Category Archives: Drama

I have a friend who never fails to miss an opportunity. Although talented and possessing charisma, at age 45 he is still single and without a steady job. Occasionally, he asks me for a loan and I give him small pocket change; but his life, on the whole, is a mess.

At age 42, he decided to leave his regular job and explore becoming a real estate agent in Chicago where he was born and raised, but now he has neither job nor steady income. Instead, he has lots of stress and an unpredictable paycheck.

A year ago, he had a chance to take a high-paying job in the hotel industry where his superior people skills would in all likelihood make him successful, but he hesitated. In the interim, the job was offered to someone else and his job prospects turned increasingly bleak. I thought about him as I watched Rocky, a film about a loser who has the good sense not to let a one-time opportunity pass.

Rocky is an iconic story because it touches on the insecurities of every man who is mired in a mediocre reality, but who wants more out of life. Rocky serendipitously is given a moment when he can change his life for the better and he takes advantage of it, and that decision makes him an inspiration for many.

We first meet Rocky in November of 1975 as a small time fighter and collector for a local loan shark in a seedy neighborhood in Philadelphia. He is a man with no prospects. But fortune shines on him when the heavyweight champion of the world, Apollo Creed, needs a replacement for the boxer who has dropped out of a glamorous New Year’s title defense because of a hand injury. Apollo turns to a local underdog with the flashy pseudonym of “the Italian Stallion,” to generate interest in the fight, and so Rocky Balboa has his chance of a lifetime to come out of obscurity and into the limelight.

The Ethics of the Fathers, a classic of Jewish wisdom literature, reminds us that a person should never disparage another man, for every man has his hour. Although Rocky is at first dismissed by many who see him as a failure in life, who never capitalized on his talents, they reassess him when he reinvents himself as a serious contender for the title.

No longer casual about his training, he realizes what is at stake and resolves to go the distance with Apollo. All this happens because Rocky is blessed with a mentor, Mickey Goldmill, who initially calls Rocky a bum but then has a change of heart and mind, visioning Rocky as a potential champ who simply needs to get rid his old habits and rededicate himself to the sport of boxing. It is this mentoring that makes all the difference. Rocky understands that he does not know everything and that he needs guidance, which is the first step to self-knowledge. Under Mickey’s guidance, Rocky emerges as a real threat to Apollo, and what subsequently happens is the stuff of boxing legend.

Rocky has lots to recommend it. It reminds us to appreciate the talents that God has given us and to use them to become the best that we can be in spite of setbacks and limitations. Furthermore, it encourages us to find a mentor, who will give us the wisdom to make good life decisions. It is noteworthy that Ethics of the Fathers specifically recommends that we acquire a teacher. This is a priority in a world that can be confusing and damaging to us if we insist on going it alone.

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When I was a teenager, I was smitten by a beautiful girl from the Bronx. I thought we were going to get married, and I prayed to God that it all would work out. Thank God, God did not answer my prayers. If He did, I would have led a very different life from the one I lead now.

Many years later, I heard a song by Garth Brooks called “Unanswered Prayers.” Its lyrics spoke to me: “Sometimes I thank God for unanswered prayers/ Remember when you’re talkin’ to the man upstairs/ That just because He doesn’t answer doesn’t mean He don’t care/ Some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers.”

Silence, Martin Scorsese’s personal project in which he was a writer, producer, and director, deals with the matter of unanswered prayers in a very serious film about faith and how it is tested in times of crisis. The film opens as two Jesuit priests. Father Rodrigues and Father Garupe, are discussing the fate of their mentor, Father Ferrara, who they are told renounced his faith and now lives in Japan with a wife and child. The young priests cannot comprehend this and want to find Ferrara and determine for themselves his fate and clear his name.

The setting is 17^th century feudal Japan where there is a raging theological battle between ancient Japanese religions and Christianity. Christianity is viewed as a dangerous and subversive force, and it is the target of a governmental official known as the Inquisitor who wants to uproot it from Japan.

Rodrigues and Garupe arrive in Japan and witness terrible atrocities visited upon Christians who do not symbolically renounce their faith publicly by stepping on an image of Jesus.

