Kosher Movies: A Film Critic Discovers Life Lessons at the Cinema

By Rabbi Herbert Cohen

Crossing genres of films, this book contains movies that have lessons in them as a way of finding insights into daily life. While other critics summarize a film, focus on the amount of profanity and nudity it contains, and decide whether it's worthwhile to watch, Herbert Cohen takes a different tactic and views films as life lessons. This collection of meaningful films, with inspiring and emotional stories that help understand the plight of others, provides new ways to approach self-growth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Urim Publications
• Release date: Jul 15, 2015
• ISBN: 9789655242317

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Walking in Two Worlds: An Epiphany

I began studying Torah in earnest when I entered Yeshiva University in 1960. The program was designed for students who had not gone to Jewish schools either at the elementary or high school levels. In those early years, I heard about the great Torah luminary, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, who was the intellectual force at the university, but it was not until the late 1960s that I went to hear one of his lectures.

I still remember the excitement of the evening. Parking was hard to find on Amsterdam Avenue in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York. Cars were double-parked on both sides of the street, and people were looking for tickets to enter Lamport Auditorium where the lecture would take place. I arrived early and found a seat in the middle of the room near the left side of the stage. There was a palpable tension in the air; and after five or ten minutes, the Rav, as Rabbi Soloveitchik was referred to, entered. More than 2,000 people stood up to give him honor. He stepped up to the stage and sat down behind a table, filled with huge tomes, which served as a base for a microphone. The microphone amplified his voice, but I still had to strain to listen. What I experienced was an intellectual awakening.

The Rav shared Torah insights but in a way that reflected a sophisticated and cosmopolitan understanding of life. He could quote from the Bible and from the philosopher Hegel with equal facility. He spoke for close to three hours, and I was not aware of time as I was mesmerized by his talk. Until now, the two worlds of Torah and secular wisdom were two separate worlds. Now in the Rav’s animated lecture, the secular and the sacred merged together as two aspects of one holy creation.

The Rav suggested that all of the laws of the Torah, even the social laws, should be seen as chukim, statutes which are not based on reason. There should be no distinction between them and mishpatim (rational laws). As an example, the Rav quoted the commandment of thou shalt not murder. Reason tells us that it is wrong. Everyone will cry if a beautiful young girl is killed; but the Rav queried, what about the murder of an old mean miserly lady, such as Raskolnikov’s victim in Crime and Punishment? Reason might say that murder is okay in this instance. However, if we assume that all laws are simply directives from God to man that should be observed even if they do not make rational sense, then such a crime is wrong. Without such an approach, the whole world will turn into a jungle where each man will rationalize his own behavior.

Hearing the Rav was a watershed experience in my life. To my young mind, it represented an ideal synthesis of Torah and worldly learning that became a model for me to emulate. It convinced me that Torah and secular learning do not always have to be in opposition. Clearly, the Rav always functioned on a daily basis with the understanding of the primacy of Torah learning and living, and with an understanding that there is an inevitable tension between the Torah and the secular spheres. However, he did feel that there was room for some rapprochement of the two worlds. Indeed, it is the premise of this book that there is much to learn from the secular world if we approach it thoughtfully and critically.

In the mid-1960s, when I was pursuing a master’s degree in English at Hunter College, I took a class in European Literature of the Renaissance with Dr. Sears Jayne. One of the authors we read was the Frenchman Rabelais whose work is filled with profanity. Even though we read the work in translation, the four letter words remained intact. As part of the lesson, the professor, who was probably the best lecturer that I had in graduate school, asked the class to read the narrative aloud. As my turn approached, I felt increasingly uncomfortable. My parents never used profanity at home, and I did not feel at ease uttering four-letter words, especially in a coed class. When my turn to read aloud came, I simply could not get the words out, and my teacher then moved on to the next student. Although he did not tell me, I sensed he was disappointed in me. He wanted to liberate me from my real-life frame of reference, just as Rabelais wanted to liberate his contemporary Frenchmen from narrow thinking; yet I resisted. I chose to remain in my limited, parochial world.

