00:00:00.000Hey everybody, happy Friday, special Friday episode of the Charlie Kirk Show.
00:00:04.000My conversation with Dennis Prager, one of my mentors, and just people that have impacted my thinking so tremendously, author of a new book, Deuteronomy, God Blessings and Curses.
00:01:16.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:04:31.000First of all, the Ten Commandments is repeated.
00:04:33.000This time, in Exodus, it's from God, and in Deuteronomy, it's from Moses.
00:04:40.000And it's virtually identical, except interestingly, for one thing, one major thing, the others were minor, where the reason for the Sabbath is different.
00:04:54.000God says, it's because I created the world in six days and rested on the seventh, so that when you keep the Sabbath, you are stating to the world that God created the world.
00:05:07.000But Moses says it is because you are now free, and free people don't work seven days a week.
00:07:46.000It isn't like I took you out of the land of Egypt, so bring me great sacrifices so that I could munch on yummy food, which is what it would have been in the pagan world.
00:07:57.000But rather, hey, listen, I took you out of Egypt.
00:08:07.000It's very powerful that the way in which you express gratitude to God, it's for all of us, not just the Hebrews 3,200 years ago, is by treating our fellow human being decently.
00:08:23.000I want to talk more about the Ten Commandments in a second, especially treating your parents heavily, which is something I learned from you, which I find to just be so fascinating.
00:08:34.000And one of the most important conversations I've ever heard you give was about the difference between treating your parents lightly or cursing them or honoring them or treating them heavily.
00:08:48.000But I want to ask you about a verse that is very important in Christian theology, as I believe it is in Jewish theology, which is Deuteronomy 6:4, which is, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.
00:09:02.000What is the significance of that verse?
00:09:04.000It was re-quoted again by Jesus in the New Testament.
00:09:08.000And I'm going to butcher this, Dennis, but I believe that's the Shema Yizarel, if I'm not mistaken.
00:09:40.000And by the way, even that is an important point.
00:09:44.000This is the credo of the Jewish people.
00:09:47.000Jews often, even non-religious Jews, if they know they're about to die, they will say, Shemai Yisrael Adama Elohino Adonai.
00:09:58.000Here, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord alone, or the Lord is one.
00:10:04.000Jews walk to the gas chambers saying this.
00:10:07.000It's a very, it is the motto of Judaism, of the Torah.
00:10:13.000And what you'll find of interest, and by the way, I got to tell you, I'm very, very touched at how carefully you've read this, that you knew the heavy and the light.
00:11:04.000Charlie, I don't get along with my parents, and I think I'm going to avoid them this holiday season.
00:11:11.000What does it mean, Dennis, to treat your parents heavily, not lightly?
00:11:17.000When one knows the Hebrew, and it's a blessing in my life that I know biblical Hebrew very well, because I couldn't have done this commentary, the rational Bible, without that.
00:11:31.000So you obviously found this fascinating, and I have a feeling your many listeners will.
00:11:39.000So it says, honor your father and mother.
00:14:53.000And I did it because, I mean, ultimately I did it.
00:14:58.000I had a sense of indebtedness to them.
00:15:00.000And, you know, in adulthood, I got along just perfectly with them.
00:15:04.000But I did it in the beginning because I believed God commanded me to.
00:15:09.000That is the importance of believing God commanded you.
00:15:11.000All of these young people or these adults who won't speak to their parent because the parent voted for Donald Trump, these despicable adults, they're despicable for doing this.
00:15:23.000By the way, you're despicable if you don't talk to your parent for voting for Joe Biden.
00:15:51.000There's no commandment to love your child.
00:15:54.000And it matters, and you say this all the time, Dennis, which we're going to get into in the next segment, how you behave towards your parents, not how you feel towards your parents.
00:16:07.000You have no idea how much it means to me how carefully you've read my stuff.
00:16:12.000I mean that I have touched a guy like you is a big deal.
00:16:17.000Dennis, what I'm so struck about your Bible commentary when I read it is you go out of your way to communicate in the preface of Genesis, if I remember correctly, at least I think in every one of them, that this is written for Christians, for Jews, but also the non-religious.
00:16:34.000So there are Jews, I don't know how many, I don't know what percentage, but in the religious world in which I grew up in Judaism, I think there was a sense that, which is totally understandable, that God gave the Torah to the Jews, and then they would put a period at the end of that sentence.
