Judaism

Once involved in Republican politics, the Orthodox rabbi and coach spends eight hours a day writing, focusing on the roots of conservative ideas.

David Swindle

(JNS)

Rabbi Daniel Lapin grew up in Johannesburg, South Africa, as part of a prominent rabbinic family. However, he did not excel as a student initially, and so his parents sent him to boarding school in England when he was 10.

“I understand that I was not an easy child to have around,” the rabbi, who lives on the East Coast of the United States, told JNS. (He asked that JNS not name his home city because he has received prior credible threats.)

English boarding school expanded Lapin’s understanding, he said: “I was growing up as a barefoot savage in Johannesburg and then all of a sudden, I was exposed to another world.”

He grew up in a religious home in South Africa, but his parents—wisely, he said—didn’t sit him down in front of complicated sacred texts as a young boy. “I would rather have been hunting with my dog,” he told JNS.

In his 20s, Lapin began to clarify his understanding of Jewish scripture and rabbinic commentaries.

He told JNS that Judaism is often taught to children in ways that aren’t age-appropriate, like exposing children who cannot possibly understand Gustav Mahler’s music yet. “People are exposed to bar mitzvah training, and it’s largely empty and meaningless and vapid,” he said. “They then form the views and opinions on scripture, which effectively inoculate them against ever looking at it from a serious adult point of view again.”

A prolific writer and thinker who coaches others on their spiritual and financial life journeys, Lapin told JNS about what he’s working on these days, as well as about some significant changes in his life in recent years.

‘Juvenile Judaism’

The last Jewish thing that many American Jews have experienced is their bar or bat mitzvah, according to Lapin, which means that their faith identity is solidified in their minds on a childish level.

“This resembles someone considering themselves a knowledgeable mathematician when the last bit of mathematics they encountered was Algebra 1 in middle school,” he said. “In certain ways, I think Judaism has been a colossal marketing failure in the sense that it is depicted entirely as a childish landscape.”

Lapin noted that High Holiday news coverage in major city papers across the United States run “two regular, dependable standbys” every September around the High Holidays: recipes for traditional Rosh Hashanah foods and photos of rabbis—or other conspicuous Jews—blowing shofars for groups of children.

“The message is essentially that Judaism is gastronomical and juvenile,” he said.

His own real engagement with Judaism began in his 20s, he said, when his brain started maturing and he studied with “substantive teachers” who exposed him to sophisticated materials on an adult level.

“In hindsight, I began to get a clearer picture of what my father had been trying to teach me,” he said. Lapin’s great uncle, Rabbi Elyah Lopian (1876-1970), a leader in the Lithuanian pietistic Mussar movement, was also an important influence on him.

Less politically involved

“A long time ago, the Israelites crossed an ocean to arrive in a wild and untamed land. They brought nothing but one crucial idea that created a culture and forged a nation,”

Lapin said in a benediction at the 1996 Republican National Convention in San Diego.

“That crucial idea—what we think of God—is less important than what God thinks of us, and His thoughts about us can be found in the Bible,” Lapin added at the time. “Three millennia later, clutching their Bibles, our forefathers crossed another ocean to arrive on the shores of this land. They, too, brought nothing but an idea.”

Becoming an American citizen when those founding fathers became Lapin’s as well was “the proudest day of my life,” he said.

Lapin has spoken at Faith and Freedom Coalition conferences in Washington, D.C., and was one of the speakers at the Congressional Prayer Service at Lutheran Church of the Reformation in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 1999, where members of the 106th Congress and clergy reflected on the upcoming session and prayed.

“What a wonderfully traditional way to begin a session of the government with a prayer service,” Lapin said in his remarks before leading a prayer. “How utterly American that is. What a country this is. And for a Jew to be welcomed to such a prayer service. What a country!”

These days, Lapin is much less involved in Republican politics, he told JNS. Instead, he is preoccupied with the roots of conservative ideas.

“When I speak for political groups, I don’t think they’re necessarily interested in hearing me speak as a Republican,” he said. “They are interested in hearing the timeless truths of certain elements of conservative thinking.”

Among the subjects about which he teaches and coaches are biblical views on taxation and representative government, as well as gender politics.