I realized then and I realize now, as an Orthodox Jew and as a serious student of secular studies, that there is a sharp dissonance between the two worlds. I sometimes feel that the term Modern Orthodox is an oxymoron, for to be an Orthodox Jew in the contemporary world may be impossible. After all, the values of the modern world are so often antithetical to the values of Torah. As an Orthodox Jew, I strive for sanctity in my daily life, yet the world in which I live and immerse myself pushes me away from it. How should I approach Western culture? Can there be, in fact, a rapprochement between these two opposite forces?

I began to refine my understanding of the problem and develop a coherent approach to the issue after meeting Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein and being in his Talmud class when I attended Yeshiva University. It was then that I began to emotionally and intellectually integrate the two worlds. Moreover, Rabbi Lichtenstien is the son-in-law of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik. For me, Rabbi Lichtenstein was and is a role model, for he synthesizes excellence in Torah study with excellence in secular studies. Most important, he is a master of good character; and as a person of sterling character he has made the most profound impression on me.

In his lectures at Yeshiva University, he often expressed the view that there is value in secular culture. By culture, he meant the study of the best that has been thought in the world, as Matthew Arnold defined it for his Victorian society. The touchstones of great literature of the past can provide a beacon of light for the future. If properly approached and balanced, general culture can be an ennobling and enriching force for mankind. The best of culture, he maintained, offers us through art profound expressions of the creative spirit, which reflects our being created in God’s unique image. Moreover, culture offers us the ability to understand our cosmic context. It can help us cope with the human condition and give us a sense of the moral complexity of life.

When someone asked Rabbi Lichtenstein what he had learned in graduate school at Harvard, he responded: I learned the complexity of human experience. He understood that life cannot always be viewed in black and white terms. Grey is the common hue to much of human experience. The great writers of the past enable us to see life steadily and see life whole. They give us a more comprehensive picture of the human condition.

My assumptions about secular culture emerge from this perspective, articulated over a span of time, in various lectures that I heard from Rabbi Lichtenstein and others. Furthermore, Maimonides informs us in his seminal book Yesodei HaTorah (Foundations of Torah) that we apprehend holiness/God not only through Torah but also through God’s creations. We learn about God by studying not only His words but also His works. Everything in creation has an infinite potential for good. My task as a teacher of literature and film is to give students the tools to discriminate between the wheat and chaff of secular culture. In the Modern Orthodox schools in which I operated, the assumption was that I could not keep the outside world out, but that I could help students navigate that world from within. Therefore, I spent time in class giving students examples of literature and film, both contemporary and classic, which made meaningful observations about life that paralleled a Torah worldview.

When My Passion for Movies Began

December 25th is a very special day for me. It is my birthday, and from my early childhood I have fond memories of my sister Martha taking me on the 241st Street/White Plains Road subway line at the tip of the north Bronx from Mount Vernon to Broadway where she would treat me to a grilled cheese sandwich and ice cream soda at the Horn and Hardart restaurant. We would then walk over to the Paramount Theatre or Radio City Music Hall where we would watch a new film that had just opened along with a stage show that included such luminaries as Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, the Count Basie Orchestra, and Johnny Ray. It was there that I became enamored with the movies. I still remember with what amazement I watched the curtains part at Radio City Music Hall when it unveiled its first wide screen, and there I saw Shane, a landmark western that made me an Alan Ladd fan for years.

Movies were a staple of my growing up in the small town of Mt. Vernon, New York. My idea of the perfect day was to go to the synagogue in the morning where I participated in youth services followed by scrumptious cakes with black and white icing, and then it was off to the movies to watch a double feature which transported me to faraway places and to adventures that stimulated my young imagination.