00:16:56.000I never, of course, I believe that, but I never accepted the period at the end of the sentence.
00:17:02.000And what are we supposed to do with it?
00:17:05.000See, I never believed that something could be relevant to one group, but not to another.
00:17:11.000If the Torah has something to say to a Jew, it has something to say to a non-Jew.
00:21:14.000And people don't know how seriously the Bible, and especially the Torah, which is the first five books, which are the basis of the Old and New Testaments, take murder.
00:21:29.000For example, how many Christians even know that God prescribes capital punishment when creating the world?
00:21:41.000All the laws are in the other four books.
00:21:44.000But there are maybe two or three or four, maybe actually seven, I think it is, in Genesis.
00:21:53.000One of them is, if a man's blood is shed by another human being, human beings must shed his blood because in the image of God, man is created.
00:22:06.000You are violating the sanctity of human life by letting every murderer live.
00:22:15.000And that's why it drives me crazy when people, Catholic, Protestant, or Jew, who say that they take their religion seriously come out against capital punishment in every case.
00:22:31.000Do you know that in the five books of Moses, the Torah, it is the only law in all five books to take a murderer's life?
00:22:41.000So that, back to your point, the point that I make, why do we kill an ox that gores a human to death?
00:23:42.000So let me ask you about one or two of the more obscure laws, if that's okay.
00:23:48.000Because, you know, people, I'm far from a biblical expert, but every once in a while there's a smart alec that will come up to an event and they'll ask me about one of the laws, and I just couldn't answer it.
00:24:01.000This one's in numbers, so I might put you on the spot of a different one.
00:24:05.000And I think this is only the one delegated for women, and I think there's only three of them, where you must set aside a piece of dough when baking bread.
00:24:15.000What is the rational explanation for that?
00:24:19.000So, yeah, it's odd that somebody would raise that.
00:24:24.000Why would any ceremony be problematic?
00:24:28.000I can understand where people are troubled by taking the life of a bad child that occurs, which I explain as one of the great moral achievements of the Torah.
00:27:29.000The biggest reason, according to the greatest Jewish philosopher who ever lived, Maimonides in the Middle Ages, was to wean them away from human sacrifice.
00:27:37.000Much better to sacrifice an animal than sacrifice a human.
00:27:41.000You have to understand things in the context.
00:28:08.000For example, if someone's on trial for homicide, it makes a big difference if the person dropped a hammer doing construction work and it split a guy's skull open and he died, or whether he went with a hammer and split the guy's skull open and he died.
00:28:30.000Clearly, one is intentional and one is accidental.
00:28:34.000So in those instances, intentions matter.
00:28:39.000But as a general rule in life, only your behavior matters, not your intentions.
00:28:47.000The number of people who intended good and supported communism is in the millions.
00:28:53.000But it was the greatest slaughtering machine that has ever existed in history.
00:28:57.000100 million people just by communism alone.
00:29:01.000So that's why whenever I hear, oh, he meant well or she means well, I think, who cares?
00:29:09.000And I think I agree with that in large part.
00:29:12.000I would just say, though, maybe on interpersonal relationships, this is an example, right?
00:29:17.000If my wife forgets to feed the dog, I would treat that completely differently than if she decided to starve the dog.
00:29:26.000That was my homicide analogy, of course.
00:29:30.000But remember, that's a specific act of a specific person in a specific condition.
00:29:43.000I know you agree with me because you and I so know the damage the left has done and is doing today, but a lot of these people don't mean to do damage.
00:29:54.000They don't wake up in the morning and say, how can I destroy America?
00:30:09.000And I mean, it caught me in that unbelievably great podcast you did where it was the, I love myself with unlimited good intentions, or I'm a broken human being knitted together with an endless ocean of good intentions.
00:30:23.000All that self-love nonsense that is permeating society.
00:31:32.000So, Dennis, in closing here, we only have a minute and a half remaining.
00:31:35.000What did we not cover on your Rational Bible series you want our audience to be aware of?
00:31:41.000In Deuteronomy, the latest volume, there is a law that almost nobody knows about, and it is the one that I always cite on behalf of this book.
00:31:55.000That is not, I don't mean my book, the book of Deuteronomy.
00:31:59.000Man goes into war, his army is victorious.
00:32:05.000He sees a woman belonging to the conquered people.