After five years of teaching English in Israeli schools, I now have no official job. The school in which I worked cannot hire me because I am beyond retirement age. What do I do now? I learn Torah every day and I exercise every day. Additionally, I write almost every day. Mostly, I write film reviews that appear on the Internet and, when I visit the States, I lecture on “kosher movies,” films that have something meaningful to say about life and the subject of my recent book, Kosher Movies: A Film Critic Discovers Life Lessons at the Cinema. Such writing compels me to think, to remember certain aspects of my life, and to formulate life lessons to impart to the reader. Writing keeps me engaged with the world.
I think of my old friend, Charlie, who owned a grocery store in Atlanta. We would study Jewish texts together and one day I asked him about his grocery business. Did he like it or was he in it only because it was his father’s family business? His response: I am in it because it is pleasant and affords me a livelihood, but my real interest is in Torah study. I may be in the grocery store, but my creative intellectual juices are focused on Torah study, not on my grocery inventory.
Reflection on these two experiences makes me appreciate Paterson more. Paterson is an unusual slice-of-life film about a bus driver named Paterson who drives a bus in Paterson, New Jersey. His regular job is driving a bus, but every day he finds time to write poetry. The subject of his poetry is his wife, Laura, and the varied people he meets in the course of the day, both on the bus and at a local bar where he stops each evening as he walks his dog Marvin. He carefully observes the world around him because he is interested in other people and because the scenes he sees and the people he meets provide poetic inspiration for him.
The film covers a week in his life. Every day starts out the same, but there are minor variations. In a sense, the movie is a visual poem with themes being repeated and visuals that are doubled into what might be considered as internal rhymes in poetry; these visual rhymes underpin the thoughts of Paterson as he drives his bus during the day.
Paterson is extremely sensitive to details and inspired by little things in life. For example, a simple matchbox motivates him to write a love poem. Life for him is filled with poetic possibilities. The film gives the viewer a window into the creative process. As Paterson closely observes the world around him, we hear him articulating his poetry and the poetry simultaneously appears as squiggly writing on the screen.
Although Paterson is a man of routine, at times life intervenes and he does something extraordinary. It may be just writing a poem or it may be as serious as saving someone’s life. Whatever happens, he remains peaceful in the midst of chaos.
Even when Paterson is faced with tragedy, he finds comfort in the contemplation of nature’s beauty and in his private thoughts. Serendipitously, when he is trying to come to terms with a personal loss, he comes upon a Japanese stranger. The stranger is also a poet, who, after a brief but cryptic conversation, presents Paterson with an empty notebook, implicitly suggesting that Paterson’s creative instincts are alive and well and they will enable him to see new poetic possibilities.
Patterson maintains his routine outer life because he lives an exciting inner life of intellectuality and creativity. Interestingly, the rabbis of the Talmud lived their lives in similar fashion. They intellectually rejoiced in Torah study and in matters of the mind and spirit, while possessing mundane jobs enabling them to survive financially. It is recorded that the occupations of the Sages included woodchopper, builder, field laborer, businessman, gravedigger, launderer, shoemaker, tanner, winemaker, blacksmith, and physician.
Patterson reminds us that no matter what our life’s profession, we can still lead intellectually creative lives. All we have to do is live small but dream large.
Kosher Movies 
It’s a cooky movie, but a pleasant one. Nice review.
Thanks for commenting. It was cooky.