As I got older, I became an observant Jew, knowledgeable about Jewish law and tradition, and my attendance at movies became suspect, especially as the nature of movies changed over the decades. Still my infatuation with film remained and I continued to watch them, but my tastes gradually changed. I began to look for meaning in film. I wanted them to be not only enjoyable, but I wanted to leave the theatre enriched with some kind of message.

An early favorite was The Defiant Ones, a story of race relations starring Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis and directed by Stanley Kramer. It was the kind of movie I could watch again and again because its message resonated within me as a high school student at A. B. Davis High in Mt. Vernon, an academic high school that was about to merge with Edison High, the city’s technical high school, into one large Mount Vernon High School where whites and blacks would be more integrated.

As a rabbi and school principal for many years, I have continued my interest in film both as a patron of the cinema and as an instructor of film courses. The arena in which I have operated for most of the time has been high school and there I have been queried many times about the suitability of any given film. At times a teacher wants to show a film in class, and he asks me for my take on it. Sometimes a film that has captured the imagination of my students is now the topic of conversation on campus, and students ask me about it. As a rabbi and as an instructor of literature and film, I am thankful that my opinion is valued; and I thoughtfully weigh my responses to teachers, parents, and students, recognizing that my comments have implications beyond the classroom.

In recent years in religious circles, both Jewish and non-Jewish, there has been a reaction against contemporary film as destructive of core family values and vacuous of meaning. One need only surf the internet to find an abundance of sites that cite the number of profanities in a film, or the number of violent acts or nude scenes, in an attempt to forewarn parents about what their children might be seeing and be influenced by.

This book takes a different tack. It assumes that there are movies worth watching, that there are movies with something valuable to say about the human condition, and that we can take advantage of the good that films offer if we become discriminating consumers. Just as Matthew Arnold in Victorian England suggested that an appreciation of the touchstones of great literature of the past can help us determine who are the great writers of the present, so too an appreciation of meaningful movies of the past can help us separate the wheat from the chaff in cinema and so enable us to appreciate what movies can teach all of us, those who are in school and those who are in the school of life. I am convinced that film can be a tool for self-discovery, as we navigate the many challenges of life together with movie protagonists. A kosher movie to me is a film that has something meaningful to say about life.

My plan is to share my life experience, my method, and my analyses of many movies. Having served as a pulpit rabbi, a high school-­principal, and a classroom instructor of literature and cinema has placed me on the cutting edge of cinema discussion. Both my congregants and students are immersed in a world of movies, and my regular discussions with them both in and out of class have connected me with them as we discuss the latest movie they have seen. As a rabbi, I have been asked what I think of Raiders of the Lost Ark. What do romantic comedies really say about love? What can a Will Ferrell comedy teach us about life? These questions and more will be answered in this book, which aims to marry ancient tradition with the modern cineplex.

An Introductory Word about the Movies

The movies I have reviewed reflect a wide range of topics and genres. This is deliberate, because I did not want to focus only on great movies but also on popular entertainments. Moviegoing is a very democratic form of entertainment and different people seek out different stories and different themes. My choice of which films to review is an indication of the eclectic nature of the moviegoing experience.

The reviews are grouped according to theme. At the end of the book, the reviews are arranged alphabetically for easy reference.

A cautionary note about the movies: if you are concerned about the content of the films from a religious perspective, you should consult the parent content advisory information in the IMDB website to learn the reasons for the film’s rating. This is especially important if you plan on using the films in a school setting. Items that are considered in the parent advisory are the following: sex, nudity, violence, gore, profanity, alcohol, drugs, smoking, and frightening/intense scenes.

THE MOVIES

PARENTING

I am drawn to films about fathers and sons. I am a father and I am a son, so I have a natural affinity for the topic. Moreover, I have regrets about my role as a son. I was a dutiful son, but I don’t remember being a super son in terms of the way I treated my parents. I loved them, I respected them, but I did not honor them enough. I did not know how to do that until I was an adult.

