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[Laura Schlessinger] Dr. Laura Renounces Jewish Orthodoxy Item 3999 • Posted: 08/13/2003 • Weblogged by Religion News Blog http://www.religionnewsblog.com/archives/00003999.html Forward, Aug. 15, 2003 http://www.forward.com/ By LISA KEYS, FORWARD STAFF With 12 million Americans tuning in daily, controversial syndicated radio- show host Laura Schlessinger — known to all as "Dr. Laura" — is arguably the best-known Orthodox Jew in the United States. Rather, she was. In a little-noticed pronouncement, Schlessinger — who very publicly converted to Judaism five years ago — opened her radio show, "The Dr. Laura Schlessinger Program," with the revelation that she will no longer practice Judaism. Although...

So, Donald Trump delivers a speech in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day, and the anti-Semites are up in arms. He is not the man they thought he was. In reality, he never was that man, which was more a projection of their own ideology than a right assessment of his. As Sam Kestenbaum reported on the Jewish Forward, “Trump Gives A Holocaust Speech — And The ‘Alt Right’ Screams ‘Betrayal’.” How, exactly, did Trump betray the “alt-right”?In his speech, he said, “The State of Israel is an eternal monument to the undying strength of the Jewish people. The fervent...

Rabbi Boteach held the third annual Champion of Jewish Values International Awards Gala last Thursday.‘Is there a liberal in the room?” One couldn’t help but wonder this while looking around the large ballroom of the Marriott Hotel in Midtown last Thursday evening. It was filled with about 1,000 attendees of what could have been called “The Shmuley Boteach Show.” They were loudly cheering a succession of major conservative political figures outdoing each other in their support for Israel, condemnation of President Obama’s foreign policy, and giving voice to the fears about anti-Semitism at home and abroad. The formal name of...

Three Republicans, including an Englewood rabbi, are seeking the GOP nomination to run in the new 9th Congressional District. The three are vying for a chance to compete against Rep. Steve Rothman or Rep. Bill Pascrell, both Democrats, are engaged in a primary fight for the redrawn 9th District. Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, a talk show host and author of books including “Kosher Jesus” and “Kosher Sex,” told Bergen’s Republican Organization he wants to be the nominee, according to a report on politickernj.com. The congressional run is Boteach’s first bid for public office. Boteach and Rothman, a former Englewood mayor, were...

My friends tell me that I'm the Jewish Forrest Gump, a man who unexpectedly finds himself in strange and surprising situations. But the place I find myself in now surprises even me. I've just discovered that Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi is going to be my neighbor. Quite literally. In about a month. In New Jersey. I knew when I moved into our home ten years ago that the property adjoining ours was the residence of the Libyan ambassador to the United Nations. But for many years the large estate was derelict and neglected. Overgrown with grass and shrubbery, it was...

I was on vacation with my family in Iceland when my office called and shared the terrible news of Michael Jackson's passing. My wife and children were with me in the van. We could scarcely believe what we had heard. The children all remembered Michael fondly. He had given them their dog Marshmallow who is a member of our family until today. My daughter teared up. And while I was heartsick at the news, especially for his three young children, I was not shocked. I dreaded this day and knew it had to come sooner rather than later. In the...

The picture of the president of the United States smiling broadly as he met President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela startled me. Our president is a nice guy. Chavez is anything but. The State Department maintains that Chávez has attacked democratic traditions and has put Venezuelan democracy on life support with unchecked concentration of power, political persecution, and intimidation. Foreign Affairs magazine says that Chávez is a power-hungry dictator with autocratic and megalomaniacal tendencies whose authoritarian vision and policies are a serious threat to his people. In testimony before the US Senate, the South American project director for the Center for...

This past Shabbat my family and I hosted Rabbi and Mrs. Nachman Holtzberg, parents of Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, the head of Chabad in Mumbai who was brutally murdered with his wife Rivkah. You'd think that a family that watched their son and daughter-in-law slaughtered on TV by Islamic terrorists would feel hatred and a desire for revenge. But what this saintly father asked of our many guests was simply their participation in rebuilding Chabad of Mumbai so that his son's selfless work would continue. What a shame Christopher Hitchens did not join us. It might have dissuaded him from penning...

The outrage over John Edward's admitted affair with a filmmaker transcends what we have seen with most recent sex scandals. This partly results from his repeated denials of the affair. Much more important, of course, is the fact that it took place while his wife was battling cancer. The two of them had already dealt with the tragedy of losing a teenage son, and the public is furious that Edwards caused his wife, who agreed to campaign for him even after being diagnosed with incurable bone cancer, more pain. Why, people want to know, do men who have it all...

