Category Archives: Comedy

Both of my parents died suddenly while they were still leading active lives. I never had to think about elder care or nursing homes. It was not until a friend of mine asked me to accompany him on a visit to some assisted-living and nursing home facilities that I began to understand the dilemma that families experience when they are facing the reality of caring for a loved one who cannot take care of himself. Children want to do the right thing, but decisions are often made not by considering what’s best but by what is affordable.

There is a scene in Marvin’s Room, a serious drama with lots of comic relief, which captures this dilemma. Two daughters, opposite in temperament, are visiting a senior care facility for their father who has been “dying for the past twenty years,” and who now needs full-time attention. One sister, Bessie, has been caring for Marvin, her father, for the past 17 years, even since he had his first stroke. The other sister, Lee, has been absent all those years, and even now does not want to make a personal sacrifice for her ailing father. She fears that her future will be compromised and states unequivocally: “In a few months, I’ll have my cosmetology degree. My life is just coming together; I’m not going to give it all up, now!”

What brings the sisters together after so many years in the sad news that Bessie has leukemia and may not be able to care for her father any longer. Bessie contacts Lee, who has two boys, and asks her to come with her kids so that they all can be tested as potential bone marrow donors. They may be able to save her life; and as a consequence, Bessie can continue to care for their father. If Bessie passes, the responsibility will fall to Lee. That possible scenario is the catalyst for their visit to the elder care facility.

Complicating factors is Lee’s oldest son, Hank, who has been in a mental institution after deliberately burning down their house in a act of rebellion against his mother whom he hates and who he feels was the cause of the split between his parents. Hank idealizes an absentee and abusive father who he barely knew and his mother feels the brunt of this anger. Family dysfunction abounds.

Marvin’s Room gives us a window into the world of families faced with awesome decisions. It exposes the raw nerves of a family, both challenged and confused by an inevitable future. The film depicts two points of view, one very dark and one optimistic, suggesting that confronting the mortality of a loved one can be a stimulus for reinventing one’s life and reordering life’s priorities. In fact, Lee and Hank finally undergo an epiphany in which they understand that living fully means giving to others, not just being concerned about one’s own needs.

The Talmud tells us that it is better to visit the house of mourning than the house of feasting because the lessons learned there are so profound and so meaningful for purposeful living. Moreover, the Bible exalts the commandment of honoring parents, which is defined in books of Jewish law as providing for the needs of parents, especially when they get older and cannot take care of themselves. This includes feeding them, clothing them, escorting them, and respecting them. Marvin’s Room provides a textbook case of varied responses to a life problem facing many, and in its own idiosyncratic way recommends that love trumps all. Family endures when children and parents care for one another.

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I remember the meeting well. A teacher discovered a student who had plagiarized a paper and gave him a failing grade. The father of the student demanded a meeting with me, the teacher, and his son. He opened the meeting with line I will never forget: “My son never lies.” The teacher, a woman with a sterling reputation for excellent teaching, exemplary character, and an abiding concern for the welfare of her pupils, was stunned by the implicit assertion that she either had lied in making the accusation or made a terrible mistake in evaluating the student’s work.

Having worked with students for many decades, I, like most teachers, always assume the best of students. But when confronted with incontrovertible evidence of cheating, I accept the reality that students, even good ones, occasionally may do dishonest things. The teacher in question broke down in tears from the baseless accusation. I, of course, defended and supported her. Several months later, the father apologetically confided in me that his relationship with his son was very rocky, and he felt a need at our meeting to be publically supportive of his son even if he had doubts about the veracity of his statements.

This kind of misguided, naïve parenting is at the heart of Ferris Beuller’s Day Off, a comic but true perspective on teenage life in the 80s that still resonates today. The plot, such as there is one, revolves around high school senior Ferris, who decides to cut school on a beautiful spring day and enjoy the day in downtown Chicago. He enlists his girlfriend Sloane and his buddy Cameron to join him on his self-declared vacation day.

The day begins with a lie as Ferris fakes an illness to his fawning and naïve parents, who believe everything he says. It is clear that they are preoccupied with their own lives; parenting to them is a diversion, not a mission. Cameron’s dad is never seen in the film. We only see his polished Ferrari, glistening in the family’s hillside garage. It is an emblem of parental neglect and a reminder of his parents’ total preoccupation with material things. In fact, almost all the adults in the movie are out of touch with children. Whether it be parents, teachers, administrators, all are self-absorbed and only peripherally aware of the children with whom they interact.

Two insights emerge from Ferris. First, parents need to be present in the lives of their children. They need to spend quality time with them and not be so preoccupied with business that they are clueless about what makes their child tick. Second, Ferris’s visit with his friends to the Chicago Art Museum suggests that kids need more than mastery of rote knowledge to succeed as human beings. Ferris, Sloane, and Cameron engage the modern art they view with creativity and wonder. The classroom is boring, but the museum, which houses a major collection of abstract art, unleashes a creativity that speaks to their curious and active teenage minds.

Proverbs tells us “to educate a child according to his personality.” This means that it is the job of parents to know their children well and to provide opportunities for them to develop their own unique talents. The patriarch Isaac, according to some Biblical commentators, erred in educating his children Jacob and Esau with the same parenting tool box. He failed to recognize that each one required a different parenting approach, one that recognized their different personalities and intellectual and spiritual inclinations. It may be easy to do more of the same when it comes to parenting, but it may be wiser to do something different that takes into account the way each child learns.