Rodrigues’ faith in God weakens when he sees people suffering and God is seemingly silent, indifferent to their pain. The Japanese officials tell him that if he renounces his faith, the people will be spared from more afflictions. The inquisitor regards Rodrigues as the leader and role model, and if he apostatizes, then the others will follow his example.

As tortures mount, Rodrigues’ crisis of faith intensifies. He wonders how God can be so silent in face of the agony of so many sincere Christians. His eventual meeting with Ferrara is complex, revealing ambivalence about religious certainties and it does not resolve his crisis of faith.

The question of why bad things happen to good people is one of the most difficult questions for people of faith. Suffering often leads to loss of faith, and that is the overarching enigma with which Silence deals.

Rabbi Noach Weinberg writes that one way to understand the mysterious ways of God is to accept the reality of eternity. Man only has finite vision and can only see the present; only God can see past, present, and future. From the aspect of eternity, pain on earth looks different because there is more to life than life on earth.

Rodrigues experiences an epiphany when at a moment of deep despair, he exclaims to God: “I feel so tempted to despair. I’m afraid. The weight of your silence is terrible. I pray, but I’m lost. Or am I just praying to nothing? Nothing. Because you are not there.” At that moment, he hears the voice of Jesus say: “I have suffered beside you. I was never silent,” to which Rodrigues responds: “It was in the silence that I heard your voice.”

Silence is a complicated film dealing with issues of religious faith that are seldom dealt with in commercial movies. It reflects a sensitive soul trying to come to terms with unsolvable matters. The beauty of it is in its refusal to give pat answers to complex ideological questions. In that sense, Silence reveals a Jewish sensibility which says that asking the question may be more important than finding the answer.

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In the course of my career as a high school principal, I had many faculty meetings. I would present a list of agenda items and the staff would give me their thinking on them. On occasion, a teacher would say to me that the problem under discussion was simple. All we had to do was one thing and then things would be fine. This kind of simplistic thinking in most cases did not work. The failure to see complexity doomed the suggested solution.

In Wonder Woman, an exciting and thoughtful rendition of the famous comic book heroine’s origin, Diana as a young Amazon warrior first sees the world’s evil in a simplistic way, but through her life experiences realizes that evil is complicated and cannot be reduced to the evil of one bad man.

The movie opens when Diana is a child growing up on a remote island with Amazons, mighty female warriors. Her mother, Queen Hippolyta shares with the daughter the story of Ares, the god of war, who desires to corrupt men and encourage them to battle one another. Queen Hippolyta allows Diana to train for battle, knowing that there will be an eventual showdown between Diana and Ares at some future time.

Normal life changes for Diana when she grows up and rescues an American pilot, Steve Trevor, who has crashed into the sea. Interrogated by the Amazons, he reveals that he is an American spy gathering intelligence to fight Germany, a country at war with the United States. He has valuable information that will save lives, and this information resonates in Diana, who sees her life’s mission as saving lives and ending world conflict.

Allying herself with Steve and his noble cause, she gradually discovers that evil is not one-dimensional, residing only in one person. She understands that evil affects many people whose motivations are complex. Eradicating evil will take a lifetime, not victory in one battle.

Judaism believes in the reality of evil, and maintains that man is largely responsible for bringing it into the world. Man possesses an evil inclination, which, if left unharnessed, can lead man to do terrible things. It must be counterbalanced by a good inclination, which keeps man on the correct moral path. Man has a choice to make many times during each day to determine which inclination he will follow.

Rabbi Raymond Apple makes an interesting observation: There is a “paradoxical fact that when a person chooses to do evil, he does so not because it is evil but because he perceives it as good. We might question his judgment, regard him as having a warped view of what is good, and reject his probably subjective criteria of goodness – but he believes, nonetheless, that what he is doing is good in some sense.”

When General Erich Ludendorff, the personification of evil, shares his thinking with Diana, it reflects this notion that his destructiveness is good for the world: “You know your ancient Greeks? They understood that war is a god. A god that requires human sacrifice. And in exchange, war gives man purpose. Meaning. A chance to rise above his petty mortal little self. And be courageous. Noble. Better.”

