Dennis Prager

Dennis Prager
Prager speaking at CPAC in March 2016.
Born	1948 (age 75–76) New York City, New York, U.S.
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Brooklyn College Columbia University University of Leeds
Occupation(s)	Radio host, political commentator, creator of PragerU (the PragerU YouTube channel), author, and television personality
Political party	Republican
Spouse(s)	Janice Adelstein (1981–1986; divorced; 1 child) Francine Stone (1988–2005; divorced; 1 child) Susan Reed (2008–present)
Children	2
Website	dennisprager.com

Dennis Mark Prager (/ˈpreɪɡər/; born 1948) is an American nationally syndicated conservative radio talk show host and writer. He created PragerU, an American non-profit organization that creates videos on various political, economic, and philosophical topics from a conservative perspective.

Early life and education

Dennis Prager was born in New York City in 1948, to Hilda Prager (née Friedfeld; 1919–2009) and her husband, Max Prager (1918–2014). Prager and his siblings were raised as Modern Orthodox Jews. He attended the Yeshiva of Flatbush in Brooklyn, New York. There, in the 10th grade, he met Joseph Telushkin. The two became close friends and would later co-author two books. He went on to attend Brooklyn College and graduated with a double major in history and Middle Eastern Studies. Between 1970 and 1972, he attended the Middle East and Russian Institutes (now Harriman Institute) at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs. Prager also studied international history, comparative religion, and Arabic at the University of Leeds.

Career

Prager speaking at the California Capitol Building in 2008.

Prager left Columbia University without finishing his master's degree and decided to write an introduction to Judaism with his friend, Telushkin: The Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism. The book was intended for nonobservant Jews. Unlike Telushkin, who became an Orthodox rabbi, Prager abandoned his Orthodoxy as an adult but continues to maintain many traditional Jewish practices.

In April 1976, Shlomo Bardin, the founder and director of the Brandeis-Bardin Institute, invited Prager to succeed him as the director, and Prager hired Telushkin as education director. Prager remained at the institute until September 1983. During his tenure, he succeeded in influencing many young Jews and built up a cadre of "Prager followers". He married Janice Adelstein in 1981, and in 1983, they had their son, David.

Media

In 1982, KABC (AM) in Los Angeles hired Prager to host a talk show on religion every Sunday night. Prager hosted the show for more than ten years. He and Telushkin published another book in 1983, Why the Jews? The Reason for Antisemitism. Later that year, Prager became the Monday-Thursday talk show host for KABC, but he refused to work on Friday night, the beginning of Shabbat. He also wrote a syndicated column for newspapers across the country. In 1985, Prager launched his own quarterly journal, Ultimate Issues, which was renamed to Prager Perspectives in 1996.

Since 1999, he has hosted a nationally syndicated talk show from KRLA in Los Angeles and Salem Radio Network. His show has some recurring segments. The "Happiness Hour" is based on his book Happiness Is a Serious Problem and occurs on the second hour of his show on Fridays. Other regular segments are the "Male/Female Hour", occurring on the second hour of his Wednesday show, and "Ultimate Issues Hour", which takes place on the third hour of his Tuesday show.

In 2017, Prager and comedian Adam Carolla began filming No Safe Spaces, a documentary about political correctness at universities.

PragerU

Main article: PragerU

In 2009, Prager started a website called PragerU, which creates five-minute videos on various topics from a conservative perspective. According to Prager, he created the site to challenge the "unhealthy effect intellectually and morally" of the American higher education system. BuzzFeed described PragerU as "one of the biggest, most influential and yet least understood forces in online media." Videos produced by PragerU are on track to receive one billion views in 2018. Videos covers topics such as "racism, sexism, income inequality, gun ownership, Islam, immigration, Israel, police brutality" and speech on college campuses. BuzzFeed wrote that "the biggest reason PragerU has escaped national attention is that it mostly doesn't do Trump," with none of its videos being about Donald Trump or the political news cycle.

