[Recording Start]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Addendum. So you’re reform Jewish.
Rick Rosner: Yes.
Jacobsen: You grew up reform Jewish?
Rosner: Yes.
Jacobsen: Mom and dad were reform Jewish?
Rosner: Yes, further back there was Orthodox. My great-grandfather was a rabbi. My mom grew up in a more towards the conservative household. They kept kosher. I mean it’s not like we’ve been reform forever. Part of it is, growing up in Boulder, Denver there’s still a bunch of Judaism if you want to go after it but you’re not going to be as surrounded with Jewish people as you would be in… like Carol grew up with a bunch of Jewish friends in Los Angeles and if you grow up in New York City, you’re going to have a ton of Jewish friends. I had no friends growing up who practice Judaism and only one of my friends had even one Jewish parent.
Jacobsen: Has the family become more reformed over time or liberal over time? Or not believing in terms of some things over time or more conservative over time?
Rosner: Yes and no because my ex-stepsister was wild growing up and pretty wild into adulthood, moved from New York City back to Albuquerque during Covid because she thought it would be safer for her kids and she is barely strongly Jewish now. She is a proper Jewish woman. Her kids don’t know how wild she was. She has kind of gone back to Judaism.
My late brother had gone from reformed Judaism to being observant; the yarmulke all the time, prayers every morning, I think prayers before every meal, being strictly kosher, and going to Chabad all the time. He was a stand-up comedian and he had two different routines. He had the routines he did for military audiences because he was a lieutenant colonel in the Marines. So he could go do a show for a bunch of Marines or he could do his Jewish show at a Chabad and he did both of these like all over the world. So, half my family became more religious.
Jacobsen: How do you think your own view of things has evolved since you were younger?
Rosner: I think my evolution is similar to a lot of people’s where you hope that religion is true, in that you want the goodies, and the immortality is what I really wanted. I think that’s what everybody wants which is forever in paradise. Then as you learn more and more about the world, your belief that that’s a possibility grows less and less. You see what science can do in terms of explaining things and you talk about the God of the gaps which is that mysticism in religion occupies smaller and smaller gaps in knowledge. That’s the case for me personally where there doesn’t seem to be a lot of room for straight up religion-based immortality though I can see the possibility of technologically mediated extended life or resurrection but again that’s a long long shot.
[Recording End]
Authors
Rick Rosner
American Television Writer
Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Founder, In-Sight Publishing
In-Sight Publishing
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Rick Rosner 