Grab your popcorn, we're talking Jewish movies | David Akerman - The Frieda Vizel Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, and welcome or welcome back to this channel. My
name is Frieda Bazel, and here I explore topics related
to Judaism New York City, with especially a focus on
the Orthodox Jewish subculture of New York that I come from. Today,
I'm calling all movie lovers, especially Jewish movie lovers, for
this long form interview. I recently discovered the channel Yiddish

(00:21):
Guide by David Ackerman, where he explores various Jewish movies
beautifully put together video essays, from Fiddler on the Roof
to The Jazz Singer to the Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacobs.
It's a feast and he's just gotten started. So I
invited David for a casual chat about Jewish movies.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
Hi David, Hi Frida, It's great to be here.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
How are you. Oh, I'm happy to have this conversation.
I've been watching more Jewish movies thanks to you. Let's
really quickly just get to know you. You're having this
lovely channel where you started to work on I think
for maybe a couple of years. Do you want to
tell us a little bit about who you are, what

(01:06):
your Jewish connection is? Sure?

Speaker 2 (01:11):
So, yeah, if you go to my channel, you'll see
a bunch of videos that are very much about the topics.
But I guess I don't really talk about myself as
much as I would like to. So yeah, I'd love
to let you and the audience know a little bit
more about me. So my parents are Soviet immigrants, and
you know, came from Ukraine in my dad in the nineties,

(01:34):
my mom in the eighties. And I was born here
in America and I went to Yeshiva like in Flatbush.
So I have that like very interesting perspective where I'm
definitely like an insider because you know, I went through
the system. I know the ins and outs and all
the details. But having that like Soviet off the boat

(01:54):
background definitely made me feel like, you know, there was
more to it than just Yeshiva and like sometimes a
bit of an outsider.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
Two.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
And then my connection to Jewish history really developed later,
like in my late teens early twenties, where I didn't
really feel a personal connection to a lot of the
things I was doing, and I decided to like fix
that and actually learn, like where does a lot of
this stuff come from? Long story short, After going on

(02:22):
a couple of historical deep dives, what I ended up
finding were certain stories that really really spoke to me,
and certain authors that would write about different experiences that
really spoke to me, and eventually I just felt this
need to share that. And what's really interesting is that
movies not only a very accessible way to talk about
Jewishness and to see different challenges, but in particular, like

(02:47):
movies themselves are very it's like the perfect way to
convey certain challenges around Jewishness. So it was like, initially
it was just like, oh, it's like a cool tool,
but then I learned that, like, no, the movies are
often the point themselves, if that makes any sense.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
Meaning the movies what do you mean by the movies
are off in the point themselves.

Speaker 2 (03:06):
So for example, like a lot of the earlier movies
in Hollywood, particularly the Jazz Singer is not just a
cool way to look at So the story of the
Jazz Singer, just to catch everyone up, is about a
guy who you know is raised. Especially the earliest one
from nineteen twenty seven is about a guy who lives

(03:26):
in the Lower East Side. His father's a canter like
if you watch the movie as a long white Beard,
and like old school Yamaka and everything but he wants
to be a jazz singer, and he's kind of going
on his own journey. You know, today we might call
that OTD. Back then they didn't use that label. But
that's what the movie's about. And it's crazy that's happening
one hundred years ago, in nineteen twenty seven. And so

(03:48):
at first I'm like, oh wow, that's just a cool
way to describe this challenge. That look, he goes all
the way back, you know, we've been dealing with this
for over one hundred years. But then I realized there's
more to it than that. Like the actor himself went
through a version of this, the people that wrote that
went through a version of this, Like the people that
were putting the movie together went through a version of this.

(04:09):
The audience is going through their version of it. So
there's just so much more to it than just like
a tool. There's like this whole world of people that
are going through this challenge one hundred years ago. And
I just found that really inspiring. And like I looked
at that and I'm like, Okay, we're in a good company,
Like we have what's rely on, there's what to dig here,
and I just want to like discover that and share

(04:31):
that with everyone, because I feel like it's not talked
about enough.

Speaker 1 (04:34):
You know, it's this tension between modernity, assimilation, embrace of
the new versus holding on to the old, which feels
like the most quintessential Jewish question, finding the line between
tradition and inheritance and historical preservation and embracing the new,

(04:55):
opening yourself up to new experiences. Is that experience which
is so central to my own life journey? Is that
something that's central to your own.

Speaker 2 (05:06):
I would say so, yeah. I like to call it integration.
That's the word that sounds the best to me. But
I think to go back to the story of being,
you know, my late teens, early twenties, and just like
starting to think about what is the actual meaning behind it.

(05:26):
I made a video on my channel actually when I
was first starting it to kind of explain what this
was all about. And the way I did it in
that video was the way it felt at the time
was that Judaism Yiddish kait was just a checklist. It
was like, wear the right clothing, buy the right books,
live in the right neighborhood, eat the right food, go
to the right school, and you're Jewish like that's really

(05:48):
all you need, and that felt very shallow to me.
I'm like, I want to be able to feel this.
I don't want to just go through the motions. So
there was two options, I guess while I was going
through experience. One is to like just in RaSE the
checklist and not think about it and just say, like,
brush all those doubts onto the rug. The other option
is to like amplify the doubts and just go that

(06:09):
route and basically anything that may have had meaning during
my experiencing in Shiva just totally brushed that aside. And
I found that both options weren't true to who I was.
I'm kind of a mix, like there's certain things that
really mean a lot, and I amplify that from my
time in Yeshiva, and the certain things that don't serve

(06:30):
me anymore. And I've kind of moved past that as well.
And everyone has, I think, their own journey. And that's
why these stories really interest me, you know, from the
past hundred years of movies, but also farther than that,
you know, stories history, like it all speaks to this thing,
Like it's not something that I'm going through a loan.
It's not something that like only this generation is going through.

(06:51):
It's like we've always been going through this journey, the
struggle whatever, this integration between like two polls, and like, yeah,
just to name drop a movie, there's a very old
Yiddish film called The Dbook, and we can talk more
about that if you'd like. But the subtitle of the

(07:11):
Diybook is between two Worlds, and I feel like there's
so much there, but the point is that it summarizes
like that experience that it's always between two sides, and
like the question is do you choose one side the
other side or do you choose something in the middle?
And I tend to try to hit the middle If
I can't, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (07:30):
I hear that. Can I ask where that leaves you? Religiously?
Do you put yourself in a box? The last few
personal questions I have, by the way, and then I'll talk.

Speaker 2 (07:41):
About the Dibot. I guess I'm still figuring it out.
I guess let's say traditional, spiritual, deconstructed something like that.

Speaker 1 (07:51):
Did you grow up watching movies? Because I didn't grow
up watching movies.

Speaker 2 (07:57):
So that's interesting question. Short answer is yes, slightly longer
answer is that yes, but not traditional American movies. There
were a couple like mainstream movies that I did see
growing up, you know, Lion King or like uh, Finding
Nemo or stuff like that, American Tale, a couple of

(08:19):
like very clean classics. But most of what I watched
was like Soviet cartoons in Soviet movies that my parents
saw as kids in the eighties or in the seventies.
So I would watch that like on YouTube. And then
the other side of that was like Jewish movies, like

(08:39):
the most famous probably ag and Ms. There's also like
stuff Onhabad, like stuff like Ichi Kadouzi those who know No.
So there was three weird mix and it wasn't until
it was like a teenager that I saw like Avengers.

Speaker 1 (08:55):
You know, ah, what about Fiddler on the Rue for Yanel?
Did you watch these as a child or teenager?

Speaker 2 (09:01):
So Fiddler's the exception. I saw that. I can't remember
how old, but I was like probably in middle school.
I didn't fully appreciate it was also very long. I
didn't like have the ability to sit and watch a
three hour movie at like ten, so I remember it
just feeling like a dragged down forever and I kind
of lost attention by the end, and obviously now I realize, like, wow,

(09:22):
it happens if they do give you a break in between.
It was like an intermission to go, you know, like
take a drink or whatever. But yeah, so Fiddler was
the exception. But in terms of Jewish movies, not really.
I did see Frisco Kid because my parents loved Frisco Kid,
So I did see that one. Even though it wasn't
so clean. It was just like there's like a little

(09:44):
bit of swearing and especially in like the Sharish community,
is not so acceptable. But for some reason that made
it through. And it's like a very distinctly Jewish movie.
And it's also like has a lot of famous people
that my parents grew up watching, isn't it Harrison Yeah,
Harrison Ford and Gene Wilder. So yeah, I think my

(10:05):
dad had an affinity. I don't know when he saw
it exactly, maybe in the nineties or something, and he
just fell in love with that movie. So there were
certain movies that my dad really really inspired him in
terms of jewishnists, Like you mentioned Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob,
which is a French movie, but like French cinema did

(10:25):
trickle into the Soviet Union, especially later on, and so
they did see that movie, and like, there's certain there's
a lot of silly depictions of Jewishness, but there's a
couple of accurate ones, and those really stuck with him.
Like years later, when he became religious, he would look
at he would watch the movie with me and be like, oh, yeah,
that's like a real representation that was made it into

(10:46):
the Soviet Union. So like, you know, that sounds special
to me.

