Timeless Wisdom : Why Lead a Religious Life?

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.

Amen I always find it a drop hard to speak after that, which touches me to my core, that and classical music get to me very deeply. Okay, I want to talk to you about the ultimate subject, God, and specifically Why are so many Jews secular? Why are so many Jews irreligious? I'd like to give you a list of reasons and answer some of them. Whenever there is a survey done about who is the most secular group in America, Jews win that contest. There's no close second. Secular Jew is almost redundant. There's a small and growing percentage of religious Jews, and I don't only mean Orthodox. I mean religious in the sense of God-centered practicing Jews. There are non-Orthodox. It's mostly Orthodox, but there are. And I might add that you really could, in 9/10 of the reasons I'll give, you could give this talk about non-Jews as well. Why are non-Jews secular? It's only a few of them pertain specifically to Jews. They're overwhelmingly universal problems and reasons, so much so that, as you know, more and more millennials identify as nones. N-O-N-E-S. Nones. They have no religion. So why is it? Why are Jews and so many others secular, irreligious, and even atheist, and at the very best, agnostic? So I'll begin with one specifically Jewish one, and it begins with Hebrew school. Hebrew school helps make you irreligious. Because Hebrew school teaches Hebrew. It doesn't teach religiosity, it doesn't teach about God, it doesn't teach about chosenness, it doesn't teach the Torah as anything but an ancient Hebrew book. But you do learn Hebrew. But so what? I mean, it's good, I think Jews should know Hebrew. I know Hebrew fluently, but that's not why I am Jewish, it is not why I sustained being a Jew in my life. I went to a very different form of Jewish education where the people actually believed in Judaism. But Hebrew school— as soon as I hear somebody went to Hebrew school, it's funny, not only do I immediately assume that they won't take Judaism seriously, but they use it to show, well, I went to Hebrew school and still I'm not religious, or I'm not a believer, as if the two are contradictory in some way. Not that one might have led to the other. Then, in case Hebrew school doesn't prove to you that religion shouldn't be taken too seriously, you have a bar mitzvah or a bat mitzvah. Most of which remind me of the— there was a long time ago, there was an Antonioni film called Blowup. I'm not a film maven at all, but I do recall this film, and in it there was a scene of two tennis players playing tennis without a tennis ball. And that is what I have always imagined when I've gone to most bar mitzvahs or bat mitzvahs that I have attended. Tell me if I am exaggerating in any way. A young man or woman is chanting words he or she does not understand to a congregation that also doesn't understand them, and they are crying from nachas. Wasn't that beautiful? They're all moved, but nobody knows what they're moved about. They're moved that the kid chanted in a language he or she doesn't understand to people who also didn't understand it. And then that's, for all intents and purposes, that's sort of the best. It gets worse than that. I remember, and this is now common, people are outdoing— Jewish families are outdoing one another for fancy bar mitzvahs. So I remember years ago reading that the Orange Bowl in Miami was rented by a very wealthy Jewish family, and Miami Dolphin cheerleaders performed and served the meal. Now, as a guy, I thought, that is one bar mitzvah I would like to attend. I have to admit, that was my original reaction. Forgive me. But I didn't quite see where that fit into the concept of bar mitzvah, let me put it that way. And I don't think the kid will think of it as a holy experience in reflecting on the Dolphin Cheerleaders and the Orange Bowl. And that is not atypical. You know, there's wild dancing at these things, and it's a party. And the non-Jewish kids who come love it, obviously, because it's a great party, and they eat well, have great dancing, but it's not— there's no concept of the holy. And the bar mitzvah is actually one of the most profound ideas in Judaism. It's a terrific idea, and non-Jews should embrace it. In fact, there was a letter in the Wall Street Journal a number of years ago, or an article, I don't remember if it was a letter or an article, about the need in non-Jewish life to have a rite of passage for kids as well. Now you're an adult. This was such a profound idea. Now you're an adult, but what does it mean? Now you're an adult so you can dance through the night? Now you're an adult so you can enjoy the Orange Bowl? Now you're an adult, therefore what? Now you're an adult and therefore you are responsible to God for how you act. Your parents are no longer responsible for your bad acts. That's heavy duty. That's great stuff. But how many kids are told that at the bar mitzvah? And Jewish life generally is irreligious, is godless. A friend of mine in a Midwest city told me about how much money they raised