and My Torah's Defender:
Radio'ing for Help from Dr. Laura
The Laura
Schlessinger stuff has been circulating enough that a brief comment is
warranted. And because she is a public figure whose actions and comments
touch on our values, it is halakhically proper for me to make these
comments that, in a different context, would be forbidden as lashon hara
and motzi shem ra'.
First, I have no comment on Shmuly Boteach's commentary, attached with
the Laura article. In the huge assemblage of those who deeply admire and
respect Rabbi Shmuely Boteach, my presence is not to be found.
As for Laura, I was one of the very, very few who quietly hesitated to
speak with pride about her adopting Judaism or veering towards Orthodox
Judaism. I was bemused by her having converted to Judaism, to Orthodoxy,
while still being married to a non-Jew. I did not understand how that
works. How do you convert to Judaism authentically if you will be going
to bed the next night with someone non-Jewish who is not converting with
you? So it all appeared to begin all wrong. Maybe she was not having
physical intimacy with a non-Jewish husband. But it was too quirky to
run to the front of the line and to get proud. Too
Soon, I read that she was forging Jewish religious contacts with a
Conservative Jewish temple in Woodland Hills. A Conservative affiliation
does not accord with an "Orthodox conversion," so that did not add up
either. Too quirky to get proud. Too
I suppose that, in a way, I really wanted to find a way to take pride in
her – I like her gusto; I like her feistiness; I like her courage in
certain situations. But too much was too quirky. How can someone really
participate in the Covenant of Abraham and Sarah by linking with a
There is much about her I respect. She took her stand on homosexuality,
and that cost her mightily. She probably lost her television program
because of that. She stood strongly for other morality issues and did
not back down. I felt the maximum sympathy for her when that creep
distributed nude photographs that she had allowed him to take decades
earlier, when she was so-much younger and less focused on values she
later adopted. I felt so bad for her. All her critics were calling her a
hypocrite, ridiculing and mocking her. I felt so bad -- cannot a person
make real mistakes when young and later revise her path? For that
matter, can't a person make mistakes when in his 30s and 40s and 50s and
60s -- and later reverse course to a more Torah-defined path? And maybe
the life of mistakes allows someone a heightened insight into why the
Torah path is better. She was a victim, blackmailed from her past to
silence her now. And she weathered the outrage with grace and dignity.
Still, a bunch of her strong positions, her not backing down, are as
much a part of her radio schtick as they are the manifestations of
courage. So it did not cost her on radio to stand firm on morality
issues, to issue tough love to her callers, because her core backing
expects that of her. So I am not sure how much of her is about courage.
And how much is schtick.
There are many, many quirks in the Dr. Laura persona, and she may be a
great and wonderful person, but maybe not. I just do not know. And many
things about her bothered me. She tells people to call their parents,
but she told Tom Snyder on a TV interview that she had not spoken to her
parents for decades. Now that does potentially evince an aspect of
hypocrisy. He asked why, and she responded that she did not want to
discuss it. Interesting, I thought. She discusses everything else. Not
inhibited, she. And she encourages her callers to put their personal
lives out front on radio.
Later, when her Mom was found dead a year or two ago, the papers
reported that the Mom had died quite some time earlier, but nobody had
known for a while that the deceased lay deceased in her Beverly Hills
home. I guess Laura really did not call her Mom all that much.
Maybe it is my very modest roots and upbringing, as the grandson of
immigrants who, on the paternal side, worked at a fruit stand and, on
the maternal side, sewed doll's shoes, knitted vests, and stocked eggs
in the apartment living room to sell on street corners during the
Depression. Whatever the reason, I have never been impressed by money,
by the lavish spending of money, or by the wealth of those who have that
money. Money is good to have, and I know the difference between having
it and not having it. I work hard for it, spending most of my weekday
time doing work that I would prefer not having to do, because that is
the current economic lot that Hashem has put before me. So I respect the
value of money. But I am not impressed by the rich, the famous, the
wealthy. I am not impressed by the spending of money on lavish things.
And no one else should be either. The rich are just like the rest of us.
In the end, one should not be Jewish because Dr. Laura has a passing
moment of interest or, as happened during a craze during my college
years in the 1970s, because Bob Dylan suddenly was taking an interest in
his roots. One day Bob Dylan is meeting with the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and
a few years later he is meeting with Christian theologians and recording
a Grammy-winning Christian Gospel album. One day Madonna is studying
Kabbalah, and the next day she is publishing a book of pornographic
photographs. One day Dr. Laura is the featured speaker at an Orthodox
Jewish group, and one day she is getting love-bombed by Christians
hoping to get their hands on a new Jewish convert . . and she is loving
it, loving the attention, loving the acceptance.
It sure is nice to be accepted and love-bombed. Definitely. I could use
it, too. Plenty. But the only reason to be Jewish is that G-d gave the
Torah to His Chosen People at
Why are we Jewish? Why do we do it? These are real questions to ask.
“Just because”? Perhaps that kind of answer is not good enough. There
has to be a spiritual core. For example, Shabbat needs to be spiritual,
not just ritual rote. Sure, the Shabbat table needs to be a place where
people eat kosher food. But that is not enough. The oven and stove with
which the food is prepared need to be kosher. But that is not enough.
The dishes on which the food is placed have to be kosher and permissible
for use. But that is not enough. Because the discussion at the Shabbat
table has to be rich, substantive. It has to be about ideas, not things.
If one must talk about things, the discussion must not be about people.
Then the Shabbat table is healthy and rich.
Too much of Dr. Laura’s livelihood is about people. Yes, she tries
imbuing her show with ideas, but she knows that her listeners are not
all drawn by the drama of ideas, not by the drama of things, but by the
drama of listening to schmutz, to gossip, to people talking about
people, to hapless individuals calling in for seven minutes of drive-in
therapy. That is why she gets the Arbitron ratings. For that matter,
that dynamic is why Jerry Springer draws higher ratings than did Dick
Cavett or than does Charlie Rose.
And that is where the problem with Dr. Laura always returns. Because
there is a modesty in speech, a modesty in behavior that kind-of
conflicts with the drama of the mass-media persona. The public figure
gets so caught-up so deeply with her self-promotion and with mass
adulation that she loses touch with Emes, with truth. People fawn, and
the public figure becomes accustomed to the fawning. Then, when she
joins a group that does not fawn with sufficient consistency, she is
disappointed. Why don't they fawn?
Now she has new religionists – from a different faith community -- to
fawn. So be it. If they cannot win over converts from Judaism among
those who studied in yeshiva, they at least can focus on winning those
higher in profile.
Ultimately, the lessons that Laura teaches us through this escapade are
powerful if we learn them. Ersatz Judaism is not the Torah. The Torah is
not merely the Five Books of Moses. Rather, Torah is about a Written
Law, an Oral law, and associating and affiliating with a community of
observant Jews who, by their practice, live by the words and practice
the laws. There is plenty of slack, plenty of room for evolving
commitment. It is rare that someone normal would, overnight, accept and
successfully practice all the Torah. Indeed, arguably the more stable
personality needs time to evolve and to accept. But when too much Valley
glitz is sprinkled, and things just do not make sense, there often is
good reason for wondering whether the quirkiness belies, well, quirks in
the story. And here they do.