Dennis’s Thoughts on Passover and Easter Blessings | PragerU

Dennis, it is almost Passover and Easter, and I of course have your explanation of the Passover Haggadah, which has been fascinating and worth reading time and time again every single year. But many of us want to hear from you, what is your message to us this season? Passover happens to be the quintessential Judeo-Christian holiday, and my proof is the Liberty Bell. The founders put on the Liberty Bell one verse, 2510, I believe it is, and you shall proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. Liberty is a basic value of the Hebrew Bible. It is essential to the Christian message as well. And the notion of Judeo-Christian should not be abandoned. There are some Jews who don't like the notion, and there are some Christians who don't like the notion. They're both wrong. Without the Judeo, there is no Christianity, and without Christianity, the world has no idea about the Judeo. They both need each other badly. The Jews need the Christians to publicize to the world the Ten Commandments, the Bible, the Torah. The Christians obviously need the Old Testament to have a New Testament. At PragerU, we constantly talk about the importance of teaching in the home, getting the parents involved in educating their children, and in creating rituals in the home in order for the next generation to truly learn from us, but not from the government. And I know many times you have spoken about how the Haggadah was almost the original edutainment in the home, that original PragerU, if you think about it in those ways. Why do you think the Passover and the ritual of the Passover Seder, why are they so important? And why are Jews so focused year after year doing this same ceremony that to some people may seem juvenile or pediatric, that we're dipping little parsley in salt water and pouring wine of our glasses. It seems almost like a childish ritual, yet adults of all ages throughout the years continue to engage with. Well, that's the great lesson. You have to tell your story to every generation, every year. Americans have forgotten their story and have forgotten to tell their story. That's one of the great lessons that Passover could teach America. We need, and we did at PragerU, we started a July 4th Seder. On Passover, we have rituals and we tell the story and it's dedicated to kids. The whole evening is dedicated to answering kids' questions about Passover. And there's a great line in the Haggadah, the Passover service, in every generation we are obligated, humans are obligated, to see themselves as if they got out of Egypt. That's the point. And how true was that or what? That we go back to slavery every few generations. What was communism but the largest slavery enterprise in human history? What's so interesting about the Haggadah is that I would have never expected that Moses would not be mentioned in the Passover booklet. How is it possible that you're reading about the Exodus and Moses is not mentioned in there? It's a brilliant lesson. I hold the authors of the Haggadah, rabbis 2,000 years ago, in high esteem for that choice. Not to mention Moses in the story, it would be like not mentioning George Washington in recounting the founding of the United States. The whole point was that God took us out of Egypt. That's what Jews are saying. Moses didn't take us out of Egypt. God took us out of Egypt. And there was a great, great fear that Moses could be worshipped. That is why we have no idea, as it says in Deuteronomy, at the very end when Moses dies, we have no idea where he's buried. Lest we make a shrine out of him or worship him. He was a flawed human being, a great giant, but flawed. Muhammad is perfect, but Moses is not. When I think about the Haggadah not mentioning Moses and also the ritual that we need to see ourselves as if we today are fighting for freedom, I think there is a connection there too. Because maybe if Moses' name was in there, it would have been harder for us to put our own name in the story as we are supposed to really understand that the human condition, the experience of choosing freedom, is not going to be easy. It's not going to be free. It's something that we're going to have to work on every single year. And it's a responsibility that we have to take on. And maybe if Moses' name was in there, we would forfeit that responsibility because we would say that it was Moses' story and not our story. But we are the ones who have to live through this. That's a very impressive point. I wish I had put it in my Haggadah. Well, we're looking forward to having you write more books. So hopefully it's going to be in some of the future ones, right? Can we talk a little bit about the four sons? I want to just geek out with you a little bit on the Haggadah. And I don't know how many people had a chance to really dive into what you are describing as a masterpiece of really educational content, right? The four sons, maybe you can summarize a little bit, what is the point of the story? And we can talk about how it's relevant to today. Who are these four sons and why are they described like that? Based on the Torah's description of the sons at your Passover table, there are four types of people and they are wicked, wise, simple, and doesn't know how to ask. That's what we have going on now in America, by the way. We have a generation that doesn't even know how to ask. It's really, it's frightening actually. What does that mean? When I was a kid, yeah, well, let me go back to the