there for a Jewish community center with a very fancy pool and a very fancy series of racquetball courts. And he, you know, there's just a flight from Judaism among the Jews of that city. Why will Jewish racquetball courts keep Jews Jewish? What does that mean? It means nothing. Because Jewish life has become secular. By and large. So that is the specific cleavage. The rest is pretty much universal. I will return to some specific Jewish in it later. Another reason why so many people are secular today, Jews and non-Jews, is because of education. When you go to a typical American or West European school, you are as immersed in a godless universe as the most religious Catholic was immersed in Catholicism in the most traditional Catholic school. And Jewish parents are very happy about it, and non-Jewish parents are very happy about it, but it doesn't occur to them, even to religious Christian and Jewish parents, who send their kids to— and I'm not talking just public school, I'm talking about private schools as well— they, the teachers and the school has their children far more than they do. They are indoctrinated into the irrelevance of God and religion. That is what Western education is. It is an indoctrination into the irrelevance of God and religion. And then we wonder why they don't take, in our case, Judaism seriously. But of course this is happening across the board with Christians as well as Jews. That is what happens. It's a secular brainwash. And by the way, this of course is intensified at college. And the Jews are the most— are the group most likely in percentages to attend college. So it's not coincidental that the group that has most— the most numbers in college is also the most secular group in America, because you graduate with a BA in secularism, you graduate with a master's in secularism, and a PhD in secularism. That is what you get when you go to schools, when you go to universities. The irony is, I remember, 'cause I was a stamp collector in my younger years, and I learned a tremendous amount from stamps, as it happens, a great hobby. And I, among the things I collected were called first-day covers. On the day a stamp is issued, you have a stamp from the post office in the city that it's issued, and it says first day of issue, and people collect them. And the envelope often has information on the stamp, so that's how I learned a lot. So in the 1950s, I wasn't— I was too young then, but I collected this cover later. A 1950 stamp had the— I guess it would have been the 200th or maybe 300th— no, I doubt it. 200th anniversary of Columbia University. And the COVID had information on Columbia at its founding and said, at Columbia University when it was founded, it was to talk— it was directed to teach 4 subjects. And one of them was theology. You were not considered educated in America till the end of the 19th century when it all changed, unless you studied the Bible, unless you studied God. Theology means the study of God. You were considered illiterate if you didn't study God. That was one of the 4 subjects. Today, you can study— I don't want to be facetious, so I won't say what you can study at Columbia. I will only say you can study some very, very bizarre subjects, but I wonder if there is one theology class at Columbia University, which I attended. That's the last thing you study in college, is God. If God comes up, this is how God comes up in college. I've heard it probably 1,000 times, both at college and as a talk show host, from callers. Uh, it goes basically like this: more people have been killed in the name of God than by anything else. This is a common statement that one hears. Right? Religion, God, were the biggest sources of bloodshed in human history. Now, they heard it from somebody, who heard it from somebody, who heard it from somebody. It just doesn't happen to be true. But other than that, it sounds good. More people were murdered in the 20th century alone by secular ideologies, Nazism and Communism, than by all of the Christians and others in history. I mean, they mean Christians, by the way. They don't mean Muslims. So we'll exclude Muslims for now. Just Christians. Christians don't hold a candle to what was done. And there were Christian massacres of Jews and others. I don't deny it. I've written a book on antisemitism. I'm well aware of it. But it's just not true. You know how many Jews were killed in the Spanish Inquisition over the course of 100 years? I think 1,200. People think a million. You ask the average person how many Jews were killed in the Spanish Inquisition. Now, the Jews were expelled from Spain, which is horrific. I mean, I'm not defending the Inquisition. I just think truth matters. Whereas the Nazis killed, what, 10,000 a day in Auschwitz? A day. And that was not Christian. That was a twisted cross, not the cross of the crucifix. But that's what you hear. God and religion are the sources of evil, if they're even talked about at all. Next, God is deemed unnecessary for meaning. People delude themselves. They think you can have meaning in life if there's no God. This