At my elementary school, a couple of kids in the school band thought my name was Herbert Coleman, not Herbert Cohen. They assumed I was not Jewish. Then one day they became aware that my name was Cohen and they knew I was a Jew. That realization gave them license to threaten and intimidate me. One told me not to show up for the school band parade in which I played drums. When I told my mother about the threat, she went to the principal and related the incident to him. Moreover, she told him that she expected me to be in the parade as planned, and I was. But the memory of the event is still with me. I was the same person whether my name was Coleman or Cohen, but for people who are prejudiced, the stereotype becomes the reality.
This is what happens in Focus, the story of Lawrence Newman, a self-effacing office manager who, when he gets a new pair of glasses, begins to “look Jewish.” This puts him at odds with neighbors in his Christian neighborhood, in which there is a strong current of anti-Semitism.
The more he tries to convince people of his Gentile roots, the more suspicious his neighbors become. They view Jews as responsible for the United States entry into the war and as a subversive element within American society. Moreover, they view Finkelstein, the Jewish grocer in the neighborhood, as an outsider bringing in undesirables that taint the Christian character of the neighborhood.
Things go south for Newman at work. Because he is perceived as a Jew, his boss relegates him to a remote office where he cannot be seen by people who visit his firm. Soon, Newman resigns in anger only to find that securing a new job is difficult when people regard him as Jewish. He forms a relationship with Gertrude Hart, a woman whom he did not hire when he was an office manager because she looked Jewish, but she now works for a Jewish firm that hires him.
Romance blossoms and they marry, but he still encounters quiet hostility from his neighbors who regard him as a Jew and an outsider. Things reach a boiling point when Newman attends a rally of a neo-Nazi group and there is a brutal attack on Finkelstein’s store. All this galvanizes Newman and his wife to rethink who they are and redefine themselves as persecuted Jews who want to be treated without prejudice.
Judaism affirms the sacred essence of all of God’s creations. Everyone is created in God’s image; therefore; everyone possesses a spark of the divine and has infinite potential. In Judaism there is no place for prejudice or discrimination since we all come from the same place. Eve was everyone’s mother.
Moreover, Jews were strangers without a homeland for many years; the Bible reminds us of this many times. In Leviticus (19:33-34), it states: “When an alien lives with you in your land, do not ill-treat him. The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.” We are Biblically commanded to empathize with the stranger, the one who is different from us.
The story of Lawrence Newman is a parable for the story of everyman, who is inherently different from every other man. His last name, Newman, is a clarion call to all men to be free of prejudice and to relate to all men as new men, without the baggage of old memory tapes of ingrained discrimination.
Many years ago, I asked a lawyer whom I respected what was his specialty. His answer: money. It was an “aha” moment when I realized that law is not always synonymous with justice, and that what often determines a legal outcome is how much money is at stake in terms of potential gain for the attorneys working on the case.
I do not know many people who will do something to benefit someone else if it means that they will suffer a negative consequence. I have read of such actions taking place in the cauldron of the Holocaust narrative or in a prison setting, but it is a rare occurrence in times of peace and prosperity. Yet that is exactly what is depicted in Two Days, One Night, a slice-of-life drama in which Sandra, a factory worker, goes around visiting her fellow employees asking them to forego their annual bonuses so that she can retain her job.
Some people are passionate about food; others eat simply to be nourished, lacking interest in food preparation and presentation. I remember watching one of my Torah teachers eating a piece of gefilte fish almost every day for lunch in the Yeshiva. He ate at his desk in the study hall and did not want to waste a moment in walking to a nearby restaurant.
There is a brief scene in Beyond the Sea, a biopic of singer Bobby Darin, which resonates with me personally. Bobby unbuttons his shirt and reveals his scar from open-heart surgery. It looks like a long zipper on his chest. I, too, have had open-heart surgery and remember other patients telling me I am now a member of the “zipper club,” all of whose members brandish an extended scar on their chest.
My review of The Godfather trilogy requires some preliminary discussion. Why have I chosen to consider all three films in one review and why is it a “kosher” movie in spite of the fact that there is much violence and profanity in the film?
As I write this review, the country is in a fierce debate as to whether the United States should accept Syrian refugees from that war-ravaged country. Coming after a devastating attack on innocent civilians by Islamic extremists in Paris, many in this country are wary of accepting Muslims without serious background checks. I witnessed similar anti-Muslim sentiment after 9/11, when Islamic extremists brought down the World Trade Center towers. I have no opinions about this matter other than to accept the reality that the resolution to this problem is complicated and probably will involve a balance of kindness and caution. We want to help people in dire straits; but we also have to be prudent and not put our own citizens at risk.
One of my favorite poems is “The Convergence of the Twain” by Thomas Hardy. The poem describes two events occurring at the same time but at different locations. At some future time, the events converge. One is the building of the ship, the Titanic; the other is the forming of the iceberg with which the ship will collide. Hardy writes: “Alien they seemed to be/ No mortal eye could see/ The intimate welding of their later history/ Till the Spinner of the Years/ Said ‘Now!’/And each one hears/ And consummations comes, and jars two hemispheres.”
My parents were people of modest means. Moreover, they always considered the needs of their children before their own. I never felt deprived as a child even though I lived in a low-income neighborhood and did not go on fancy vacations to Disneyworld. Life was joyous because my parents, by example, found joy in the everyday, in spending time with their children, in working as volunteers on behalf of the local synagogue, and in regularly visiting our extended family and friends. I do not recall ever envying other kids because I was satisfied with my lot in life. I remember that my favorite Bar Mitzvah gift was a simple basketball given to me by my friends Kenny and Marilyn Beeman.
In the late 1970s, I taught a class on the Holocaust to teenagers at Yeshiva High School of Atlanta. A high point of the course was an interview with a survivor of the camps. There were many living in Atlanta, but it was not easy to find people willing to talk about their terrible experiences in the concentration camps. For them it was too painful to resurrect those memories.
Kosher Movies 