Dennis Prager (born August 2, 1948) is an American syndicated radio talk show host, columnist, author, ethicist, and public speaker. He is noted for conservative political views frequently based in religious faith and for his critique of secularism in the 20th century.
Prager is a native of New York City. He has an elder brother, Kenneth (b. January 3 1943). His nephew is Joshua Prager.
Raised as Orthodox Jews, the Prager brothers attended Yeshiva Rambam from kindergarten through 8th grade and Yeshivah of Flatbush for high school, where he met his future coauthor Joseph Telushkin in the 10th grade. Prager attended Brooklyn College, majoring in Anthropology and History; he graduated in 1970.[1]
In 1969, Prager spent his junior year abroad at the University of Leeds in England. Having studied Russian, Prager traveled to the Soviet Union to rescue Judaica and meet with Jewish dissidents. Upon his return, Prager began his career as a public speaker, lecturing several times a week about the state of Jews in the Soviet Union.
In 1970-72, Prager attended the Russian (now the Harriman Institute) and Middle East Institutes at the Columbia University School of International Affairs. He studied under Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, who later served in the Carter administration as the head of the National Security Council.
Prager did not complete his master's degree, dropping out instead in 1973 to collaborate with Joseph Telushkin on an introductory book about Judaism. Prager and Telushkin self-published the book in 1975 as The Eight Questions People Ask About Judaism, later published by Simon & Schuster in 1976 as The Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism. The book has been translated into nearly a dozen languages and remains a widely used introductory text to Judaism.
From 1976 to 1983, Prager served as the director of the Brandeis-Bardin Institute in Simi Valley, California, teaching the tenets of Judaism to college-age single Jews.
In 1980, Prager met his first wife, Janice Adelstein, who was a nurse. They were married on January 15, 1981. Their son, David, was born two years later. In August 1986 she filed for divorce.
Prager started his radio career on August 8, 1982, as moderator of "Religion on the Line," a Sunday night program on KABC-AM, Los Angeles. The program featured discussions between representatives of various religions, typically including a priest, a Protestant minister, and a rabbi. Prager continued as the show's moderator for 10 years, and he continued to broadcast on KABC for several more years on "The Dennis Prager Show." He then began broadcasting for KRLA. National syndication began in 1999. He recently celebrated his 25th anniversary in radio broadcasting.
On September 4, 1988, Prager married Francine Stone, an actress, in a Los Angeles synagogue. In November 1992, the couple adopted a son, Aaron Henry Prager. On December 30, 2005, Prager announced on air that he and Stone were divorcing.On December 31, 2008, Prager married Susan Reed.
Prager often presents his political views in moral terms. He advocates the historical and uniquely American combination of Judeo-Christian values. He emphasizes moral clarity, that is, identifying the specific points of logical incompatibility between opposing sides of an issue.
Prager is an advocate for conservative causes and a supporter of the Republican Party . The motto for his radio show is "I prefer clarity to agreement."
In his articles, broadcasts, and lectures, Prager has declared that the U.S. is engaged in a "second civil war," a "culture war" over the fundamental moral values on which American society was built. Prager argues that many influential American institutions (including universities, trial lawyers, labor unions, the ACLU, civil rights groups, and most large newspapers and television networks) are dominated by secular leftists, whom he depicts as attacking and misrepresenting the uniqueness of Judeo-Christian values and their positive historical effect upon America and the world. In 2005, 24 of his columns were devoted to explaining those values and how he believes they make the United States special.[2] Prager has suggested that most contemporary social and political crises stem from the absence of a normative system of ethical monotheism. Prager accuses the governments of Western Europe ("a civilization in decline") and Canada of suffering from "a broken moral compass," charging that the dominance of secular leftist thought in those countries has rendered their societies morally confused.
Prager is a proponent of "American exceptionalism", the view that the moral superiority of American values sometimes justifies unilateral action on the world stage, and that the U.S. should not always be constrained by international law or the United Nations in pursuit of its goals. Prager has been an enthusiastic supporter of the United States' initiative in the War in Iraq, as well as many other efforts that he sees as confronting oppression and working toward the liberation of people living in tyranny.