drives me crazy. I don't care if you're an atheist, I care if you're honest. Philosophers, the vast majority of atheist philosophers have been honest. There's no God, and life has no meaning. But if you look on the internet, at any, for example, any of the videos that Prager University has put out on God, and the issue of meaning, for example, The— it's hundreds, if not thousands, of attacks on what is this nonsense pervaded by Prager and his institution here, that without God there's no meaning or there's no morality. What do you— there's no objective morality. They don't know what even atheist philosophers know. So let me give you an atheist philosopher who just wrote a book. Called The Human Predicament. It just came out, published by Oxford just a few months ago. Just came out. And the man who wrote it, this David Benatar, is a professor of philosophy at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. And he wrote an utterly truthful book. Now, interestingly, it was reviewed in the Wall Street Journal by another professor. A professor, uh, let's see, Joanna Bourke, a professor of history at the University of London. All right, so one atheist professor is reviewing another atheist professor, which is fine. I think this is one of the most important pieces they've ever published, and they publish a lot of important pieces in the Wall Street Journal. But I want to read to you from her summary of what Professor Benatar says in his book, ultimately our lives are meaningless. Evolution is blind and serves no intrinsic purpose. In a cosmic sense, we each live for an insignificant amount of time. Furthermore, the lives we do lead are often suffused with suffering. Roughly 40% of us will develop cancer during our lifetime. Mr. Benatar, a professor of philosophy at the University of Cape Town, argues that humans can enjoy terrestrial meanings. In other words, earthbound meanings. There are no— there's no ultimate meaning to life, but you can have earthbound meanings such as nurturing children, fighting for the rights of refugees, composing a symphony, or making a delicious breakfast. All right, so these, these things are— you— these— but he admits, he's honest, you can make up meanings because you're here on Earth and you don't want to go crazy and realize life is pointless, so you make up a meaning. Nevertheless, we are each but a, quote, blip in cosmic time and space. Mr. Benatar insists that most of us are terminally anxious about this lack of cosmic meaning. Now, I happen to agree with him, and that is the reason I believe— this is as far political as I will get, but it's not meant to be political— the country is going crazy. The country is going crazy because people have no meaning, and they need meaning. So they will fight things that don't really exist. They fight horrors that don't really exist in any large number whatsoever. I am a Jew. I've written on antisemitism. I have fought antisemitism my whole life. I have a book on it. Israel sent me into the Soviet Union to smuggle Jews out. I have a pretty good record fighting antisemitism. And I believe that in the United States of America, there is very little antisemitism. Of course there's antisemitism, but there's very little. It does not pose a threat to Jews. But right now, this is the biggest thing about white supremacists and Nazis and so on. Why? Because people need meaning. That is all of the isms that were founded— Marxism, Nazism, you name it— they're all post-Christian because that was the dominant religion in the West, not Judaism. They're post-Christian answers to the question, "Where do I get meaning from?" And they have— they fulfilled the meaning gap. So I agree with Professor Benatar that most of us are terminally anxious about this lack of cosmic meaning. But listen to her response, the reviewer, who's also an atheist professor: I don't agree. I did a very unscientific poll of my friends. None of them believe that there is some wider purpose to human existence, and it doesn't bother them. It doesn't— okay, fine. Whether it bothers them or not is a separate subject, but all of them acknowledge there is no meaning to human existence. All right? So this is what was said here. By the way, just one more thing about Professor Benatar. Listen to this. Mr. Benatar is an advocate of antinatalism. I have never heard of that before, so now I'm introducing you to a new ism. Antinatalism. A view which maintains that for any being capable of suffering harm, It is a misfortune to have come into existence, and as a consequence, we should never choose to procreate. By the way, it makes perfect sense. If life is meaningless, and there is suffering in life to the extent there is, it is ridiculous to procreate. So the quest— by the way, if you are secular, why procreate? And they don't, the secular don't procreate. I knew this, I knew this in graduate school, where I realized how much nonsense I was taught. I was taught that the reason people have fewer children, there's one reason, and that reason is affluence. That as people get more affluent, they have fewer children. But