“Those are the things that they’re uncomfortable talking about in terms of conservative politics,” Lapin said. “There are political leaders who turn to me for more guidance in that area.” (Lapin told JNS he has no dog in the 2024 race but is grateful to former President Donald Trump for moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem in 2018, and for “having said in advance what he was going to do and having kept his word.”)

New book

These days, Lapin spends a lot of time writing. He wakes up at 6 a.m. to pray and usually has a breakfast meeting, he told JNS. After that, he tends to write for four hours. He then coaches clients for an hour and writes for another four hours in the afternoon.

In addition to writing articles and columns for his website and for other publications, Lapin has a new book, released on Sept. 26, titled The Holistic You: Integrating Your Family, Finances, Faith, Friendships and Fitness. (It is co-authored with his wife, Susan Lapin.)

“Our entirety as complex human beings depends not only on finances, but a completely fulfilling life requires completion in those five areas,” he told JNS. “If you have a great sex life and a great family life, you have no financial worries, you’re physically fit, you’ve got great friends and you’ve got a connection with God, you don’t have a lot to complain about in life.”

The book explains how those five areas “feed and nurture one another,” he added.

Pat Robertson

Lapin has received “threats and antagonism” in the course of his work over the years, he told JNS, but that has tended to be from Jewish critics of his friendship with Christians and his interfaith work, rather than antisemitism.

“I used to get hate mail with words in Hebrew and Yiddish,” he said. He also hears from those who object to his “conservative views on business and finance,” particularly regarding business “as a moral and dignified endeavor.”

A large part of his decision to become involved in interfaith work was seeing a contradictory controversy unfold around the December holidays. Manger scenes would pop up on government property in small towns ahead of Christmas, and a local Reform rabbi would sue on First Amendment grounds for violating the separation of church and state. Typically, a week or two after the Christmas scene was removed from city property, Chabad rabbis would install eight-foot Chanukah lamps on city property.

“I was lecturing to non-Jewish audiences, and people would very often say to me: ‘Why is it OK to have a Jewish religious symbol on the City Hall lawn? Why did we have to take away the Christmas scene?” he said. “Pretty good question.”

Courts had ruled that menorahs were cultural rather than religious symbols. “I don’t think that went down very well as an answer because the eyes show what the eyes see,” Lapin said. “I thought this was something that made Judaism and Jews not look good—that one group of Jews calls for the removal of the Christmas scene and another group of Jews installs the Jewish symbol.”

So Lapin set out to explain the situation to non-Jews, who most likely didn’t understand the difference between Chabad and Reform Judaism. He also thought it was important for them to understand Jewish views on abortion better, particularly as the overwhelming majority of religious organizations that supported abortion in the 1980s and early 1990s were Jewish.

Lapin decided that it was necessary for the United States to retain as much of the biblical values of the past as possible if his children were going to be able to live in tranquility and prosperity in the country, as he has. He penned his first book America’s Real War in 1999. When it won Christian book awards and sold well, he started receiving invitations to lecture, which he accepted.

“That’s really pretty much how it began,” he said.

As his profile rose, Lapin came to know the late televangelist Pat Robertson, who had a controversial past.

“The hostile voices towards Pat Robertson emanate almost entirely from the secular end of the Jewish community, not religious,” Lapin told JNS. “Bible-committed, Bible-believing Jews feel a certain commonality with people like Pat Robertson.”

Lapin thinks many Chassidic Jews realize that these days, they have more in common with evangelical Christians than they do with Reform rabbis, and that “committed and serious” Christians have come to see many mainstream U.S. Christian strains as “basically wings of the Democratic Party.

The real divide in the United States, he said, is between “those who believe that Bible-based, Judeo-Christian values are vital for the nation’s survival” and “those who are equally convinced that Judeo-Christian values are reprehensible obstacles to progress.”

Image: Rabbi Daniel Lapin. Source: YouTube.

A congressman, rabbis and Jewish nonprofit heads also shared some of their personal resolutions for the coming year.

Menachem Wecker

(JNS)

Nearly 60% of Americans told pollsters in late March and early April that life is worse for them than for those like them 50 years ago, and sizeable majorities think the U.S. economy will be weaker, the nation will be less important and more politically divided and the gap between rich and poor will widen by 2050, per Pew Research Center data.