wicked and wise. That's the most important point. Even as a child, I remember thinking, if there's a wicked child, why isn't there a good child? But there is no good child, there's only a wise child. And it was the brilliant insight, again, of the Torah and of the rabbis that you can't be good without wisdom. Wisdom is more important than good intentions. And what we have today, again, in America, is a lot of people with good intentions who lack wisdom and they're causing a great deal of havoc. You made the comment that it's possible that right now, as Americans, we're going through the experience of the son who does not know how to ask, though I might contemplate whether we're already in the wicked phase, given what I'm seeing on social media these days. But can you explain what does that mean? Why is it a problem when you have a son who doesn't know how to ask? Doesn't know how to ask what? Any question about, they're not going to even ask a question, gee, what happened? Who took us out of Egypt? What was it like in Egypt? Because they don't even know about Egypt and they don't know about slavery and they don't know about Moses and they don't know about the 10 plagues. They don't know. We have a generation that doesn't know. That's why I wrote another one of my books, Still the Best Hope, Why American Values Need to be the World's Values. And what are they? They're found on every coin and banknote. In God we trust, e pluribus unum, and liberty. That's what we stand for. The number of Americans who could say that is very small. What's fascinating about the story of the four sons and being able to compare it even to the American experience in history is you start with the wise. Maybe that was that wise generation of Thomas Jefferson, right? They had the knowledge. They had that wisdom and discernment. And then possibly there was a simple generation. Then later on, there is the generation that didn't know how to ask. That generation that was not taught about the Bible, that was maybe that generation where the 10 commandments were taken out of the classrooms, where the operating system of the West was removed from their households and from the education system, where they just didn't learn anything about America's DNA. They knew nothing, so they didn't even know what to ask about it. And so is the next step the step of the wicked son? I alluded to it earlier because, you know, Dennis, over the last year and a half, I have seen wickedness that I never imagined that we would see. And as I think about the warnings in the Passover Haggadah, is that what the Bible has warned us against? The sum total of the first three sons is the wickedness. When you have kids at elite universities marching for calling for the annihilation of the state of Israel, which is what from the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free is all about. It's from they don't they don't know it. A lot of them can't even name what river or what sea, but that's what it means. There was no demonstration about October 7th when horrific, beyond description, things were done. Children burned alive, parents murdered in front of their children, children in front of their parents. Women not only raped, but stabbed in their genitalia. I mean, I can't go into any more detail because people don't want that to be related graphically. But there were no demonstrations against that. Isn't that unbelievable? There were demonstrations against Israel before Israel had one bomb dropped on Gaza. And the lies, Jews are the recipients of the greatest lies in history. That's why the blood libel is so famous or infamous. It's about the the charge against Jews in the Middle Ages that they would take Christian children and slaughter them for their blood in order to bake matzah for Passover. Which was as big a lie as it was absurd. And now we have Israel's committing genocide. Israel is committing genocide. One of their five times as many Palestinians today than there were when Israel was founded. Pretty lousy job at genocide. Well, I mean, and when we talk about the wickedness, I can't think of anything more wicked than attacking a widow, Erica Kirk, making all kinds of claims against her while she has these little children and an organization that she is, you know, trying to manage her life, the attack on a widow, the attack on on the United States of America, the toppling of of our ideas and our values. Frankly, even the the attack against President Trump, everything that he's doing for our country, everything that he has done, where he has risked his life to to save America, to save the West, and then he is being attacked by people who claim that they were his supporters and his friends. I mean, this it just feels like such an era of wickedness. And the irony about this whole thing is the phase before that actually started with the I'm just asking questions phase. Yeah, sure. I'm just asking questions so that people get to think about what I want them to think about. That's what that means. It's amazing that this has been written thousands of years ago. And it is almost a supernatural prediction of what we're going through. That's correct. My heart breaks for Erica, that she has to lose her beloved husband and I knew them. I always remind people that Charlie's last book published posthumously is dedicated to me to Dennis Prager, his book on Shabbat, we spoke almost every week of the year. He would call me after listening to another one of my Bible teaching or, or some other lecture that I