Author Archives: herbert j. cohen

House of Sand and Fog may be the saddest film I have ever seen. It demonstrates the tragic consequences of failed communication, when two people are, metaphorically speaking, on opposite sides of the table unable to find a compromise middle ground before it is too late to avoid catastrophe.

There is a well-known story in the Talmud (Gittin 55b) explaining the origins of the destruction of the Holy Second Temple in Jerusalem. A man wanted to invite all his friends to a big party. He sent an invitation to his friend Kamtza, but his servant mistakenly delivered the invite to his enemy Bar Kamtza.

When Bar Kamtza showed up at the feast, he was told to leave. Rather than be embarrassed, Bar Kamtza offered to pay for the entire feast. In spite of this generous offer, Bar Kamtza was ejected from the festivities. The rabbis who were present and witnessed this exchange said nothing, and Bar Kamtza assumed they were complicit in causing his embarrassment. In anger, he went to the Roman authorities and said the Jews were disloyal to Rome. The Romans took this slander as truth and proceeded to attack and destroy both the Jews and their Temple. Self-absorption, misunderstanding, an inability to see things from another’s perspective led to this tragedy. This is the essential narrative crux of House of Sand and Fog.

Kathy Nicolo is depressed. Her husband has left her months ago. She lives alone in small house near San Francisco Bay. Because of her failure to respond to eviction notices for non-payment of county fees, her home is sold at auction to Massoud Amir Behrani, a former Iranian Army Colonel who fled Iran when the Ayatollah assumed control of the country. For Behrani, the purchase of the home represents his final opportunity to gain respect for himself, for his wife, Naderah, and for his son, Esmail. His goal is to fix up the dilapidated house and sell it for four times the purchase price in order to provide a comfortable life for this wife and for a college education for his son.

Kathy feels the county has illegally has sold her home and enlists the aid of a lawyer and Deputy Sherriff Lester Burden to help her reclaim her house. And so begins an acerbic relationship between Kathy and Behrani, both of whom assume they are in the right.

Kathy willfully destroys the lives of others in her quest to get her house back, while Behrani does not understand the desperate straits that motivate her actions. Things reach a breaking point when Lester, posing as another policeman, threatens Behrani with deportation of his family back to Iran where certain death awaits them. Behrani, who is a bonafide American citizen, discovers that he is the victim of extortion and reports Lester’s misrepresentation to the internal affairs department of the police department, further driving a wedge between Kathy and Behrani.

Tensions escalate until an unspeakable tragedy suddenly awakens sympathy for the other. Calamity has the power to take a person out of his own malaise and makes him aware of the troubles of other human beings. It is a painful way to learn.

Jewish law and lore places a high priority on harmonious relations between people. Knowing that everyone is created in the image of God means that everyone is important, everyone is unique and has infinite potential. Therefore, one cannot be dismissive of anyone, for everyone deserves respect, even if they do not agree with you.

Our Sages tell us not to hold grudges or be vengeful. Rather, anytime we encounter friction, we need to try and work it out. We need to ask ourselves if we are at fault for miscommunication. Once we recognize our own faults and correct them, we can bring the ultimate redemption of mankind one step closer. Kathy Nicola learns this lesson too late.

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I once employed a teacher who wanted very much to succeed in the classroom. The model lesson that he gave before being hired was superb and I thought he would be a great asset to the school.

Things went well in the first year of his employment, but then problems emerged. He did not take criticism well and blamed others for his own shortcomings. Either the students were not cooperative or the parents were conspiring against him, deliberately sabotaging his teaching efforts. Eventually I had to release him because of his constant complaining, which bordered on paranoia. I felt that there was a danger that he might infect the kids with his overwhelming negativity and inability to respond to criticism constructively.

This notion that talented people are sometimes sabotaged in life because of their own self-induced psychological issues underpins the sad narrative of Bobby Fischer, the chess genius. Fischer vanquished Russian Boris Spassky in the chess match of the century, yet suffered serious mental issues that, at the end of his life, left him a vagrant and alone, espousing conspiracy theories to anyone who would listen.