A YouGov poll from April indicated 65% of Americans think the nation is more divided than normal, while in June, Gallup data suggested Americans think the economy improved significantly in the prior month, “though they remain negative overall.”

Against this backdrop, and divisions among U.S. Jews about Israeli politics, JNS sought reflections from Jewish leaders about the degree to which they are optimistic about the looming Jewish new year. JNS asked the leaders what worries them the most about the coming year as Rosh Hashanah approaches, and what are some of the things upon which they are reflecting, and what are their Jewish new year’s reflections.

‘Clean slate’

To Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), Rosh Hashanah is “the start of a new season and a clean slate.”

“It leaves me energized and ready to take on the important lessons and tasks I have in the new year as a Jewish American and as a member of Congress,” Gottheimer told JNS. “This period of introspection helps me remember key principles like the importance of tikkun olam—to repair the world, or, put another way, to perfect our union.”

Perfecting the union is something to which Gottheimer aspired every day in his job. “It’s a philosophy that seems more necessary than ever,” he said. “I want to wish all a Shana Tovah, and I hope that everyone has a sweet and healthy New Year!”

Gottheimer is optimistic as Rosh Hashanah approaches, he told JNS.

“My hope is that Congress will continue our bipartisan work to protect America’s economy and national security, including strengthening the historic U.S.-Israel relationship into the New Year,” he said. “Despite hyper-partisan rhetoric and extremism, the security of America and Israel is an overwhelmingly bipartisan priority that the vast majority of my colleagues and I remain committed to each year.”

The “ironclad” U.S.-Israel relationship is more important than ever given the growing “Iranian threat based in the West Bank,” and as Hezbollah increases its destabilizing activities in Lebanon, the Congressman said.

“In the coming year, I look forward to working across the aisle to lead ongoing efforts to expand the Abraham Accords,” he said. “I am excited for the potential to broaden Israel’s normalization agreements with its Arab neighbors, especially through the newly appointed U.S. Senior Adviser for Regional Integration Dan Shapiro.”

In the coming year, Gottheimer intends to keep working to make life more affordable for families and small businesses. “That’s why I’ve fought so hard in Washington to claw more of our federal tax dollars back to Jersey, and away from the Moocher States, and to help get our property taxes down,” he said.

The congressman is also concerned about extremism on both sides of Congress that “try to hold the country and Congress’ work hostage, including turning the U.S.-Israel relationship into a partisan issue,” he said. “The vast majority of both of my colleagues—Democrats and Republicans—understand the importance of ensuring that the relationship remains bipartisan.”

Votes against the boycott Israel (BDS) movement and to invest in military support for Israel or Iron Dome are “massively bipartisan,” Gottheimer said.

New Jersey, Gottheimer’s home state ranked third-highest in the country last year for antisemitic incidents, at a time that is already setting records for antisemitism.

“As the only Jewish member of the New Jersey delegation, and as a member of the House Bipartisan Task Force on Antisemitism, these trends are extremely concerning and personal. Antisemitism is the world’s oldest form of hate, and it has no place here in New Jersey, our great country or in the world,” he said.

“In the year ahead, Congress must continue to loudly and clearly speak on its commitment to combating antisemitism, protecting Jewish Americans, fighting the BDS movement, and protecting America and Israel’s security from shared threats, including Iran,” he told JNS. “In the upcoming appropriations process, I’ll continue to fight for these efforts, while also working to secure key programs like the Nonprofit Security Grant to help protect our house of worship from attacks.”

Resilient communal DNA

Daniel Mariaschin, CEO of B’nai B’rith International, told JNS that Jews are optimistic by definition.

“Our history is filled with immense challenges and threats, but resilience has been very much a part of our communal DNA,” he said. “We need that as much today as ever.”

The “continuing rise in global antisemitism, with new variants seemingly cropping up daily, is a deep concern,” Mariaschin told JNS. “As is Iran’s march to a nuclear weapon and its fomenting regional chaos and terror, aided by its league of proxies and allies, beginning, but not ending with Hezbollah and Hamas.”

“We hope, too, that domestic consensus can be reached in Israel, especially as it faces increasing acts of terror at home, and bias in international forums like the United Nations, abroad,” he added.

This Jewish New Year, as every year, Mariaschin will pray for “peace for Israel and its people, for Jews everywhere and for a world free of hate and intolerance.”

