There’s a part in Glenn’s July 4th ‘Man in the Moon’ show that features a stunning Tower of Babel replica - so what the heck is the Tower of Babel doing in a July 4th celebration? Glenn talked on radio today to Rabbi Lapin, the man who explained the history of Babel to him better than anyone.
Transcript of interview is below:
GLENN: I have with me one of my dear friends and he's the best teacher I think. I said on the era minute ago, I have such respect for David Barton and I think he's one of the best teachers known in America. Rabbi Daniel Lapin is David Barton on steroids, not on speed but on steroids. And I was just showing him a picture of something that's coming from the American Dream Labs for Man in the Moon and this is in construction now and I think it's actually finished. I'm just waiting for the film on it. But this is a model of the Tower of Babel that, when I'm telling the story of America in the Man in the Moon thing for independence week in Salt Lake, part of that has to include the Tower of Babel. And that came from a conversation where he taught me the story, Rabbi Lapin taught me the story of the Tower of Babel and it is so clear what the ‑‑ the Lord is so consistent, and we are battling the exact same problem over and over and over again.
RABBI LAPIN: Well, that's what the first nine verses in Chapter 11 of genesis, that's not just a silly story about some anachronistic nation that's vanished in some primitive archeological artifact. No, it's actually a blueprint for the faithful allure of socialism which will live and burn in the hearts of men until the end of time.
GLENN: He has a new book called Buried Treasure: Secrets For Living from the Lord's Language, where he is taking Hebrew and showing ‑‑ for instance, I love this, and this isn't in the book and let me just make this side note. One of the things he taught me was, "Glenn, there is no such thing ‑‑ there's no Hebrew word for retirement. It's not in the Bible. There's no word for retirement, not part of God's plan."
RABBI LAPIN: And it's a really bad idea because what it really suggests is that when I've got mine, I'm getting out of the game and talking my ball and going home.
PAT: And how many people seriously die shortly after retiring?
RABBI LAPIN: It's definitely not part of God's plan for humanity. You're right about that.
GLENN: Okay. So one of the things in the book you talk about, there's only one word for blood and money.
RABBI LAPIN: Yes. In Hebrew ‑‑
GLENN: And so when you're reading ‑‑ you're reading the scriptures, you have to know which way it's ‑‑ similar.
RABBI LAPIN: It's always like that, yes, and this is not like this in English. For instance, the sole of my foot has absolutely nothing to do with fried sole that I like with french fries.
GLENN: Right.
RABBI LAPIN: And we don't sit around figuring out ourselves what could one have to do with the other. But in Hebrew anytime one word applies to what appear to be two concepts, what we do is we wrap those two concepts and they are actually, by combining them and integrating them, some fundamental truth is divulged and ‑‑
GLENN: So the same word, it's "dam."
RABBI LAPIN: Correct. That's exactly right, yes.
GLENN: So "dam" is the word for blood and "dam" is the word for money. So you're saying that God's language is saying those are the same how?
RABBI LAPIN: Sure. Well, one of the ways they are the same, of course, is that they are both your life force and, in fact, scripture says blood is the life force. And we've got to recognize that money isn't this dreadful, awful thing that hangs onto us like germs or like an article of clothing we might put on. Money, our money is actually our life force. If we didn't ‑‑
GLENN: Hang on just a second. That sounds to me like you're worshipping money or that you've put money ‑‑ you've made money more than a vehicle that can drive either way.
RABBI LAPIN: Ah, and this is why we're not allowed to, in Judaism we're not allowed to eat blood. And number two, think about it. There's a real problem if you see blood. Anytime you actually see it, something's wrong. It's not a good thing. When you see money, when it's too evident, that suggests the love of money. That's something else entirely. So money should do its work behind the scenes, as it were, the way blood does it work thinned scenes.
PAT: Makes sense, doesn't it?
GLENN: I just love you.
PAT: That's great.
GLENN: You are so clarifying on stuff. The thing that you said last night, we were talking about the pope.
RABBI LAPIN: Yes.
GLENN: And when you talk about the pope, first thing you do is you call a rabbi. We had really ‑‑ we had actually one of your really good friends. He just flew in from Rome to be with us last night, and it's really good news about this pope. We did our homework, we've talked to several people, and we really believe this guy is a ‑‑ he could be, he could be the best pope in the history of the church and he very well looks like he's going to be the same kind of pope as John Paul was, which is help the poor. He was described as really kind of a Mother Teresa. Not a government thing. It's an individual thing to help.
But as we were talking about this, we started talking about the world and the president going over to Israel and you said something that I had never heard before. In fact, the reverend said, "Where is that in the Bible? Show that to me." When the Jews left Egypt ‑‑
RABBI LAPIN: Yes.
GLENN: ‑‑ not all of them left.
RABBI LAPIN: Correct.
GLENN: Explain.
RABBI LAPIN: Well, the verse in Gene‑ ‑‑ excuse me. The verse in Exodus says ‑‑ and in Hebrew it says (inaudible), the children of Israel went up out of Egypt 1/5th. And since the early 17th century with the King James translation of the Bible, they've had trouble translating that word because it raises so many more questions than it answers. "Wow, what are you talking about? Like only 20% left?" Well, yeah, that's exactly right. And so most English translations fudge that Hebrew word and turn it into something else. They might say the children of Israel left with weapons in their hands.
