Dr. Laura Schlessinger and the Ten Commandments

Sermon given February 12, 1999, by Rabbi Samuel M. Stahl

        Several years ago, our Temple member, Frank Kimmelman, of blessed memory, left a large bequest for humanitarian purposes. It was to be administered by Temple Beth-El. After struggling with the unclear language of the will for well over a year, our lay leadership set up a semi-autonomous Permanent Charities Foundation.

        At the suggestion of Rabbi David and Helen Jacobson, who were largely responsible for this bequest, the foundation decided to use the income to provide day-care scholarships. They are intended primarily for single parents to enable them to attend school and/or pursue a career.

        The noted talk-show host, Dr. Laura Schlessinger, if she knew of this plan, would strenuously oppose it. Dr. Laura argues that day-care is not good for children. She insists that mothers, in particular, should stay home with their children during the early years of their life. To Dr. Laura, day-care workers don’t care about children. To them, it’s just a job.

        Dr. Laura, however, fails to take into consideration that many young mothers have no choice but to work in order to support their families. They don’t have the option to stay at home. If they did, their families would starve.

        However, Dr. Laura is not known for her compassion and sensitivity. On the air, she can be brutally direct and frank. She is often arrogant, rude, and abrasive. Yet, in spite of her opinionated bluntness, she has managed to attract a high volume of listeners, numbering well over fifteen million, to her daily radio shows. Next to Rush Limbaugh, she is the most popular national radio talk-show host today.

        Dr. Laura’s life journey has been a challenging one. She was born in Brooklyn, New York. She was one of two daughters of Monroe Schlessinger and the former Yolanda Ceccovini. Her Jewish father had fought in Northern Italy during World War II. There he met Yolanda, a beautiful woman who resembled the actress, Sophia Loren. Yolanda had been a non-practicing Roman Catholic.

        Dr. Laura describes her parents’ union as an "interfaithless" marriage. She was raised with essentially no religion. Her father was Jewish in name only. The only reference her father ever made to Judaism was the fact that he was repelled by the Passover Seder. He claimed that it celebrated the wholesale slaughter of Egyptian children in the Ten Plagues. Actually, the opposite is the case. The purpose of the Ten Plagues is to mourn the suffering and the death of the Egyptians.

        Dr. Laura grew up in Long Island and went to Columbia University, where she eventually earned a Ph.D. in physiology. It is well known that she has never earned any academic credentials as a mental health practitioner. While at Columbia, she married a fellow student, but the marriage was of short duration.

        At age thirty, Dr. Laura moved west, to teach at the University of Southern California. There, she began her career as a radio talk-show host. At USC, she met a fellow faculty member, Lou Bishop, then forty-seven, who was an Episcopalian.

        After becoming romantically involved, she decided that she did not want any children and underwent a tubal ligation. She and Lou married when she was thirty-five. She then had a change of heart. She thought that, after all, she did want children and had her tubes untied. She also underwent a series of fertility treatments. Eventually, she gave birth to Derek, her only child, who is now thirteen. Lou became her manager. True to her convictions, she stayed home for two years while Derek was growing up.

        One rainy Sunday afternoon, Derek, then six or seven, and Laura were channel-surfing. She stopped at the scene of masses of naked women. They were grasping their doomed babies at the edge of a deep pit that Nazi soldiers had dug. As the soldiers were about to fire at them, Derek gasped in horror.

        He asked Laura what was happening. Laura explained that evil German soldiers in World War II had murdered masses of mothers and their babies. When Derek probed further, Laura said that they were murdered because they were Jews.

        Derek then asked, "Who are Jews?"

        Laura answered him, "Jews are our people. You are a Jew!" Derek then wanted to know what a Jew is, and Laura responded that she didn’t know either but she that was going to study and find out.

        Actually, even in the most liberal Jewish movements, neither Laura nor Derek could have been regarded as Jews at that time, because neither had ever practiced Judaism. Derek’s questions, however, sparked Dr. Laura’s religious quest. She began to study Judaism, attend synagogue, and keep kosher. Soon she enrolled in the conversion program at the University of Judaism, in Los Angeles, with Lou.

        Lou had to miss several classes and could not complete the course. However, Dr. Laura and Derek were eventually converted to Judaism under Conservative auspices. Last year, however, Dr. Laura and Derek converted again, this time under Orthodox supervision, and Lou converted with them.

        Though she does not convey specifically Orthodox Jewish doctrines in her talk shows or her writings, her religious values do influence her works. Her first book was entitled Ten Stupid Things Women Do with Their Lives.

        Recently, she co-authored a book with Conservative Rabbi Stewart Vogel, of Temple Aliyah, in Woodland Hills, California. The book is called: The Ten Commandments: The Significance of God’s Law in Everyday Life. Later, she produced a television program based on the book, which was recently seen on our local public television station.

        In this book, Dr. Laura and Rabbi Vogel assert that the Ten Commandments represent the first direct communication between God and an entire people. They are designed to elevate our lives above the existence of animals. They represent God’s blueprint for us to lead sacred lives. Each commandment contains an important moral principle for real-life situations, connected with God, family, sex, work, charity, property, and human relationships. To Dr. Laura, these are not human suggestions or guidelines. They are commandments, mandates backed up by the authority of God. They must be unquestioningly obeyed.

        I personally believe that she is so immensely popular, in spite of her irritating personality, because she boasts that all life situations are either black or white. She sees no grays. She is very harsh with callers who don’t accept this premise, and who try to rationalize their irresponsible behavior.

        She is impatient with people who offer alibis and excuses. She tells those who call that they must make decisions on the basis of what’s right, not what feels good or what is expedient.

        She is very definite about her views. Here are some of her articles of faith. Day-care is wrong. So is living together or sexual intercourse before marriage. In the case of unwed mothers, abortion is wrong and adoption is right. Homosexuality is abnormal, though she does concede that this sexual orientation is not a choice for gays and lesbians. Abused wives should leave their husbands quickly and not become enablers with low self-esteem.

        Dr. Laura has little use for Reform Judaism, which lets each individual Jew decide, on the basis of his or her God-given conscience, what is right or wrong. To her, conscience must submit to an external authoritarian Divine standard, which is applicable to all people. There is no personal choice.

        Dr. Laura appeals to our human tendency to be told clearly what is right or wrong and not make any decisions for ourselves. Such is the reason why fundamentalist religions and cults are also attractive to thousands of people. There is no personal choice.

        But, we must ask ourselves, as liberal Reform Jews: Is this black-and-white approach best for our spiritual development? Life is much too complex today for simplistic solutions. I believe it is important for us to struggle with conflicting options, to consider contradictory alternatives in every ethical situation. Indeed, such an approach is far more demanding than Dr. Laura’s but ultimately, I believe, it is more spiritually satisfying and growth-producing. Amen.

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