don't know if Sodom would be feminine. It's actually in the Jewish tradition, it's held that it was the cry of one girl. One mistreated girl by the society was enough. She had shown tenderness to a stranger and was tortured to death by the people of Sodom. That's the traditional understanding of that cry. In other words, if a society tortures people for being hospitable, we have a serious problem here. But the point is, that God goes down and checks it out. Okay, you with me? Okay, before we get to Abraham's debate, probably one of the 2, 3 most seminal things to happen in the Torah, I want to talk to you about what God— what is being taught here. And it might take the rest of time because it's so important. There are a number of points here about God being ready to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. Number 1, it tells us, unlike the gods of paganism— and those of you who have taken this from Genesis 1 know that Genesis is a battle with paganism— unlike the gods of all other people The God that the Torah is revealing to the world is a God who is not capricious. It is a predictable God. It is a God who we understand the behavior of because this God acts according to his own moral rules, which is the preface to why Abraham can then challenge him. You couldn't challenge Zeus. 'Zeus, I don't understand what you're doing.' And Zeus would say, 'What, are you nuts? I'm Zeus. I do whatever I want. That's all. I, I want to make love to this woman. I want to, I want to slaughter this village. I'm God.' Now, there is an element of that even in monotheism, that ultimately God's will is inscrutable because we're only people. Nevertheless, God is not capricious. Number 2, God is moral. God is a moral being who is preoccupied with how you and I treat each other. God does not punish people for people mistreating God. God punishes people for mistreating people. This is critical. If you want a human analogy, if you are a parent, I think you will relate to this. Every parent parent wants their child to treat him or her well, to love them, obviously. But the biggest pain is if our children don't treat each other well. We're prepared to take disrespect, that they shouldn't call us, whatever it might be. It's painful, but we can live with it. But it is the most painful when they can't understand each other. And if— can you imagine if one of your children murdered the other? Can you imagine that? Would that not be the ultimate pain? And is there any joy as great as your children loving each other? Is there not a parent who reminds one kid to call the other kid, to remember the other kid's birthday or anniversary or something like that? You want your kids to like each other. That gives you the single greatest sense of joy, much greater than their liking you. You want them to take care of each other. If we feel that way with our children, presumably God, who is the parent of all of us, feels that way when we hurt each other. Because you can't hurt God. Remember, you have to make this analogy that I gave to humans much greater. You can be hurt by your kids. But God can't be hurt by you. If you don't call God, he's not hurt. But if you hurt another one of his children, he is hurt. That's the point that's being made here. That's what God is preoccupied with. Cain and Abel. How the world treated each other in Noah's time. And now with Sodom and Gomorrah. It doesn't say, "Gee, these people don't pray to me." Right there is not even a hint of that. These people don't relate to me, God. These people don't know me. There's nothing of that. They hurt each other. That's what matters. That's what God most cares about— how we treat each other. That's ethical monotheism. Number 4— number 3: God judges. God is not capricious. God is moral. God judges. A lot of people in our time are not happy with that. It's part of, I believe, what helps New Age thought become popular. There's no judging God outside of you in New Age thought. God is in me. Well, if God is in me, then who's to judge me? God is outside of us in the, in the Hebrew Bible, not inside of us. God is out there. We can touch God. We have a spark of the divine, a spark of the divine in us. We're in God's image, but God is not in us. God is outside of us, and God judges us. And God judges us is not a thought that the world lives with well. It is, to my belief, the single greatest reason for antisemitism historically, that the Jews introduced into the world a universal God who judges people and punishes bad people has been a source of great hatred to Jews historically. People don't like that belief. Don't give me a judging God. That bothers me. God is judgmental, to use the worst possible term, in, in— to many people today. He's not judgmental judgmental on trivia. He's judgmental on how you treat other people, though. That's the type of God that is introduced in Genesis. Number 4, both in the case of the destruction of the world in the time of Noah and