Speaker 1 (10:49):
That's so interesting with regards to The Mad Adventures of
Rabbi Jacob, which we should say is a story of
this thief who dresses up as a rabbi and there's
even a scene where they were all dancing the horror
and they have the citsus flying. It's like, I remember
it was one of the first movies I watched, and

(11:10):
I watched it with my then husband, So I had
watched very few movies and we came upon The Mad
Adventures of Rabbi Jacob. I think we had Netflix that
sent CDs. Do you remember they sent the DVD in
the mail?

Speaker 2 (11:22):
I heard, Mike, but I never had that experience.

Speaker 1 (11:24):
Oh how old are you can ask?

Speaker 2 (11:26):
I'm twenty five.

Speaker 1 (11:28):
Ah, okay, yeah, okay, So anyway, we got in the
mail these DVDs and you got to watch stuff that
is now just sold at Walmart, but we got to
watch more niche stuff. And I remember we were crying
laughing at the Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacobs. It was
so absurdly ridiculously hilarious to us and so totally like manufactured,

(11:55):
and I can't imagine it representing anything serious. Obviously we
were from a very different angle than your so bea dad.
It just represented a tremendous caricature of us, which is
why we found it so funny. What's your takeaway of
that movie?

Speaker 2 (12:11):
Well? I really have two takeaways. One is the childhood takeaway,
which was when I mentioned with my father telling me
how much aiment him also being like super slapstick, like
you said, and just incredibly silly. So yeah, I walked
away with being like, oh, you know whatever. It was
like a cute film, obviously not accurate, but like I

(12:34):
came up with a good impression, and then coming back
to it last year as an adult and like diving
into it, I realized like it was really trying to
It was like during a very tumultuous time during the
seventies where there was like a lot of strife in
like Israel because of the Kipper War was like about
to break out. And then also like there was all

(12:55):
this politics in France and there was a lot of
tension between like Thejewish, Christian and Muslim communities, and this
movie was really trying to like smooth it over or
to like bring about some sort of like understanding. That
was really the goal of it, and that obviously went
over in my head as a kid. But it was interesting,
and like people have different feelings on it now, you know,

(13:17):
fifty years later where they're like, I don't know, was
that so appropriate? Is that tasteful? Was that silly? But
I think for its time and honestly even today, like
it's a feel good movie, Like you come away with
it being like that was nice. I like what they
were trying to do, so overall I like that movie.

Speaker 1 (13:35):
What do you think is like the most important single
Jewish movie someone should watch? If they have just come
out of a carriage jo old childhood like me, and
they want to learn about Jewish movies, what's the one
you would tell them to watch? Okay? Would it be
The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacobs by Jacob Jacob.

Speaker 2 (13:57):
No, not that one. What I would say, especially to
the type of person you mentioned, and really to anyone
like to me, My favorite Jewish movie is Hester Street,
and I would really recommend that, especially to a person
that is emerging and trying to figure out, you know,

(14:18):
what's up, what's down, what's right, what's left in terms
of Judaism and that landscape. That movie really lays it
out for you, and it really says, it really goes
through a lot of that discussion. So I guess I
should probably mention what the movie is first. It's the
story of these immigrants that are coming during the Great Wave,

(14:39):
which is when you know, over two million Jews came
end of the eighteen hundreds to America and they are
living on the Lower East Side. And you meet different
characters along the story, and all of them are again
wrestling with the tradition versus modernity. So the character you
meet first is Jake where uncle and Jake, you know

(15:02):
he today we would call him OTD. He's shaved his beard,
shaved his paus. He's not observed as were Yamica, et cetera.
And you know, you kind of see like his way
of thinking, how he looks at the world, you know,
how he operates through it. Obviously he's very inspired by
that era, but like he associates like being religious with

(15:26):
being uncultured, and he calls it like being a greenhorn.
Like there's that whole world. But even today, even though
we don't use the same language and the same like mannerisms,
like that theme still stay at this that theme still
stands true because like there are people that totally reject
that whole side, like we mentioned initially. And then you

(15:47):
meet his wife, Gittel, who just came over from Russia.
She's still wearing a shatle, like the head covering. You
know she that's really like the main tension of that story.
Like he keeps telling her, don't wear a shadel, don't
wor techol, and you know, she eventually does integrain and
she stops wearing a shapel by the end spoiler alert.

(16:08):
But you get to see her journey. You get to
see how that develops, and you also realize that you know,
Jake is depicted in the movie in an abusive way,
like he's not a sympathetic character, but still you get
to So it's kind of like pain to g in
a certain direction towards Gettel and this other character, Bernstein.
But still it really shows you. It doesn't hold back,

(16:30):
it doesn't really sugarcoat it, and it really shows you,
like the different ways of thinking and how that pans
out in that world and the what do you call it?
The connection to today is like so direct that when
I first watched it, it felt like I knew who
these people were, felt like it belonged in that world.
And that's why when I started the film club on

(16:51):
Yiddish Guy, it was the first movie I chose because
I'm like, this is the movie and I still feel
like I want to do another video on it, just
to like shout from the rooftops, Oh my god, watch
this movie.

Speaker 1 (17:03):
Yeah, it's a very beautiful movie. I just rewatched it.
When we were talking about this video, we went through
some movies that are like we would put on a
top ten list, right, and we didn't end up going
with that. But for that top ten list, I watched
Hester Street again. When I first watched it, I loved

(17:25):
it because I so related to Gittel, who arrives and
feels that force of give everything up, give everything up,
and she refuses. She might be a greenhorn and she
might not know what people are saying because she doesn't
understand English, so she's at such a disadvantage. And there

(17:45):
are so many pressure forces telling her give up yourself,
and she refuses to move at anyone's time but her own.
And it's just so lovely. I found it to be
such a refreshing antidote. What I felt were the ot
details that were told when I left, which were mostly
how heroic it is if you wear jeans and you

(18:07):
eat a cheeseburger. And I cried when I watched it.
It's just a beautiful, beautiful movie. But on rewatching it,
I really couldn't stand Jake. It was such a distraction,
what a terrible character he was, And I don't understand
why they had to make him into such a extremely
abusive person who is literally abusive to his poor greenhorn

(18:30):
wife because she's not immediately cool for him and his friends.
And it was like, what is the context in which
they needed to create him in such strokes.

Speaker 2 (18:39):
Yeah, it's a good question. I don't know the exact answer.
What I do know is that the movie was based
on a book where I think a short story by
Abraham Kahn, so I've yet to read that. I wonder
if he's similar in that story or not. What I
do know is that in the short story it's the

(19:00):
name of it is Yunkle or Yuckle. It's very much
focused on him and his tale. And the movie, which
was made by Joe Micklin Silver, she wants to focus
get more on Gittle and really make her the forefront
of the story and really like the poster, the older
posters are both of them, but the newer posters are
of just her. It's really her story. So again I'm

(19:22):
not really answering her questions. I don't know why he
was portrayed so abusively in that film. That could be.
It also represents like this idea of like an American Tale,
which is this cartoon about the same time period about
coming over to America. There's this they portray really well,
this like naive attitude that a lot of people had

(19:44):
coming over, like someone like Jake who's obsessed with, you know,
making it and being a Yankee and having money. So
the way they saw it in American Tale, the Jews
are portrayed as mice and the anti Semites are portrayed
as cats. So they sing this song on the ship,
which is there's there are no cats in America and
the streets are paved with cheese. So it's basically this

(20:08):
idea that in America there's like no problems and there's
a ton of money and like z Rey naive attitude,
and it could be like on the flip side, this
movie showing you, like the very real side that like
the people that are so obsessed end up turning like
it that obsession can also almost turn them into the
worst version of themselves and like you know the like

(20:31):
that trend on Instagram these days, Like I almost forgot
this was the whole point. It's like Jake forgot that
the whole point was bringing his family over and like
setting up a life where was safe and prosperous, but
he like became obsessed with this like version of himself
and kind of lost himself to it. I mean, I'm
thinking of that on the spot, but that is like

(20:51):
the closest thing.

Speaker 1 (20:52):
Yeah, that's I appreciate that. I feel like there's some
kind of self criticism in that portrayal, and that unempathetic portrayal,
Like there is very little empathy for the character who's
trying so hard to make it, and it feels almost
like a self criticism from the generation that was trying

(21:16):
so hard to make it, where they're being gentle and
kind to the person who is who is slow, but
those that they see themselves more and they're they're quicker
to skewer. That's like maybe my feeling because most most
American Jews ultimately did want to be Yankees. They didn't

(21:37):
want to escape the greenhorn label. They were extremely ambitious,
they wanted to make it. And it feels almost like
a lack of self empathy from who are these filmmakers.
They're not religious people, right, they're themselves people who made it.
Probably right, it's Hollywood.

Speaker 2 (21:54):
Well, Hester Street is indie film.

Speaker 1 (21:57):
It's an endie film.

