I feared there would be no original content in Prager’s column. He’d just rehash things he’d said thousands of times before. I was wrong. There’s an original story about his first book:
We sent the manuscript to the Jewish Publication Society of America (JPS), hoping they would publish it. I received a call from an editor at JPS who told me that they would not publish the book. I asked her why, and her answer taught me a great deal about Jewish life: �Because it is too advocative,� she said.
I was stunned. The Jewish Publication Society of America refused to publish a Jewish book on the grounds that it was �too advocative� of Judaism?
As it turned out, that rejection was a blessing. Joseph and I published the book on our own and sold so many copies that we lived off the sales of the book at lectures for years. Later Simon and Schuster published the book.