The film, which begins with Bobby as a child, depicts him being exposed to conspiracy theories by his mother, a Russian immigrant, who fears a possible social revolution in the United States, in which ordinary citizens are spied upon. A loner as a young boy, Bobby learns to play chess on his own, and it soon becomes his obsession. His mentor, a local chessmaster, creates opportunities that lead Bobby to the arena of professional chess championships.

After he becomes the youngest grand master ever, Bobby senses that the Russians are out to get him and responds with vitriolic outbursts that surprise even his fans. He seems unhinged mentally when he decides to leave the professional world of chess because of suspicions that the Russians are trying to isolate him and make it impossible for him to win.

Sensing that it is important for an American to win the World Chess Championship in the era of the Cold War, an American lawyer volunteers his services to Fischer to enable him to modify the tournament rules so that he will have a fair chance to win future competitions. Bobby then turns to William Lombardy, a former World Junior Chess Champion, to be his second, a man who will encourage Bobby to mitigate his excessive demands and return to winning tournaments. Bobby then re-enters the world of professional chess.

Although Bobby projects confidence and invincibility, we sense insecurity and mental psychosis because of the pressure to win every match. His first match with Russian Boris Spassky, the reigning World Chess Champion, ends in defeat; but Bobby and Spassky eventually meet again in Reykjavik, Iceland, for a historic match to determine who, indeed, is the world’s greatest chess player. It is a sporting event like no other and it captures the excitement of chess fans all over the world.

Maimonides, the great medieval Jewish thinker, promotes the golden path in life, avoiding extremes in lifestyle and character traits. Moreover, the Sages of the Talmud always espouse living a live of balance. They especially discouraged a life motivated by jealousy and a life in which the desire for honor and recognition dominates.

Bobby Fischer does not lead a balanced life. He is a troubled child who grows up to be a troubled adult. Focused on chess alone, he turns inward and divorces himself from the real world. His inability to see things from the perspective of the other does not allow him to appreciate the contributions of those around him. All he sees are people who want to take advantage of his celebrity. Such a narrow, extreme view of life leads to paranoia and emotional instability.

Bobby Fischer’s narrative in Pawn Sacrifice is a cautionary tale of what can happen when you lead a life without balance, when you are concerned only with your own welfare and no one else’s.

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As a youngster, I lived in a neighborhood of low income housing in Mt. Vernon, New York, predominantly occupied by black families. In my elementary and junior high schools, there was a sizeable population of black students, and I was friendly with some of them. There was Dickie Fisher, Joyce Jones, Wendell Tyree, Linwood Lee, and Quentin Pair. Their names fascinated me and gave expression to the unique personalities of each one of them.

I was not especially close with any black student, but we were cordial with one another. My parents never made any disparaging remarks about people of color so I did not have any negative baggage when I interacted with these students.

In ninth grade, however, my experience was different. I attended a boarding school in New York City located at the edge of Harlem at the corner of Riverside Drive and 145^th Street. Late one night after attending a jazz concert with a friend, three black students accosted us as we walked back to school. One was on roller skates and he wanted our money or else he would beat us up. He waved his fist in my face and on his hand was a big ring, which he threatened would land on my face.

My friend Max suddenly kicked the boy and yelled out “Herbie, run,” and that is exactly what I did. I ran faster than I ever had before in my life and did not stop until we were several blocks away and felt safe. I did not change my view of blacks because of this traumatic incident, but the event gave me another perspective on black-white relations.

 Black or White is about black and white relations, but from a totally unfamiliar perspective. It is the story of a grandfather, Elliot Anderson, who is suddenly left to care for his beloved multi-racial granddaughter, 7-year old Eloise, after his wife dies in a car crash. The granddaughter’s father is black; the mother, Elliot’s deceased daughter, is white.

As long as Elliot’s wife was living, Eloise’s black grandmother, Rowena, was okay with Eloise living with her white grandparents. Now that Elliot is a widower and Eloise no longer has a motherly presence at home, Rowena wants Eloise to live with her, especially since Elliot has a serious drinking problem.