Speaker 2 (21:59):
Yeah, crazy story. I forget the details. But the woman's
husband he had to raise the money himself, and I
forget how he did it. I look into that story again,
but it's something crazy and they like raised all the
money for now, wow for it?

Speaker 1 (22:14):
Okay, I guess we need to look into the backstory
of the film then take it. I don't know. I
guess it depends on who made it. Okay, let's talk
about other must watch Jewish movies.

Speaker 2 (22:27):
Okay, so the must watch I was thinking about this today,
like what are the the Old Time? Like? When I
think about it, what jumps out at me? I would
say Fidler on the roof. Obviously that kind of is
like a no brainer. Then we also mentioned the jazz
singer in Hester Street, and I think on that list
would also go the Chosen and a serious man. I

(22:51):
think those five are really like your most basic I
think people would you obviously come up with their own list, like,
what do you mean it's these five? It's that five
and obviously.

Speaker 1 (23:01):
But you're being interviewed, so it's your five. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (23:04):
I think the reason why I'm saying that is because
everyone has their own list that they come up with.
But to me, those really capture like the best of
both worlds, where they really capture this universal struggle but
portrayed accurately in a Jewish setting. And I think sometimes
movies are trying to be like they're trying to capture

(23:25):
just a jewishness and they totally miss like having a
good story, and sometimes they're very focused on a good
story and the Jewishness is very shallow, like those five
really tend to like nail both of them together really well.
So you know, with a giant asterisk, Like even Filmer
on the Roof is not going to be perfect, but
it's in terms of movies, it's going to be really close.

(23:49):
So yeah, And even in all those movies like Fidler
on the Roof, the Chosen, Hester Street, they're all dealing
with this again, between true worlds, being stuck, you know,
between tradition and modernity, and like every one of Teva's
daughters is being pulled between that, and Tevy himself is
being pulled like between that as well, and watching as
his daughters, you know, progressively become more modern, I guess

(24:12):
you can say. And to jump to another movie, The Chosen,
it's also a similar discussion where you're stuck between two worlds.
Like the two boys represent like this clacidic world of
being the son of the rebel, the leader of the community,
and this other boy is the son of like an
author who's like a biblical critic and Zionist. And so

(24:34):
there's these two worlds again, and these boys are like
navigating what does it mean to go between that, and
they end up kind of like swapping places where the
set of the rev becomes like an academic and the
son of the academic wants to become a rabbi. But again,
it's just interesting and you get to explore their journeys.
So to go back to your initial question, someone who's

(24:54):
beginning to explore their own Jewish landscape, I would say
those movies are really great because they really get you
to think of about it, They really get you to
experience it. You get to see like, do I disagree,
do I agree? Does A resonate with the stories of
those people. So yeah, those would be the movies I
would recommend.

Speaker 1 (25:12):
I would say of these movies, Filler on the Roof
probably touched me the most, I guess because I'm a
daughter of a father that didn't want me to take
the path that I took, and Tavia's inability to like

(25:33):
his conflict, but also in the end of the day,
him choosing to stand strong on faith to the point
that one of his daughters he disowns. It was so
incredibly painful to me and heart wrenching and tear jerker,
and it felt very real, more so than The Chosen

(25:54):
which I also enjoyed a lot but didn't relate to
as much at all. Philler on the Roof is probably
a high point in movie watching for me. But on
your list of five movies, I would say the one
that I couldn't finish was a serious Man I tried.
I don't know what I'm like. First of all, it

(26:18):
has this weird opening scene in the stettle that's like
a satire of something I don't know. Okay, it's like gory,
right that that is like a gory scene. What happens
there remind me of So yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:30):
I'm actually really curious to hear what you did not
like about it. But the scene itself is this husband
and wife finished settel. The husband comes home and tells
his wife that he met this guy on the road
and invited him home, and she says, what do you
mean That guy died three weeks ago? And she's convinced
that that's a dybook, that like somehow there's like an

(26:52):
evil spirit possessing this guy's body or something like that,
and she basically comes convinced of it and absent, and
then it cuts the black and then the movie just
starts and there's no explanation, like, well, how it's connected.
So that's a really good question, and I don't have
a good answer to that, like yeah, in my video,

(27:13):
I totally skip that. So I don't know.

Speaker 1 (27:16):
I feel like it's a Cohen Brother absurdism that I
don't get. I feel like I'm fairly good with humor,
like make all the jokes. I love jokes I am.
I'm not the kind of person that is like, oh no,
the steps on the line, Like I'm okay with a
lot of line crossing jokes. I just don't get this
absurdist humor. And also it's like like I don't know,

(27:38):
I'm just sitting there. I'm invested in this, in this
steadtled couple, and this poor man gets get stabbed, Like
are you supposed to laugh? What are you supposed to
do there?

Speaker 2 (27:49):
I don't know. I yeah, now I laugh because I've
just seen it so many times. But the first time
I was like shocked and like what And then the
whole time you're waiting for an answer and you never
get it and sorry spoiler alert, but you never get it.
And I remember being very my first time, like being

(28:10):
very frustrated, like what we just sat through whatever two
hours and we didn't get an explanation. But yeah, so
the best I know that the best the closestep come to,
like an explanation, is that the whole point of the
movie is supposed to be kind of like absurd in
the sense where the whole movie's about suffering and you

(28:31):
never really get the answer to suffering. You're just it's
kind of like life, Like there's no big moments where
God reveals himself and says this is the answer and
this is why you're suffering and this is how to
fix it. Like, so the movie is not going to
do that either, and so the the like the fact
that it doesn't make sense is almost kind of the

(28:53):
point that it's supposed to mirror life, where like is
it connected, is it not connected? Is it because you
know someone did something wrong in the past and it's
affecting me, or is it just totally random? Like we
don't know, And that's kind of how life is. We
just don't know, and we can all assume and make
judgments based on philosophy, religion, blah blah blah, but we

(29:13):
don't really know.

Speaker 1 (29:14):
Yeah, but we make stories and we make movies in
order to know, in order to make sense of all
the various absurd fragments, not to make it even more absurd.
And I'm not just sing on anything. I'm just saying
absurdism has never like like satisfied me. I'm such a like,
I have such a craving for narrative. But how about

(29:34):
you summarize the story of the actual a serious man
sure movie.

Speaker 2 (29:40):
So the movie itself follows this professor named Larry, and
it happens to be Yeah, I guess what I'm realizing
is that the Coen Brothers movies like The Big Lebowski
or other movies like that, a lot of it is.

(30:00):
It's kind of like Tarantino in a sense also, where
it's not really so much about the story. It's more
about just how the characters are going through and the
way they talk to each other, and like a lot
of it is focused on that. So Larry's professor and
his life starts to fall apart. His wife wants to
divorce him and marry like one of his friends or
like one of the people in his community. Yeah, there's

(30:22):
this review for tenure that he's not sure if he's
going to get, and like slowly's life just totally falls apart,
and it keeps on going to different rabbis to try
to get advice, and like, why is Hachem making me suffer?
And by the way, just as a side point, the
first time I watched it and he kept saying Hushem
over and over, I was like mind blown because it
was right like the beginning of like discovering Yiddish culture

(30:46):
and like Jewish movies and this is going back a
bunch of years now, and so watching that and like
them saying Hushem in a mainstream movie totally blew me away.

Speaker 1 (30:56):
Why because you'd expect God and yeah, he's more intimate.

Speaker 2 (31:00):
It felt I don't know exactly what it was, but
it just felt like it represented something closer to my experience.
You know, obviously, to watch a movie and relate to
it even if it's not about directly experienced, but just
felt cool. It's like almost like a give permission. It's like, yes,
you can't say Hashem in a movie. By the way,

(31:22):
That's just how it felt in my brain at the time.
But anyways, so he keeps asking why Hashem is making
him suffer, and he goes to three rabbies and only
two of them end up speaking with him, and he
doesn't get a satisfying answer, and basically the movie just
keeps on going and going, and then it just kind
of ends. So if you're watching it, especially for the

(31:44):
first time, it's like very unsatisfying, and it leaves you
with more questions than you had when you started. It's like, okay,
but why but who? But and Yeah, it took a
few times for me to like truly absorb and digest
this film. To me. You can, I guess go watch
the full video after this. But the essence that I

(32:04):
kind of took away from it was that the movie
was essentially trying to make two points, and the first
point was this idea, like we talked about of absurdity
of not having a clear answer. And there's this line
in the movie that is used a few times strategically,
like Larry's it's never answering his question about suffering. It's

(32:25):
always answering a different question. But when you zoom out,
you're like, oh, it's also answering a suffering question. And
that is accept the mystery. And it's this idea like
you're not going to get an answer. You just have
to accept that contradictions exist, that like God and pain
exist at the same time, and like how you square
that circle? We don't know except the mystery. That was

(32:47):
like point number one of the film, and then point
number two was like, Okay, what do you do in
the face of that, because then it's very easy to
get nihilistic and just be like life is only about
suffering and it all sucks. So comes the title of
the movie, which is a Serious Man and like this
kind of actually, now that I think about it ties
into the story of Jake as well, where Larry is

(33:10):
very much chasing like this image of what he's supposed
to be. He's supposed to be the serious man. And
the movie opens with this quote from Rashi of all
people that says something about you should live your life
with simplicity, and they keep on mentioning that, like very
suddenly throughout the film that the point is not to

(33:31):
like project some sort of image of like you're the
serious man, you're the greatest person ever. It's about just
like you got to do what your role in life is,
like your top kid, as you're saying Hebrew, and like
if you do your top kid and you kind of,
you know, just follow that simple path, then that kind
of becomes the answering to like why is God making

(33:52):
me suffer? It doesn't answer that question, but it becomes
like the way through that, and that to me was
like the takeaway from the film. But again that was
not on my first time, and first time, I agree
with you is incredibly frustrating and interesting a summer of
obsessively thinking about it, that's where I've reached.

