Name: Joe Rogan Experience #680 - Steven Hassan
Uploaded: 2015-08-08T02:06:53.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #680 - Steven Hassan' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2015-08-08. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #680 - Steven Hassan' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2015-08-08. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #680 - Steven Hassan

boom what was the original pronunciation well standing is back in the old days
it was sam the
butcher and joe the barber and and my greek grandfather was a hazan which is a
singer of
holy songs like cantor would be the term now and when my grandfather came to
ellis island he didn't
speak english and they wrote it up as h-a-s-s-a-n and so i've lived my life
being thought of as an
arab being persecuted at times by jews i'm actually jewish and i belong the jews
persecuted you i've
had experiences where people made yes because of your name because of the
spelling did you have to
let them hey you i'm one of you well first i'd say you're you know being a bigot
and then i'd say by
the way i'm jewish what did they say i'm so sorry they would look at me and
then they'd say you don't
look sephardic i'm ashkenazi but uh anyway you know like act with some dignity
and compassion and
kindness yeah especially for no reason it's not like you did something anti-semitic
right the first
time i was actually physically assaulted was during the six-day war back in the
60s when i was in
elementary school on on a stairwell in queens new york you were assaulted
because of your ethnicity
i was assaulted by jews who thought i was an arab jesus christ and they they
attacked me and i
threw them down i grew i grew up in my father's hardware business so i kind of
like knew how to pick
up hundred pound bags of rock salt and stuff so they like fell on the floor and
then i said you schmucks
i'm jewish i like how you schmuck that way you let them know but isn't isn't
judaism sort of a cult
so let me just explain what steve does anyway steve hassan hassan hassan hassan
hassan yes yes um you
you wrote a book um combating cult mind control i got a hold of you because of
my friend nate quarry
who used to uh fight for the ufc and uh he is one who uh uh connected me to you
and uh he was a jehovah's
witness for a while and uh he grew up in it yes yes he did and he wrote me a
really interesting email
about the mind control process of that that particular cult uh-huh um your book
combating
cult mind control um is um right here it says number one best-selling guide to
protection
rescue and recovery from destructive cults is judaism a cult so first let me
just say that book
first came out in 1988 and it had a fellow on the front cover who looked a
little bit like you like
me but but clean shaven and he had a padlock and a chain around his forehead i
hated it i told the
publisher i hated it oh they they created the artwork for you they did the
artwork and anyway it's been
out for 25 27 years now in hardback and i've finally bought the rights back and
i've updated it post
internet including terrorists and human trafficking and right including people
born into cults like the
jehovah's witnesses so that said um i grew up in a conservative jewish family
the youngest of three
my mom was an art teacher my dad had a hardware store he was a musician before
that and after that
um and i really didn't like the judaism that i was taught but i was very close
to my mom and my
maternal grandfather he was orthodox and i grew up with a spiritual feeling and
connection and i still
feel that connection and i'm actually part of an alternative jewish community
for the last 17 years
but the the point that i want to say is that there's a whole range and i
actually gave you a blow up of
a graphic i don't know if you're going to use it but of ethical influence and
unethical influence and
the idea is that one can look at specific behavioral components and determine
whether or not it's a
destructive cult or a benign cult or constructive cult so the word cult in and
of itself tends to be
pejorative but as someone who was quoted in the book called the cult of mac as
a disciple uh myself in
the book uh cult of mac mac being apple yeah that was literally interviewed by
this writer who actually
has a website called the cult of mac and he said your editor my editor said i
have to interview you
and i said what about i'm writing a book about computers i said that's weird
that's not the
typical interview like what's the title he said the cult of mac and i laughed i
said i've been using apple
since 1982 and i have five macs right now but if you still want me to do an
interview i'll be happy to
do it i do believe that people there are certain people that are in a cult of
mac 100 i noticed it in
the 90s when i was on news radio all the people on the staff all the people
that work behind the scenes
they would get so excited when a new os uh operating system came out a new uh
apple os and they would
talk about it like we've got a new one now it's gonna be better than windows it's
gonna be amazing
yeah there's a science there is a social science to creating a cult but again i
i cite the byte model
and cite that you know if there's deception so there's lack of informed consent
if there's extreme use
of fear and guilt if there's information control where people are being told
you can't talk to
critics or defectors or you need to cut off from family or friends who are
questioning you that's i'm
concerned about human rights i think the easiest way to understand what i do as
a former cult member
myself it's really in support of the united nations universal declaration of
human rights so you're not
necessarily anti-cult you are anti-negative cults that have a detrimental
effect on a person's life
yeah and i would actually blow the frame up a little bit bigger since i've been
doing this work for 39
years and i would say i'm against undue influence undue how would you it's a
legal term for exploitative
influence as compared to ethical influence where like a therapist is trying to
help somebody to confront
their fears or his uh influence of helping somebody who's addicted to something