in the case of Sodom and Gomorrah, we have the principle that the entire The entire world can be wrong, meaning morality does not emanate from society. Morality emanates from God. And if everybody in society says kidnapping is okay, kidnapping is still not okay. You vote laws into power, but you do not vote morality into power. There is a right and there is a wrong, irrespective of what society says. Slavery was wrong even when society said it was okay. And it goes on and on for whatever example you would like to raise. Only Abraham was right here, then only Abraham was right. Only Noah in the whole world was decent because decency is not a matter of society. So when your kids are taught at college that morality emanates from society, they are being taught the opposite of what the Judeo-Christian tradition teaches and what Judaism specifically in this case is teaching. Because at Sodom University, they taught all the ethics of Sodom. Sodom had an ethical system, but God considered it evil. So it didn't matter that professors of ethics at Sodom U would teach one thing— they were wrong. And that is what is being emphasized by the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. One other point: there were two forms of societal evil. One is far worse than the other. And really only two forms. One is the society has evil rules by which people live by. Two, society has good rules but people violate them. Number two is more common today, but it is not, but it is not the only form form of evil. What is number 2? Number 2 is simple. It says in the United— in the United States, murder is against the law. A lot of Americans murder. I don't mean a lot, in other words a huge percentage, but far too many. Okay, in absolute numbers a lot, and percentage-wise not a lot. That's why, by the way, those of you who hear me on the radio constantly inveigh against calling America racist America is not racist. The South was a generation ago. America was a few generations ago. America is not racist. There are racists in it. So too, America is not murderous. There are murderers in it. The difference is very important. A murderous society is a society that says it is okay to murder. Nazi Germany was evil of Type 1. The laws themselves were evil. The Nazi who murdered a Jew did nothing illegal. That's the ultimate form of evil. That's what Sodom and Gomorrah had. Sodom and Gomorrah were of Type 1, the worst form, and today the rarest. But, but it exists. It is when the law is evil that you have the greatest capacity to do evil. That is why there is a great difference. What you see, people will often say, look at how many religious people do evil. That's true, religious people have done evil. But the question is, did the religions countenance it or not? Not whether people did it or not. That is why, to give a contemporary example, The, the Khomeini death edict on Salman Rushdie is far worse than a bunch of murderers in Tehran because they're violating the law. Murderers in Tehran, they're violating Islamic law, they're violating Iranian state law. It's, it's terrible, but it's not as dangerous as an evil law. That's the worst. That's where murder is okay. Those are the two forms, and Sodom and Gomorrah is the worst. It's where a society has stated it's okay to hurt people. It's a mitzvah, as it were, to do bad. Those— there's no hope for such a society. That society must be destroyed. There is always a chance for people violating laws to come back to doing them properly and being decent. That is why I have just answered for myself a question that's plagued me for the last month. It's interesting, nothing like thinking on your feet to help yourself. I have wondered why Abraham did not argue with God that the people of Sodom and Sodom and Gomorrah do penitence? And I have looked and looked and found no answer to that question. And now I just answered it for myself. You can only do penitence when the evil you do violates the laws of your society. Look, you're sinning, but you couldn't say to someone in Sodom and Gomorrah, you're sinning. They would have looked at you with a blank stare. What do you mean sinning? This is the way we behave. Then there's no chance for repentance. Are you with me? That's why Nazis couldn't have repented. They actually thought they were doing the right thing. There was a very famous speech given by Himmler, who was in many ways the architect of the Holocaust. He spoke in Poznań, Poland, I believe it was 1943, at the depths of the Holocaust, he gave a speech which is pretty well known to the SS men in charge of implementing what they called the Final Solution, the murder of Europe's Jews. And the speech goes basically as follows: I know what you are doing sometimes seems hard. But you must know that you are doing great and idealistic work for the Fatherland, that generations hence will look to you as the saviors of Germany and the saviors of the Aryan race. In other words, it wasn't like