Hassagot השגות

Munich, Israel, Diaspora

Steven Spielberg's Munich is an argument against the existence of the state of Israel and for a diasporan Jewry. 

The movie establishes clear dichotomies.  Israel is a response to the Holocaust, to the blood of one's slain ancestors that cries out of the ground for revenge.   The Diaspora (represented by Brooklyn) is a place to raise one's daughter.  Israel is seeped in blood, its existence is bloody, its perpetuation requires the shedding of blood.  The Diaspora is a place where one eats, where one is nourished, where one raises his daughter.    To defend the continued existence of Israel, one must appeal to a thirst for blood, for revenge.   Jewish values, Jewish legitimacy, recoil against the very need to defend the state.   The very members of Avner's team of avengers express a Jewish revulsion against the violence they perpetuate.  In the end, only two of the original five live.  One, Avner, has opted out of Israeliness to live as a Jew (that is, to cook and feed, not to govern and kill) in the Diaspora.   Only one of the five remains unscathed.  That is Steve, a South African Jew who asserts "The only blood that matters to me is Jewish blood."  Noone in the movie articulates a rationale for the difficult task of protecting Israel in Jewish terms.

Tony Kushner and Steven Spielberg have given us a choice:  A Jew may live as a Jew in the Diaspora or as an Israeli in Israel.  The state of being a Jew cannot be maintained, in Munich, in the Jewish State. 

-- H. A. Massig המשיג

Human Love as a Surrogate for Divine Love

In The Clearing, the ghost of murdered Wayne (Robert Redford) visits his grieving wife Eileen (Helen Mirren) and asks if she loves him.  She answers, "Yes," to which he responds, "Then I have everything I need."

Such love, such sufficient love, is a surrogate for G-d's love, for the return of the soul to the sheltering wings of the Divine Presence.

--H. A. Massig המשיג

What the Cathedral can learn from the Movies

A friend tells me that she and her friends have a Judaism without prayer.  I believe that they do not have a life without the movies.  I believe that movies feed them in a way that the Jewish prayer they know does not.

My advice to the houses of worship of their youth:  What Hollywood does unabashedly, you may too.  A century and more of cleansing Jewish life of ritual, of cultural material, has left so many Jews thirsty for transcendence.  Steven Spielberg obliges--he knows how to provide transcendence.  Here is a Jew who can teach rabbis something.

-- H. A. Massig המשיג

At the Movies=At the Cathedral?

What sort of commitment is demanded of someone who goes to the movies?   Not more than the cost of the ticket.  Yet when one is at the movies, much more than the movies happens. 

A movie theatre, a cineplex, is a place of magic, of pomp, of transcendence.  Here one encounters pathos, here one laughs, here one sinks to the depths of despair and rises to giddy heights of joy.  The time an American spends at the movies is perhaps the most real part of his life.  The rest of his life may be filled with pain or joy, yet a pain or joy that cannot compare with the larger than life figures, with the noise and speed and perfection of the silver screen.  Even when one sits or stands in the public assembly areas of a cineplex, one may be overwhelmed with sights and sounds.

One might speak of a visit to the cinema as a religious experience, the kind of experience one may have in a cathedral, a temple, or (yes, there too) a shul (=בית כנסת).   There are sights and sounds, there is music, there is a journey to some sort of conclusion.  There have even been attempts at smells!  And there is food.

As a movie goer, I know how to journey through a film--I have been taught, I have learned, and I practice the art from time to time.  As a shul goer, I know how to journey through a davening--I have picked it up, I have learned, and I practice the art on a regular basis.   And a davening can be very moving--the beauty or the simplicity of the melodies, the power of the liturgy itself, the inspiring words of a rav one admires greatly, and a delicious bowl of cholent. 

This is not the place to sing the praises of a certain shul.  I mean to make the point that a trip to the movies is a powerful cultural experience, of the kind that many in the past (and in the present) have found in houses of worship. 

Beyond knowing how to complete the journey, that is, to participate actively, affirmatively, in a shul or at the movies, there is the journey one is forced to take when one is there.  To experience the movies (or the davening/cathedral) is not only to move, but to be moved.  (For those who find the environment of worship to be distasteful, the being moved in a house of worship may be painfully felt.)

Let us not deceive ourselves into thinking that our exile from the 'cathedral' to the 'cineplex' is a move from meaning/religious/organized spirituality to something value neutral, open, liberating, free.  Sorry to break the news: the movies are a cathedral too.

-- המשיג H. A. Massig

At the Movies

Alan Brill's piece for the Edah Journal, http://www.edah.org/backend/JournalArticle/4_1_brill.pdf , "Judaism in Culture: Beyond the Bifurcation of Torah and Madda," came to mind when I went to the movies yesterday.  My family and I saw Revenge of the Sith (http://www.starwars.com/).

Alan Brill argues against bifurcating the realm of Judaism ("Torah") and culture (madda,מדע).   Whatever else one says, Brill contends, the life of a Jew is always embedded in a cultural context.  There is no possible bifurcation of the Jew and his cultural context. 

I am struck by Brill's sympathetic comments directed to some scholars who are or have not been associated with "Torah and Madda;"  I note his criticisms of some scholars who are or have been so associated.  Brill does not strike me as hareidi, and he presents himself as a modern Orthodox person.  Yet he seems to imply that hareidim have a better understanding of the cultural context of Jews than do many modern Orthodox Jews.

It seems to me that hareidim do understand the power and reality and simultaneously the contingency of what makes up popular culture in the US.  Their resistance to movies, for example, need not (ony) bespeak contempt for Hollywood.  Going to the movies implies a sort of commitment that they do not wish to make.  A commitment to something ephemeral.

More later.

--המשיג  H. A. Massig

Thoughts on Science Fiction 2

The anxieties of the present are garbed in narrative, where they will not hurt us too much, in works of science fiction. I have in mind two films, Star Wars II (Attack of the Clones) (2002) and the upcoming I, Robot (July 16, 2004). In the latter, an enormous delivery of identical robots is scheduled for a particular day. The robots are in effect clones.

The explicit or implicit theme in both movies illustrates a subject that perhaps arouses more interest than anxiety: human cloning (for an organization that promotes the concept see here; for a for a piece in opposition, see Leon Kass' call for an international ban). Many anticipate a wondrous future through human cloning; some fear for the future of humanity. Those who fear may be seen as delusional.

What strikes me is that in mass market media the fearful perspective resonates powerfully, even if audiences are not conscious of the resonance.

-- H. A. Massig המשיג