Prager is both a leader in Jewish life ("One of the three most interesting minds in American Jewish life," according to The Jewish Week) and an outspoken supporter of the traditional Christian culture in the U.S. Prager often speaks of his disappointment with contemporary Jews' secularism. In a 1993 speech in Greensboro, North Carolina, Prager said that "the real religion of most American Jews is liberalism." Prager identifies himself as "a religious non-Orthodox Jew" and attends a Reform synagogue, the most liberal of Judaism's four main denominations. Prager does not observe the Jewish Sabbath according to Orthodox standards. He will drive a car to Sabbath-related events but does not allow television or radio in his home as they are not Sabbath-oriented. He neither broadcasts nor appears on TV talk shows on the Sabbath or Jewish holy days. He does not keep Orthodox Jewish dietary laws. He eats chicken with milk, as did some rabbis in the Talmudic period, but now it is forbidden under Orthodox Jewish law.[The source of the prohibition against consuming a mixture of meat and dairy is the verse, "You shall not cook a kid in his mother's milk" (Exodus 34:26). This verse infers that only the flesh of mammals, whose mothers lactate, are included in this prohibition. Fish and poultry do not nurse their young, and are thus excluded from this prohibition. Thus technically speaking, there is no Biblical prohibition against eating chicken or fish with dairy. However, many people did, and continue to, consider chicken a form of meat. It was sold together in the market, and is sold together in butcher shops and at the deli counter of your local supermarket etc. It was/is thus easy to make the mistake that if chicken (which in the mind of the masses is meat) was being eaten with milk, that meant other meats, as long as they aren't the actual kid in its biological mother's milk, are also permitted with milk. The sages, who were commanded by the Torah to protect its laws, issued a decree that since people consider chicken to be a form of meat, it is in the category of meat and may not be eaten with dairy. This confusion never applied to fish and fish is still not classified as meat]. He grew up Orthodox but abandoned Orthodoxy early in life. Prager says he believes in the divinity of the Torah. He differs with some in Orthodoxy on Torah law. Prager has taken up several causes to preserve references to God and the Ten Commandments in public facilities such as schools, parks, and courthouses.
In 2004, he spearheaded an unsuccessful movement to protect the official seal of the County of Los Angeles from being redesigned to remove a cross from its imagery. The ACLU held that the cross on the official seal implied an unconstitutional government endorsement of religion, while Prager argued that it instead honored the founding of Los Angeles by Catholic missionaries, or the historical influence of Christianity in the region.
Prager is a former liberal.[3]
In 2006, he was appointed by President George W. Bush to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council (which, among other projects, governs the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum). Due to Prager's involvement in the "Quran Oath Controversy," the Council on American-Islamic Relations called for Prager to be removed from the council overseeing the U.S. Holocaust Memorial. Some members of the Memorial Council such as former NYC mayor Ed Koch were vocal in advocating his removal.
In the end, the executive committee of the council issued a resolution that has been seen as "distancing" the council from Prager's remarks.[4] In an interview with the Associated Press, Prager stated "he was honored to 'continue serving' on the board, and that he understands the pressures that caused it to issue a statement."[5]
See main article: The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council and the Quran Oath Controversy of the 110th United States Congress.
Prager has lectured on his views in Jewish communities across North America, at major business conclaves, to chapters of the Young Presidents Organization around the world, and at churches and other Christian institutions. He is credited with lecturing on all seven continents. This claim appears to be at least partially in jest. During a cruise to Antarctica in 2002, Prager spoke in front of a group of penguins. He posted a photo of the moment on his official website. [6]
On February 1, 1999, Prager began national syndication of his radio show. Now KRLA is his flagship station, broadcasting live across the country from 9 AM to Noon (Pacific Time) for the Salem Broadcasting Network. He has been criticized for turning down the volume of callers' phone connections so that he can have the last word.
Prager wrote for several years for the Sunday Los Angeles Times "Current" section, and writes a weekly column published in newspapers and online at Townhall.com http://www.townhall.com/opinion/contributors/dennisprager/archive/2006/ and elsewhere.
He is also the author of four books: