There have been times in my rabbinic and educational career when I tried to enlist the aid of friends to move a particular project forward. I would speak to many acquaintances, all of whom gave me warm expressions of support. But when it was crunch time, they were with me in spirit only, but not in terms of giving me dollars for my project.
I realized then that I would have to go it alone, and I often applied to foundations for funding rather than solicit individuals within the community. The experience of not successfully fundraising for a project was disappointing, but it taught me a valuable lesson echoed in The Ethics of the Fathers. There it states: “In a place where there is no man, strive to be a man.” If there is a critical project that needs to be done, and no one steps forward to help, then you should be prepared to do it yourself.
Such is the predicament of Marshall Will Kane in the classic western High Noon. The film opens as three outlaws ride into Hadleyville to meet the noon train on which is riding Frank Miller, a notorious criminal whom Kane has arrested for murder and sent to prison several years before. Now Miller has been pardoned and he is traveling to Hadleyville to settle old scores with those responsible for his incarceration.
Serendipitously, Kane is getting married to pacifist Quaker Amy Fowler that same day in the morning. At his wife’s wishes, he is leaving his position as Marshall and looking forward to a quiet time in life. The community encourages him to leave town before Miller and his men arrive, and he does. But once on the open road, he turns his buckboard around. He feels that Miller will continue to hunt him wherever he is and the townspeople, without a new marshal in town, will be defenseless against Miller and his cronies.
Kane solicits the help of the townspeople, but to no avail. He walks to the local saloon to get volunteers and they reject his overtures. He then goes to the church, interrupting the sermon, to get help. The congregants are more civil, but again he comes up empty-handed. Slowly, it dawns on him that he will have to face Miller and his henchmen alone. With that sobering thought, Kane writes a will, which he leaves in his desk drawer, to be opened in the event of his death.
When it is high noon, the train arrives and Miller gets off to meet his gang. They walk into town looking for Kane. The camera shows Marshal Kane all by himself on the deserted street. It is an iconic scene, emblematic of the formidable challenge he has to meet: one lonely man against four very bad men who want to kill him.
Jewish history has within it models of reluctant heroism and leadership, the most famous of which is Moses. He does not thirst for glory. He does not want to be the center of attention, but he eventually understands that he is the only man to lead the Jews out of slavery in Egypt to freedom in the Promised Land.
When he sees a slave being abused by an Egyptian, Moses looks “this way and that.” The Biblical commentators suggest that Moses was looking for help, for someone else to take action, but no one did. At that moment, he realized that it was up to him to act.
Will Kane in High Noon is tempted to leave town and save his own life, and he contemplates that course of action briefly. But in a moment of moral clarity, he decides to protect the community even though he must act alone. In the end, doing the right thing trumps personal considerations.
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