Elliot does not want to relinquish custody because he knows Rowena has another agenda: she wants Eloise to have a relationship with her drug-addicted father, Reggie, her son. Elliot holds Reggie responsible for the death of his daughter, who became pregnant by Reggie, her 23-year old boyfriend, and died in childbirth at age 17.

The custody battle between Rowena and Elliot is depicted in a nuanced way. Both sides love Eloise and want the best for Eloise, but they define the “best” in different ways. The issues of race and prejudice are the subtext of the film, but they do not figure into the ultimate outcome of the case. What matters is who the principals are and what is in Eloise’s best interest, not the color of anyone’s skin.

Jewish sources in the Bible and Talmud do not say much about the relationship between blacks and whites in society, but there is much said about stereotyping or to use the more contemporary term “profiling.” For example, the Talmud considers the consequences of stereotyping not based on skin color but based on one’s past behavior.

There is an unusual story in the Talmud, which relates obliquely to profiling. Rabbi Elazar, the son of the great sage, Rabbi Shimon, met a man whose job it was to catch thieves. He asked him how he was able to identify the criminal. He told him the following: “Go into an inn in the late morning. If you see a person nodding off with a cup of wine in his hands, ask after him. If he is a Torah scholar, he is nodding off because he got up early to learn. If he is a workman, it’s because he rose early to work. If he works at night, he was working late. Otherwise, he is a thief, and arrest him.” The commentators point out that in general we do not rely on such circumstantial evidence, but in times of great lawlessness, we can sometimes resort to this kind of profiling.

Black or White raises the issue of black-white relations and implicitly suggests that profiling may have some legitimacy. After all, Reggie, Eloise’s father, is a convicted felon and still involved with drugs. It is reasonable to assume that contact with him may not be in Eloise’s best interest even though he is her father.

In the final analysis, however, profiling is not enough to make a definitive judgment about a person. For that one needs an appreciation of the whole man, not just one snapshot in time.

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I remember a weird story from my youth. I attended public school and in the afternoon went to a synagogue Hebrew school where I learned how to read Hebrew and lead the services. Although I was a good student, I occasionally was mischievous. One cold, snowy day, I decided to play a prank on the teacher and placed a snowball on his chair expecting him to get up right way when he discovered the moisture on his seat.

To my surprise, he said nothing. However, on the next day he called into the school office a student whom he suspected of causing the prank. The student, of course, denied it, and the incident passed without any student being punished. Retrospectively, I realized it was an example of the presumption of innocence being operative here. I was known to be a good student; the other pupil was known to be a troublemaker, and so he was called into the office and I was not.

The notion of the presumption of innocence is visible in a crucial scene in Driving Miss Daisy, the story of Daisy Werthan, a 72-year-old Jewish widow who needs the help of a driver to chauffer her to various citywide functions and activities. Although reluctant to hire a driver, her son Boolie insists that she be driven rather than drive herself. He fears that his mother may hurt herself and hurt others with her diminished driving skills.

The driver he hires is Hoke Coleburn, a 60 year-old black man. At first their relationship is rocky when she refuses his overtures to help her. In time, however, they become fast friends when one incident changes their relationship. On one winter morning, Daisy discovers a can of salmon missing from the pantry. She immediately suspects Hoke of pilfering it. When Hoke returns to her home, he openly informs her that he took a can of salmon for dinner the previous night because the leftover food was inedible. Daisy is ashamed of herself and from that point on sees Hoke as a man to be trusted.

The notion of judging someone favorably and giving people the benefit of the doubt is a Jewish sensibility. The Talmudic Sages tell us that one who favorably judges others will be judged positively by God. It is good to give someone the benefit of the doubt. This approach to human relationships is based on a legal concept in Jewish law known as a chezkat kashrut, the assumption that all people are basically good and do not want to take advantage of you.

