Dennis Prager

Early life and education

Dennis Prager was born in New York City on August 2, 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 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. Published in 1976, it became a bestseller that was popular in all major American Jewish movements. 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.

Prager University

In 2009, Prager started a website, Prager University, which offers five-minute videos on various subjects, such as the Ten Commandments, the minimum wage, the Middle East, Global warming, and happiness, 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.

Views

According to NPR, Prager "often targets multiculturalism, Muslims and LGBTQ people." Prager's "inflammatory views and past statements about gays, liberals and others" have stirred controversy.

Islam

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 falsely asserted that an oath on any book other than the Bible would be unprecedented. In response, a 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. He has suggested that same-sex marriage will lead to polygamy and incest. In 2014, he claimed that the “heterosexual AIDS” crisis was something “entirely manufactured by the Left.”

Donald Trump

Prager endorsed Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. Conor Friedersdorf of the Atlantic criticized Prager for this, saying "Trump is the quintessential embodiment of so much that Prager claims to abhor (so much that he alighted on Trump as an example of who shouldn’t be president in the past); and Trump is the antithesis of much Prager claims to value." Friedersdorf noted that Prager had in 2011 said that Trump's profanity "render[ed] him unfit to be a presidential candidate, let alone president"; 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 said 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.com, 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 seven books:

His books have been translated into Spanish, German, Russian, Korean, Japanese, and Chinese.

Filmography