Category Archives: Crime

When I moved to Israel four years ago, I lost a treasured possession: a silver wine goblet that was presented to my dad when he was president of the local synagogue for a number of years. To preserve the memory of that gift and of my father reciting the blessing over wine on the Sabbath, I decided to buy a replacement cup similar in appearance to the original cup and inscribe it as it was when it was originally presented to my father, and so I did. My father was not an educated man, but he was a wise man to whom I owe a great deal. He was present in my life at critical times, always supporting me and being there offering counsel. Keeping his memory alive both comforts and inspires me.

Fatherhood is at the core of the generational drama The Place Beyond the Pines. The first father we meet is Luke Glanton, a well-known motorcycle stuntman who regularly performs at state fairs. He is an absentee father who discovers he has had child with an ex-girlfriend. This revelation evokes a powerful desire within Luke to be a father, to take care of his son and to provide for his physical needs.

Because Luke’s father has been absent from his life, he is clueless about what parenting really means, translating it mainly into getting more things for his son. To accomplish this, he needs more money. He first obtains a job at an auto repair shop to supplement his income, but Luke wants more than this job can offer. When Robin, the auto repair shop owner, reveals that he was a former bank robber and asks Luke to join him in robbing a few banks, Luke readily agrees.

The second father we meet is Avery Cross, a policeman and father of a son as well. Raised in an affluent home, his own father is a role model of wisdom and material success. Avery intellectually understands the challenge of parenting, but his own personal drive for fame and fortune cause him to be an absentee father.

The lives of Luke and Avery intersect as do the lives of their sons, Jason and AJ, in painful, dangerous ways. There is a Talmudic notion that the acts of the fathers are a signpost for the children, implying that sons often retrace incidents from their parents’ lives in their own lives. They face the same challenges, but do not necessarily make the same choices when confronted with similar circumstances. The fact that AJ comes from an affluent background and  Jason comes from a poor family does not insure or predict success as an adult.

As we watch the relationship between the two sons unfold, we are compelled to meditate on the qualities that make a good parent. The Torah and Talmud clearly define our parental responsibilities towards children. We have to teach them Torah, which implies giving them moral guidance. We have to teach them how to swim, and by this our Sages mean we have to teach them how to navigate life in the face of all the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that will befall them. Furthermore, we have to teach them an honest profession, or give them the means to learn one. Finally, we have to help them find a spouse. Implicit in these parental duties is the presupposition that we are involved in our children’s lives at watershed moments in their lives.

The Place Beyond the Pines reminds us that parenting does not begin simply with bringing home the baby from the hospital nor does it end with sending our child off to school. In the final analysis, parenting requires presence, not presents.

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As I scan the news every day, I see a recurrent theme. People who commit terrible crimes want very much to seem normal, regular guys who just want to preserve peace and order. In Syria where thousands are being killed by government forces, President Assad in a TV interview projects moderation and reason. Recently in Iran, leaders project charm and openness to the world while at home anyone who veers from the party line is subject to harassment or death. The politicos always want to portray themselves as reasonable men who are doing reasonable things, even if this means the murder of many innocents. I was reminded of this as I watched Collateral, a tense thriller in which a paid assassin conducts himself like an ordinary Joe.

The film begins when Max, a cab driver in Los Angeles, picks up Vincent, a friendly passenger, who offers him $600 to drive him around throughout the night as he makes a number of stops. Driving through Los Angeles, Vincent observes that the city is impersonal with no one really caring for one another. He shares a vignette with Max about a dead man on a subway who wasn’t even noticed by the other travelers. The viewer senses that Vincent really cares about the abandoned and forgotten. As the night wears on, however, we learn that Vincent is a paid assassin and at each one of the stops, he plans to murder someone. Max wants to escape after the first murder; but Vincent does not allow him to flee, and so Max’s ride with the devil begins.

Vincent executes two more people out of the five he has contracted to kill, and then orders Max to visit Max’s sick mother in the hospital. Before going up to her room, Vincent buys her flowers. Although his goal is to make Max’s delayed response to her phone calls seem normal, he goes the extra mile by purchasing the bouquet and engaging in sweet conversation with his mother. Vincent projects a solicitous attitude towards the old and infirm, but Max knows the truth and is emotionally unnerved by the sight of a confirmed killer by his mother’s bedside.