Speaker 1 (34:10):
That's very interesting. Those are very interesting takeaways and also
interesting takeaways in terms of Jewish themes, because the one
Jewish theme we've covered so far is the theme of
the poll between tradition and modernity, and of course there
are other Jewish themes like suffering, I think and making
sense of suffering with our very very long, difficult history

(34:35):
is recurring theme and the question of what does it mean,
especially you know, how does faith square it? And I
do find it interesting what you're saying about accept the mystery,
which fits with all of this, like Cohen Brothers lack
of giving you what you're coming for, know which rabbis

(35:01):
are supposed to be able to give you, like an
easy answer, and instead it's like a more challenging answer,
which I'm just bringing it around thinking about how this
is a Jewish theme, that whole idea of like sitting
and pondering on these existential life questions to me is
very Jewish.

Speaker 2 (35:22):
Yeah, I agree with that. Actually, we were talking about
before about how broad the idea of like Jewish film,
or let's say Jewishness in film, to make it a
little broader, how broad that is, and I would say
really goes into four big groups that I tend to

(35:44):
put titles in. So the first one is definitely a
tradition versus modernity, and there's a lot of subcategories to that,
Like we mentioned, immigration is definitely one of them, but
it's a huge category and I think we've gone through
a lot of that. The second one is definitely dealing
with suffering or dealing with tragedy or processing tragedy. A

(36:05):
lot of it is like a lot of really really
good films about Jewishness are about looking, let's say, after
World War two, kind of reflecting like what does jewishnists
mean in the face of that, and also deals with
this pain, but it also deals with Jewish identity.

Speaker 1 (36:23):
Can you name titles?

Speaker 2 (36:24):
Sure? So probably my favorite one in that genre is
Left Luggage, which is I think it's also indie. I
should probably know more of the like The Insider streak
of all these things. But you know, the internet exists,
we could just look it up. But that film is
also really good because it's it shows you a bunch
of different views on this central issue of like, Okay,

(36:49):
we had this incredible tragedy of the Holocaust, and now
the story takes place in the seventies in Belgium, so like,
you know, all those people went through that firsthand, and
now they're all just trying to, you know, thirty years
later piece their lives back together. And everyone kind of
took a different view on it. So there's a secular

(37:10):
family and a Cosietish family, and then there's people in between,
and everyone has this different view and like throughout the story.
So the story is basically about a young woman who
becomes a nanny to this Casettish family and she herself
her parents are secular, although she's Jewish, and she basically

(37:30):
starts being a nanny and there's this little boy with
like a developmental delay, like he's not able to speak,
and she basically falls in love with this little boy
and starts helping him and eventually this boy starts speaking,
and the father at first is being kind of like
a Jake character where he's like incredibly rude and kind

(37:52):
of abusive and just you don't really understand where he's
coming from. And then there's this amazing scene, like every
time I watch it, I just yeah, I have this
intense moment where she finally teaches the boy how to
save monishtana for which is this thing you say on
passover at the satyr And this boy is at first

(38:13):
not able to say it, and finally like he quietly
sings the monishtana and everyone's like, oh my god, I
can't believe it. Like, remember he was a mute a
few months ago. And the dad goes like, it was good,
but you messed up on this line, so now repeat it.
And this turns into this whole fight, And what you
learn at the end of the fight is that the

(38:33):
dad this came from like his inability to process what happened,
because this little son of his looked exactly like his
brother who died on the war, and he just felt
like he was letting down the memory of his brother
by his son having this disability, and he kept on
like blaming it on himself from his son, and like
there was so much of that, and that was just

(38:56):
one example, and the movie's filled with examples like that
where to see like how tragedy influenced his view of
the world but specifically his Jewishness. So yeah, that is
a whole second category of Jewish film.

Speaker 1 (39:12):
Can you name other like films you don't have to
go into them, but like if someone wants to explore
films about suffering and the influence of tragedy. Yes, besides
Left Luggage.

Speaker 2 (39:26):
Another one I would mention that comes to mind is
Everything Is Illuminated. That one also, that's originally a novel.

Speaker 1 (39:32):
I read it. I never watched it. I just read it.

Speaker 2 (39:36):
Yeah, the movie's interesting. It just as a warning. It
has a dark ending, but again it's very much about
Jewish identity in the face of suffering, in the face
of processing tragedy. Some others that we discussed as Ida
definitely fits into that.

Speaker 1 (39:50):
Also the Polish the Polish film, Yeah, that, Yes, I
watched that. I think I watched it on Highflix. Also
very dark by the way.

Speaker 2 (40:00):
Very very dark and very similar. It almost feels like
a companion piece to Everything Is Illuminated. Then there's some others.
There was a movie came out this year. I wouldn't
exactly call it a Jewish movie, but it does fit
into this category, which is the brutalist. Again, it has
similar themes. It touches on immigration, it touches on Jewish identity,

(40:23):
and then particularly how to process suffering because you learn
at the end, again we're swiling a lot of films today,
but at the end we're going to put in.

Speaker 1 (40:30):
The beginning of the interview, we're gonna put spoiler alert.
Everything is spoiled here. Okay, go on, sorry, I interrupted.

Speaker 2 (40:37):
Okay, we'll be richer for it. You'll be richer now
that you've spoiled it to me. Yeah, So there's at
the end you'll learn that a lot of this person's
life was inspired by his experience in concentration camp, and
that you don't know that initially. You kind of get
a sense of it, but by the end of it

(40:59):
you realize, like, oh, everything was based on that. So
when you rewatch it through that lens and things start
to make more sense. And again you have certain moments
where he's like in schule and he's Onion Kipper and
things like that. There's discussion of Zionism in that film.
So again, it touches on a lot of Jewish themes
through this lens of processing tragedy and like moving on

(41:20):
in the face of that. There's a bunch more, but
I can't remember off the top of my head.

Speaker 1 (41:25):
Yeah, So okay, we're talking about four categories that you
have of Jewish themes that you've mentioned too.

Speaker 2 (41:30):
Yeah. So the other one, I would say, this is
kind of your catch all bucket. This is cultural Judaism.
So this is where a lot of kind of anything
fits into this one. Yeah, everything from like Woody Allen
to like The Big Lebowski. I would throw that in here, Yeah,

(41:51):
trying to think. And then there's subcategories. I would put
like holiday theme movies in here. So there's one that
is very silly but kind of accurate, which is called
When Do We Eat, which is a film I became
obsessed with this paceoff. It's about this family that comes
together for a passover stator and it's incredibly dysfunctional and

(42:12):
everyone's on a in their own crazy world, doing their
own crazy thing. So again, it's very silly, but it
kind of actually captures some dysfunction and captures the way
people think, so that again it fits into the cultural bucket.
You don't let me, actually, I think it might be
better for sial let me just put it up. Yes,

(42:32):
I'm just looking at it. Yeah, so that's really the
cultural judaism.

Speaker 1 (42:35):
Woody Allen, for instance, Woody Allen stuff is like the neurotic, overthinking,
insecured You would you say that that's what makes Woody
Allen like the Jewish Woody Allan content?

Speaker 2 (42:52):
I think so, yeah, I have to be honest, I
haven't fully taken a deep dive into Woody Allen because
the list is so huge, and like he didn't resonate
with me at first, so I'm like, I'm going to
come back to you. But there was something to that
where I just the scene that sticks out of my
mind was in Annie Hall where he's sitting at like

(43:14):
this dinner with this like grandmother of this non Jewish
woman he's dating, and just pictures what he looks like
in her mind, like a long paist, and he's like
being all, oh, yoch whatever. It's like very stereotypical and
kind of a caricature, not kind of a caricature, but
it's very famous and it's a part of Jewish film.

(43:38):
But is it up there with like dealing with tragedy?
Is it up there with like traditional person vernity, does
it have that that sold to it. I don't know,
maybe for some people, not for me. So you know,
I just kind of put in the catchull bucket of
cultural Judaism.

