The Tragedy of Dinah - Genesis 34:1-34:31
Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager
Salem Podcast Network
4.7 • 2.3K Ratings
🗓️ 30 May 2026
⏱️ 84 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Dennis Prager's latest episode of Timeless Wisdom delves into the complexities of human nature, morality, and the Torah's teachings on love and compassion. In this thought-provoking discussion, the speaker explores the story of Dinah, Jacob's daughter, who was defiled by a man from a neighboring clan, and the subsequent actions of her brothers, Shimon and Levi, who take revenge by slaughtering the entire male population of the clan.
The episode touches on the themes of rape, violence, and the treatment of women in ancient societies, highlighting the problematic attitudes towards women's agency and autonomy. The speaker also examines the concept of circumcision as a condition for intermarriage and the implications of this practice on the relationships between different cultures. Throughout the discussion, the speaker draws on his own experiences and insights to shed light on the complexities of human nature and the importance of moral values in shaping our actions.
One of the key points of the episode is the speaker's argument that the Torah's greatest moral achievement is the commandment to love the stranger, and that this principle is essential in promoting compassion and understanding towards those who are different from us. The speaker also discusses the idea that our nature is often at odds with our conscience, and that we need strong moral values to guide us in making good choices.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | On today's episode of Timeless Wisdom. |
| 0:03.4 | For years, I have been stymied by a question, and I came up with the answer last week. |
| 0:10.2 | Here is the question that has always stymied me. |
| 0:13.4 | When I would speak about human animal differences and distinctions and so on, |
| 0:19.6 | one of the common things that you hear, |
| 0:22.1 | especially among animal devoteeses, is animals only kill other species. |
| 0:28.7 | They don't kill their own. |
| 0:30.4 | The only species to kill its own species is human. |
| 0:34.3 | You hear that all the time. |
| 0:36.5 | And it always struck me, it has always bothered me, |
| 0:40.6 | not bothered me emotionally, it bothered me intellectually that there was a weakness to that |
| 0:44.5 | argument, but I could never figure it out. And here it is staring me in the face for all these |
| 0:50.1 | years that I'm talking about this. For us, the human being, the other species is not |
| 0:58.8 | leopards and zebras. It's another ethnic or racial group. That's our equivalent of other |
| 1:08.3 | species. For the human being, for a Canaanite, an Egyptian, |
| 1:14.6 | was as, is as foreign, as unreal, if you will, as a mosquito would be to a lion. |
| 1:21.6 | You just swat it. It has no worth. |
| 1:25.6 | Now, you then raised, you still have the issue of the, |
| 1:28.3 | what about all the maltreatment of your own group. |
| 1:30.9 | Okay, that's a separate issue, which obviously is a terrible commentary on humanity. |
| 1:36.5 | But the real evils in history have overwhelmingly been against other groups. |
| 1:42.3 | They are not real. |
... |
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