Why God Was Right, with Mark Gerson

Tablet Studios

Tablet Magazine

Religion & Spirituality, Judaism, Society & Culture

4.6 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 3 April 2025

⏱️ 50 minutes

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Summary

Like most highly successful entrepreneurs, Mark Gerson likes things he can measure, quantify, and know for certain. So as a student of the Torah, a question came to mind: If the Torah is supposed to be a guide to life, can we prove that its claims are true? In his epic new book, God Was Right, Gerson examined each and every single one of the Torah’s prescriptions on anything from what to wear to who to marry, and compared them to contemporary scientific research to prove that the ancient wisdom is as true and as urgently relevant as always. He joins Liel to discuss why the cure to depression may be in your closet, the biggest mistake you’re making while dating, and why we need less victim culture and more dignity culture.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey there and welcome back to Ruthless. I'm Leah Liebelowitz. And today I have a very, very special treat.
0:17.2	It's a book that fell into my lap some months ago. And it is truly one of the most astonishing things that I have seen.
0:25.1	The title alone captures the magnitude, the ambition, the aspiration of this volume.
0:32.0	The title is God was Right.
0:34.5	And its author, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and public intellectual Mark Gerson,
0:39.6	my dear friend, made the audacious assumption that the things that you read about in the Bible
0:45.2	aren't just, you know, nice, inspiring, kind of like ideas that are good metaphors for a generally
0:52.8	pleasant way of life,
0:55.0	but rather withstand the science, withstand the test of time,
1:00.0	could be empirically proven to be correct,
1:03.0	which is a kind of audacious, crazy task,
1:06.0	that only Mark would dream up,
1:09.0	and then he of course did what he always does, which is actually
1:12.6	look at metrics, at numbers, at research. We are talking about hundreds and hundreds and hundreds
1:19.0	of peer-reviewed scientific papers. The book is out now. It is a delight, a thousand and so
1:27.0	pages long to be read either in one sitting or in
1:30.5	hundreds of sittings in full or in part.
1:34.4	But we'll have a lot of time to go into this in our conversation.
1:37.4	Mark, welcome to Ruthless.
1:38.8	Leo, I'm so excited to be here.
1:40.1	Thank you.
1:41.2	Okay.
	...

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