the Mafia. The Mafia know that they are operating outside of the law, and that's the way they have chosen to live their lives. In Incident at Vichy by Arthur Miller, the play, there is a Jewish doctor in Nazi-occupied France. He wants to be saved. He prays that he will meet a Nazi who is not idealistic. He has a chance to get saved if he can bribe a corrupt Nazi. If he bumps into to a Nazi who believes in Nazism, he has no chance to be saved. You see the point? When you believe that the evil you do is legal, is right, you can't do penitence. You can only repent when you are— when you know you're sinning and allow yourself to do it. You're weak, you're, you're whatever it might be. Oh, you get it? That's all the difference in the world. That is why it is so important to have good laws and good principles. That is why I so deeply believe in keeping ideals before people. I don't care about hypocrisy. I don't care if people say on the one hand that, you know, ladies and gentlemen, it is— if a preacher says it's wrong to commit adultery from his pulpit and then commits it on Monday one day. I mind it for him and his wife, but I don't mind it for society. He is simply— he has violated a law that he knows he shouldn't violate. He's too weak. The issue is not hypocrisy. The issue is weakness, is sin. But if the man gets up and says, my friends, wife swapping is beautiful, we should all be sleeping with each other's spouses. We're finished. There's nothing I can say to him. How could he repent? He's not doing anything wrong. That is why it is so important for society to maintain standards, even if people violate them. We need standards. At least know that there was something that I fail, a standard that I fail. So what I do, you you do. We all fail the highest standards. But if there are none, there's no chance to improve. That is why Abraham, when he now appears before God, will not argue. Let me go and call them to repent. They won't understand. Later, Jonah, the prophet Jonah, who you know is swallowed by a big fish— know the story, that's not a whale, it's just a big swallowed by a big fish. Jonah is told by God to go to a city of Nineveh, the major, major city of the time, and to tell them to repent their evil ways. And he tries to flee God. By the way, there's another example. Could you imagine today if you thought God spoke to you, you'd run away to a ship? Think about it for a minute. You see what I mean? They had such a more real interaction with God than we do. He said, "Oh, forget it. I'm leaving." But the point is, you know the end of the story, well, the near end, is extraordinary. Jonah goes to Nineveh, says repent, and they do! That's really a riot. They do. They all put on sackcloth, ashes, and get better. Which blows Jonah's mind out. Now that is where you had people who understood there's a God, there's a law, we did wrong, we'll repent. No such chance in the case of Sodom, apparently. What then does Abraham argue for? What time is it? Who's got— I, I didn't— okay then. I— all right, do you want questions or do you want me to Continue. Okay, that was pretty apparent. Thank you very much. Okay, verse 22: The men went from there to Sodom, and Abraham is still standing before God. Now here's an interesting thing. Look at 23: Abraham stepped forward, that is to God, and said Now wait a minute. If Abraham is still standing before God, what does it mean he stepped forward? I don't have a direct answer, but what is clear is it can't be literal. If— let's take God's name away. Let's say, and Abraham is still standing before his friend Walter, and then Abraham stepped up to his friend. It doesn't make sense. He's already standing in front of his friend. You don't step up to your friend and then stop and then talk. What I think it might mean is he entered God's presence in order to continue the dialogue. He entered into an understanding of what it is that God wants. And I pointed out in an earlier tape that it meant that he was deeply aware of God's sense of goodness. I— it, it, uh, it was pointed out in an earlier session, but whatever it means, he steps into this presence of God and then says, will you destroy the innocent along with the guilty? What we have here is, is such a revolution that, uh, it's I can't fully describe it to you because we are the heirs of the revolution and take it for granted. Number one, we have man arguing with God. It's such a powerful notion. It is also of staggering power that you could not only argue with God in Judaism, but you could call God accountable for his acts. Remember what I said earlier? It's not capricious. God, it doesn't make sense what you're going to do because you, God, don't do that because you hold the following standard. The— if a— in any other religion, first of all, nobody would have argued a moral argument with God in another— in a pagan religion. But let's say they did. The God would have said, shut up. I smite you with the dragons