Santa Monica Symphony performance

In 2017, Prager guest conducted a sold-out performance of Haydn's Symphony No. 51 with the Santa Monica Symphony at Walt Disney Concert Hall. University of California, Los Angeles political science professors Michael Chwe and Andrew Apter, who are also members of the symphony, signed a letter saying that a concert featuring Prager would help "normalize hatred", citing Prager's "inflammatory views and past statements about gays, liberals and others." Prager invited both professors onto his radio show, and Apter accepted.

Views

According to National Public Radio, Prager is an "outspoken conservative" who "often targets multiculturalism, Muslims and LGBTQ people." He also defends free speech "vociferously", including comedian Kathy Griffin's photo stunt in which she held up a model of President Trump's severed head.

Islam

Main article: Quran oath controversy of the 110th United States Congress

Prager in 2006 criticized Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, for announcing that he would use the Quran for the reenactment of his swearing in ceremony. Prager made the incorrect assertion that an oath on any book other than the Bible would be unprecedented. In response, former New York City Mayor, Ed Koch, called for Prager to end his service on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Council.

LGBT rights

Prager opposes same-sex marriage. The New York Times wrote that Prager suggested that if same-sex marriage were legalized, then "there is no plausible argument for denying polygamous relationships, or brothers and sisters, or parents and adult children, the right to marry." Prager disputed this; saying "Do I really believe that family members will have more sex with one another because of same-sex marriage? It's an absurdity." In 2014, he claimed that the "heterosexual AIDS" crisis was something "entirely manufactured by the Left."

Donald Trump

Although Prager endorsed Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election, he said that Trump was his "17th choice out of 17 candidates." He clarified that he "was not a Trump supporter, when there was a choice," but added, "There is no choice now." Prager had previously said that Trump was "unfit to be a presidential candidate, let alone president". Conor Friedersdorf of the Atlantic noted that Prager had also said that he could not "trust the integrity or conscience of a man or woman who publicly humiliates his or her spouse" through adultery; that those who lie to besmirch the names of others cannot be trusted; and that "any human being with a functioning conscience or a decent heart loathes torture." Prager said that endorsing Trump was in line with his principles because "We hold that defeating Hillary Clinton, the Democrats, and the Left is also a principle. And that it is the greater principle."

Barack Obama

In 2015, Prager headlined the title of one of his columns about the Iran nuclear agreement, "1938 and 2015: Only the Names Are Different", implying that Obama was the equivalent of Neville Chamberlain whose Munich Agreement with Hitler is widely regarded as a failed act of appeasement toward Nazi Germany.

News media

In July 2017, Prager stated that "the news media in the West pose a far greater danger to Western civilization than Russia does."

Published works

Prager's columns are handled by Creators Syndicate. He has been published in The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times and Commentary. His weekly syndicated column appears on such online websites as Townhall, National Review Online, Jewish World Review and elsewhere. He also writes a bi-weekly column for The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles.

He is also the author of eight books:

• The Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism (with Joseph Telushkin) (1986) ISBN 0-671-62261-7
• Think a Second Time (44 Essays on 44 Subjects) (1996) ISBN 0-06-098709-X
• Happiness Is a Serious Problem: A Human Nature Repair Manual (1999) ISBN 0-06-098735-9
• Why the Jews? The Reason for Antisemitism (with Joseph Telushkin) (2003) ISBN 0-7432-4620-9
• Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph (2012) ISBN 0-06198512-0
• The Ten Commandments: Still the Best Moral Code (2015) ISBN 978-1621574170
• The Ten Commandments: Still the Best Path to Follow (2015) (for children) ISBN 9781511317092
• The Rational Bible: Exodus (2018) ISBN 9781621577720

Filmography

• For Goodness Sake, 1993
• For Goodness Sake II, 1996
• Israel in a Time of Terror, 2002
• Baseball, Dennis, & the French, 2011
• No Safe Spaces (in production)

External links

• Official website
• Dennis Prager at IMDb