The RDL Podcast with Rabbi Daniel Lapin

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.

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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.”

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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…….

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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.

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People say, “I’m not religious but I’m spiritual”.  What does that really mean?  What is spiritual reality?  Why do prostitutes still prosper in the era of Tinder with quick and free hook-ups?  Why are so many mental health professionals secular when every indication is that spiritual reality is a powerful factor in mental rehab?  The role of Darwin, Freud, and Marx at the start of the 1900s.  My close encounter with a real, live African lion. Definitions of spiritual and physical and how many of the joys in your life depend upon each? The exact location of heaven. 

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How to overcome  the resistance that obstructs every attempt to improve our lives, New Year resolutions notwithstanding.   Health & weight loss; alcohol, drugs, & other addictions, career advance, debt reduction and almost everything else that involves us in a struggle pitting our higher selves and our betterment against our lower desires, our laziness, and our lethargy.  Learn the lesson from a famous musician & hear him play.  Developing a ripped body without effort through electro-muscle stimulation. Reviewing President Trump’s first year. Judeo-Christian religions liberate; secular liberalism restrains and restricts.  Sexual harassment between 1967 and 2017.  A secretary was not a toy, but is she now?  And one of the best ways for a young woman to get ahead.

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My polite response to the rude people who accosted me for driving a fuel-hungry, twelve cylinder automobile.  Why we circumcise.  The higher and holy purpose of energy and how the Left has it all wrong.  What Chanukah lights have to do with foreskins.  Why airplane engines burn oil not coal like older railway locomotives.  The real purpose of aging and why not to dye your hair.

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Why does the Canadian town of Halifax send Boston a fifty-foot Christmas tree every year?  Why have great senators of the past like Hiram Revels of Mississippi, Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, & Henry ‘Scoop’ Jackson of Washington been replaced with the clowns, creeps, crooks and cranks in Congress today?   Want to hear a fantastic 100 year-old poem answering this question?  The bullying, grabbing, groping, and touching of women (as well as of themselves) by disgraced men isn’t masculine at all—it’s pathetic.  Masculinity is what most women yearn to surrender themselves to. It follows that males who seize what no woman wishes to grant is the very opposite of masculine.  It is their behavior that is appalling not their masculinity.  The culprit is their character, not their chromosomes.  President Trump-Jerusalem Hero

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Why do politicians and the intellectual elite hate successful business professionals, but they prostrate themselves at the feet of super-wealthy stars of sports and entertainment?  What can we learn from the 1991 movie City Slickers starring Billy Crystal and Jack Palance?  Who really owns a business, stakeholders or shareholders?  Where does the ubiquitous dollar $$$ sign come from?  As long as employees feel fulfilled, expenses can grow faster than revenue – True or False?  Why you should not think of your spouse as your ‘best friend’. 

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54 Years ago this week, Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas underwent the most momentous and historic 48 hours ever undergone by an American hospital.    The hospital was resilient enough to endure it and continue functioning.   Resilience is indispensable for any person, family, or business that hopes to survive.    When blows of fate fall, those who are resilient absorb those blows and bounce back.  They are buffeted and bent by the storm winds but not broken.  They spring back because they possess resilience.  What is the secret of resilience?     That is what you will know by the end of this short Thanksgiving show.  

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