Diana disagrees and expresses an optimistic, nuanced view of the world: “I used to want to save the world. To end war and bring peace to mankind. But then, I glimpsed the darkness that lives within their light. I learned that inside every one of them, there will always be both. The choice each must make for themselves.”

Wonder Woman ‘s early belief that evil is one-dimensional morphs into a mature understanding of the nature of evil, an evil that manifests itself in the world in many ways and requires more than one strategy to defeat it. Her complex vision of evil is a reminder for us not to seek simplistic solutions in the face of evil.

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As principal of a high school, I would often interview teachers for positions in the school. Resumes often were superb, but the person had no teaching experience. I remember one candidate in particular who took pride in the fact that he had a perfect SAT score. I did not hire him because there was no empirical evidence that he would succeed, let alone survive, in a high school classroom.

The difference between someone who possesses sterling academic credentials and someone who possesses exceptional real world experience is at the crux of Sully, the film that depicts the famous “miracle on the Hudson,” in which the pilot, Captain Chesley Sullenberger, landed a commercial jet, US Airways Flight 1549, carrying 155 people on the Hudson River in New York with no loss of life.

The opening scenes of the film depict the investigation of the incident by the airport authorities, who question why Sully chose to land on the Hudson River rather than simply fly back to LaGuardia Airport from which they had just departed. They argue that computer simulations of the flight that replicate the large flock of birds that flew straight into the plane’s engines indicate it was possible for it to return to LaGuardia safely.

Through flashbacks, we see the flight as it unfolded in real time. It becomes clear that the flight simulations do not consider the human factor in making the right decisions under pressure. When the group listens to the cockpit recordings, they understand how critical the human component is in making good decisions at stressful moments, when life and death are at stake. Sully reminds them: “No one warned us. No one said ‘You’re going to lose both engines at a lower altitude than any jet in history. But, be cool, just make a left turn for LaGuardia like you are going back to pick up the milk.’ This was duel engine loss at 2800 feet followed by immediate water landing with 155 souls on board. No one has ever trained for an incident like that. No one.”

Jewish tradition shows great respect for the learning that one acquires over a lifetime. The Bible exhorts us to stand up before the aged, even if the old person is not necessarily a scholarly man. We simply revere age because it tells us that a person has experienced much in life, and that experience makes him a valued and respected member of society.

Rabbi Noach Weinberg writes: “People have some idea that there’s nothing to learn outside of a university. We think: What does the average person on the street know? This attitude is destructive because it stops us from learning the many bits and pieces of wisdom that are available. Just the fact that someone survives from day-to-day, and copes with life’s obstacles, means he’s picked up valuable tips on living.” Moreover, Rabbi Weinberg observes: “We assume that unless a person is a recognized scholar, or successful business person, he lacks wisdom. But the truth is, anyone who’s had life experience possesses great wisdom. You may be shocked to find out how much your parents know about the issues you’re grappling with right now. As Mark Twain said, ‘I spent four years in university, and I was amazed at how much wiser my father got while I was away!’ “

Sully’s many years of experience as a pilot enabled him to do extraordinary things when an emergency demanded a quick response to a life or death scenario. Textbook learning alone would not have prepared him for dealing with such an unknown and unpredictable crisis. Only through the crucible of life experience, for which there is no substitute, do we acquire the practical wisdom that enables us to overcome life’s challenges.

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Rescue missions are inherently unpredictable. In Israel there are many rescue narratives, the Entebbe rescue being the most famous. Before any rescue attempt is made, the plan is intensely scrutinized to obtain the optimum results: saving those in danger and making sure no one, including the rescuers, gets hurt. That is why the Entebbe rescue is so highly praised. The lives of ninety-four hostages, primarily Israelis, and the 12-member Air France crew were in jeopardy, all of whom were threatened with death. As a result of the 90-minute Israeli operation, 102 were rescued.