Vincent and Max then go to a night club filled with customers dancing to loud music. In the club is a heavily guarded target of Vincent’s. When Vincent attempts to assassinate the target with the FBI, the LAPD, and assorted underworld hit men in the room, a melee breaks out in which bullets fly. When someone mistakenly tries to shoot Max, it is Vincent who saves his life by killing the shooter, thereby adding another layer of confusion to Max’s relationship to Vincent.

All this gunplay and tension unravel Max, who in desperation wrecks his cab as he and Vincent make their getaway from the crime scene. When Max realizes that Vincent’s final hit is a passenger that he chauffeured earlier in the day, he goes out of his way to warn her. Vincent is determined to kill her in spite of his ambivalent feelings for Max; for at the end of the day, he is an assassin for hire, not a person who lets emotions get in the way of his mission.

The Ethics of the Fathers exhorts us to judge every man favorably, to give people the benefit of the doubt. However, once you know with certainty the evil nature of someone, you should be vigilant. As our Sages say, don’t judge anything by its outward appearance; rather judge it by its contents. No matter how charming an evil person is, that does not excuse immoral behavior. Judaism mandates that we judge people by their actions, not by their appearances.

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When I was principal of Yeshiva High School of Atlanta, I had a conversation with a board member who was a Holocaust survivor about the Holocaust Museum that was being built in Washington, D.C. He shared with me his feeling that it was not a wise use of community funds which could be better utilized to support Jewish day school education. I empathized with him since part of my job was to raise money for the school and I, too, felt that more community money should be directed towards Jewish education.

A couple of years ago, I had the opportunity to speak to my friend again and he shared with me his change of heart about the Holocaust Museum. Now he felt glad that the Museum was here to teach many subsequent generations about the Holocaust. He never envisioned years ago that there would be Holocaust deniers and that anti-Semitism would be alive and well in the world after the atrocities of the Holocaust. Never could he have imagined leaders of so-called civilized nations calling for the annihilation of the Jewish state. The world had changed and it was not for the better. Evil was a potent force in the 21^st century, and the Holocaust Museum was an important agent of moral education challenging the perpetrators of evil.

The conversation brought back memories of my own innocent childhood in Mt. Vernon, New York, when everyone thought, post World War II, post- Holocaust, that the world was now enlightened, that there would be war no more, and that our collective human future was bright. 9/11 brought all that optimistic thinking to an abrupt halt.

The Batman trilogy of films deals metaphorically with how we come to terms with this new world where evil is real and ubiquitous. The reality of evil in these narratives undercuts our assumptions about the basic goodness of man and leaves us on edge.

The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises present two villains who are the personifications of evil: the Joker and Bane. The Joker represents the chaotic nature of evil; Bane represents the committed terrorist, for whom death and destruction are liberating events. Bruce Wayne, aka Batman, begins with a conventional understanding of the Joker’s criminal mind. He tells his butler, Alfred: “Criminals aren’t complicated. I just have to figure out what he’s after.” Alfred wisely responds: “You don’t fully understand. Some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.” Bruce is ambivalent about how to deal with the Joker and Bane, and it takes him a long time to understand how vicious they are and how he must change his preconceptions about the nature of evil people.

This perhaps can give us some understanding about the Biblical approach to unfettered evil, such as we find in Amalek, the arch-enemy of the Jews who attacked the old and weak as they were leaving Egypt. The Bible tells us to eradicate this evil and for the compassionate Jew, this is a hard business. On Passover at the Seder, we are bidden to spill out drops of wine from our cup when we recount the ten plagues because our cup of joy is never full when others have suffered. Even when justice triumphs, we feel for the victim who suffers. The Ethics of the Fathers also cautions us not to rejoice over the fall of the wicked even though he is deserving of punishment. Moreover, the Talmud recounts the story of Beruriah, the wife of Rabbi Meir, who, when her husband wanted to harm bullies who were constantly harassing him, exhorted him to pray that these sinners repent, not to pray that they die.

The Batman trilogy is a brainy thriller. It asks us to leave our simplistic notions of good and evil at the door and to recognize that in our new and dangerous world, we cannot ignore evil. To be naïve in the face of absolute terror and evil places us at great risk.

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