of the sky and drop dead. That basically would have been it. Instead, we have here a remark— what is more, what I don't know which is more remarkable, that Abraham argues with God or that God takes it. I don't know which is, but they are both equally stunning, stunning. And here is truly where you understand why Abraham is the the father of the people that God wants to teach the world compassion and justice. Because that's exactly what he's arguing for here— compassion and justice, even for the miserable people of Sodom. Will, uh, will you destroy the innocent along with the guilty? Now here's a question: who is he pleading for? Real complex issue here. Who is he— who is he arguing on behalf of? Is he arguing on behalf of the good people, or is he arguing on behalf of all the people? Again, here's the question. Abraham came forward and said, will you— will you kill the innocent along with the guilty. What if there— oh, let me finish his argument. What if there should be 50 innocent within the city? Will you then wipe out the place and not forgive it for the sake of the innocent 50 who are in it? Who's he arguing for? It's pretty clear he's arguing for everybody because of the good people who are in it. Okay, I will, I will continue with that thought a little later. I want you to see the entirety of his argument. Notice what he's not arguing. Number one, he's not arguing, why don't you send me in and ask them to repent? Okay, that's clear. I offered one answer earlier, that this is not a repentable crowd. I may be wrong. If I am wrong, the question remains: why didn't he ask for repentance? There are non-Orthodox scholars who hold that he didn't ask for repentance because repentance is a later prophetic idea. It's as simple as that. I find it difficult to believe that the concept of, of becoming good after doing bad is only a prophetic idea. But be that as it may, we certainly don't have examples of it, to the best of my knowledge, in the Torah. So there may be some substance to it that it was not a deep Torah idea, though of course you have Yom Kippur in the Torah, uh, and you have the whole sacrificial system, which is personal penitence. What you don't have is a whole society doing it. But so what? It, it's not a story that would have arisen in Torah. Therefore, it's a, it's an open question if you don't accept my earlier explanation. Why didn't Abraham say, send me in and I'll tell them to do good? Number 2, he does not ask what I would have asked. I admit to you I am not Abraham. I admit it at the outset, because even knowing what Abraham the Great asked for, I still wouldn't ask for it. I would have asked, why don't you just save the good 50 or 40 or 30 that you find and take them out? I— when a society reaches the level of evil of a Sodom, of a Nazi Germany, etc., I will not plead for those people personally. I am not on Abraham's level. I I admit it to you. Had I— I would have argued with God. That part I know. That part of Abraham I have. But I would have said, wait a minute, maybe there are good people in there. Take them out first, then do whatever the hell you want. That's how I would have done it. He doesn't do that. Isn't that interesting? He wants the whole place saved if there are enough good people in it, a number of good people in it. That's why you must understand he's not pleading for the good people's lives. He's pleading for all of Sodom's life. Do you get that? It's a very big difference. But he's doing so on the grounds that there are 50 good people there, if there are 50 good people. Now, if you think this is amazing, that he's arguing with God Number 25 is absolutely, to use a very sophisticated theological term, mind-boggling. Far be it from you to do such a thing. But the Hebrew is much stronger than far be it from you. That's disgusting if you should do such a thing. I mean, there is no English equivalent. It's like it's disgraceful and repugnant that you would do such a thing. It's the sort of thing you would say to a kid if you were a parent of a kid who was about to smack another kid. Khalil al-acha. You wouldn't even say it to your parent. It's not Hebrew that a traditional Jewish child, an Israeli child, because khalil al-acha would still be used, would use to a parent. It is so strong. Don't you dare. Is probably the closest. Don't you dare, don't you dare do such a thing to bring death upon the innocent as well as the guilty, so that innocent and guilty fare alike. Far be it from you. Shall not the judge of all the earth deal justly? I mean, if the words resonate, they're among the words you always remember. Will the judge of all the earth not judge fairly or not do justice? Believe me, a lot of Jews historically have asked God this question when they have seen the injustices of their lives.

This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.

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Now back to more of Dennis Prager's timeless wisdom.