Speaker 1 (43:54):
Yeah, I mean there is the question for Jews who
grew up totally assimilated or integrated, if you will, whatever
it is, so didn't grow up traditional and didn't have
that like religious judaism, but had a very cultural Judaism.
There are these ideas of the stereotype of a Jew
among nun Jews, like in South Park, where this cousin

(44:18):
comes and that cousin is like money grubbing, nerdy and
I don't know about the money grove, but it's like
neurotic and too smart to be socially adaptive, and the
main character, who is Jewish and who has been trying
so hard not to be that way, is like freaking
out because the cousin is making him into this, like

(44:41):
it's by association, hurting his reputation of getting away from
Jewish caricatures. And I think that is a theme that
can be especially relevant to Jews who didn't grow up
with tradition being a big question, but grew up among
nun Jews, understanding that there are stereotypes about them in

(45:03):
their social circles, stereotypes about Jews and money, stereotypes about
Jews and smarts and nerdiness and uncoolness or whatever it
might be. And I feel like maybe Woody Allen deals
to some degree with that, even in the scene in
Annie Hall where he is trying to be cool and
discuss ham and he's eating ham, no problem, but in

(45:26):
non Jewish Grandma's mind, he cannot escape that he is
wearing the Hasidic garb and he is the cricature still,
and that other ring feels like it's his own genre.
The feeling of being othered in larger circles where you've
tried to integrate and you're sort of supposed to be

(45:47):
integrated already. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (45:49):
I really like that you mentioned that, because that really
is an offshoot of what I would put in the
tradition versus Madernity or like called between two worlds. I
think that's a better way to call it, because again,
it's between two worlds of like being totally insulated and
being you know, totally integrated into general society, and like,

(46:11):
like you mentioned this character in South Park who's feeling
that tension or what he allen, who's feeling that tension.
So yeah, it's actually a really good point. I didn't
think of that in regards to what he allen. But
even like the like, for example, the movie The Brutalist,
there's this moment in that movie which to me really

(46:31):
was like wow, it's like a gut punch, and it
was kind of the points of the film I think
where kind of towards the end, there's this building of
tension and it's like building the whole time, and it
kind of explodes towards the end, and there's like the
son of this rich billionaire who tells the main Jewish character,
he's like, we just tolerate you, and like he finally

(46:53):
spells out what's been building up this whole film, which
is that like we don't actually like he's saying, I
don't actually like you, and we don't actually like Jews,
We like just tolerate you. We just keep you around
so you can build our projects for us, and then
we're going to discard you. And like he finally says it,
and that was like really like okay, he just went there.
But I think in a way that was a similar

(47:15):
thing to what you were touching on before.

Speaker 1 (47:17):
It's these are Yeah, I think this is its own big,
big subject that, like you said, it might not touch
the same nerve for all people. For me, the question
of tradition and modernity is like the central question that
I navigate life through. So it is a very like
open wire for me and a tender spot. Obviously what

(47:38):
else goes in the catch all bucket?

Speaker 2 (47:40):
Okay, So there's this movie. It's called Hebrew Hammer. It
was Have you heard of it? This?

Speaker 1 (47:48):
I feel like I have, but I don't remember if
I watched it.

Speaker 2 (47:51):
So it's also really silly. It's a Knica movie. It's
one of the few CONDG movies, and it's about this
Jewish superhero, the Hebrew Hammer, who needs to rescue Knica
after Santa Claus, the old Santa Claus basically had an
agreement with the Jews and very acumenical, but then his
evil son kills him and takes over, and so now

(48:14):
there's evil Santa Claus who wants to steal Khanica, and
so the Hebrew Hammer has to rescue Khnica. And it's
very silly, very appropriate, but very funny, and again, like
I don't know where to put this. It's not a
children's movie, No, I don't think so, but it's still
very Jewish and it kind of relies. It's very slapsticky.

(48:36):
It kind of goes with Adventures of a Rabbi Jacob
in a sense. It's very over the top of silliness.
But to me it was also one of the first
I saw, so it has a special place in my heart.
I'm like, this is what a true Jewish movie is,
just unfiltered jokes NonStop the whole time. Yeah, so that's

(48:57):
another one. I also have a whole section of be
named Mitzvah movies that I think I'm a little bit
too old to really appreciate, because you know, my bur
Mitza was in the past. But there's a bunch so recently.
There was one about a bot Mitzvah called You're so
non Invited to my Botman.

Speaker 1 (49:16):
Oh yeah, that made a lot of white waves, was it,
Adam Sandler?

Speaker 2 (49:19):
Yeah, I did see it, but it shocker did not resme,
but I definitely understood, like why you resonated with a
lot of people, and I think it's what you were saying.
It was like geared towards people that did grow up
kind of more integrated than I did. That in my
yeshiva world, you know, this would be unheard of, this

(49:40):
type of boss mitzvah, but in other circles it is
heard of. And that's kind of also what Jewish film
has taught me, like the expression of Jewishness, like what
that looks like is very wide, and that movies really
capture that because they're going to capture from Hassidic to
reform to cultural, and they're going to capture the whole spectrum.

(50:03):
So I love that.

Speaker 1 (50:05):
Yeah, they're the benign miss from movies. What else is there?
By the way, three Stooges? Would you say that's Jewish?

Speaker 2 (50:12):
Very interesting? I actually never saw the Three Stooges, so
I have really no idea how to answer that. I
think so Apparently a friend of mine was telling me
that there's this place in a city, actors temple, which
apparently was like a place where actors would hang out
slash dovin in this synagogue in midtown, and apparently the

(50:34):
Three Stooges went there, so I guess they were kind
of Jewish. I have no idea. That's as much as
I know about them. You know, I didn't grow up
much American movies, so yeah.

Speaker 1 (50:45):
Me neither. It was just that it was one of
the first movies that I watched, and at the time
I found it hysterical, obviously, very slopsticky. I don't know
that I would still find it funny. But you know,
your palette totally changes from the movies you watch, obviously,

(51:06):
and you also stop seeing the brilliance of early movies.
For instance, a lot of what we see now in
movies is built on the brilliance of earlier movies, but
if you watch a lot of contemporary movies, then the
earlier brilliance is kind of like dilute it. When I
first watched something like Three Stooges without having watched anything

(51:29):
that's been built on that paced fast or polished and
so on, I thought it was hilarious. It was so
like full of comedic timing and letting yourself kind of
embrace you're silly. But that's been so much refined over
the generations that by now I can't access that appreciation,
I think anymore. So it's like a big challenge for

(51:54):
me is things that one of the benefits for me
of watching movies only as an adult is. I saw
them with such fresh eyes. I hadn't seen anything yet,
and for the first time, I'm watching movies and I
remember one of the early movies I watched was Parent
Trap and it's not a Jewish movie at all. Is
there anything Jewish about Parent Trap? I think nothing? No. Yeah,

(52:18):
did you watch it?

Speaker 2 (52:19):
Yeah? I did. It was one of the first Geyish
American films I saw. Also, so that's really funny.

Speaker 1 (52:25):
Oh, that's funny. But when I watched it, the fact
that the same actress was talking to herself, because Lindsay
Lowen is playing both characters and this is in the remake,
was mind blow. It was like, how is it possible
she's sparring with herself? She is coming back to herself,
like she's answering herself back. And obviously there's a lot

(52:47):
of brilliance that goes into the ability to take the
same actress and recreate the scenes from different perspectives. But
it's been done later so much better that now if
I look back at it, it just doesn't have its magic.
Back to talking about the buckets.

Speaker 2 (53:04):
I guess the final bucket. There is obviously a lot
more in each one, but the final bucket is. I
just call it relationships, and it's everything from romance movies
to all sorts of like weird in between romance movies
kind of break them up into different groups. But so

(53:24):
I guess some of the classics in this box would
be Crossing Delancey would be like up there. It's like
a classic rom com. It's actually made by the same
filmmaker as Hester Street. It's actually interesting to like watch
those two back to back and think, like, are they
talking to each other these two movies? Probably?

Speaker 1 (53:45):
I think, yes, yes, it's very interesting. I love crossing
the lines. Oh yeah, it's very very wholesome. You know,
it's like Jewish characters and Jewish mom. It's grandma right right.

Speaker 2 (53:59):
Yeah, the buggy.

Speaker 1 (54:00):
Pressures the Bobby, the pressures to get married. But these
are also caricatures of the Jewish character, the elder pressuring, Oh,
you're getting so old, who's gonna want you?