I knew, but maybe because I was one of the, you know, 5 religious kids at Columbia at the time, and none of my professors were, I knew all these religious Jews who were affluent who had 10 kids. So I don't understand, why are they— why are religious Catholics who were affluent, religious Mormons who were affluent, religious evangelicals who were affluent, and some were not even that affluent, why did they have 10 kids? I don't know a secular person with 10 kids. I'm sure it exists, but I don't know of any. I'll bet you don't know of any. Isn't that interesting? But nobody teaches that. Because the truth is, there is no reason. Why bother yourself with children? On the most basic level, children takes time away from restaurant dining with your wife. At the very, very least, that's what children do. They do more than that, as I have said in my more sarcastic moments. That which is produced by passion then kills it. But that's a separate issue. I said it in a way that it will fly right over the kids' heads, so we're all okay, it's kosher. But kids, there's a price paid having kids. There's a financial price, there's a time-with-your-spouse price, there's a fun price, you can't travel as much, you can't go out as much, right? So why have them? I'm saying this in front of a family of 12. So if you heard "right," it was that. Just for the record. So, but there's a cosmic reason not to have children. What is wrong with Benatar? What is wrong with this professor's reasoning? Life is pointless and you suffer. You shouldn't have children. That's his argument. He now— he asks whether abortion should be regarded as morally obligatory, not just permissible, obligatory, and whether the ideal population size is zero, right? This is, this is what happens without God. So why are people secular? They don't confront honestly the meaninglessness of life if there is no God. They do not confront the absence of objective morality. This is what drives them the craziest. There are people who have made counter videos to the ones we made on this subject. Prager is out of his mind, he's a simpleton, he's an idiot, the whole thing's a fraud. Of course there's good and evil if there's no God. But then they go, "Of course there isn't. I mean, it's absurd. Show me good and evil. Show me a test tube with good and evil." I can show you a test tube with various chemicals, so show me a test tube with good. I want to see a good test tube. Of course it doesn't exist if there's no God. It's a non-material item, good. It's like beauty. Show me. Where's the beauty measurement? Where's an objective beauty measurement? You have an objective temperature measurement. Where's the objective beauty measurement, or the objective morality measurement? It doesn't exist. Only if there is a God is murder wrong. You can think murder is wrong if there's no God, and I hope you do, but it's your opinion. I debated this at Oxford 25 years ago, and the atheist professor, to his great credit, said, "Mr. Prager is right. If there is no God, ethics are subjective. But people don't acknowledge this. See, I very rarely argue for God's existence. In all the debates that I've ever done, or presentations to young people, I've always argued for the necessity of God. Because even if I convince you there is a God, but you don't understand how important God is, it's irrelevant. I want you to understand everything rides on God's existence, whether your life has any meaning, and whether there is good and evil to begin with. But people don't know this. The secular don't confront the consequences of secularism. Next, God is dismissed as a silly fable, right? You should say— I've learned so much from the people who attack me. They, they don't— they have no idea. And, uh, you know, oh my God, this guy Prager, he believes in this fairy tale in the sky. Is this guy primitive or what? That's what you learn. God is just a fairy tale. So of course people become secular. It's just a fairy tale. Or psychological crutch. I always found the one about God being a crutch fascinating. Let's say God is a crutch. First of all, why in any way does that deny God's existence? If you're crippled, you need a crutch. We aren't crippled. So the fact that we need a crutch doesn't invalidate the crutch. So it's a very odd argument. You act as if we're not— of course we're crippled. We're emotionally crippled. We are in every possible way, because we understand the pain of life and the meaninglessness of it. So yes, I admit it, God is not only a crutch for me. God exists objectively in my belief. But yes, God is a crutch. I have said a thousand times, if I didn't believe in an afterlife, I would go nuts. I admit it. To believe that Hitler and his victims have the same faith, that the world is that despicably evil, is too much. That no one, no parent who loses a child will ever see that child again, that's the world that was created. I find that too horrific to contemplate. Plate. So yes, I admit that. And then of course, here's my favorite: atheism, or at least secularism, is equated with reason and