Dr. Laura Comes Down With the Commandments

If any doubt lingers among listeners of Laura Schlessinger’s radio talk-show that the nation’s nag scolds from a strict religious viewpoint, it should end with her book published this week on the Ten Commandments.

Moses might raise an eyebrow over the book’s expanded meanings for some commandments--for example, that the shalt-not on killing even bars “gossip.”

But the ancient Israelite lawgiver might be pleased with the rabbinical company kept by the sharp-tongued “Dr. Laura,” who is heard on 450 U.S. and Canadian radio stations with an audience of 15 million to 18 million, rivaling that of talk show leader Rush Limbaugh. Her rabbis are:

* The book’s co-author, Woodland Hills Rabbi Stewart Vogel, whose help was pivotal when she began exploring her Jewish roots six years ago.

* Another Conservative rabbi, Eli Schochet, who leads the West Hills synagogue that she attends and was to give Friday’s evening sermon. Schochet has also tutored Schlessinger in Torah studies.

* An Orthodox rabbi, Reuven Bulka of Ottawa, who performed an Orthodox conversion ceremony for her and her family four months ago in Canada.

Any of the rabbis may occasionally get a quick phone call for guidance from Schlessinger during commercial breaks on her five-day-a-week program, heard locally on KFI-AM (640).

In May, the trio conducted an Orthodox-style wedding ceremony for Schlessinger and Lew Bishop, her husband-manager of 15 years. “It was wonderful,” she said. Alluding to her thoroughly secular past, she added: “I owe so much to these three rabbis for where I have come religiously.”

Although now calling herself an Orthodox Jew, Schlessinger admitted in an interview at her Sherman Oaks studio that to attend Saturday morning services, she drives from her west San Fernando Valley residential enclave and does other things that Jewish law prohibits on the Sabbath, such as “turning on lights in a closet to find some clothes.”

She, her husband and son Deryk “have accepted the validity of the commandments,” she said, referring to hundreds more besides the big Ten expected of traditional Jews. “We don’t live in a neighborhood where we can walk [to synagogue], and we regret those breaches,” she said. “We are slowly moving toward expressing every one of them.”

The idea of writing about the Ten Commandments was sparked by titles used by Schlessinger in earlier books, “Ten Stupid Things Women Do to Mess Up Their Lives,” a bestseller for six months, and last year’s equivalent, “Ten Stupid Things Men Do . . . “

*

Vogel, the 38-year-old rabbi of Temple Aliyah in Woodland Hills, suggested to her that if she wanted to stay on the “ten” theme, “We’ve got ten really good things we can share.” The result was “The Ten Commandments, The Significance of God’s Laws in Everyday Life” (HarperCollins).

“Our goal was to make them applicable to all people--to deal with them without any baggage, if you will, of any specific religious tradition,” said Vogel. With a chapter devoted to each commandment, the co-authors expanded the prohibitions beyond literal edicts against stealing, adultery, bearing false witness and coveting others’ possessions.

As her celebrity has grown, some magazine articles have quoted ex-associates’ critical assessments of Dr. Laura, licensed family counselor and religious moralist, who in turn acknowledges a freewheeling, erring past--but only in general terms.

Asked how many commandments she has broken, Schlessinger replied, “Probably all 10 in the way we took each one into the molecular level.

“We embraced the idea that gossiping, character assassination and stealing someone’s innocence is murdering someone,” she said. “Gossip is evil, whether or not it’s even true.”

Vogel added, “In Rabbinic tradition, [gossip] is akin to a triple homicide--the person who is gossiped about, the one who is doing the gossip and the person who is going to hear the gossip. All three are somehow involved with physical damage, hurting lives.”

On the commandment to “honor mother and father,” Schlessinger confirmed that she has been estranged from her mother [her father is deceased] for about 14 years.

“It’s not an accident that that’s the longest chapter in the book, because relationships within a family can be so complex and sometimes so difficult,” she said. “The way I honor my mother is not to gossip about personal, family business.”

Schlessinger’s mother was not invited to attend either her secular wedding to Lew Bishop or their recent religious marriage ceremony, she said.

Vogel wrote in their book that not inviting parents “is clearly a form of dishonoring parents, but, in fairness, it is not always the fault of the child.” In a joint interview with the co-authors, Vogel conceded that under some circumstances, “it is just not in the interest of the couple or the parents to have the parents there.”

On sex outside of marriage, Schlessinger wrote disapprovingly of rabbis who “are willing to create new definitions of commitment, with guidelines for so-called ethical, unmarried sexual relationships.” She was referring to a document approved in 1995 by the national organization of Conservative rabbis to the effect that committed, heterosexual relationships by unmarried couples “can embody a measure of morality” in sexual intimacy when they follow ethical norms expected of married Jewish partners.

“When you make yourself the god, you can do things like change the rules for a nonmarried relationship,” Schlessinger said. “There are things in my past for which I am now embarrassed [although they] seemed logical at the time--I was a child of the ‘60s.”

Reflecting on her own evolution, she said that “embracing moral accountability and a moral standard outside of myself makes life more pleasurable, joyous and worthwhile--and that’s what I teach on the air.”

Indeed, “moral” is the key word used by Carolyn Holt of Tarzana, who has screened for 10 years the tiny proportion of 60,000 callers who get through to Dr. Laura’s studio each day. Holt asks over and over again, “What is the moral dilemma you are struggling with?” and “No, what is the moral struggle you are having?”

Psychologist-author Leonard Felder of West Los Angeles said he thinks Schlessinger has become more tolerant on the air and shows more respect for people who disagree with her. As the author of another book on the Ten Commandments--”The Ten Challenges,” published last year by Random House--Felder read an advance copy of the Schlessinger-Vogel book and said he was pleasantly surprised.

“Her voice is gentler and more compassionate in this book than it is on the radio,” Felder said. “Sometimes religion makes people intolerant; she seems more tolerant now.”

Schlessinger disagreed. “As I’ve gotten more religiously based, I’ve been more firm,” she said. “I have a small amount of time in which I have to make a very big impression, and I’m strong in how I present it.”

Dr. Laura is “subject to a lot of vilification” because she takes a tough-love posture with callers to her quasi-pulpit, said Rabbi Schochet, who retires next year from West Hills’ Shomrei Torah after three decades.

“People can resent a rabbi or a clergyman intruding in their lives and telling them what they should do,” Schochet said. “But someone not ordained and doing that is a lightning rod for resentment.”