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When I was 11 or 12 years old, I visited a Times Square Army recruiting booth at which Audie Murphy, a celebrated war hero who won the Congressional Medal of Honor and a movie star in Grade B westerns, spoke and gave out autographs. He was an early role model and I left the recruiting station elated that I had in my hands the autograph of an American hero. Many years later, I introduced my sons to a sports celebrity. I ran a 2-week camp for a synagogue in Atlanta, and arranged for admittance to an Atlanta Hawks practice session where we could watch the great Pete Maravich in action. He was very accommodating to the campers and signed their scraps of paper with his name. It was a heady moment for many of the kids to be in the presence of a basketball legend.

Flash forward to the year 2012, and our adulation of celebrities is no longer so innocent. Just ask any parent or educator. Celebrities, actors, politicians often grab our attention due to their nefarious activities, including dishonesty of all types, illicit sex, drugs, and the list goes on. The King of Comedy, appearing in 1983, gave us a prophetic hint about the craziness surrounding celebrity that was to come.

In a brilliant opening scene, Jerry Langford, a late night TV host, is bombarded with fans as he exits the studio. One obsessed fan tries to get close to him, but Rupert Pupkin, ostensibly trying to protect him, slams the door in her face, and we are left with a freeze frame of hands pressing against the window of the limousine. It is an image representing the intense longing of an obsessed fan for access to a celebrity. Life is nothing unless there is connection with fame. It is sad and it is frightening when the entire thrust of one’s life is to live through others.

Rupert Pupkin is determined to become a TV celebrity like Jerry and the movie chronicles his fantastical and obsessive quest for fame. Rupert keeps cardboard figures of Jerry in his basement and has imaginary conversations with him and Jerry’s guests. His friend Masha, a celebrity stalker, will stop at nothing to get close to Jerry, her idol. She ultimately helps Rupert break the law in order to compel the studio to grant him a guest appearance on Jerry’s show.

Rupert receives a prison sentence of six years for his crime, but is freed after serving less than three years. He goes on to write his memoirs and becomes a celebrity in his own right, which echoes what happens so often today. The criminal is released, writes a book, and becomes a fixture of talk shows as he rehabilitates his public image.

The Torah view of celebrity is clear. The Ethics of the Fathers instructs us that fame is elusive. The more one chases it, the more it eludes him. Gaining celebrity is not a Jewish goal. Moreover, the object of Torah adulation is not the actor or the athlete. Rather it is the scholar or the doer of good deeds. In the end, we cannot live vicariously through others. Each of us is an image of the Divine, totally unique with our own respective missions. No one else can live our life for us because we are accountable for our own destinies. God only wants us to be ourselves, not an imitation of someone else. At the end of 120 years, God will not ask me if I was as great as Moses or Abraham; instead He will ask me if I was the best “me” I could possibly be.

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When I came to Israel a couple of years ago as a recent oleh (immigrant), I arrived with a rudimentary speaking knowledge of Hebrew and no Israeli cell phone. Yet I had arranged from America to meet old friends, now living in Israel, at the airport, who would take my wife and me to our home in Beit Shemesh. The challenge: how to make contact with him if I had no cell phone and no Israeli money to use a pay phone. Moreover, even if I had money for a pay phone, I was unaware that I had to dial city code prefixes before the actual phone number.

Fortunately, I found my friends and everything worked out, but I was reminded of my unsettling airport experience as I watched an early scene in The Terminal, in which Viktor Navorksi, a citizen of an Eastern European country in the midst of a violent coup, arrives in the United States and is unable to leave the airport. His passport is no longer valid and he cannot enter the USA until his situation is resolved. While stuck in the airport, airport security gives him food vouchers and a 15-minute phone card, but Viktor does not have the language skills to know how to use them. Viktor is confused and I understood his frustration.

As his temporary stay at the airport extends into weeks and months, Viktor, a building contractor, uses his skills at construction to get a job with a renovation crew at the terminal. This enables him to earn money to buy food, clothes, and other necessities. These crafting skills and his modest personality slowly ingratiate him with the airport staff, who admire his resourcefulness and his innate kindness towards others.

A turning point occurs when a foreign national wants to bring in medicine for his deathly ill father. He threatens airport personnel and Viktor, because of his language skills, is brought in to diffuse the situation. He successfully resolves the tension by calming the foreigner and creatively suggesting to him that he claim that the medicine he brought in from Canada is for goats and, therefore, needs no special clearance. Viktor, originally seen as a buffoon, now is perceived as a savvy negotiator, which brings him the admiration of many who work at the airport.

Our first impression of outsiders may be akin to seeing Viktor for the first time as simply a foreigner; but once we mentally engage another human being, we are peeling an onion, discovering new layers every time we speak with him. I have found that the more I get to know people, the more interesting they become.

When my wife and I have guests over for a Friday night Shabbat meal, I always ask the invitees to introduce themselves for a moment. I sometimes suggest that each guest tell us something we may not know about them. Surprisingly, I learned that one of our guests celebrated her 70^th birthday by parachuting out of a plane. There is clearly more to people than what meets the eye. Viktor Novarski reminds me of the innate complexity of people, and that we should give people a second chance to make a first impression.

The Bible instructs us many times to remember our sojourn in Egypt when we were strangers in a strange land. I am no longer a recent immigrant but I remember how good it felt when I was greeted with a smile, when someone asked me what my name was and where I was from, when someone clarified a confusing moment. It is a good thing to be kind to the stranger. After all, one day the stranger may be you.

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