intellectuality, right? Intellectuals are atheists, dummies are believers. That is the message at college. That's why I love speaking at colleges, because I know how to come across as a non-dummy. I have really gotten that down to a science. There are many things they could say about me, but dummy has not been the normal one. I speak intelligently, I don't speak down to the college students, I make utterly rational arguments, and hey, yes, I do believe in God, and they haven't confronted that. They haven't. What they do is they will show dummies. There are dummies who believe in God. I totally believe that. I know that. You know, they'll take some silly— and not all of them are silly— but they'll take some silly preacher on TV who acts non-intelligently and say, here, look, this is— these— this guy believes in God. This is it. They don't— they don't take people like me as the examples. But that is what they do. They equate intellectuality with atheism. An intellectual or a person who believes in science cannot believe in God, which is absurd. Why is that? Like Darwin, if you believe in Darwin, right, it's one or the other, you know. You know, of all, uh, so many websites mocked the Republican candidates who weren't prepared to say they fully assent to Darwinism. To blind evolution, because it shows they're anti-science, and if you're anti-science, you're anti-intellectual, and you're a dummy, and who can have a dummy for president? That's how the thinking works. But of course, these people don't know how many scientists have real problems with Darwinism. For example, I mean, how many people, how many students, I wonder, at UCLA know that Darwinism, and Darwin himself, acknowledged it, has zero explanation for how life came from non-life. None. Darwin has nothing to say on how life came from non-life. Isn't that more important than how a, a breed of butterfly did or didn't evolve? How did we get life from non-life? Science has no better an answer today than it did in 12:17. It has no answer and no clue and will not have an answer or a clue. That's a pretty big thing to say, oh, I believe in Darwin, therefore I don't believe in God. But you don't answer the most important question of all: how did life come from non-life? How did anything come from nothing? I had a professor on who wrote a book called, I think, Nothingness, I think, or something like that, or Something from Nothing. Anyway, Lawrence Krauss, he's an astronomer, a very highly regarded astronomer at the University of Arizona. So I had him on my show for an hour because I really wanted to talk to somebody who believed that something came from nothing, because this fascinates me since I don't understand how something can come from nothing. Finally, in the middle of it, you can probably get it, I hope we I know we record all the shows, but I don't know if they're— most are not available, but I hope this one is. So I finally asked him at one point, "Well, you know, sir, forgive me, but the notion that something came from nothing contradicts common sense. It's just completely contradictory to common sense." So then he said, "Well, it depends on what you mean by nothing." And then I thought, I can't believe it. That's worse than what the definition of 'is' is. What do you mean by nothing? Now, you know, many of you have heard me, I am respectful to just about everybody, including people I would like to punch. It's not so much I wanted to punch him, I wanted to somehow— I really, I mean, I want to say, sir, I have I must tell you, I'm listening to the Twilight Zone theme in my brain right now. What do you mean? But without using the Twilight Zone put-down, I said, "Sir, there's one definition of nothing: no thing." That's what I said. That's exactly the way I put it. No, no, it doesn't mean no thing. There might have been laws of physics, for example, in place. Then there wasn't nothing. What kind of— what do you mean? Laws are something? Laws of physics are something? Who made the laws of physics? But does it matter? Who's going to contest this man at the University of Arizona? So you're taught that if you think scientifically, you can't believe in God. If you think intellectually, you can't believe in God. And Jews and others have bought this nonsense. And it's truly nonsense. I want to read to you what Charles Krauthammer said on my show. Whenever I dialogue with Krauthammer, I never talk politics, because you can hear him on politics all day long. So I ask him about life. He's very intelligent. So Krauthammer, I knew, was irreligious. I knew he was secular. I didn't know if he was atheist or agnostic. So I asked him what he thought of atheism. I will now read to you verbatim his response to me: "I believe that atheism is the least plausible of all theologies. I mean, there are a lot of wild ones out there, but the one that clearly is so contrary to what is possible is atheism. The idea that all of this universe, it always existed?" It created itself ex nihilo, out of nothing? I mean, talk about the violation of human rationality. That to me is off the charts. Now, I want to tell