Speaker 2 (54:12):
Exactly. Yeah, it's very real, even though it's like kind
of silly. And you know that one was I think
a Hollywood movie, but yeah it was, Uh, it like
captures it, but it waters it down enough where you
still have the essence, but it's palatable, like a lot
of people can see it and enjoy it, and there's
some other ones in this category. I recently watched this

(54:35):
very interesting Israeli movie that I put into this bucket.
It was called The Wedding Plan, and it was about
how this woman gets like she basically she's engaged and
her fiance breaks up with her like a month before
the wedding, and instead of calling off the wedding, she
then says God is gonna find me a man and

(54:58):
proceeds to like have a bunch of interactions and then
the movie ends with the wedding and it's probably the
most awkward scene I've ever seen in my life, where
it's just like a bride sitting and it's like a
wedding with no music because everyone just like talking and
you have no idea who the man is going to be.
I'm not going to ruin this one. You have to
just watch it. But I just I'm like, where the

(55:20):
heck do I put this? I'm like, Okay, it goes
in romance, but yeah, Honestly, to be honest, I haven't
seen a whole lot in this category, Like this is
one of the buckets I have yet to really take
a deep dive into. I have other ones. I have
ones that are like also really interesting and really odd,
but I think I've only seen the odd ones in

(55:40):
this one. Like what, So there's one that I really love.
It's really a tradition versus a Dirney story, but I
put it into romance because it's very silly and absurd.
It's called loving Leah, and this is like my guilty pleasure.
I can't get enough of it. Basically, there's this concept
in the to rh on the Bible where if you

(56:03):
have two brothers and one of them gets married and
dies without children, then his other brother should marry the
widow and the children will be like basically upholding like
the legacy of the original person, right. So it's called
yebum or Leverett's marriage. So there's this Wholemark movie where

(56:24):
basically there's this religious couple. The husband dies and he
has a non religious brother who comes in and he's
supposed to do yebum. Well today we don't do that.
We do this other thing that annuls the connection they have.
So they're middle of this nullification ceremony and they basically

(56:46):
he realizes like he can't dismiss his brother. He's like
I can't destroy my brother's legacy. I can't do this process,
this ceremony. And the girl, she's like kind of itching
to leave her mother's house and to go to college
and to kind of like step out into the world.
So she sees us up as an opportunity to kind

(57:07):
of break away and go into that world. And so
they basically move in together in Washington. They see they
move out of Brooklyn, they go to Washington and they
begin living like roommates. Meanwhile, this guy has a girlfriend.
It's this crazy Hallmark film where they finally figure it
out spoiler alert they end up together.

Speaker 1 (57:27):
But to me, he really spoiled this one. We didn't
see it coming.

Speaker 2 (57:34):
To me, what really gets me is both like I've
never seen Hebam represented like this Leverett marriage represented even
in drawings, and here was like they were acting it
out and actually showed it to like a rabbi and
he looked in he was like, it's pretty accurate. Actually,
He's like, I don't know if I would show it
in class, but it's pretty accurate. And so that was

(57:55):
pretty funny. And the other side of it is like
very much tradition versus modernity, Like this woman's saw an
opportunity to kind of step out and live a more
modern lifestyle, and like at first, her mother is not
very happy. Eventually she comes around to it, but like
you know, it's very silly, like you kind of see
the whole thing coming and there's no like surprises. But

(58:18):
it's a very feel good movie. It's like, oh so wow.

Speaker 1 (58:22):
It makes me think of the Israeli movie that I
cannot remember the name that it's also a woman. Her
husband dies and she has to marry the brother. Do
you know what I'm talking about because I can look
it up.

Speaker 2 (58:39):
It is it Fill the Void? Because I haven't seen that,
but I've heard.

Speaker 1 (58:41):
Yes, fill the void. Fill the Void. That's what it's called.
Thank you, It's called Fill the Void. And it's a
very different story. It's not like loving leya this romance.
It's a it's a completely different direction. But it's an
interesting one of the interesting representations of Hareadi life coming

(59:02):
out of Israel, which I think is more is better done.
There is Fill the Void and I enjoyed that, but
I have to remember the main plot points. Again, I
have to rewatch it. Where would you put two real
classics and one of them you touched on are Yentel

(59:24):
and the dipic? Okay, where would you put those?

Speaker 2 (59:27):
So Yentel is.

Speaker 1 (59:30):
And you maybe tell us the story briefly.

Speaker 2 (59:34):
So yeah, I feel very strongly about both of them,
but totally opposite directions. So I'll start with Yentel. I'll
kind of get that one out of the way. Yentel
is a story about a young woman who lives with
her father. Her father is like a scholar. He basically
studies the talmud all day and kind of like unwittingly,

(59:56):
he ends up teaching his daughter tombut, not on purpose,
but because like she's just around all the time, and
she picks it up. And she lives in like a
schettl in this little town where you know, this idea
of like women don't read books, women cook, and like
it's constantly reinforced, and she wants to break out of that,
and she ends up dressing up as a boy and
going to like an academy after her father passes away.

(01:00:22):
She ends up kind of running away and dressing up
as a boy and ending up in this academy with
her with these like she meets these guys and gets
into this whole Weird Love Triangle and I watched it.
I was like very turned off, and honestly, it didn't resonate.
But I decided to be vulnerable and talk about that
on my channel briefly, and I was doing this video

(01:00:44):
where I was ranking some of the movies I saw
this year, and Yentel was one of them, and I
was honest I didn't like it. And a lot of
people explained to me that what I was missing was
that this was really kind of an LGBT story and
like a lot of people saw that as their as
like part of their journey, and that was something that
just totally went over my head. So once people explain

(01:01:06):
that to me in the comments, that kind of and
I read a little bit more about it, I'm like, okay,
I kind of see where it was coming from. But
there were still things about it that bothered me, particularly
the way like Toomat Study was represented. It just seemed
like they should have hired someone who knew what Tomas
Study was about, as like a consultant, and like just
asked them, like, what does it look like? It sounds

(01:01:28):
like they just totally made it up with zero knowledge,
Like I'll give you a really good example of discussing
this with a friend of mine, he explained it perfectly.
There's this comedian named Elon Gold who has this sketch
like what if Jews had Christmas trees, they would be
like Messephis Christmas and it would be like if it's

(01:01:48):
six feet tall, it's good. If it's and like what
if you chop off the top then it's not like
that was that joke. That's sad that Elon Gold did.
It's like way more accurate than the entire movie in
regards to like what Gimara Learning looks like, what toment
Study looks like, so as they say and Shark Gang.
For those reasons, I'm out. But I also understand that

(01:02:09):
it's a classic a lot of people. To them, their
representation of Jewishness, you know, from the older generation, if
they're like from the seventies. To them, it's like, oh,
I know, you know the jazz singer the Chosen and Gental,
like that's their vision of Jewishness from you know, the eighties.
And I totally get that. So it didn't resonate with me.

(01:02:30):
But I also like kind of fold space for the
fact that it means a lot to other people. It's
just not for me.

Speaker 1 (01:02:36):
Yeah, it means a lot for a lot of I
think people who find the rigidity of gender norms to
be a challenge for them. In Judaism and Yentil is
about challenging those gender norms. I don't know that it
necessarily has to be about LGBT or anything necessarily queer,

(01:02:57):
as much as it's if you're a woman and you
you do want to study talmut or you feel constrained
by lack of access to studying Talmud. The story, I mean,
it's Barbara Strei's end with like full of Hollywood feel,
but I think the story gives voice to that sense

(01:03:17):
of pushing out of the box, which which I think
comes back to a lot of what we're talking about,
which is in the box, out of the box, you know,
in your place, or pushing out of your place and
what you lose when you push out of your place.
And that's a very Jewish. I would say it's a

(01:03:38):
very Jewish like I would classify it as feminists if
you could, possibly because it deals with a woman pushing
out of the traditional female space.

Speaker 2 (01:03:49):
Yeah, I agree with that, and I think, yeah, it
happens to be now online especially on social media, there's
a lot more visible talmelet study by women, and I
think that's really cool and I enjoy that, and I
think this movie does speak to that to me personally, because,
like I said before, like growing up and knowing what

(01:04:09):
it looks like and then seeing it so far afield,
it just totally missed that for me. But I do
think it has a lot of meaning to a lot
of people. So you don't have.

Speaker 1 (01:04:18):
To, David. You don't have to love all the classic
Jewish movies. By the way, people will have opinions. They'll
always be like, don't you dare say something bad about
my favorite movie that has been so like impactful in
my life or whatever. But there's always going to be
Tom But I'm miss Kaya. As we say, taste and smile,
you cannot argue about people are going to be interesting perceptions.

Speaker 2 (01:04:40):
Yeah, in particular because it streisand it kind of feels like,
you know, if you say anything negative about streisand there's
people going to come for you. Yeah, I know, who cares?
You know?

Speaker 1 (01:04:53):
Yeah? Yeah, No, we have to create a safe space
where you can criticize. I've I've experienced that with movies.
I don't like, but I feel like it's like being
in a book club where you can say you didn't
like the book, even if everyone around the table loved
the book. There should be the one person who says,
I don't like the book. If I didn't like the book, yeah,
and that's okay.

Speaker 3 (01:05:14):
Yeah, but you know, there's also this whole conversation to
be had around accuracy and representation of Jewish themes in
Jewish movies, which is it really makes it difficult to
watch a movie with Jewish subjects when it's like completely wrong,

(01:05:35):
and that happens often.

Speaker 1 (01:05:37):
Enough, where it's one way or another, You're like, this
doesn't feel right. I am feeling this tickle in my
brain at a movie that's like coming to me that
I remember. The representation of Judaism felt really weird. There's
like smuggling involved kids.

Speaker 2 (01:05:56):
Getting it's called a Holy Rollers. Yes, oh, thank you
for that movie so much. It's it's supposedly story. I'm like,
you're all buntion mode so bad.

Speaker 1 (01:06:13):
It was so completely off and weird in so many
ways that I got this like weird cartoonish idea Jews.

