Q:
Why do you consider secular American media—television, movies and press—to be so dangerous for Jews?
A:
Now this is a question that you can answer yourself. Because if you pick up a newspaper, you’re going to see immediately that the people there are slanting all of the news towards the left. All the newspapers today are leftist newspapers. They are radicals who are in favor of things that are undermining society. They are teaching the breakdown of the authority of parents; they’re busy telling children to do according to what their own inclination is. That’s the whole trend of education today.
And by the way Jewish teachers ought to speak up more against the National Education Association. Shanker (Albert Shanker, one of the founders of the United Federation of Teachers) is a big rasha, and he is advocating homosexual rights and abortion rights and funding of abortion. He believes in playing up disarmament. He believes in ERA which means compulsory military service for women. He believes in teaching Marxism in the schools — because that’s what the trend is today, to ridicule capitalism.
We have to know that these people are the enemies not only of righteousness; they’re the enemies of America too. And it’s a very clear thing. America is going crazy today. All the media are trying to break down America itself. They’re breaking down our safety, they’re breaking down our families and they’re breaking down our youth. They want to decriminalize marijuana and even the more dangerous drugs they want to make a victimless crime.
And so people are now able to ruin their lives. The youth go to schools and they do almost anything they want in the schools. And the schools are the places where they learn to ridicule any belief in Hashem. And evolution is the Torah of all the newspapers and the rest of the media.
So how can there be any question that today the media is poison for anybody?! It’s poison for the youth and it’s poison for even the best, for even the most convinced Jew.
One look at what’s going on leaves an impression that will be on his neshamah forever. It’s a stain on the neshamah. You just can’t help looking at reshaim and not being influenced.
And therefore the time has come for people to stop being so foolish and so stubborn. Getting rid of the television is not merely an optional thing. Television is worse than a treifeh kitchen. There’s no question that it’s much better to have a kitchen with chazir than television. Because chazir goes into your stomach. Television goes into your neshamah.
Of course you have to have a kosher house. Your kitchen must be kosher. Your bedroom must be kosher. Everything must be kosher. But the mind must surely be kosher.
And the time will come when there will be a division made between the television Jews and the no television Jews. Even today it’s happening. People ask me today about shidduchim. So they say “Is he nice boy, a yeshivah boy?”
“Yes, very good; fine. His middos? His learning? He’s a ba’al kishron; very good.”
“Yes, very good; fine. His middos? His learning? He’s a ba’al kishron; very good.”
And then they ask, “Do they have television in the home?”
It’s a question today, and it’s a very important question. Shidduchim are going to be rejected in the years to come because of that question: “Is it a television home?”
People are very slow in waking up. Among the gentiles there are a lot of Christians who have already decided to throw out the television. They realize what a danger it is. And here is a fool, a man with a little beard, a ex-yeshivah man; he even has semichah and he comes to shiur every night. But he believes in television! So every night he sits with his little children in front of the television set, and he holds them with his arms; he embraces them. He wants to show them that the father is together with the children in their interests; so he’s mechanech them in the mitzvah of being metameh their little neshamos – besides his own.
These people are crazy people! They don’t know where they’re headed to. Sof kol sof, they’re going to ruin themselves and their families chalilah.
The time has come for the world to wake up and know that the media in America today is poison. It’s poison for America, and it’s poison for even gentiles, and it’s certainly and certainly poison for Jews.
TAPE # 445 (February 1983)