In The Finest Hours, there is a crisis of a different sort that is the catalyst for the rescue mission. It is February 18, 1952, near the coast of New England. An oil tanker, the Pendleton, on a stormy winter night suffers a hole in the ship, allowing in huge amounts of water. The dilemma: how to keep the ship afloat until rescuers come. Ray Sybert, the ship’s engineer, recommends that they try to run the boat aground to keep it afloat. Moreover, the challenge of the rescuers is enormous because of the inclement weather and raging sea.

Bernie Webber, a Coast Guard seaman, is tasked by his superior to take out a large motorboat and rescue the tanker’s crew. Three brave men accompany him. The waves almost capsize their boat, but miraculously they get beyond the fierce waves and continue towards the tanker.

Once the Coast Guard crew finally arrives at the sinking ship, they realize that there is not enough room on the boat for all the sailors. However, they persist in trying to get all the men on board. Most make it to the rescue boat. Once the last man hops on board the Coast Guard boat, the Pendleton sinks.

In the melee of trying to rescue the men amidst torrential rains and waves, the Coast Guard crew loses its compass. How they find there way back in the dark is a minor miracle, and the viewer rejoices in their success against all odds.

Jewish tradition tells us that it is a good deed to save someone’s life. It is derived from the Biblical commandment ‘You shall not stand aside when mischief befalls a neighbor (Leviticus 19:16).” We are responsible for our neighbor’s welfare. This commandment is an extension of the commandment to love one’s neighbor as one would love himself. The question arises, however, to what extent should we put our own lives in jeopardy to save someone else’s? This is the scenario on The Finest Hours in which Bernie Webber and his Coast Guard crew knowingly endanger their own lives when they attempt to rescue the crew of the Pendleton.

Rabbi Eliezer Melamed, quoting the Talmud and Codes of Jewish Law, speaks of two approaches to this dilemma. The first is to consider the level of risk and not be overly cautious when it comes to evaluating whether a rescue attempt will fail or succeed. When human life is at stake, we should be willing to assume some level of risk and not be apathetic to a cry for help, even if it means endangering ourselves.

The second approach is to take great risks when it comes to saving another person’s life. The Sages say that entering into great danger is justified is there is at least a fifty per cent chance of success. This means that both the rescuer and the person whose life is immediately threatened will survive. Saving the life of another is considered an extreme act of kindness, for which there is much Divine reward.

The Finest Hours, in exceptional visual terms, recounts one of the greatest small boat rescues in the history of the Coast Guard. It skillfully dramatizes the tactical and emotional challenge faced by Bernie Webber and others to encounter personal peril when that is what is required to save human lives. Bernie does not take the easy way out; rather he courageously confronts danger and becomes a hero worth emulating.

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In Israel, I am a member of a synagogue with a large cadre of volunteers. The volunteers serve in many different capacities, each calling upon their unique talents to strengthen the infrastructure of the congregational community. One person may help with organizing the prayer service, another may focus on taking care of members who have suffered the loss of a loved one, another may be in charge of building repairs, and so on. There is a clear recognition that people are different and contribute in different ways to the overall health and wellbeing of the community.

This mindset exists in the military as well both here in Israel and in America. Different units specialize in different areas, and bring their specific expertise to the table. However, in Hacksaw Ridge, the true story of Desmond Doss’s experience in World War II, the soldiers in one unit do not fully comprehend or appreciate the fact that one soldier operates under a different set of givens than the others and contributes to the greater good in his own idiosyncratic way.

Desmond Doss is a conscientious objector and refuses to carry a weapon in war, even within his own combat unit. He wants to serve as a medic and save lives, not end them. His fellow soldiers view him as an unreliable ally and coward and they make his adjustment to the military miserable.

A military court prepares to court martial him for disobedience, but at the proceeding they change their view of Desmond when he explains his perspective on the war and on his personal vision of military service: “When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, I took it personal. Everyone I knew was on fire to join up, including me. Why, I had a job in a defense plant and I could’ve taken a deferment, but that ain’t right. It isn’t right that other men should fight and die, that I would just be sitting at home safe. I need to serve. I got the energy and the passion to serve as a medic, right in the middle with the other guys. No less danger, just… while everybody else is taking life, I’m going to be saving it. With the world so set on tearing itself apart, it doesn’t seem like such a bad thing to me to wanna put a little bit of it back together.”