The beginning of my understanding of my obligation to honor my parents was in a summer camp in the Catskills when I was twelve years old. It was a religious camp in which there was daily prayer and study of the Torah. For the first time, I saw that Judaism was a way of life, not just a family tradition, and that honoring parents was not something you did because you felt like it, but rather something you did because it was a Divine requirement. But I was only twelve, so I still didn’t see the big picture.

That picture emerged once I entered Yeshiva University, where I was exposed to great teachers, a very bright student body, and a corpus of Judaic knowledge that influenced the way I thought about and practiced Judaism. In particular, I became more aware of my obligations under Jewish law to honor and revere my parents. The only problem was that I was now out of the house most of time and had less opportunity to honor my parents.

Over the years I became more cognizant of my responsibilities towards my parents, but this occurred after I married and had children. Having kids made me a better son to my own parents. I finally began to understand how important is the role of a father and how my own father taught me many life lessons, some explicitly and some by example. Inwardly, I felt I did not honor my parents enough as a youth, and as an adult I welcomed any chance to do something for them.

One incident towards the end of my father’s life gave me a heightened sense of personal fulfillment as a son. My father was in the hospital and very ill. My sister Martha and I came in from out of town to be with him. One evening when I was sitting with him, he asked for an ice cream soda. I was overjoyed that he asked me directly for something and I felt happy to be able to do this for him. I ran to the local ice cream parlor, purchased the drink, and ran back to deliver it to him. I enjoyed watching him drink the beverage through a straw. If only I had been this solicitous of him when I was younger!

After he passed away, I began to think of questions I never asked him about his growing-up years, about his family customs, about his Jewish learning in Russia before he immigrated to America. Fortunately for me, he left a record of some of the events that shaped his character. Many years earlier when he was in the hospital for surgery to remove a cancer of the lung, a disease he developed after years of chain smoking, my mother and sister plied him with questions about his past to stimulate his mind and they transcribed many of his thoughts in a small pamphlet for the family entitled The Cohen Saga.

Let me share a few of his memories. He lived in a small town in Russia where his family was the only Jewish family among about 200 Christian families. To get an education, he had to go to a village about ten miles away where he would be given meals by the local Jewish residents. Each day a different family provided the meal. Here are my father’s words: When I was six or seven years old, one lady brought a big bread and put it on the table with no knife. She was too busy to think about it. I made the blessing for the bread and waited for the lady to come with a knife to cut the bread. The lady never came and so I walked away without eating . . . The next day she apologized and gave me five cents. The incident reveals a certain shyness about my father, a reluctance to draw attention to himself even if it meant personal inconvenience. This is a quality that manifested itself on a number of occasions as I was growing up and I refer to them in some of my reviews.

Another memory: this one about my sister Carol, who passed away a number of years ago. Again, my father’s words about an event in the 1930s: Carol was our very first child and the greatest disappointment of our lives. She was born retarded or mongoloid. Dr. Leff said when she was born that if we didn’t want to take her home, we could leave her there. Johanna [my mom] knew nothing until seven months afterward, and then she cried her eyes out. This was the beginning of the time we took Carol to all the hospitals and doctors to see what could be done. We were told that there was not much chance of Carol improving greatly, but we did learn that after a while she would learn. Carol lay in a carriage for three years before she walked. It was a very confining life for us with our retarded child, and it still is. However, Carol now goes to a sheltered workshop in White Plains. Travels by bus herself. She is very self-reliant. Behaves quite normally in dressing, but has trouble keeping her room clean. It is always a mess and we tear our hair out when we look at it.

As Carol’s younger brother, I loved my sister but had very little understanding of the challenges my parents faced. As a small child, I thought I could become a doctor and solve her problem. When I got older, and especially after my parents died, I began to understand the extent of the daily sacrifices that my parents made to give Carol a productive life. Every morning I remember my father, even in inclement weather, walking Carol to the bus stop for her ride to her workshop and then returning to the bus stop in the evening to meet her.

My parents rarely took vacations, both for financial reasons and because they did not feel comfortable leaving Carol with anyone other than themselves or close family members. I learned from them that when faced with adversity, the best way out is actually through. Accepting responsibility and not making excuses were hallmarks of my parents’ persona.

