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The Corner of Hollywood and Sinai is a regular column on the Nishma website in which Dodi-Lee Hecht comments on recent movies with a view from the Torah perspective
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With all due respect to Dodi-Lee Hecht's recent review of Upshizin, there are a few points where I profoundly disagree. Firstly, with the assumptions she made in analyzing the behavoiur of the protagonists. She notes that in the movie we are given the impression that if a Jew is faithful and prays hard enough, he will get what he wants. Careful viewing of this movie will show, in fact, that this is not the message at all. The message is: God sends us trials. Recognize them, overcome them and maintain your faith and you just might get what you want. The theme in the movie which was not overemphasized is that Moshe Belanga has a temper. He used to be a violent criminal. He is now trying to be a Bratzlaver kollel man. Having rejected the secular world, he is trying to hide in the religious one to become a better person. But that temper is always there and his fear is that, confronted by the right set of circumstances, he will explode. And what is his path to God's blessing? Keeping his cool. His prayer for a sukkah is answered but very imperfectly. His prayer for a child is not answered until the end of the movie, only after he is forced to confront his temper and control it, not through learning, not through praying, but through a supreme effort of self control which shows that he is not just wearing the clothes of a religious man (as his friend Eliyahu Scorpio suspects) but that he wears the soul of one too. We do not know if the couple has gone for fertility testing and besides, could they afford it? Many non-Jewish couples here in rich Canada have only prayer to rely on given the prohibitive cost of the procedures so to criticize the Belangas for relying on prayer is a bit contemptuous. The bottom line messages of the move are (a) faith is not a lodestone around your neck keeping you from being happy in this life, a message in direct contradistinction to Hollywood movies featuring religious characters (b) it's not enough to have faith. You must allow that faith to strengthen you and change you for the better. In that regard, I wish I had more in common with Moshe Belanga.
ReplyDeleteA movie is, like Torah, subject to many, varied interpretations. That said, I cannot simply declare that schweitzer@axxent.ca is wrong in his understanding of "Ushpizin" although I do continue to disagree. While it is true that the movie does include the Belangas overcoming trials, that is also in keeping with a view of Judaism that I do not completely believe in. I do not know when God tests us or when he doesn't but I don't think that we are meant to assume that we must feed and harbour criminals, control our tempers to the point of passivity, and pray -- because, yes, prayer is shown to be crucial in this film -- whenever we need to think, in order to be rewarded with children or etrogim. Sometimes being a good host is wrong, sometimes anger is right, and sometimes it's important to talk to yourself before you cry to God. "Ushpizin" preaches the opposite. On a second note, it is true that some couples are left with prayer as an only option if, unfortunately, God deems that they should remain childless. I apologize if my comments concerning this sensitive issue appeared heartless or "contemptuous." Prayer is an essential act in Judaism and I didn't mean to imply that the act of turning to God in times of despair is a foolish thing to do. Quite the contrary. However, God is a partner in our lives, not a genie in a lamp. I think it wrong that the movie makes us believe that the Belangas earned the child because they said the right incantations and passed the right tests. Life isn't like that. It's a bit more complicated.
ReplyDeleteIs life more complicated? Well, sure it is and that's why movies never get real life right. I mean, how many after-school specials are there where the geek gets the girl in the end? Hah! Like that ever happens. The point of Ushpizin isn't to simplify Judaism. It's deeper than that. Our ancester Yaakov Avinu prepared for his conflict with Eisav by three methods: prayer, gifts and arming himself. This was a mix of self-reliance and calling out to the Divine for help. But even in his self-reliance, he recognized that his attempts at war with Eisav could only be successful if Hashem wanted it to be so. Ushpizin tells us something about that reliance on Hashem. The Mishnah in Avos tells us not to look at the bottle but what's in it. Who knows what the guy who stops you on the street for money today will be tomorrow? The gemara notes that wealth in a family is cyclical. One generation is rich, the next will not be, and so on back and forth. Give with an open hand today without expectation of payback and your descendents might just be similarly favoured. Why? Is it a direct reward from Hashem? No, of course not. But if everyone in society feels this way, then giving becomes a part of the community's behaviour. Your efforts to give tzedakah benefit your children through the example you set. The final point is that Hashem is always testing us but we have to stop and recognize that the test is occuring. In that, the film is priceless
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