by Avraham M. Goldstein
As these words are being written, the news of
Senator Joseph Lieberman’s selection as Al Gore’s running mate has instantly
relegated Dr. Laura Schlessinger to the rank of second most famous Orthodox
Jew in America. Second, because with up to twenty million listeners tuning
in to her top-rated radio show each week, she used to be first. And she has
used this exposure to open a window onto Judaism’s true stand on today’s
key moral issues.
The trip to Yiddishkeit has been a long and winding
road for Laura Schlessinger, husband/manager Dr. Lewis Bishop, and son Deryk.
This giores tzeddek, true proselyte, was born in Brooklyn to a Jewish father
and an Italian mother. The family moved to Italy and then came back to the
U.S. Dr. Laura recalls a childhood with “no religion” in her life.
When she was about thirty, already highly credentialed
in psychology and associated fields and a successful California talk show
host to boost, she was asked to speak at a Beverly Hills synagogue. She had
“the oddest feeling” walking in, and told her audience, “I feel a little
breathless being in this building, and I’m not quite sure why.” Her inner
yearning for Judaism had begun to surface.
Her real epiphany, however, came one morning
nine years ago. Flipping through television channels with five-year-old Deryk,
she froze at the site of Holocaust footage. Deryk, now fourteen, remembers
asking, “Who are those people?” His mother replied, “They are Jews.” Deryk
persisted, “What’s a Jew?” Said his mother, “I don’t know, but I’ll find
out.” Little could she have known that she was also about to find herself.
Recalls Dr. Laura, “I started reading books about
Judaism. When I got to the part about Jews being a nation of priests, I said,
‘Bingo, that’s what I’m supposed to be doing.’ ”
Dr. Laura’s journey of discovery led her to a
Reform temple in Los Angeles. The family went to Passover services, and here
she had another revelation. Her father had once said about Judaism, “I will
not be a member of a religion where they celebrate the mass murder of children.”
Yet here she saw the Seder participants spilling wine from their cups to
memorialize the Egyptians who had suffered during the Ten Plagues. “He lied
to me!” she remembers thinking.
Yet an attempt to placed Deryk in a Reform religious
school failed on grounds of hypocrisy: the school saw nothing wrong with
serving non-kosher meat. Next they tried a Conservative temple, but again
came away unsatisfied. The reason? Dr. Laura says that while the rabbi teaching
the class she attended was nice, “he never talked about G-d.” It was form
without substance.
Along the way, the family picked up additional
Jewish practices, including keeping kosher. All three also underwent a Conservative
conversion. At the same time, her radio show was gaining in popularity, and
she was quite open on the air about her religious awakening.
Dr. Laura Schlessinger with husband Dr. Lewis Bishop and Rabbi Moshe Bryski of Chabad of the Conejo. |
Dr. Laura started to correspond with Rabbi Reuven
Bulka, a prominent Orthodox rabbi in Ottawa. She was slowly becoming aware
that not all Jewish groups shared Judaism’s traditional values. Her association
with Rabbi Bulka proved invaluable when she was assailed after a presentation
she made for a secular Jewish group. She had made the benign observation
that the only thing missing from a fund-raising video about the group was
the fact that giving charity is a mitzvah. In her words, “It doesn’t matter
if you feel” like giving; tzeddakah is mandatory.
“It was a very ugly thing,” Dr. Laura says. “Media
all over the country reported that I had been rude in front of a Jewish organization.
I was stunned. What hurt was that everyone had been telling me to be careful
about talking on the air about becoming a Jew, that anti-Semitism would snap
me. It wasn’t; it was the Jews who came up and snapped me.”
She credits Rabbi Bulka with pulling her through
this trauma. “He was on the phone every afternoon, trying to talk me through
this. He told me, ‘I don’t want to go down in history as the rabbi who lost
Dr. Laura!’ ”
It was at this time that, as she humorously puts
it, she, Lew, and Deryk elected to “upgrade” their Jewish status. Having
become aware that a Conservative conversion did not pass muster in the eyes
of traditional Judaism, the family flew to Canada, where Rabbi Bulka converted
Laura, Lew, and Deryk k’halachah, in accordance with traditional Jewish law.
Deryk now attends Shalhevet, a yeshivah in Los Angeles. This summer he went
to Israel with Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis.
Today the family makes its spiritual home at
the Chabad of the Conejo, in Agoura, California, and has developed a close
relationship with the synagogue’s leader, Rabbi Moshe Bryski. Dr. Laura recalls
their first visit to the shul. “The first person we saw said, ‘Welcome. Would
you like to come to our house for lunch?’ Everyone was just so nice. We all
liked it a lot, so that’s been home.” She says of Orthodoxy: “I’m enthralled
with the mentality” of people actually living their beliefs.
