Film: Some Rosy, Some Rugged

Not that everything he has to say comes as a revelation. The peculiar aspect of all these books is that while they present their lessons as if freshly discovered, much of what they advocate has been heard before—long before. As I read them I kept checking off points I’d heard my own rabbi make.

I can testify that Gray’s insight about listening to women is straight out of the injunction in the Talmud that one should “lean down and listen to your wife.” Carlson’s suggestion that we “learn to find holiness in seemingly ugly circumstances” recapitulates the fundamental lesson of Deuteronomy 6:4, with its assertion of God’s oneness and the unity of creation. Needless to say, Dr. Laura’s endorsement of sexual self-control did not originate with herself.

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John Simon

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Not that everything he has to say comes as a revelation. The peculiar aspect of all these books is that while they present their lessons as if freshly discovered, much of what they advocate has been heard before—long before. As I read them I kept checking off points I’d heard my own rabbi make.

I can testify that Gray’s insight about listening to women is straight out of the injunction in the Talmud that one should “lean down and listen to your wife.” Carlson’s suggestion that we “learn to find holiness in seemingly ugly circumstances” recapitulates the fundamental lesson of Deuteronomy 6:4, with its assertion of God’s oneness and the unity of creation. Needless to say, Dr. Laura’s endorsement of sexual self-control did not originate with herself.