I have vivid memories of some of my interactions with my parents. When I was in a high school gym class in the late 1950s, someone from the administration came to class and told me I needed to go to the office. Generally, I was not a student who was called to the office, so all sorts of things entered my mind. I began thinking that perhaps one of my parents had died and I started crying. I knew that I had an argument with them the previous night and I felt terrible that I would have to face this tragedy knowing that my last conversation with them was filled with tension and ill will. When I arrived at the office, I was told that someone had found a textbook of mine, and that’s all there was to it. I breathed a sigh of relief and resolved from then on to be more sensitive and more respectful whenever I would speak to my parents.

Flash forward: In 1976, right after the Passover holiday ended, I spoke to my mother on the phone. I was in Atlanta; she was in Mt. Vernon, New York. She had recently recovered from foot surgery and I was inquiring about her welfare and sharing with her how my holiday went. It was a warm, loving interchange. The next morning around 10 o’clock I received a call from my father, crying on the phone, informing me that my mother had just died that morning from a heart attack. That telephone call that I made on Thursday night right after Passover is still in my memory today. It was the last time I spoke to my mother and, thank God, it was a good conversation. It was a sad time, but I was fortunate that my final memory was a positive one. There was no argument, no tension, just love between us and that is a memory I treasure.

In retrospect, these two incidents reminded me that parents are not here forever and we need to cherish the time we have with them. Imagine if the most recent conversation with your parent was your last communication with them? How would you feel about it?

Another aspect of parenting that continues to be food for thought is the reality that I have been a different parent to each one of my kids. I love them all, but I manifested that love in different ways because I was at a different place in my life when each of my children was born. For the first three, I was in my 20s, living in Washington Heights in New York City and did not yet have a real job, only a part-time job teaching English at a community college and receiving a graduate fellowship during my ordination studies. For the second three, I was a rabbi and school principal in Atlanta, Georgia, with a full-time job, living in a real house, and making a decent salary. I was very much consumed by my work. I am sure there were ripple effects in the lives of each of my children in relation to my work at the time.

I have learned many techniques of effective parenting from observing my teachers. Still in my memory, even though it occurred many years ago, is one particular incident. I was a guest at a rabbi’s house, and his six children were a bit out of control. Running from this room to the next, it was clear there was an accident waiting to happen, and it did. His seven-year-old daughter, who was tossing a ball to her five-year-old sibling, lost control of the ball and the ball landed in the thick tomato soup of the rabbi. I expected him to reprimand his daughter, but he didn’t. Instead, he calmly took the ball out of the soup and continued sipping the soup. He then paused to ask his daughter where she remembered the ball had been before it landed in his soup. Satisfied with her answer, the meal continued without interruption; and the all the kids, embarrassed at what happened, settled down quietly to finish the meal.

As a student eager to learn and not reluctant to ask the rabbi a personal question, I later asked the rabbi how he developed such patience in dealing with his children. He told me that his parenting style developed over time, but that he always knew it was important to control his emotions and not overreact. The incident with the ball was certainly not premeditated, and it would not make sense to get angry with his daughter. Moreover, he saw immediately that his child was embarrassed by the accident, and there was no need for any public correction.

The rabbi also related to me a Talmudic story that had a great impact on his parenting style. A Babylonian Jew married a woman from Israel. In the course of their marriage, he discovered that a language barrier prevented optimum communication between them. Often, when he would ask her to make a particular dish, she would prepare something totally different. In a fit of anger, he directed her to throw out the dish, which she mistakenly understood to mean to break candlesticks over the head of Baba Ben Buta, a prominent citizen. When she struck Baba Ben Buta over the head while he was engaged in a legal proceeding, he did not get angry. Rather, he praised the woman who was carrying out the will of her husband. He then promised her that she would have two pious sons. As far-fetched as the story might seem, it showed the tremendous extent to which