Speaker 2 (01:06:21):
Yeah. My biggest pet peeve, and I mentioned this before,
is you have to get the if you're going to
do a cricature, get the cricature right. And the biggest
pet peeve is when you do, like when a person
does like a pointed hat, like a Fedora Barcelona style
with long curly pace and no beer, Like who looks
like that? There's no in America. There's no Jews that dresses.

Speaker 1 (01:06:44):
Like I know, I know, I've had like once or
twice in my life. I'll be walking in like Williamsburg
or bar Park and I'll be like, this person looks
like Hollywood. I feel bad thinking, but it's like usually
I can spot a Hollywood person so quickly that when
a Hasidic person for some reason has that like weird

(01:07:05):
off uncanny look like the pays are like this, They're
like they're not like but they look like someone in
Central casting was trying to put together a ju then
I feel bad, but because it's a real person, but
I'm like, you look like how they It's sometimes that happens.

(01:07:26):
Most of the time, it's so easy to tell the
real from created for screen or created for entertainment.

Speaker 2 (01:07:33):
Yeah, and like in recent times there's been more of
a push to be more accurate to a degree, it's
not perfect, but like at least it's in the right universe.
And yeah, like certain movies just totally missed that. And yeah,
Holy Rollers was I don't know if I even got
through that whole thing. It was just really really bad.

Speaker 1 (01:07:55):
It was really bad. Yeah, I think I watched the
whole thing. I think I took notes. I have to
go back to it. It was very absurd And also
a trope in a lot of these kinds of movies
is of the venerated Chiksa and the like Yeshiva boy

(01:08:15):
drooling over her, which is so like borderline offensive, Yeah,
and tiresome. And I think it's also on Holy Rollers.
I have to.

Speaker 2 (01:08:24):
Rewatch it, is it. Yeah, someone just recently told me
about this movie called Walk of Shame. I haven't seen it,
but he described the scene, so I'll do secondhand. But
it was what you were just saying. It was. The
movie follows like a woman who's like basically having the
worst day of her life and keeps on going from
one terrible situation to the next, and at one point

(01:08:44):
she stumbles across like a Yeshiva boy who basically is
like obsessed with Kalisha, which basically means that like in
orthodox circles, a man's not supposed to hear a woman sing,
but because he's like so oppressed, he becomes like obsessed
with hearing a woman saying, and he's like seeing a
song or something I don't even know, and then like
his rabbis come out and like yell at him. And

(01:09:06):
then I searched up the picture and it's exactly what
we're talking about, which is like every single person it
looks like a different type of fake jew And it's
like it sounds wrong, but it's just no, there's no
one that wears that combination of clothing and that combination
of like facial hair that equals a real person that
I've ever met. So it just felt so fake and

(01:09:26):
and authentic. You'll have to see the picture on screen.

Speaker 1 (01:09:29):
It's just like I watched it.

Speaker 2 (01:09:32):
I've seen it. It's terrible.

Speaker 1 (01:09:33):
It's terrible. It's like eye rollingly terrible. What's frustrating is
when you talk about it, a lot of people who
don't know this world and don't have the intuitive feel
for it all. Like I thought it was great, it
was so accurate. There was a black ad. The fringes
at the side were curly. It was perfect, and they
become defensive when you're like, this is so caricature, This

(01:09:57):
is so the outsideer looking at these Hasidic men and
projecting on them that they are. All they're doing is
they're salivating over non Jewish women that are not dressed modestly,
which is an offensive simplification of people's lives.

Speaker 2 (01:10:12):
I agree. I would put that in the trash category
in the bottom tier.

Speaker 1 (01:10:17):
What do you think of the Dipok?

Speaker 2 (01:10:18):
The dybook is very much up there. It's probably one
of my favorites. However, I don't recommend it to the
uninitiated because it's a little bit hard to get through.
First of all, it's in Yiddish, so you have to
watch it with subtitles if you don't Speakiddish. And it's
in black and white, and it's from nineteen thirty seven,

(01:10:40):
so the pacing sometimes is really off, so you have
to kind of like scare it during long sequences. But
the story itself is no, you.

Speaker 1 (01:10:50):
Have to stay for it. Yeah, yeah, So what's the story.

Speaker 2 (01:10:54):
Well, let's see the stories about this couple. I guess. Actually,
let's say this way. The story about this boy and
girl who living in the stettle the town in eastern Europe,
but they're in love. However, the girl's father doesn't see
this boy as like a viable option for her because
he's obsessed with money. And this boy's very smart, he's

(01:11:18):
like a genius basically, but he doesn't have any money
because he's an orphan, and so this father keeps him
becoming like obsessed with trying to get his daughter married
to the son of a rich man. And eventually this
boy like starts using kabbala, which is Jewish mysticism, but
in this movie, it's particularly like kabbala, but the dark side.

(01:11:40):
It's he's able to access Samachmam, which basically means like
he made a deal with the devil. Let's keep it simple.
So he basically keeps on making this deal with the
devil to ruin the engagements of this woman, and then
finally one engagement does go through and he realizes, okay,
he has to up his game. So this boy named Klanna,

(01:12:01):
so he basically makes a deal with the devil to
take his soul, and then his soul possesses the body
of this girl while she's about to get married. So
there's this scene where this girl is under the hipA
the marriage canopy, and this boy she's supposed to get
married to, he's like about to put the ring on

(01:12:23):
her finger, and then this strange voice comes out of
her mouth and says, like, you are not my husband
I can get married to. And we learn that this
is the fun On'm speaking through Leah, through this girl
he's possessed. Through this girl he's possessing. And the rest

(01:12:44):
of the story is them going to this great rabbi
who's trying to exercise the spirit. He's trying to remove
the dybbook, which is the Hebrew name for this spirit,
and at first it's like, Okay, this is really interesting.
Eventually the rabbi does, you know, kick out the bad spirit. However,
turns out the girl was actually in love with the

(01:13:06):
boy also, and so just because the spirit left doesn't
mean she's now happy and her problems her solved. And
she basically says, if you can't come to me, meaning
if your spirit can't embody my body, I'll come to you.
And she drops dead and that's how the story ends.
And so the at first glance is like a really
bizarre story. It's about spirits, and it's like, why does

(01:13:29):
she have to die at the end, like it makes
no sense. But as I mentioned at the outset, the
subtitle of this story is the day Book hyphen between
two Worlds, And once I dug into that a little bit,
I realized that a lot of the story was really
a metaphor for the idea we've been talking about the

(01:13:50):
whole time about being stuck between two worlds, and in
the movie they capture a lot of it. But if
you want to be a real nerd like myself, go
and read the original play, which you.

Speaker 1 (01:14:02):
Can find what's that by Ski?

Speaker 2 (01:14:06):
Yeah, by Anski and you know it's I think you
can find it online. Definitely get it in like a
library and read that. It's a lot better than the movie.
And what they really showing, what he really shows you
in the story is that the boy run on by
making a deal with the devil. He really represents the
idea of like going off. Specifically, he's connected to the

(01:14:30):
idea of Acher for those who know know this idea
of like the spirit that is rebellious and you know,
rejects tradition and becomes like totally secular and kind of
like an atheist, and like even though he's involved in Kambala.
That's what he's associated with, like that pole and the
other the other people, Like let's say the rabbi represents

(01:14:52):
you know, tradition. But that's just one example. There's there's
like being obsessed with money versus charity. There's all these
different polls and and you get to see kind of
an exploration of like the two worlds that are constantly operating,
you know, the living versus the dead and so on,
and like the whole story is just layered this versus that,
this is versus that, and as the characters move through it,

(01:15:14):
you get to see like how the author navigates it.
And what's really interesting to go even a layer deeper
is again this isn't in the movie, but with this
knowledge coming back to the movie, it takes on a
home new meaning. Is that the author himself was his
whole life. Solomon Anski was trapped between two worlds. So

(01:15:34):
like he grew up in a schettl that was half
Hasirish and half Litfish, which is like two very similar
but distinct groups of Jews, and you know, like each
group is like we're not like them, you know, because
of these very minute differences. And yet he was like
stuck between them. And then he became like more of
a socialist, so he was stuck between like the secular

(01:15:56):
socialists and the religious Jews of the town and on
an on and on, And it was only at the
end of his life where he actually went. He did
this thing called the Ethnographic Study, which was he went
and for two years, right before World War One, went
through Stethel's in Poland and collected stories, songs, artifacts, books,

(01:16:19):
basically anything can get his hands on, and collected what
he called like you know, Jewish culture. And from that
came while he was collecting on that came the story
of the day Book, which is really like an aggregate
of everything he heard and then also abstracting the story
that we just were talking about how like everything is

(01:16:39):
really trapped between two worlds, and he like took that
and used the stories he heard to tell his own
story and to kind of come up with his own
conclusion of like how the two things are supposed to
be reconciled. So going back and watching the Day Book
again through that, Lens I was blown away. I was like, Wow,
this is up there with Hester Street, but it's not

(01:17:01):
as accessible, you know what I mean. It's not on
the surface like Hester Street, that's what the story's about. Here,
it's like one to two layers beneath it. But once
you get there, it's like, oh so good.