The sickening specter of a monster like Samir Kuntar being welcomed home in Lebanon as a conquering hero should turn the stomachs of all who repose faith in humanity. Even for a generation neutered to horror stories, his crimes stand out. In April, 1979, after killing a police officer and then shooting Danny Haran at close range in the back in front of his four-year-old-daughter Einat, Kuntar proceeded to smash the head of the little girl on beach rocks and then crushed her skull with the butt of his rifle. The coup-de-grace was when, in an attempt to hide her...

Dr. Laura Schlesinger has a penchant for inane and knee-jerk moralizing. But last week even she outdid herself, as she blamed Elliot Spitzer's long-suffering wife, Silda, for her husband's unfaithfulness with a prostitute. Speaking on the Today show, Dr. Laura opined: "When the wife does not focus in on the needs and the feelings sexually, personally, to make him feel like a man, to make him feel like a success, to make him feel like our hero, he's very susceptible to the charm of some other woman making him feel what he needs. These days, women don't spend a lot...

America is talking about teen pregnancy. Britney Spears's baby sister Jamie Lynn, all of 16, is pregnant. The father, her 19-year-old boyfriend Casey Alridge, who may or may not face statutory rape charges for having sex with a minor, is someone she met at church. Then there is Juno, a satirical comedy about a tortured but well-meaning 16-year-old who gets pregnant and decides to give her baby to a childless couple who later want to divorce. It has been fascinating to watch the debate sparked by these two moms-to-be, with the principal question in each scenario being, "Why didn't she...

 The next president of the United States will need to address the crumbling social fabric of this great nation. America is richer than ever, but its families have never been so impoverished. Presidential contenders, from left; Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY), former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).Photo: Office of John McCain, US Senate, City of NY, AP The main problems are: first and foremost, the 50-percent divorce rate; second, children who do not interact with their parents; third, a shallow and degenerate culture that especially degrades and exploits women;...

The invitation by Columbia University to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran beggars belief and brings one of America's foremost institutions of higher learning into disrepute. Columbia's distinguished president, Lee Bollinger, defended the invitation as being in keeping with "Columbia's long-standing tradition of serving as a major forum of robust debate." Of course, that is nonsense. Does anyone seriously believe that Columbia would invite a politician or scholar who denied that American slavery took place, or alleged that its effects on African-Americans was benign or exaggerated? Would Columbia host a Grand Wizard of the KKK who called for African nations to...

Christopher Hitchens's rancorous attack against religion, God Is Not Great, is the number-one book in America. Three years ago he and I debated religion in New York City (the debate is available on my Web site). I looked forward to the debate because I had always admired Hitchens's iconoclastic mind and barbed pen. In our debate, he did not disappoint. He began with a typically acerbic attack against religion, saying that Stephen Hawking had more wisdom in his tiny little finger than all the pages of the Bible combined. When my turn came, I responded that the great, wheelchair-bound physicist...

Dear friends, This past week, I was invited to take part with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach in a dialogue /interview on a radio show run by Roseanne Barr and someone her producer kept calling "her boyfriend Johnny." The producer kept repeating that while Rabbi Boteach was very right-wing, Roseanne was very left-wing and it would be an interesting conversation. I sent him a few questions I thought would be interesting to pursue — the role of religion in general and Judaism in particular in dealing with wars like Iraq, wih the danger of global scorching, and with sexual ethics. The producer...

A particularly troubling aspect of the news coverage of the gruesome massacre at Virginia Tech is the fact that no one seems to hate the killer, Cheo Seung-Hui. Indeed, he is not even referred to as a killer or a murderer. Cheo is invariably described as a gunman or a shooter. A gunman implies someone who goes to a local gun range a few times a month, and a shooter connotes someone who pops off a couple of rounds in the woods with friends. It conveys nothing of the monstrous nature of Cheo's crimes, the cold-blooded and deliberate slaughter of...

I grew up in the US during the 1970s, the one decade universally acknowledged to have truly sucked. In 1970s America we danced to disco music, wore leisure suits and watched the Brady Bunch. But if that wasn't torture enough, we had Jimmy Carter as our president. I can still recall how depressing it was to watch his taciturn face on TV announcing one catastrophe after another, from the skyrocketing misery index, to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, to the capture of our hostages in Iran, to the tragically-botched rescue attempt to free them. Jimmy Carter was arguably the most...

The Talmud famously says that a man is known in three ways. What he says when he is drunk, what he says when he is angry, and what he spends his money on. On all three counts, it appears that Mel Gibson has sadly shown his true colours. Upon getting arrested for drunk driving, in his inebriated state, he allegedly said something to the effect that "f---ing Jews are responsible for all the world's wars." In his anger, he asked the arresting deputy if he himself was Jewish. And, of course, he spent $25 million (U.S.) of his own money...

University men in the Western world view going to college as an arena for the fulfillment of their unbridled lust, and it is these intellectual crossroads wherein one finds, ironically, the greatest contempt for women. Sadly, unless it leads to some terrible tragedy, like rape, nobody cares.