you how dramatic this response is when you understand Charles Krauthammer is an MD from Harvard Medical School. He's a psychiatrist, and he was rendered quadriplegic in a diving accident while at Harvard Medical School. Medical School as a young man. If anybody is going to be an atheist, it's going to be Harvard Medical School and someone who suffered as much as he did, this terrible loss within his own body at the age of about 22 or whatever it was. And he's the one who's saying, give me a break, it is— I love the phrase— it is a violation of human rationality, atheism. How many people at Harvard, or UCLA, or at Idaho State think that atheism is a violation of human rationality? You know what they think is a violation of human rationality? Religion. They think belief in God is a violation of human rationality. To posit that there is something that created the world, that's a violation of human rationality. Not that it came from nothing, not that there's nothing out there. If you found a computer on Saturn, wouldn't you assume an intelligence had put it there? We're infinitely more complex than a computer. How could non-intelligence come from— how can intelligence come from non-intelligence? Why does that make sense? It doesn't make sense. We went from rocks to two-baked hilda. It is mind-boggling, and that's considered rational. And finally, on the reasons for all the secularism, I will return to Jewish life specifically. I think that the Holocaust and Jewish suffering have played a terrible role in Jewish life, and a lot of Jews just decided there is no God because of all the horrors. And the Holocaust was not the first by any means that Jews went through. Do you know that almost a third of European Jewry was killed in the 1660s in the Chmielnicki pogroms in Ukraine and Poland? Staggering numbers of Jews were slaughtered. Women were— pregnant women were cut open and the babies were shoved into their mouths. I mean, horrific, horrible beyond belief descriptions of torture and murder. And it's not coincidental in my opinion that the one false messiah in Jewish history that Jews in large numbers believed in arose in 1666, Sabbatai Zevi. Half of the Jewish people believed that Sabbatai Zevi, a Turkish Jew, was the messiah, including most Orthodox Jews and rabbis. We never learned about that in yeshiva. It's an embarrassing moment in Jewish history, so it wasn't taught. But I'm sure it had to do with the Jews sort of giving up and wanting to believe in something. Makes perfect sense. So I think that this stuff has played a terrible role in Jewish life. I think Christian persecution of Jews left Jews with a bad taste about religiosity too. So everything conspired, and then all the higher education and secularism, and then finally Orthodoxy didn't present a very appealing intellectual alternative. Have to be honest. It was a system of rituals, none of which seemed to make all that much sense. And so what was the Jew supposed to conclude? So I don't respect the choice that most Jews have made, but I have some sympathy at least for why it happened. So then, I would like to conclude with some recommendations how to take God seriously, specifically as a Jew, but a non-Jew could apply it as well. Apply almost all of this to his or her life. There are two Jewish answers to how do you bring God into your life: study and behavior. Study is a big one for me. I guess prayer, you should put prayer too. I guess I didn't put it down because it doesn't do the magic for me, although I do feel it here, I must say. I do, but this is a very special example. It's not me praying alone. But yes, prayer would be one example, but I'll give you the one I relate to: study. The more I study the Torah, the more I feel I am in touch with God, because I think it's a divine book. So it's a big deal. You'll see why in April when my first volume comes out. The other is behavior. Oh, I do have prayer. Good. Phew! I did put prayer down. But the prayer that I put down is two examples, and they're both quick: before eating and upon awakening. American homes traditionally certainly through the beginning of the 20th century, would just say grace, as they call it, before eating. It would take a minute, maybe a minute, to thank God, to say something about the day, and to say something about the people at the table. I have many meals with Christians who say grace, and by the way, they often now invite me to say it, and I got good at it, and I like it. I do, because it's spontaneous, it's about what's happening, it's brief. And in Judaism, you know, the, you know, the rote prayer, which I think is fine— over bread, over wine, over milk products, over liquids— they're all different prayers blessing God who created these things. But I'm telling you Any family that actually said, "We want to thank God for this food and for the blessings that we have in having each other in our life. Amen." Just that, or some variation on that, it changes children's lives forever. Whether or not they continue to say it as adults, it is life-changing. But most Jews wouldn't do it for two