In the crucible of battle on Hacksaw Ridge, Desmond’s comrades change their view of him. The Japanese attack ferociously and many Americans die and become wounded. Time and time again, Desmond is there to tend to his fellow soldiers and help them get to safety. Against all odds, he rescues 75 men. Later Desmond becomes the first conscientious objector to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Desmond remains true to his principles and becomes a hero, an invaluable member of his brigade. His commanding officer, Captain Glover, asks Desmond to forgive him for misjudging him: “All I saw was a skinny kid. I didn’t know who you were. You’ve done more than any other man could’ve done in the service of his country. Now, I’ve never been more wrong about someone in my life, and I hope one day you can forgive me.”

Misjudging someone is at the core of Hacksaw Ridge. The inability to see another’s perspective almost prevents Desmond from serving his country. Consider how many more lives would have been lost without his intervention.

The Ethics of the Fathers, a classic of Jewish wisdom literature, tells us: “judge every man favorably.” It is important to give every person the benefit of the doubt. Always try to see the good in the other. Moreover, the Talmud teaches us: “Anyone who judges others favorably will be judged favorably in Heaven” (Shabbat 127b). Hacksaw Ridge reminds us that those who see life differently from us may teach us by example how to lead a life of virtue and meaning.

I taught an eighth grade class for a number of years in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish school in Israel. The secular class began in late afternoon and there were only two hours per week devoted to English language study.

However, I still wanted to introduce the students to classic literature, and so I created a unit on Shakespeare in which the students read and acted out a few seminal scenes from the great bard’s plays. Included was the assassination scene in Julius Caesar. The kids had fun wearing makeshift togas and learned about something about the wielding of political power. Moreover, we reviewed some of the classic lines in the play in their context.

This cinematic version of Julius Caesar still has legs although it was filmed in black and white over sixty years ago. The reason: the stellar cast which included Marlon Brando as Marc Antony, James Mason as Brutus, and John Gielgud as Cassius.

The story begins in Rome when Caesar is at the height of his power. Some, however, see his rise to power as a reflection of his unflinching ambition and as a threat to Rome. They recruit the honorable Brutus to join with them in a plot to murder Caesar and, by doing so, save Rome. Brutus’ participation gives the conspirators respectability and the courage to move forward with their plans.

After the assassination, Brutus gives permission for Antony to eulogize Caesar, and his emotional speech turns the crowd against the conspirators. His funeral oration beginning with the famous words “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears” is a speech for the ages, and Brando executes it in iconic fashion. This sets the stage for war between Antony and Brutus and their respective constituencies.

When I discussed the themes of the play with the students, I inwardly lamented their lack of exposure to great literature, the touchstone of superior culture. Of course, I understood that Torah study was primary, but one can still learn from great literature and the study of the humanities in general. Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein, a rabbinic scholar with a PhD in English from Harvard, writes that the humanities gives us insight into the human soul: “Great literature presents either a rendering, factual or imaginative, of aspects of the human condition, or a record of the artist’s grappling with the ultimate questions of human existence: man’s relation to himself, to others, to the cosmos, and above all to God.” As such, reading exceptional works of literature can help us navigate our own lives.

There are lines in Julius Caesar that express truths about life in a poetic way that touch the heart as well as the mind. Moreover, they coincide with Jewish sensibilities. Here is one of them: “Cowards die many times before their death, the valiant never taste of death but once.” This passage makes us think about how to confront fear. Another passage: “There is a tide in the affairs of men/ Which taken at the flood leads on to fortune/ Omitted, all the voyage of their life/ Is bound in shallows and miseries/ On such a full sea as we are now afloat/ And we must take the current when it serves/ Or lose our ventures.” The message here is to take advantage of the moment. Evaluate the present and then act boldly to determine your future.

What I found in instructing students of all ages is that life lessons that were embedded in sacred Jewish texts often emerged in the secular texts I was teaching in my English literature classes. My students, many of whom were not reared in observant Jewish homes, connected with the secular source more easily than with the sacred. In teaching, I understood that when it comes to student learning “the readiness is all.”

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