You Don't Have to be Wrong for me to be Right! Ok, Yeah! You're A Bigger One! The sounds of Politics- America's new religion as expressed by Rabbi Brad Hirschfield.

This is The God Show, a conversation about the human spirit with your host.

Over the 25 years that I've been hosting this program, I think I probably tell you one thing more than any other, and that is this is non-denominational conversation. And that means then that we won't be concentrating on a specific denomination other than maybe some information about it or something in the news about it that you didn't know before. But most of the time we're talking about Just the general quality of life of mankind and the spiritual elements of that. The one thing, however, that we haven't done is ever have two religions represented back to back. And this is the second rabbi in two weeks. Last week, it was just simply a very, very interesting show. with a local rabbi where I'm doing the program now. The origin is always Phoenix, Arizona. And we had one of our friends, a rabbi, come in just to talk about Judaism, to talk about what the beliefs are, what they aren't. kosher laws, all of those things. But today we bring an old friend back to talk about the state of religion and politics in the United States and other places that are even less united than we are. Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, welcome back to The God Show, my friend.

It's a total pleasure to be with you, Pat. I love your show. I love what you do. I think you have threaded a needle in a way that is a lesson for all of us because you truly honor the particularities of every faith you encounter

and,

not but, and you know that ultimately this is a human story and meant to improve the lives of all humans, whatever faith they follow, including no faith at all.

Absolutely. The author of You Don't Have to be Wrong for Me to be Right, subtitled Finding Faith Without Fanaticism. Hold it. One, two, three. Yes. A number of people are just simply right now saying faith these days without fanaticism. Oh, this must be about science fiction. As a matter of fact, we're going to be talking about all of that right now with Brad Hirschfield. And this is a guy who spent his childhood in North Shore, Chicago. wound up in the militant arena of Israel after a period of time. Author, broadcaster, voice of peace and reconciliation, and an interfaith activist. If you had any more titles, we would be running out of time about now. So Brad, and I know that it's okay for you, If I call you Brad, there will be people who say, no, no, it's a rabbi. You can't do that. After October 7th, Brad, after the massive lessons on both sides, right now, if you had Prime Minister Netanyahu in your company alone, just the two of you, how would you advise him?

Oh, boy. Of all the great questions I thought you would ask me, I have to be honest, Pat, that was not one that I would consider. And I don't pretend to have all the advice that's necessary. But that would be the first thing that I would say to him. I would say, Mr. Prime Minister, if everything we thought we knew was right, we would not be in the position we're currently in. So I want us to begin to imagine What about our most deeply held beliefs do we need to question and interrogate ourselves about and think bigger and more creatively about?

And I'm

not saying that in some namby-pamby