Kosher Movies

Do you remember where you were on 9/11? I do. I was principal of Columbus Torah Academy and was called to the office to see what was unfolding on TV. It was a horrific sight, hitherto unimaginable. I called an assembly and spoke to the students about evil in the world and about how good ultimately triumphs because God is in charge. Therefore, know that in spite of the current tragedy, we will endure and live to a better day. In the interim, we need to pray for the victims and do whatever we can to help our fellow citizens in distress.

It is this kind of cataclysmic event that Contagion describes, but in this case it is an unknown, deadly virus that kills millions of people. Contagion is not a horror movie. Rather, it works as a thriller, which imagines in a very logical way the consequences of a virus infection that has no known cure. Although the movie is populated with A-list actors, the main character is the disease. All the players unassumingly portray human responses to crisis. Many respond with fear. Some, such as an unscrupulous blogger, see the crisis as a way to make money by suggesting that the government is conspiring with the drug companies to make a financial killing. Fortunately, some respond with altruism.

Examples of altruism punctuate Contagion. A dying woman offers her blanket to another patient shivering from cold. A doctor injects herself with a trial vaccine to test whether it will be effective with humans. Another doctor gives the preventive vaccine to a neighbor’s son rather than use it himself. A scientist who abandons protocol to find a stable version of the virus does not try to make a profit by selling his research to a drug company. Instead, he shares his findings with the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, the agency best equipped to develop a vaccine to halt the spread of the virus. These vignettes recall the Jewish value of showing kindness to others, and not using crisis for personal advantage.

The Ethics of the Fathers teaches that the world depends on acts of loving kindness. From where is this derived? From God Himself, who clothed Adam and Eve even after they sinned, and who buried Moses at the end of his life.  Moreover, the patriarch Abraham personifies kindness. Even when he is in pain suffering the aftereffects of circumcision, he greets total strangers and welcomes them into his tent. Furthermore, when he seeks a wife for his son Isaac, the litmus test is whether the prospective bride will manifest compassion for weary animals in addition to his emissaries. Rebecca seals her destiny when she brings water for the camels as well as for the tired travelers.

It is comforting to feel that at moments of crisis, good people will step forward to help. Not everyone will be motivated by selfishness. There is a touching coda at the end of Contagion that indicates a hopeful future. Mitch, husband of Beth, the first victim, is privately perusing photos of his wife in his upstairs bedroom. He breaks down in tears, and then hears his teenage daughter calling him. He comes down, sees her dancing with her boyfriend as they prepare to go to Prom Night. He smiles as he realizes that his daughter is alive with a bright future ahead.

This also is a Jewish sensibility: to go beyond mourning and to see continuity. The traditional Jewish mourning food is the egg, totally round and without an opening, without a mouth. Our Sages tell us that this is a metaphor for mourning, a time when we cannot articulate our pain. But the egg is round, and this symbolizes the reality that life moves on beyond tragedy, and that a cycle of renewal can begin even after great loss. This is a valuable life lesson for all of us.

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My wife and I have bought a few homes in our lives. Each purchase probably represented the largest purchase we made until that point in our lives, and the down payment represented much of our savings. However, we, like many others, bit the bullet and made the purchase on the assumption that our income would eventually enable us to pay the mortgage. Sometimes we made money on the sale of the house and sometimes we lost money. Over the years we have become philosophical about ups and downs in money matters. We cannot control the housing market and, in the final analysis, God is in charge and whatever happens is for the best even if we don’t always see it in the short term. Nonetheless, the purchase of a home can be a stressful moment in the life of a family.

Nowhere is this more evident than in an excruciatingly painful scene in Boiler Room, a coarse, profanity-laden look at the world of young stock brokers who cold call customers with promises of big returns on their investments. One call goes to Harry Reynard, a family man who gives $50,000, his entire savings for a house, to Seth Davis in return for what is essentially worthless stock. We watch in agony as Seth lies to his client in order to make the sale. Harry buys the dream and loses his money and family in the process. It is a gut-wrenching scene to watch.

Boiler Room, based on real-life accounts of stockbrokers, is very disturbing. Young men are schooled in how to lie to clients in order to make big profits for themselves. There is a culture of conspicuous consumption at the firm. Successful brokers buy expensive cars, the latest techie gadgets, and have neither heart nor soul. They make a pact with the devil and revel in it at the unsuspecting client’s expense.

Seth Davis, the narrator of the story, is the son of a judge, and even though his relationship with his father is turbulent, he understands the ethical problems with his new job. He is torn between financial success and moral responsibility. Ultimately, it is the relationship with his father that moves him to try to make things financially right for Harry, his desperate client, and ethically right for himself.

Boiler Room reminds us of the perils of living a life where the only goal is the acquisition of more and more things. People become objects to exploit, not good friends and neighbors. The Ethics of the Fathers tell us that the truly rich man is the one who is content with his lot, who does not spend night and day trying to amass wealth. Wealth in Judaism is a means, not the end goal. Wealth enables us to help the needy, to welcome guests to our table, and to support community institutions and worthy causes of all types. Wealth is to be shared, not hoarded. The Book of Ecclesiastes states: “the lover of money will never be satisfied with money; a lover of abundance has no wheat.” The acquisition of worldly goods is ultimately futile. Only good deeds accompany a man to the grave.

There is another lesson in Boiler Room. Harry purchases the worthless stock without consulting his wife. Our Sages tell us, in reference to a quandary of Abraham, that he should consult with his wife Sarah. The spouse who loves you and has your best interest at heart should not be ignored when making major decisions in life. It is important to “listen to her voice” as the Sages say. A pow-wow with a loved one reinforces peace in the home.