that's that's killing
them but wouldn't you put a lot of religions in that category then that
classification of undue influence right
so the b you asked me is judaism a cult the answer is there are jewish cults
for sure and there are
lots of other jewish temples and affiliations that are not destructive cults so
what would you consider
them them meaning the positive ones the positive ones i belong to temple beth zion
in brookline massachusetts
powerful brookline you would appreciate that my my rabbi wrote the big book of
jewish humor and he was a
comedian for most of his adult career he became a rabbi later on what's his
name uh moshe waldox
and he cracks jokes even during yom kippur and he's my kind of rabbi it's not
it it's gay friendly
women-centered social justice but we love to sing we love to chant we love to
daven we love to do what's
a daven davening is is religious prayer okay going through the siddur and
learning torah i love to go
to the torah study it it resonates for me uh in terms of my spiritual path that
said i've also studied
buddhism and i i have a teacher who's teaching me a korean form of meditation
and movement he's a
martial artist by the way oh yeah korean martial arts what kind he's uh swordsman
swordsman
so he does like kendo or something something like a real like the real sword
thing well kendo is a real
art of sword they just use bamboo sticks because they don't want to cut each
other's legs off it is yes
yeah um i learned a little bit of that in the moonies they would teach in the
moonies they would teach
a kendo really exciting it's nice they teach a little something it's probably
just in case they
have to take over the world and everybody's out of bullets well i hope we have
a chance to chat about
the moonies at some point we will definitely chat about the moonies so so you
would you say you're uh
by doing this uh being involved in an organized religion an ancient organized
religion in a sect that you
feel is positive would it be just more of a community of philosophy and maybe
just a just a nice group of
people that well it is a nice group of people and we are independent although
we're influenced by the
renewal movement of zalman shaktor sholomi but we're trying to what does that
mean where that's the name
of a of a spiritual leader rabbi who passed away who basically said and he
liked to smoke pot by the
way i like him already he he talked about like updating the traditions for the
modern time
and that we need the whole point is growth and connection to other beings in a
loving compassionate
way it's not about being exclusive it's not about putting other people down to
be on your path
it's about um awareness and consciousness well that sounds like a very healthy
perspective i don't think
i would be part of a spiritual community after everything i've been through
that wasn't super
healthy and giving me more than i was taking from me are you allowed to eat
bacon in that group people
eat bacon i personally don't eat bacon my wife loves bacon but uh we're not we
drive to temple i live
several miles away my rabbi drives to temple even on saturday on shabbat whoa
but you know it's more
important to show up at temple than to you know than to miss temple than to
follow some mystical
so that all of the all of the rules should serve the spiritual purpose and not
the other way around
that people are just compressed into this rigidity right of conformity and
obedience and guilt and shame
we're not into guilt and shame we're into joy and love and laughter and helping
one another that sounds
very ideal as far as cults go i i think so so it's a cult it's just a really
good one it's a good um some
people in boston call it a cult and i'm like i'm a happily say i've been there
for 17 years from the very
beginning of his uh his invitation to become a rabbi there and we've had our
ups and downs but it's it's
healthy it's accountable uh the the membership make the agenda it's not tap top
down you know a
dictatorship type thing it's it's the membership and uh what's the downs what's
the downs um
there was some personality power conflicts between an assistant rabbi and moshe
there was some
other yeah isn't that always how it works there's always some power struggle
you know human beings
we're you know imperfect and the key is is you know if somebody calls you on
your shit that you step
back and you listen and you reflect and you either correct your your your
behavior or you don't and
if you don't and you're and if you're a part of a community like that in a
leadership role then they
ask you to leave hmm and so that was what was going on there uh in that
particular case i think she
wanted more say so she didn't want to be the assistant rabbi i don't know all
the chicks be rabbis
oh yeah we have an we have an assistant rabbi right now rav claudia who's
amazing um is rav like the
form like doctor i'm sorry yeah it's like rabbi rabbi means teacher okay but a
female you call
rav or is it a distinction for a male as well uh no you can call a a male a rav
also see this it's so
weird to me that you're like an anti-cult guy but this is clearly um at the
very least a very strong
ideology with some pretty rigid sort of classifications of things is that is
that fair to say i mean
judaism as i practice the one that you yeah
hmm
it seems like a weird way to get this started nobody makes me it's fine uh it's
not the typical
interview that i'm asked to do but then again i didn't expect this to be what
is it well it's not
just conversation really yeah try not to interview people okay um for me i just
want to grow and and i
like being part of a group that's bigger than myself particularly one that's
interested in helping boston
where members of the greater boston interfaith organization where we're
fighting for justice to
raise minimum wage to help uh get rid of egregious banking fees on immigrants
um we bring in pro-palestinian
peace activists to speak we bring in um steve hassen to speak about cults all
kinds of um interesting
programming and i love being part of a community and on a personal note when i
had cancer nine years ago
had hodgkin's lymphoma people were offering to drive me to th