Speaker 1 (01:17:11):
It's very interesting. It's very interesting your take because I think,
informed by my knowledge of Hasidic belief in the supernatural,
A big thing that informed my viewing of the Dibik
is the early part of the story is that these
two fathers, wanting to stay friends for life, make a

(01:17:36):
decision that their wives are pregnant and if they have
opposite sex children, they will promise each other's children to marriage.
And the entire story has a very supernatural feeling where
these two are meant to be and when they become adults,
they indeed fall in love. And that's the poor boy
with the rich men's daughter. They fall in love. Rich

(01:18:00):
Men doesn't want the match to happen. He doesn't know
that it's the son of of his friend, so he
doesn't know. I think at some point he finds out,
but he doesn't know that this is this match that
they had many years ago, twenty plus years ago, promised
to each other. So there is the element of death

(01:18:21):
and like the other world, coming into the material world
to realize a promise and it coming through it culminating
in such an interesting way where the woman is possessed,
she is overtaken. Now, in modern parlance, we think that

(01:18:43):
the dipic, whatever way it existed in the past, was
women's ways of of expressing themselves. Like it was a
way for a woman to like if she if she
didn't like something, she could say, Oh, it's not me talking,
it's this voice in me talking. But I grew up
with a dibic being a real thing. I remember there
were rumors in that city community that someone was posessed

(01:19:05):
by a dibic. And so this supernatural where the other
world and this world in a very literal way play
with each others was very prevalent to me, and it
made me feel like the mindset of the past came
to life in this movie. That was like one thing
I enjoyed about it. The mindset where the world is

(01:19:26):
such a supernaturally informed place really represents itself in the depic.

Speaker 2 (01:19:33):
Wow. Yeah, that's so interesting because yeah, I didn't really
have that Wow that Yeah, that's a good point. I
didn't really have that view until just now. But that
also explains something else that I was struggling with that
I couldn't fully comprehend, which is recently there seemed to
have been a wave of like Jewish horror for lack

(01:19:58):
of a better word, Jewish horror films. Yeah, that ive
been coming out and I've been watching some of them.
I'm trying to go through that list.

Speaker 1 (01:20:06):
What have you watched?

Speaker 2 (01:20:07):
I've seen most of The Vigil. Okay, have you seen
that film?

Speaker 1 (01:20:12):
It's like, I've not seen it, but I've watched the trailer.

Speaker 2 (01:20:15):
Yeah, I'm trying to wrap my head around it. Another
one is that's very Actually another great movie to slide
into this category of Jewish horror is called Two Dust.
It's very weird movie but also kind of a guilty pleasure.
I just enjoy how bizarre it is. And again it's
also about like a man his wife dies and like,

(01:20:39):
you know, you're never really told is he really possessed
by her? Or is he just acting really deranged? And
some people just happen to be calling that a dip up.
But again, like there's that element in the story. The
Vigil is about, like also a similar idea of a masic,
like this evil spirit that inhabits a person in the
house and like, but I was like, why why is

(01:21:02):
there such a return to I mean such a return
It's not like it's everywhere, but there's more movies on
that list. Why is there such a return to it?
And in a way, this is based on what you're saying,
my guess might be that it's people processing like, how
does a very old world, super mystical Yeah, way of thinking,

(01:21:22):
how does that translate to today? And I'm not sure
what's causing that awakening, but it's definitely happening, and so
that might be the reason why.

Speaker 1 (01:21:30):
I did see some of the I saw It to
Dust and I saw the trailer for the Vigil, and
they do play with these what we can call juws
horror themes, which often involve the dead rising somehow in
this supernatural way. So I want to wrap up the
interview by talking about two buckets that I feel like

(01:21:53):
we should at least touch on, which is Israeli film
and Holocaust film. Do you feel like they are their
own category or are they part of what we have
talked about? What's your view?

Speaker 2 (01:22:11):
Yeah? So I put those two categories as subcategories under
the big tragedy category. So I'll just read to you.
I have this list. The tragedy category is stuff that
is just tragedy, so let's say like a serious man.
But then to get more specific, there was processing trauma,

(01:22:31):
which we spoke about. Then there's Jewish horror, which I
didn't really know where to put it. I was like,
tragedy death, it works. And then the next three is
what you just mentioned. There's anti Semitism, world War two,
and Israel, and I feel like all three of those
also belong under tragedy, even Israel because the movie is
about Israel. At least the ones on my list tend

(01:22:53):
to be about war, so it kind of all fits together.
I haven't seen happens to be. This is another category.
Then I've barely barely scratched the surface on because I'm
so interested in tradition versus modernity and integration immigration. That's
really where my head is at. So if you look
at that list, they're all kind of checked off, or
a lot of it is, but these are a little

(01:23:15):
bit less, so I could yeah, there's yeah. I guess
part of the reason I haven't jumped in is because
there's just so much emotion there that I don't feel
ready to process yet, because I feel like, if I
really want to understand what this movie is about, I'm

(01:23:36):
going to have to really put myself there. But the
questions of let's say, you know, between two worlds and
all that, and even processing tragedy is something that I'm
already kind of doing anyway. So the movies are just
fit right into where my mind naturally is. But I
feel like as I wrap up this category, meaning I

(01:23:56):
cover all these movies and I kind of get what
my what I need to say off my chest, I
can then turn my attention to other stuff like World
War two and Zionism and like big big topics that
I just at the moment haven't delved into, honestly. So yeah,
that's kind of the answer to that.

Speaker 1 (01:24:17):
Yeah, well there's a lot of work ahead for you.
Obviously you're not going to run out of content ever.
You're going to be working editing, scripting for eternity. Yeah.
It's the best.

Speaker 2 (01:24:30):
It's fun, honestly. Yeah, there's nothing like that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:24:34):
Yeah, listen, you just got to grab the popcorn and
enjoy the movies and then watch it again. And there's
something wonderful to being able to unpack it and articulate
and process what it means to you. Stories are everything.
That's my view. Stories are so important. Any final thoughts

(01:24:55):
you want to share.

Speaker 2 (01:24:57):
Well, there's one thing I haven't thought about. H h.
Let me think. Okay, I guess is what I have
to say. You mentioned that the outset. You asked me like,
is there a particular movie that someone you know, emerging
from a very insular Jewish community should see? And you
know that's what we've been talking about. I think, stepping
away from this conversation, my big takeaway and hopefully you

(01:25:21):
know your takeaway as well, is that when I was first,
you know, going through that experience of looking at the
checklist and saying I want more, it felt very isolating.
It felt like I was the only one going through it.
And I feel like movies really opened up that door
for me and said like, no, it's not just you.

(01:25:42):
There's a lot of people going through it. And I
think it opens the door for conversation. You know, two
people see in a week and be like what is
it mean to you? What does it mean to you?
It starts a conversation in society, Like newer movies that
come out get people to talk. So yeah, I just
feel like there's a lot of power, and I encourage
people to go watch a movie, start a conversation with

(01:26:03):
other people online, with other people that you know. I
feel like, yeah, I feel like this is the point
of what movies are supposed to do. Like you said,
it's about telling stories. So it's not just on the screen,
it's also for us, like we're part of telling that
story too. So yeah, I encourage people to take advantage
of that.

Speaker 1 (01:26:20):
Wonderful Well, I hope this conversation will start in the
comments of this video. Yes, we invite everyone's polite disagreement. Please.
There's a lot of opinions around movies. Also, your recommendations
of what should be the one movie we should watch next?

(01:26:42):
What are you watching next? David?

Speaker 2 (01:26:44):
What I'm watching next? I'm going to try to get
through the rest of the vigil, Okay, I may have
to do that with some other people. I have some
random Yeah, I have some like random Jewish movies that
I just put on there. I'm in middle of watching
this film called Felix and Meira. Yes, the Poor Noise Complaint.

Speaker 1 (01:27:05):
So it's Poor Noise Complaint is a movie.

Speaker 2 (01:27:09):
Apparently apparently, I think someone on the told me about that,
and so it's on my list, and I have a
friend who's a big fan of the author of the
book the movie is based on, so I'm like, Okah,
I have to see it.

Speaker 1 (01:27:21):
So have you heard of the Avalon? Someone suggested on
my YouTube channel.

Speaker 2 (01:27:26):
Again, I've heard of it. I haven't seen it.

Speaker 1 (01:27:29):
I think I'm going to watch Lost Luggage.

Speaker 2 (01:27:32):
Yeah, Left Luggage, Left Left actually on five Flix.

Speaker 1 (01:27:35):
So oh really okay?

Speaker 2 (01:27:37):
Unsponsored?

Speaker 1 (01:27:38):
Great? Yeah, not sponsored at all. This is a high
Flex is getting a moment of publicity just because they
do a lot of Jewish films. Well, David, thank you
so much. I really enjoyed this discussion, but also all
of the wonderful, thoughtful work you put out. So I
hope that the viewers will check out your work on

(01:28:00):
the video description, which I'm going to link. And thank
you also all the viewers who are part of the
conversation and the podcast listeners as well.

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Grab your popcorn, we're talking Jewish movies | David Akerman

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Grab your popcorn, we're talking Jewish movies | David Akerman