This Hebraic notion finds expression in American law as well, and is referred to as the presumption of innocence. A person is presumed to be innocent of wrongdoing, and it is the prosecution’s task to prove that a defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. This presumed status of honesty in relating to other people is what lubricates the fabric of society, enabling people to trust others in both social and financial matters.

In Driving Miss Daisy, Hoke is a role model of someone who thinks the best of others, even when the other at times acts badly. He holds no grudges and always sees the best in Daisy in spite of her occasional rebuke of him.

Daisy has social baggage. Living in the South for many years, she innocently has picked up certain social prejudices regarding blacks, but they do not prevent her from seeing things anew. Daisy is open-minded and is willing to see things from the perspective of another, enabling her to form a lasting friendship with her driver, Hoke. It is a friendship that transcends race and class, and suggests that we are all part of one grand human family.

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As a child with a Downs Syndrome sister, I recall in the 1950s families with Downs Syndrome children often kept their kids in the proverbial closet. My mother and father thought differently. They felt Carol, their daughter, needed to be visible in the community and that the community should provide the resources for such kids to develop their potential to the fullest extent possible. That’s why my mother fought for the establishment for a school in Westchester County for the mentally retarded and, when Carol was older, for the establishment of a retarded children’s workshop in White Plains so that Carol could feel and be productive in her mature years.

Not all parents felt the same way. Some wanted to hide the disability, for they were uncomfortable saying they had a retarded child. I know of one specific instance where the parents decided not to take the child home from the hospital, consigning the baby to life in an institution.

Infinitely Polar Bear does not deal with mental retardation, but rather with a manic-depressive father and the family’s attempt to live a normal life, which is challenged every day by the erratic and outlandish behavior of the father.

It is Boston in the late 1970s. Cameron Stuart suffers from manic depression, sometimes referred to as bipolar disorder. The film begins with him being fired from his job and going into rehabilitation in a hospital setting. To manage the situation financially, his wife Maggie and their two young girls move into a small apartment while she does her best to support the family.

As Cameron’s mental health stabilizes, Maggie applies to graduate school for an M.B.A. so she can earn more money and send her girls to private school. Fortuitously, Columbia University grants her a scholarship. To attend, she asks Cameron to take care of their kids for 18 months, the time she needs to complete the degree, after which they can reunite as a family. Cameron agrees, but has his doubts about whether he can fulfill the mission.

Living with their father is a constant source of embarrassment for the girls. They love him dearly, but Cameron’s bizarre behavior tests them. He occasionally abandons them during the night, is overly friendly with neighbors whom he hardly knows, and begins many home improvement projects that are never finished, leaving the house in disarray. To complicate matters, Cameron does not take the meds needed to keep him calm, and the home life of the family is shattered with frequent emotional outbursts.

Infinitely Polar Bear raises the question of how much a child should tolerate the abusive behavior of a parent. The Talmud in the Tractate of Kiddushin (31a) is instructive. A story is recounted in which a prominent man wearing expensive garments was seated among Roman officials. His mother forced her way into the gathering and tore his garment, hit him on the head, and spat in front of him. In spite of this, he did not embarrass her. Another sage states that if the mother threw his wallet into the sea, the child should remain passive and not embarrass his parent.

Implicit in this Talmudic narrative is the notion that honoring parents does not depend on what parents did for you or whether they were good to you. Rather the commandment to honor parents is simply because they gave you life. As a result, you need to be nice to them even if they are not nice to you.

Dr. Benzion Sorotzkin, a clinical psychologist, considers the extent to which a child should honor a parent who is abusive. He makes a distinction between a parent who is mentally competent and one who is deranged. In the former, there is more latitude for the child to respond to abuse; in the latter case, there is less. When a parent, for example, has bipolar disorder or Alzheimer’s, the child is faced with a great challenge to keep his composure in the face of behavior that might otherwise be condemned.

Infinitely Polar Bear reminds us of the challenge of being respectful to parents even when they do not behave as parents. It also indicates that an abiding love for parents can often overcome the worst of parental provocations.

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