Rabbi Daniel Lapin

Three Mediterranean oceanfront countries with similar population densities, similar limited access, similar lack of natural resources. Yet, Malta and Gibraltar are thriving, happy places that attract throngs of tourists while Gaza is a dangerous and oppressive hell hole.  Why? (Clue: It has nothing to do with Israel)  Should countries that start wars and then lose them also lose territory?  How helpful is the United Nations? When groups of people succeed or when they fail, the causes are seldom external.  It is nearly always due to internal culture.  Kids who succeed at school usually do so because they come from a family culture that esteems education.  Whether young people grow into productive citizens building successful, independent lives or whether they become indolent, pleasure-seeking parasites depends only on culture. Why have Biblically-based countries and cultures been more successful than the rest?  Is the victim always virtuous or can you sometimes blame the victim?  Why are the Arabs in Abu Dhabi

Here’s an unexpected reversal:  It’s not so much that civilization developed water-borne sewerage systems as much as it’s that the cultural values of cleanliness that made it imperative for certain cultures to distance themselves  from their body waste that made civilization possible.  Toilets and sewage systems are more important than banks and art galleries and have to come first.  Cultures that sexualize the public area lose economic vitality.  Why premature sexualization of youngsters dooms them to poverty.  How a certain ‘redheaded slut’ contributed to the economic and military decline.  How they got enough water into New York in the 1840s.  Why it takes 3 or more people to sustain 2 elderly people even if the old-timers have retirement plans and pensions.  What distinguishes humans who are creators from humans who are consumers.  Why a prominent Stanford professor who got it all stupendously wrong fifty years ago is still teaching.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

True systems like mathematics and physics have no internal contradictions. No law about addition or subtraction contradicts any other law about multiplication or division. No law about gravity or optics contradicts another law about motion or electricity.  Yet, repeatedly, the system known variously as liberalism/leftism/progressivism/secular fundamentalism/socialism reveals internal contradictions.  These intrinsic fault lines prove the failure of the unproven axioms known as liberalism/leftism/etc.  It is clear that it is no coherent system.  It clearly possesses no integrity at all.  Women-only organizations, yes; men-only clubs, no?  Really?  A vacation resort for women only. Makes sense, but why not one for men? Germany wants all immigrants but also wants to be pro-Israel. What if your immigrants hate Israel?  Why did so-called black leadership like Jesse Jackson support O.J. Simpson but not Bill Cosby?  Should it be illegal to deny the Holocaust?  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adc

Deep down, do you harbor a horrible little suspicion  that accepting most migrants or refugees, (whatever you want to call citizens of other countries who want to live in America) is more moral than building a wall or stopping them at the border in any other way?  Deep down do  you suspect that it is more moral to help beggars in Bombay and derelicts in Djibouti than helping  your own sister?   Do any of the 535 legislators on Capitol Hill know of any moral framework defending national integrity?  Does any State Dept. bureaucrat know of any moral framework validating border control?  It sure doesn’t look like it, does it?  And if you don’t believe in the morality of it, how can you accomplish it?  No decent person can succeed at any enterprise that deep in his heart he considers morally reprehensible.  Deep down they and their European counterparts believe that any South American has the right to live in Texas or Arizona and they believe that any MENA (Middle East North Africa) resident has the right to resid