Now what does he say here? It's a very— it's an odd thing. First you think he's pleading for all of Sodom, right? But then he says, how can you do such a thing to bring new death upon the good people as well as the bad people. Are you with me? He, he's mixed two arguments together, Abraham, because he should— if he— now it sounds like his worry is not that the bad people are getting killed, but it's that the good are getting killed with them, right? So which one is it? The answer is, I think he's trying both. Don't you do that if you'd ever argue with your parent or something, or for that matter anybody? You don't just use one argument, you throw in everything you can. And that's what he's doing. Whatever comes to his mind, he throws in because it's not fully logically coherent. First he argues on behalf of the whole place, and then he says, how can you destroy them both? Meaning, I understand why you destroy the bad ones. Interesting, uh, little thing there. There. So it seems that part of him makes peace with the bad being killed because 24 argues for the whole place, 25 argues for not killing good people with bad people. And they are two entirely different arguments. I would have given the second one. Maybe, I'm just thinking, maybe he gave the second one because he got no response to the first one. So very quickly he realized it didn't work. Let me try this other one. And I mean it, it might very well be, because there's no God response after 24. So he tries 25. Maybe then I, maybe I am on a good level. Maybe in fact God didn't bother answering number 1 because it wasn't worthy of a response. So then he asked the fairness one. Remember, the first one is a compassion one. The second argument is a justice one. But what's God's answer? Listen to this. God's answer is, and God says, 26, if I find in Sodom 50 good people in the city, then I will save the whole place on their behalf. Which argument is God responding responding to? Right. Isn't that interesting? God responded to the compassion argument. He didn't say, "Hey, if I find 50, I'll take them out." That would have been the most logical response to argument number 2. Sorry, God's a liberal, I know. I knew somebody would come out with that. Can't argue with you on this basis. That is correct. Well, I told you I'm not, I'm not at that level yet. So God responds to this first argument: I will save the whole place if you find 50. At which point Abraham realizes he's on shaky ground, because God basically knows how many good people are there. We trust that God knows those things. So 27, Abraham answers: And he says, listen, I just— it's very beautiful. He knows he's talking to God. So he says, you know, how do they do it here? Here I venture to speak to God. It's really dare. I dare to speak to God. And I am only dust. Dust and from dust. It's very powerful what he does. He realizes very why he's doing this. He's not a fool. This guy's arguing with God. I mean, listen, I know I'm dust. I just dare to do this. Let me continue. So 28, maybe— what if the 50 innocent should lack 5? He doesn't, he doesn't want to say 45. Isn't that funny? What if there are 50 innocent except for 5? It's so beautiful. I just want to keep it at 50 because I know that lower numbers don't sound as good. So will you destroy the whole city not for the 45, just because there are 5 missing? Do you see? He's tricky, Abraham. He doesn't say for 45, he says just for 5 less than you would have saved them for, for 50. So, and God answers, okay. God doesn't say for the 5, God gets his tune. He goes, I won't destroy if I find 45. So Abraham continues in 29, and he said, well, 40. I could just see him doing it, you know, just how about 40? Would you, would you do it? Would you save it for the 40? And God answered, I won't, I won't destroy it for the sake of 40. And then Abraham said, please don't You'll be angry with me if I go on. How about 30? It's truly remarkable. It's truly— there is— it's epic. We are in an epic literature of, I think, divine proportions. And God answered, okay, I won't do it if I find 30 there. See, Abraham is not feeling happy at this time, obviously, but he continues. I venture again to speak to my Lord, what if 20 should be found there? And God answered, I will not destroy for the sake of the 20. God is really robotic in this regard, you know. He just says, no problem, Abe, no, won't touch them for 20, right? And Abraham said, let God— don't be angry if I speak just one last time— what if 10 should be found there? And God said, I I won't destroy it for the sake of 10. Same answer as he gave the whole time and just added the word 10. And when God finished speaking to Abraham, he departed. God departed, and Abraham returned to his place. That was it. The most obvious question at this point is, why didn't he go to 5? Right? 