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My wife and I have been blessed with many new friends since coming on aliyah to Israel. But there is nothing like an old friend who has known you for many years. For example, my friend Harvey, who I have known since I was 12, gave me two important pieces of advice or insights that have proven to be invaluable to me. When I was struggling in my Torah learning in 1966, he suggested I come to Israel where I could develop my learning skills and be free of secular distractions. Later on when I was about to enter the rabbinate, he told me that the most important thing for me to do is to love people. If people sensed that I truly cared for them, I would be successful.

The nature of friendship is at the core of The Killing Fields, which takes place in Cambodia in the mid-70s. The country is in the midst of a civil war between the Cambodian national army and the communist Khymer Rouge as a result of the Vietnam War spilling over into its borders. The two central characters Sydney Schanberg, a New York Times reporter, and Dith Pran, a Cambodian interpreter, form a deep friendship as they document in stories and photos the tragic plight of the Cambodian people who are caught in the crossfire of a war on its periphery.

Because of the mounting instability in the country, Pran’s family is evacuated with other international diplomats, but Dith Pran stays with Schanberg in spite of the risk. Pran’s situation worsens when the Khymer Rouge demand that all Cambodian citizens in the French embassy be turned over. Forced to live under its totalitarian regime, he uses all of his resources to stay alive. Meanwhile, Sydney returns to New York and launches a campaign to find him. Years pass with no word from Dith Pram; but in 1979, he is located in a Red Cross facility in Thailand.  Sydney flies there to see him and immediately asks for his forgiveness for not encouraging him to leave safely when he had the chance. Dith Pram tells him that there is nothing to forgive. They embrace as John Lennon’s “Imagine” plays in the background and the Cambodian victims of war look on, mystified by the show of friendship between these two different men from different lands. The lyrics resonate as we watch Cambodian and American embrace: “You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday, you’ll join us. The world will live as one.” Friendship means thinking of the other as part of you. It is the one of us.

I once enlisted the aid of a rabbi older and wiser than I to come to Atlanta to strengthen the Torah program of the Yeshiva of which I was principal. Surprisingly, the rabbi said he would come, but he told me something that sticks in my mind to this day. He was sensitive to the political undercurrents of my situation, and he said he would come only if I was sure it would be helpful to me. If at any moment I had second thoughts about my invitation, it was okay for me to change my mind. There was no self-interest on his part. This is what true friendship is all about.

The Ethics of the Fathers underscores this when it praises the love between the Biblical characters Jonathan and David. They loved one another and wanted to do what was in the other’s best interest. This is the kind of friendship we should all strive for, friendships where we ask ourselves what can I do for my friend, not what’s in it for me.

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For a number of years as a synagogue rabbi, I officiated at funerals and gave thoughtful and comforting eulogies. But it wasn’t until my mother passed away that I really understood what loss meant. I had spoken to her on a Thursday night right after Passover in 1976; the next morning I received a call from my father who was crying, telling me at the same time that Mommy had died. I felt an emptiness within; and at the funeral service the following Sunday in Mt. Vernon, New York, I was speechless and could not sing her praises. I could only share with the officiating rabbi my strongest memories of my mother, and the rabbi in his eulogy gave voice to my thoughts.

After that seismic event in my life, my sensitivity towards mourners who had just suffered a loss was more heartfelt. Loss was not just a sermon topic; it was something that changed my perception of death, which made me more empathetic, and more understanding of what it means to be a loved one left behind.

There is a line in Good Will Hunting uttered by Will Hunting’s therapist, Sean, which expresses the difference between just learning or hearing about tragedy and experiencing it.  Sean tells Will, an arrogant, cocky, but brilliant, young man, that “You’re just a kid. You don’t have the faintest idea of what you are talking about.” Furthermore, he doesn’t know about art, about love, about war. All he possesses is book knowledge, not wisdom that emerges from the crucible of life experience. Sean has lost his beloved wife to cancer, and Will casually presumes to know everything about Sean because of a painting he saw in Sean’s office.  Sean responds to his facile remarks stridently: “You don’t know about real loss because it only occurs when you’ve loved someone more than yourself,” and clearly Will is self-absorbed. To sharpen his observation of Will, Sean, aware that Will is an orphan, declares honestly: “You think I know how hard your life has been because I read Oliver Twist?”

In the book of Exodus, we are told that Moses went out to see the suffering of his brethren. Until that time, he was isolated from them and did not comprehend their pain. Witnessing first-hand the beatings they were receiving at the hands of the Egyptians gave him a different perspective. He identified with them and so began his odyssey of redemption. Seeing things from the balcony may be academically satisfying, but it is only through the shared life experience that one learns to understand human tragedy and become more empathetic.

There is another challenge Will has to overcome:  low self-esteem. This is nurtured by a cohort of friends who spend all their free time drinking beer, carousing, and engaging in the language of the gutter. Will is unable to see beyond his lowly origins. Only through his friendship with Sean, who does not abandon him in a time of crisis, does Will begin to see his future differently.

The Ethics of the Fathers states that sitting among the gatherings of the ignorant remove a man from the world. Association with the philistines of society makes you one of them. It is only when you separate from them that you can begin to create your own independent identity and soar.

Good Will Hunting implicitly suggests to us that a life of meaning is based on shared human relationships. It also reminds us that sometimes we have to make a clean break with the past to have a bright future.

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