reasons. They're too bashful about about being religious, and they don't want to sound like they're Christian. More Jews spend more time not being Christian than they spend being Jewish. You ask a lot of Jews, "What do you believe?" "Oh, I don't believe in Jesus." "Yeah, but what do you believe?" Then they don't have much of an answer. Jews have spent a lot of time fleeing Christianity as opposed to embracing Judaism. So since the Christians say these grace before meals, gee, we shouldn't. But it's a beautiful thing, and I wish more Jews did it. 1 minute 30 seconds, and it's life-changing. Shabbat. I don't have to— I'm not going to make— I could spend a whole talk just on Shabbat, but to not go to the movies on Friday night and not watch TV, but instead have a Shabbat meal with friends or family is life-changing. It's completely life-changing. It's the only ritual in the Ten Commandments. That's how powerful Shabbat, the Sabbath, is. Think about that. Not kosher, not fasting on Yom Kippur, not prayer, None of them got into the Ten Commandments. Only Shabbat. That's how important it is. And going to synagogue on Shabbat, which reminds me to tell you, by the way, I don't announce this on the radio because I don't want to get— I don't want it to get too big, to be honest. But in the last year, I have done something that a lot of you have asked for, and with a number of dear friends formed a little Minyan synagogue. So if you want information on it, we'll happily share it with you. We meet every Shabbat, and I teach every other week, and it's a wonderful group of people. Some of you from that Minyan are here tonight. I thank you for being with me, but I don't like to miss it. Whether or not I teach. The, you know, I'd rather sleep in, but I'm much happier if I went to shul. That's the point. I do want to sleep in. I don't get enough sleep. But Shabbat without going to shul is very different from Shabbat going to shul. It just is. One of my dear friends who is the other person who teaches often is Dr. Stephen Marmer. Some of you know him from the Happiness Hour. He's a psychiatrist from UCLA who I have on periodically. And when we talk about Dominion, he says, you know, there are so many wonderful things about it. One of them is— he says this, and he says it to me, so this is —this is not to sound nice to another member of the Minion— says, "You know, Dennis, it's an amazing thing. Pretty much nobody knows what anybody else does for a living." It's true. I mean, everybody there knows what I do for a living because I do a public living, but I'm an aberration in that way. But nobody knows, and nobody cares. I don't care. I don't know, and I don't care. I don't know if you're a millionaire, I don't know if you have no money, I don't know anything. I just know I love having you with me on Saturday morning. It's a very beautiful thing. And what is your alternative? To do what? To go shopping? To sleep in? Watch TV? Think about it. And here's the key. This is the key, and with this I will conclude. Whether or not you live a religious life— and by religious I mean a God-centered life, practice, and study, and ethics, and everything— is a choice. This I didn't know until maybe 10 years ago. Everything is a choice. Remember the song, "Love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage"? I believed that when I was a kid. Everybody believed that, that's why it was a popular song. Love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage. In other words, if you fall in love, you get married. It was a given. I've now come to realize there are no givens. Everything is a choice. Marriage is a choice, children is a choice, go to work is a choice, don't go to work work is a choice. Everything is a choice. Whether you believe in God or not is a choice. God is not going to appear to you, okay? I just want to say that with a fair amount of certitude. You will not have a divine revelation as such unless you are a very rare individual with prophetic abilities. I never had a divine revelation. I did not meet God in any— I never had a road to to Damascus, and you won't have a road to Wilshire Boulevard. So just know that if you are waiting for God to appear to you, you will die having led a secular life. If you choose, however, to incorporate God in your life, it can be done, but you have to choose to do it. That's all. And that's, that's my argument it is the best choice you can make for meaning and for everything else, for community, you name it. So that's it. You choose to live as if there was a God. A lot of people are agnostic, but they live as atheists. I understand why an atheist could live as an atheist, but I don't understand That's why an agnostic would live as an atheist. If you're really in the middle, why don't you live as if you believe? But I'll tell you this: if you live as if you believe, you will start to believe. That's how it works. And it's worth doing. It's a good New Year's resolution to make this Rosh Hashanah. Okay. We now go to the Aleinu. Please stand. Page 21.

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