As Dr. Laura discovered religion, her show changed
focus from psychology to ethics. Having realized the truth of Biblical morals,
she began challenging callers for not putting their children first, for divorcing,
for aborting pregnancies — for refusing to take responsibility for their
lives.
Dr. Laura makes no bones about Judaism’s true
position in favoring traditional values such as marriage and family, and
its disdain for alternative lifestyles, elective single motherhood, and divorce.
How does she reconcile Jewish law with her largely
non-Jewish audience? “I always say to callers, according to Jewish law, this
is the law; let’s see how we can extrapolate to your situation.” Dr. Laura
admits that she is a novice when it comes to the Jewish view of things. “Sometimes
during a break I call Rabbi Bryski and say, ‘I have ten seconds; here’s the
situation. What’s the law?’ ”
Her approach has earned her the respect of her
largely Christian audience, which sees in her a kindred spirit. “People have
a newfound respect and understanding for Judaism,” she says. And how do Jewish
listeners react? Says Rabbi Bryski: “When Dr. Laura goes on the radio and
talks about Torah, it strengthens the self-image of the ordinary Jew who
is listening.”
The public perception of Judaism has been falsely
colored by the Jewish left, both secular and religious. It has painted Judaism
as the repository for almost every anti-moral cause imaginable. Nothing can
be further from the truth.
Dr. Laura’s take-no-prisoners approach to morality
has invited vitriol, especially her oft-quoted comment that homosexuality
is deviant behavior. She has declared time and again that she harbors no
personal animosity towards gays and lesbians — that she is denouncing the
sin, not the sinner. Rabbi Bryski says, “Gays have taken her words out of
context. When anyone tries to say, ‘No, this is what she really said,’ they
get shouted down. And the media is a willing accomplice to this.’ ”
She says, “The hate that I have gotten from the
secular Jewish community is flabbergasting.” Rabbi Bryski adds, “When Dr.
Laura went public that she was going to convert to Orthodoxy, it sent shockwaves
through the Reform movement. She is their target number one.”
Groups that support the mainstreaming of deviant
lifestyles have pounded at potential advertisers for Dr. Laura’s upcoming
television program, to the point that Procter & Gamble withdrew as a
sponsor. Yet she refuses to dilute her message in order to silence her critics.
She professes astonishment at her lack of support
from Orthodox Jewish quarters. “I have been disappointed at how silent the
Orthodox community has been. The people to come to my defense, and in defense
of G-d’s laws, have been basically Christian Protestant.”
Dr. Laura continues that this silence encompasses
issues beyond her own. She notes that conservative Republicans ask her why
the only Jews they hear about are the ones tearing down moral institutions.
“Why are the only rabbis we hear from the ones that want to have same-sex
marriages?” they want to know. Again, she has no answer.
Are the Orthodox simply more segregated, so that
they are uninvolved in promoting an agenda? “If you’re going to change the
world, if this is a tikkun olam moment, you have to be out there doing it,
not just insulated in your group. I always thought the Orthodox are the keepers
of the flame, but if there’s a flame in the wilderness and nobody can see
it, it doesn’t matter.”
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Dr. Laura’s Take On the World
What is the prime reason for the decline in our moral climate?
Cowardice; people not standing up for truth. The left has no fear. They will
get up and say anything. They will name-call, because they are not judged
by the media whatsoever. But if the people on the more religious side speak
up, they are beaten into the ground.
What is the key reason for marital difficulties today?
There has been a lowered expectation of commitment, and so I don’t think
people put as much into their relationships as they used to. And they don’t
tolerate as much — the things that should be tolerated, not the things that
shouldn’t be, like abuse or addiction.
You spend two or three minutes with a caller. Is this enough time to give them what may be a life-changing answer?
Totally yes. Callers say to me: I so respect what you say; it’s changed my
life. The caller is also hearing the other three hours; it’s not just the
two or three minutes.
Are you concerned that you demean or embarrass callers with your tone?
No, because they’re not in public; they have total privacy. They know that
if they get into a certain area I’m going to be all over them. I consider
myself a very good mother on the air. Slurp them up on one side if they need
it, and smack them on the other side of the head if they need that.
I’m never asked, tell me about the times you
cried when somebody called. I only hear about the tough talk. But the prophets
were pretty threatening too. Do you hate the prophets and only like the priests?
I’m more like the prophet. I’m going to take a pot, put it over your head,
and bang on it. I’m going to make sure you hear me.
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