3 vital questions to ask the man wanting to marry (or date) your daughter. One sure giveaway that he’s a loser.  Hint: It has to do with his mom.  A scary interview with an intensive care hospital nurse.   If civilization was left up to women, we’d still be living in grass huts.  What sexist male pig said that?   It’s also true that there are more female fetuses aborted than male. By their feminists moms!  Why so many LUGS (lesbians until graduation) but not so many HUGS.  Participation prizes-a national disgrace.  Why Bible says “Man must leave his father & mother… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What really distinguishes liberalism from conservatism.  Holding your own baby for the first time matters to all people in all places at all times.  Tennis and marshmallows do not.  Feeling hope as the sun rises is something all humans everywhere have always known.  Riding a rollercoaster ride is not. Ancient Jewish wisdom’s take on Scripture is that it covers everything that is applicable to all people everywhere, always.  Such a universal experience is laughter.  What is it and what makes some things funnier than others?  Why does so much comedy revolve around toilet functions, sexual functions and God?  Which is the better blueprint for families, companies, organizations and countries; kindness & compassion or law & discipline?  Do you know what is so funny about laughter in the Bible?  Who laughs more; liberals or conservatives? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Only about 20% of self-identifying American Jews believe in God and regard His Torah as authoritative.  And the rest?  What do they believe?  Is it true that some parts of American Jewry are viewed as the circumcised wing of the Democratic Party?  Why is so much American entertainment Jewishly flavored?  This is not true for movies and TV programing from England or France.  Is this observation anti-Semitic?  If so, call the Anti-Defamation League. Or the Southern Poverty Law Center. The truth about both these disturbing organizations. The sad story of the Christian girl who wasted seven of her best years dating two Jewish men (one after the other). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Let your Rabbi describe to you a book in his library printed in 1936 and entitled “How to Make Love”.  Today’s worst insults and most indicting criticisms:  It’s old fashioned; it’s not modern; it’s archaic; it’s outdated; it’s so yesterday.  Many mistakenly believe that any idea not sufficiently progressive is automatically false and wrong.  But what if some old ideas are actually true and right?  Learning to judge the value of an idea regardless of its vintage.  And talking of older ideas with tremendous value, let’s teach our children to court rather than date.  Why the emotional roller-coaster of teenage and young adult dating does such a good job preparing for divorce.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is it because the Jews convinced the Romans to crucify Jesus?  No; many who hate the Jews also hate Christianity.  Is it because of Jews like Saul Alinsky, George Soros, Bernie Sanders, Sigmund Freud, Herbert Marcuse and many others?  Partially, perhaps, but many who hate the Jews have never heard of these men. Why is it that Jew hatred seems to go hand-in-hand with communism, progressivism, socialism or whatever else you wish to label the Left. Soviet style socialism hated Jews. National Socialism (Nazi) hated Jews and modern progressive socialism as found on American university campuses hates Jews.  People and places who possess pride in economic growth and wealth creation get on well with Jews.  Hatred of the free-market and loathing of wide spread individual prosperity seems to go together with hating Jews.  The more left a country leans the more likely it is to hate Israel.  Today’s show explains this bizarre pattern that is so much a part of today’s geopolitics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit m

This show is about the magical ten years in a man’s life; ages 13—23 years-old. These are the years in which subsequent success in life is rooted and, sadly, the years in which the origin of future failure can be found.  Here are the step-by-step success strategies that a young man should follow for positioning himself for everything good in life.  The show is not about the importance of being cool.  It is not about learning how to rap or tap dance and it is not about social media. But it is about sex and money; the two areas in which most men have the most regrets.  Here are the things you wish you knew when you were between 13 and 23 years-old.  The show starts with Shakespeare and ends with Kipling; those two dead white guys knew a thing or two! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