would give. And I saw how much he loved her and how much she supported him. And now she she has to deal with being implicitly or explicitly declared the I hesitate to say it. It's so vile, as involved in some way, at least in the cover up, and at worst in the murder of her husband. It's the big our country is going through a very, very troubled phase. So Dennis, you're the gratitude guy. Amazingly, you're still a grateful person, despite what you've been going through. And in your in your commentary about the Passover Haggadah, there is a major focus on gratitude, which through the chant of the Dayenu, which is one of the one of the chants within within the ritual that is brought into the home. There is such a big focus on gratitude. Can you teach us a little bit about where where this came from and the context for gratitude and Passover? The most famous song at the Passover Seder is called Dayenu, which means it would be enough for us. And what it is, is it's an enumeration of all of the miracles and and wonderful things that God did for us upon leaving Egypt. And in each case, we end with Dayenu, it would have been enough. But then God did the next miracle and so on. Without gratitude, there's no chance that we can be happy. That's part of my happiness book, and I have lived it. If I didn't have gratitude for the life that I have lived prior to November 12th, 2024, when I had my catastrophic fall in my home, then I would have no chance at happiness. But I am grateful. I'm also grateful that I have my mind. I'm grateful that more or less, I have I have my voice. So I could spend the rest of my life, if that's what it'll take, I hope it won't. But I could certainly have spent the last nearly two years lamenting my fate as paralyzed from the shoulders down. Or I could be grateful for the good that I have been the recipient of, and I have chosen to do the latter. The song Dayenu in the Passover Seder seems to be so different from typical human condition. And as I try to imagine Jews and Christians, but mostly Jews who engaged at the Seder and chanted this song, they were in horrific situations. I mean, many of them celebrated the Passover and the Holocaust. And many, I mean, we all know that there have been many situations where Jews celebrated Passover during very, very challenging times, yet they sat there and smiled and chanted loudly how grateful and happy they were. It just seems so atypical for human nature to do that. I will say, I have been very critical of many of the aspects of American Jewish life, but I will say on behalf of Jewry in general that there is very little concept of woe unto us. We are not a, we are a bunch of victims type people. That's not, that's not a Jewish trait, and that's, that's impressive. Yep. It is. I think it's impressive, and I think it's an inoculation. It's an inoculation against populism, communism, because ultimately when people want to control you, they're first going to convince you that you're a victim, and they're going to come and save you, right? And so I guess the Passover experience taught us that it is not the case that in every generation we have to go ahead and save ourselves. That's well said. That's correct. And it begins by not thinking of yourself as a victim. I'll never forget that one speech that I gave at a university, I had people who differ with me line up first at the microphone. So one girl got up to the microphone and she said, I'm a student here. I'm just curious, are you, are you telling us that we women are, are not victims? Is that what you're saying? And I said, yeah, you, you got me very clear. You're not. You're about the luckiest women in human history for what you have here at this university. You basically live in a, in a country club. And by this time, there's way more women are, are attending universities and getting degrees than men are. It's a very, very bad idea to see yourself as a victim. Well, Dennis, this season, I'm especially grateful. I'm grateful to you for fighting and for living your values. I'm grateful to be born here in the United States of America and, and be in this role where we're advocating to keep America prosperous and, and sane. And, and I'm grateful to all our viewers who have continued to stick with us here at PragerU while there's a lot of confusion out there. And we're, we're very lucky to be in a place where we can bring some common sense for anybody who wants to get your book, it's available on Amazon and anywhere you can buy books. And also, as you mentioned earlier, we have the 4th of July declaration ceremony, which we have created modeled after the Passover Seder for everybody to engage with their own families so they can teach the American history and DNA and the fight for freedom that our founders have gifted us with. This amazing country did not come without sacrifice. And so we need to remember that. And so for people who want to find the 4th of July declaration, they can find it on the PragerU website. And meanwhile, wishing everybody a happy Passover and a blessed Easter. And Dennis, if you want to add any blessing to our audience, go ahead. Well, yeah, absolutely. To all our Christian supporters and friends and viewers, a blessed Easter to you and to, of course, all our Jewish listeners and even Christian listeners. Many Christians are now having a Passover Seder. And I don't see why they wouldn't, to be perfectly honest. So a blessed Easter and a chag sameach, happy Passover to all of you. Thank you, Dennis. See you next time.