America's Real War

Rabbi Daniel Lapin's book opens with an ambitious attempt to deconstruct America's cultural decline. He follows up in later chapters with ideas about ideals to reverse this decline.Rabbi Lapin's analysis is rock-rib conservative, and heavily slanted towards the past and future of Jews here in the U.S.A.. But great storytelling skills serve the reader well as he shares antecdotes from his world travels, amusing parables from colleagues of the rabbinate, and lessons of history.The Rabbi makes a case that the key to our problems is a loss of God in personal and political spheres all across America.I'm a liberal Democrat, but I find myself in agreement with many of the Rabbi's thoughts on popular culture. I part ways with him when he says that religion is a socio-economic and political cure-all. To me, his own evidence points to education, within a matrix of some moral framework as being the real answer.Nonetheless, Rabbi Lapin's work is a fascinating overview from a fresh perspective. Predominance of his religious conservatism steeped in traditions of Western learning couldn't be too bad. In fact it is the best of all conservativism options from America's right.

R.Daniel Lapin takes the time to walk us through an increasingly christian-phobic society.It appears as though 'America's real war' is being played out everyday between politicians,academics and everyday families.The Rabbi clearly states (p.45)that 'We are no longer one nation under God.We are two seperate nations with two distinct and incompatible moral visions.' The author's witty approach and home truths make for a great read.This informative piece looks likely to take pride of place on my bookshelf for quite some time yet.

This book will enlighten anyone who really wants to know whatis going on in the culture war. Many Christians, and the politicallyuninvolved are blithefully unaware of the driving forces behind the rabid secularism that we see now so often, in the media, politics, and schools. The war is not between Jews and Christians, the war is between secularized Jews and other atheists on the one side, and orthodox Jews, conservative Catholics, and evangelical Christians on the other. Rabbi Lapin explains how there has always been those Jews, ever since Sinai, who have rejected the Ten Commandments, and instead chosen to worship the golden calf of money, and refuse to let anything interfere with their sexual freedom. It is these types that make up many of the political action groups that we see trying to "de-Christianize" America, i.e. the ACLU, People for the American Way, Planned Parenthood, and others. I gained tremendous insights from reading this book. I also read "The Fatal Embrace," by Ben Ginsburg, another Jewish author who explains how the Jewish people have repeatedly, throughout history, sought the protection of the state in order to escape persecution from surrounding peoples, but have made some of the same mistakes they are making now, in Rabbi Lapin's opinion. I never knew before reading these authors how much many Jewish people FEAR the rise of Christianity, and think that secularizing America is protection against another Holocaust. Dr. Lapin argues just the opposite; attacking the Christian heritage has a corrosive effect, and his people should stop acting loud, aggressive and antagonistic. No matter where you are coming from on the political spectrum, this book will give you tremendous food for thought. One thing is sure: political views are always informed by one's religious and metaphysical beliefs. It cannot be otherwise.

There is no doubt that Rabbi Daniel Lapin's America's Real War is one of those rare books destined to inspire and enlighten readers for generations to come. Like Bastiat's classic The Law, Lapin's Real War reveals timeless truths about man, society, and government while devastating the contemporary proponents of ideas that destroy freedom, prosperity, and happiness. Moreover, Lapin scores his intellectual points while simultaneously building a bridge between two groups that have frequently found themselves on opposite ends of the ideological spectrum, American Jews and Christians.The message of Real War consists of three parts. First, Rabbi Lapin develops the evidence that America was expressly founded as a Christian nation. This will not surprise readers familiar with the writings of the Founding Fathers or those who understand how liberty blossomed as Biblical ideas made their way into European political and economic thought in the centuries from the signing of the Magna Carta to the writings of Blackstone. But Lapin approaches the subject from a fresh perspective, demonstrating how America's Founders appreciated uniquely Jewish customs and ideas at a time when "Hebrew was an accomplishment of gentlemen." Second, Rabbi Lapin demonstrates how moral ideas that can only be completely found in the Jewish and Christian scriptures work to produce wealth, liberty, and fulfilling lives. Lapin leads the reader to see how ideas like personal accountability and private property create incentives for people to use their God-given talents to get ahead by serving the needs of others. At the same time, Lapin shows that the causes of the political left - like abortion and opposition to capital punishment - are logically inconsistent, and that the sole idea uniting today's jackboot liberals is opposition to God's ideas revealed in the Torah and Bible.Woven throughout Real War is Rabbi Lapin's third theme, a call to American Jews to return to the principles of Torah. In fact, with a chutzpah only a Rabbi could muster, Lapin unabashedly bases all of his social, economic, and political arguments solely on the Old Testament, as explained in the 2500 year old oral tradition of the Rabbis, the Talmud. But it is this very approach that will make the book especially endearing to Christian readers. Christians know that Jesus came not to destroy the law or the prophets but to fulfill them. (Mt. 5:17) On page after page as I read, I found myself coming to a fresh and deeper appreciation of the Bible thanks to Talmud's ancient insight.There can be no doubt that the real challenge facing America today is a war of ideas. In showing that this war is really the timeless battle between good and evil, between ideas born of God and ideas born of rebellion against Him, Rabbi Lapin has crafted a work that will be relevant for years to come.

Rabbi Daniel Lapin, head of the organization Toward Tradition, addresses several audiences with "(You Are In) America's Real War: An Orthodox Rabbi Insists That Judeo-Christian Values are Vital for Our Nation's Survival." These include Jews who feel out of step with the politics of most Jewish organizations, Christians who wonder why most American Jews demonize the Religious Right, people of all faiths who suspect that separation of Church and State has gone too far, and anyone who worries that America is on the wrong cultural and spiritual track.The central metaphor in this book is a tug-of-war between Godliness on one side and godlessness on the other. This metaphor rests on two fundamental assumptions: that faith in God is central to the American experiment, and that the political divide between Right and Left hinges on acceptance or rejection of traditional Judeo-Christian values.Rabbi Lapin establishes these assumptions convincingly. He turns to America's roots, from the original nature of the Colonies to the views of the Founding Fathers, to show that the very idea of the American nation arose from Judeo-Christian faith. Indeed, he shows how many of the central ideas of Colonial and Revolutionary America came directly from the Hebrew bible. He traces the supremacy of God in American political life through the mid-20th century, showing how judges and political figures continued into the 1960s to appeal to the Judeo-Christian God and His values in support of their positions.Since that time, Rabbi Lapin argues, traditional religion has clearly delineated the sides in the culture war. Rabbi Lapin shows how, despite the presence of many clergymen in the ranks of the American Left, traditional Judeo-Christian belief and practice stand in direct opposition to many positions of the Left.A central irony of this divide is that the political values of most American Jews are antithetical to the traditional Jewish values expressed in the Torah and Talmud. For example, as Rabbi Lapin points out, mainstream Jewish organizations denounce as "homophobia" any criticism of homosexuality, yet the Western proscription against homosexuality originates in the Hebrew Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament).The source of this contradiction, Rabbi Lapin maintains, is the tension between the liberalizing tendency in non-Orthodox Judaism and the stubborn desire of Jews to cling to their Jewish identity. Rather than simply renounce Judaism once they have abandoned its tenets, many Jews stridently argue that the religion has changed to match their views - even to the point of no longer requiring a belief in God.This is why, Rabbi Lapin argues, traditional Judaism has more in common politically with the Christian Coalition than with many Jewish political organizations. Both traditional Jews and Christian conservatives share a belief in a God-fearing society as the ideal plan for mankind.Indeed, the removal of God