America’s bizarre distinctions in how two human appetites are treated—sex and money.  With sex, anything that two consenting adults chose to do is viewed as nobody else’s business. Anything at all!  With money, even if two consenting adults agree to a certain job at a specific hourly rate, the government steps in to insist that employer must pay employee a minimum amount.  With sex, if one party decides not to deliver to another, not only is that fine but the other, the ‘buying’ party can be destroyed for even suggesting the deal to the reluctant ‘seller’.  With money, if one party, say, a baker, decides not to deliver to another party, the government steps in and punishes the reluctant seller.  Why hotel rooms in liberal cities are so expensive. What did Frank Sinatra/Ava Gardner, Clark Gable/Carole Lombard & Spencer Tracy/Katherine Hepburn have in common? School sex-ed, yes but gun-ed, no? Four revolutions that changed our world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Your spouse asks you to stop doing something. Your boss at work asks you to start doing something. You kid asks you why you’re doing something. Wouldn’t it be great to come back with the right answer every time? The answer that, a day later you still admire rather than the answer you think of a day later and wish you’d given. How do you react wisely off the cuff? By arming yourself with the right basic beliefs. But when you start off with a wrong basic belief you end up making bad intuitive decisions in all the many daily circumstance. Your rabbi equips you with an invaluable tool. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A reasoned analysis of the Florida school shooting.  Yes, there is a way to stop these tragedies, but, no, it has nothing to do with guns.  What percentage of the hundreds of people you encounter every day are really crazy?  How many so-called “homeless” are mentally imbalanced?  Do you know why they are not being cared for in medical facilities where they would be safe—and so would we?  Do you know any families being torn apart by having to struggle with a deeply troubled teenager all alone?  Is the SCOTUS ruling of Roe v. Wade in 1973 connected  in any way to the Parkland, Florida school shooting?  Why did Hitler use precious resources killing 3 million Jews in Poland in 1942 while his eastern front was crumbling at Leningrad?  Could you protect your family from a violent home invader? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why does Socialism exercise an almost irresistible appeal to secular people?  Why are intellectuals, academics, bureaucrats, career-politicians and others drawn so powerfully to, liberalism, progressivism, well, actually to Socialism?  We cannot combat what we don’t understand.  We cannot defeat what we cannot get a hold of.  Let’s probe the real roots of the problem.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Grand Coulee Dam.  Air-conditioning.   Hoover Dam.  Empire State Building.  Over 3 million miles of highway.  Golden Gate Bridge.  Verrazano Bridge.  Holland Tunnel.  George Washington Bridge.  Automatic transmissions.  Commercial jet travel. Electric refrigerators.  That and more took place 1900-1960.   Since then…?  Almost nothing!  What! Why? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is there a scientific test for honesty?  The most important organ for making money (If you’re not a swimsuit model!)  Do identical twins have same or different fingerprints?  The power of optimism in financial interactions.  Do you know what medical school your doctor attended; do you know if he attended medical school at all?  The danger of fear and how to get rid of it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Everything we think we know about Mutiny on the Bounty is a lie!  3 Hollywood movies distorted the truth.  The 1850 novel, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a great work of art nourishing our higher selves with serious thoughts about good and evil, marriage and morality, hypocrisy and nobility, the inevitability of consequences and yes, adultery.  The 1995 movie The Scarlet Letter starring Demi Moore has as much to do with the book as the movie Free Willy has to do with Moby Dick, another great American novel written by Herman Melville at the same time as The Scarlet Letter.  And while we’re on the topic of books and animals, I tell you something you don’t know about The Life of Pi. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Communicating effectively produces wonderful results in romantic, business & social interactions.  Only in politics is the reverse tolerated. Here’s what a politician would call a spade: “It’s a one person operated, foot-powered implement of ligno metallic composition designated primarily though by no means exclusively for use in agricultural, horticultural, & constructional activities for purposes of carrying out such excavational tasks as may  be designated by supervisory grades.”  Why I would eliminate and ban the use of these meaningless slurs: Anti-Semite, Homophobe, Racist, Sexist, & Capitalist. My answer to a young friend’s worry that “Trump will get us into a war.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Masturbation, the art of selfishness.   Why is the smallest room in the house, the bathroom, so over decorated?    Monogrammed towels?  Soap shaped like seashells?  Really?  Why are we so embarrassed about a perfectly natural bodily function like emptying our bowels?  What does relieving oneself have to do with masturbation?   Why did Onan in the Bible have to die?  If a woman never marries, is she better off with a child or without?  Why are welfare recipients not the most patriotic and appreciative citizens?  How to avoid all awkwardness in the masturbation conversation with teenagers.  Why did the great, great, grandmother of King David dress up as a prostitute?  Why did her former father-in-law not recognize her?  No it won’t grow hair on your hands or make you blind, but it will……. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mrs. Lapin and I were offered a guided tour of the new Museum of the Bible in Washington DC.  We accepted, planning on spending an hour there.  We were confident that an hour would more than suffice.  We know the Bible, right?  We frequently visit Israel.  We’ve already seen one too many archeological artifacts.  Gosh, was I wrong! We spent five hours there.  They couldn’t get rid of us. And we are eagerly planning our next visit; sooner rather than later.  How often is your rabbi speechless?  Ridiculous, right?  But I was lost for words.  The museum is deeply moving for any American regardless of faith and profoundly impactful for any sentient human being.  In this show, I describe what we saw and I place it in cultural context in terms of the socio-political canyon that cuts through our American culture.  This is an immensely significant addition to our nation and I feel indebted to the Green family, creators of Hobby Lobby whose generosity and vision made it possible. Learn more about your ad choices. Visi