3, 2, 1. The answer is, and the answer really, and the fact that he stopped at 10 really shows what he was arguing for. He was arguing to save the place. His second argument he dropped. In other words, I admit it, the argument I would have given is never dealt with. Remember that second argument? How can you destroy the good with the bad? It's not argued. God doesn't answer it, and Abraham doesn't pursue it. The entire argument— and you know why? Not because God's a liberal. I'll tell you why. God's a liberal and a conservative. I'll tell you why. Because already it is clear on justice grounds alone the place deserves to be destroyed. So the only leg Abraham has to stand on is the compassionate. And God is compassionate and says yes. It's clear the fair thing to do with such a rotten place is to kill the place. That's the just thing to do. We've established that. Both Abraham knows it and God knows it. So the only thing he can argue for is, all right, but maybe you'll have compassion on the place if there are some good people in it. And that is That is why he stops at 10. If his interest was saving the good people, he would have gone to 1. God, there happens to be a good person living on Elm Street who you should save. But he doesn't do that. So it is clear that his argument is not primarily, it's not fair to kill the good with the bad, because he should have kept going down to for one. It's not fair for one good person to suffer in a bad place, right? He doesn't do it. His argument is for the place. And it's not just compassion, it's one other thing. And it is this, which is why he stops at 10. After all, remember, Torah means teacher. The story is to teach you something. You can't make a good world alone. You cannot. You have to do it with others. And if there aren't even a quorum of 10 of you, there's no hope. 9 people, figuratively speaking, can't fix a bad place. There has to be a unified, united group of you. And I think the story is there to explain explain the Jews. There needs to be a group carrying on an idea. After all, all of this is explaining why God chose Abraham. Remember, it's all in context. There's got to be a group of you doing good work. It can't be done alone. That's why I'm picking a people. I need a people to carry on a mission of goodness. And it is true, my friends, you can't do it alone. Alone, you can help your neighbor, you can help others, you can even find a cure for cancer theoretically alone, though nobody does alone. It's always on the backs of other researchers and so on. Abraham chosen. Just look at the difference between Abraham and Noah. Noah's told the world's going to be destroyed, not just Sodom, the world. And what does Noah say? Where is the wood? Right? We went over that when we talked about Noah. Uh, what were those plans? Where were those plans for the ship? Not a word, not a word about the world being destroyed. Just, just give me the ship's dimensions and I'll get the hell out of here. Not Abraham. And Abraham had nothing to lose. He wasn't involved. He didn't live in Sodom. He wasn't there. He had a nephew there who was going to be bailed out anyway. He wasn't— and he didn't plead for his nephew. Notice, it's very interesting. He did not plead for Lot. He pleaded for strangers, to care about strangers. Is perhaps the deepest message of the Hebrew Bible. Jews are instructed to do it. "Va'ahavtem et hager, ki gerim hayitem beretz Mitzrayim." You will love the stranger because you were strangers in the land of Egypt. The whole task of life, I am convinced, is to learn to love the other. When we come back in 2 weeks, we're going to talk about an issue which is, to me, the single most most difficult issue in contemporary life. It makes abortion look simple. And that issue is homosexuality, because it comes up obviously in Sodom. But one of the arguments that I have learned and believe in for the emphasis on heterosexuality in the Hebrew Bible is the need to learn to love the other. It is not easy. It's easy to lust after the opposite sex. It is difficult to love the opposite sex. It is difficult to love the stranger, and the opposite sex is a stranger to us. Our own sex is no stranger at all. I know men real well, and every one of you women know women real well. That's why women can't fool women. And men can't fool men. Men can fool women with charm, and women can fool men with seduction, but it's very hard to fool your own sex. That's why one rabbi pointed out that incest is banned, not because of health reasons, but because it's not loving the other if you love your sister or you love your brother. You have to learn to love a stranger. Abraham is passionate about strangers, and that's why he's the father of the Jewish people, as Genesis teaches it. See you in two weeks. Thank you very much.

This has been Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager. Visit DennisPrager.com for thousands of hours of Dennis's lectures, courses, and classic radio programs, and to purchase purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles. Your beloved dog and a stranger are both drowning. You can only save one. Who do you save? Every time Dennis Prager asks that question, his audience splits three ways. One-third chooses the dog, one-third chooses the stranger, and one-third aren't sure. Why? Because we live in an age where increasingly feeling define right and wrong. But if morality is based on emotion, then murder, rape, and theft are just opinions. And if people feel justified, why is rioting or destruction wrong at all? In his new book, If There Is No God, Dennis Prager explains why civilizations cannot survive without objective morality and why Judeo-Christian values shape the moral foundations of the free world.

If you claim that certain things Certain things are good, certain things are evil. Independent of how you feel about it, you are in effect affirming God.

If There Is No God by Dennis Prager, available now at PragerStore.com. That's PragerStore.com.