GLENN: Find it real quick, Pat, will ya? Do you remember which ‑‑
PAT: Do you know what verse it is?
RABBI LAPIN: How awful that I came here so unprepared.
GLENN: No, no, no, no, I'm sorry. In Exodus.
RABBI LAPIN: I can find it.
GLENN: Yeah.
RABBI LAPIN: It's in Exodus. It's going to be somewhere around about Chapter 12 in Exodus, somewhere there.
GLENN: Okay.
RABBI LAPIN: And the English translation will probably say something like the children of Israel went out of Egypt armed, or something like that.
GLENN: Why did they translate "1/5th" to "armed"?
RABBI LAPIN: Because in Hebrew 1/5th is meaning 5, and the word "five" is always linked to a hand, five fingers to a hand. And so what they ‑‑ you know, unarmed combat or empty‑handed. So here they threw in and they said, well, it must mean ‑‑
GLENN: How do you know that that's not the way they meant it, that that's not what ‑‑ that only, only 1/5 left? How do you know that that's what they meant and not that they carried weapons with them?
RABBI LAPIN: Ancient Jewish wisdom, about 2600 pages of densely packed Aramaic text from the time of Jesus 2,000 years old, and before that it was completely oral. What happened is Moses was on Mt. Sinai for 40 days and 40 nights, and a large part of that time the background was being explained because there are many bizarre mysteries in the five books of Moses that on the surface of it appear to be very, very strange. And as soon as we know some of the background, we know exactly what's going on and we understand why these things are. The whole point of the 20% is to teach us not only that even in spite of Moses, in spite of the miracles, in spite of the ten plagues, bottom line is 80% of people are going to say "Give me security. Just let me ‑‑ you know what? I'm okay with the Egyptians. They have problems, they exact a lot of texts..."
GLENN: This is so amazing because it was only 20% ‑‑ correct me if I'm wrong, Pat. It was only 20% that went with the founders. It was really only about 20% of the American people who said, "I'm willing to die for this." Right?
PAT: Yeah.
GLENN: Wasn't it?
PAT: It was a small percentage.
RABBI LAPIN: It always is. And, you know, it's the rule in business as well. People who are professional salespeople know that 80% of your sales come from 20% of your customers. In the final analysis, in every epoch and in every orbit, it's about 1/5 of the people that deliver.
GLENN: So that explains why. So is the tipping point, you know, with, for instance, taxes, is the tipping point really truly 50/50 or 49/51? Because what we're having a problem with is people are saying, "Well, you'll never be able to turn it back because so many people are comfortable. They get money back and so they're comfortable."
RABBI LAPIN: When the takers exceed the makers, I think we have a problem.
GLENN: But you have only 20%. Because that's the problem. The reason why people take or they want security is they are afraid to risk.
RABBI LAPIN: Yes.
GLENN: More people are not entrepreneurs I believe because it's scary. It really is scary. To come out and say, "You know what, I'm going to do this. I'm going to leave ‑‑ I'm going to leave the comfort that I had." I mean, when I was at Fox, they told me, you're not going to leave. Nobody ever does. You're not going to leave. And I'm like, "No, I'm going to leave because I am an independent person and I'm an entrepreneur." But that takes a different kind of person to go out and strike it out on your own.
RABBI LAPIN: You better be able to live with fear.
GLENN: Yeah.
RABBI LAPIN: You better be able to live with uncertainty and above all what I find to be the defining characteristic and I've known you long enough, if I may say, to know that you possess this and that is faith. You can't do it without faith, which is why entrepreneurialism never thrives in a socialist or atheistic environment.
GLENN: I didn't know that, either. Is that why Europe doesn't have ‑‑ and that's why ‑‑ that would explain why Israel is so for its size, is so huge on so huge on entrepreneurial spirit and everything else.
RABBI LAPIN: There's no other way to explain it because ordinarily GDP is a function of population. Georgia has 10 times the GDP of Rhode Island and it's got 10 times the population. So the numbers match. Israel's four contiguous neighbors, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt have about ten times the population of Israel. You'd expect them to have ten times the GDP. That's actually closer to the other way around. And the only explanation is that Judeo‑Christian biblical culture focuses very much on the idea of faith, which is why the founders put the words "In God We Trust" not on the walls of churches but on the money. Because that is where it comes from. It absolutely depends on a faith. And Koranic culture does not possess the same focus on faith that biblical culture does.
GLENN: You are going to learn more from this one book, Buried Treasure ‑‑ this is the second edition, Buried Treasure by Rabbi Daniel Lapin than you will learn anyplace else. In fact, before I went on the air, just to show you that I love this man and I think he is really truly one of the greatest teachers alive today. I just asked him, I said, "You know, when you're in town, will you schedule some time and when you're in town, I'd like him to come and teach me, you know, and so I can learn and really be a student of Daniel Lapin. He is brilliant, and it is not ‑‑ it's God stuff that you will learn. Again the book is Buried Treasure: The Secrets for Living from the Lord's Language. Rabbi Lapin, it's available anywhere or you can go to RabbiDanielLapin.com and pick it up there. Thank you very much, Rabbi.
RABBI LAPIN: Thank you, Glenn. Great being here.
GLENN: God bless. All right. Back in just a second.