‘Not predetermined’

Rabbi Efrem Goldberg, of the Orthodox Boca Raton Synagogue of more than 1,000 families, told JNS that he is working on trying not to get outraged, avoiding feeling he has a monopoly on truth and “finding the ability to remain true to values, principles and a lifestyle, while loving, listening and learning from others.”

Goldberg, a prolific writer and podcaster, told JNS that he worries about a world that is increasingly “You are with me or against me.”

“The tribalism and divisiveness are deeply damaging and destructive,” he said. “As more issues arise that people feel strongly about and that are highly emotionally charged, we must find a way to listen, to learn, to seek to persuade and not to bully, and ultimately to disagree agreeably and to love even those we struggle to like.”

Looking ahead to 5784, which begins the first night of Rosh Hashanah on Sept. 15, Goldberg is optimistic, as he is every year.

“The future is not predetermined or a matter of fate. It is up to us, individually and collectively. We must be optimistic and then express the effort and take the initiative necessary to bring about the brighter future,” he said. “More than ever, we must take responsibility to shape the world, beginning with our world, how we speak, behave, what we believe and the difference that we can make.”

‘Forcing myself to feel hopeful’

As she looks ahead to the new Jewish year, Meredith Jacobs, CEO of Jewish Women International, is concerned about the safety of women, their rights and their financial security, “and by extension, children and families,” she told JNS.

“I worry about how politics in the U.S. and Israel will play out to the detriment of women. I worry now that we are somewhat post-Covid and are back in-person, that we will see incidents of gun violence and mass shootings ramp up again,” she said. “I worry, as I type this during the hottest week of the year, following wildfires and hurricanes, about the widespread impacts of climate change.”

Usually an optimist, Jacobs told JNS that she sees the High Holidays as a time for reflection, renewal and hope for a better world. “This year, however, I’m finding I’m forcing myself to feel hopeful,” she said. “My honest feeling is that the year ahead will be one of challenges.”

Among her 5784 resolutions are to keep doing all she is able “to build a world in which women and girls live without fear of violence, where they have access to economic security and where they can achieve any and all levels of leadership.”

Aging and youth

Rabbi Davie Wolpe, who is in his first year since stepping down as senior rabbi at Sinai Temple, a Conservative synagogue in Los Angeles, told JNS that his thoughts this High Holidays season are on “aging and youth, and the divides between political views and social class and generations.”

“I hope to reflect on my years in the pulpit and as it arises in my own awareness, share it through teaching and writing,” said Wolpe, rabbi emeritus at the synagogue, whose Shabbat morning services draw 1,000 people on average. He is also a Harvard Divinity School visiting scholar and the inaugural Anti-Defamation League rabbinic fellow.

Wolpe is most concerned about “Information without wisdom; exploitation without wonder or tenderness; heedlessness about other human beings and the needs of creation and the stoking of hatreds in our world,” he told JNS. He is “cautiously hopeful” for the future, since he has seen people do great things with God’s help.

“We have been given the ability to conquer our problems,” he said. “The question is our own wisdom and initiative.”

‘Promoting the importance of Jewish education’

The thing that concerns Mort Klein, national president of the Zionist Organization of America, the most in the coming Jewish new year is the 75% of non-Orthodox Jews who are intermarrying, “thus reducing the number of Jews in America, threatening the survival of many synagogues and reducing support for the Jewish State of Israel.”

Klein also worries about Jewish leaders, Jewish media, Israeli leaders and rabbis reducing support for Israel and increasingly hostility toward the Jewish state by failing to discuss publicly the war that Islamist terrorists wage against Israel.

“We all need to make clear that the Palestinian regime is paying Arabs to murder Jews, glorifies and incites Arab terrorists by naming schools, streets and sports teams after Arab Jew-killers,” he said. “We also must inform the world that the Palestinian regime has been offered a state four times in the last 20 years, eight times in the last 80 years, only to be rejected each time, making clear the Palestinian Arabs goal is Israel’s destruction not a Palestinian Arab State.”

Klein is committing himself to promote that message more effectively and to make the case for “the importance of Jewish education.”

“I am optimistic that this strong, patriotic and courageous new Israeli government will be more effective in promoting these truths and protecting the people of Israel,” he said.