Posted on April 30, 2013 at 8:00 am
Tonight on “Frontline” is “Never Forget to Lie,” filmmaker Marian Marzynski explores, for the first time, his own wartime childhood and the experiences of other child survivors, teasing out their feelings about Poland, the Catholic Church, and the ramifications of identities forged under circumstances where survival began with the directive “never forget to lie.”
Posted on April 25, 2013 at 4:57 pm
B+| Lowest Recommended Age: | 4th - 6th Grades |
| MPAA Rating: | Not rated |
| Profanity: | None |
| Alcohol/ Drugs: | None |
| Violence/ Scariness: | References to the Holocaust |
| Diversity Issues: | A theme of the movie |
| Date Released to Theaters: | April 26, 2013 |
| Amazon.com ASIN: | B00BEIYLGQ |
It is annoying, frustrating, embarrassing, and irresistible. It is a tradition that has transcended its origins and yet calls us back to the complicated feelings of our past.
All of which makes it a perfect Rorschach test and intriguing metaphor for many elements of the contemporary Jewish identity.
“Hava Nagila” is a song that has been performed by pretty nearly everyone. Harry Belafonte had one of his biggest hits — he says the two songs people alway ask him for are “Day-O” and “Hava Nagila.” It was also a big hit for Connie Francis (she jokes that when asked if she is Jewish, she says, “Ten percent on my manager’s side.”). Glen Campbell sang it. Parodist Alan “Camp Granada” Sherman sang it in a duet with opera star Roberta Peters. A highlight of the movie is the clips from “The Simpsons,” the Muppets, Monty Python, “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” “House,” and performers from China, Iran, Egypt, Thailand, the UK, Serbia, Estonia, South Korea, Mexico, and, wearing cowboy hats and bandanas, Texas.
Unquestionably the strangest version is only about 30 second long and features yodeling. It’s the one music scholar Josh Kum calls “both an embrace and a refusal” and “the smartest song about Jewish identity I’ve ever heard.” It’s by Bob Dylan.
We learn something of “Hava Nagila’s” origins as a “niggun” (wordless song) and its evolution into an anthem of the post-WWII era of suburban Jewish simchas (celebrations of happy occasions). Like “Hokey Pokey” and “The Macarena,” it benefits from its catchy tune, limited range, and association with a dance that can be performed by pre-schoolers and grandparents. Like the song it celebrates, this film can be annoying, but it is hard to resist. As one person says in this documentary about “Hava Nagila,” “they played it at my bar mitzvah — but not at my wedding!” It is clear that when he was old enough to call the shots, he did not want to hear that corny old song again. And yet, we will not be surprised if Hava Nagila returns when his own children become b’nai mitzvot. Bet you a quarter you find yourself humming it.
Parents should know that this film includes references to the Holocaust.
Family discussion: Which version of the song do you like best? Why? Why do you think it is so enduringly popular?
If you like this, try: “The Tribe” and some of the movies and performers featured in this film.
Posted on April 7, 2013 at 3:58 pm
No Place on Earth is the extraordinary new documentary about a small group of Jews from Ukraine who hid from the Nazis in two caves for almost two years. Interviews with the survivors, narration from a book written in the 1960’s by the woman who was one of the leaders of the group, some re-enactments, and a powerful return to the caves 67 years after the end of the war. Tonight, as the annual observance of Yom Hashoah, the day of holocaust remembrance, it is especially meaningful to share this story.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n00EE5CeatAI spoke to director Janet Tobias about making the film.
One of the people in the film says, “We were not survivors. We were fighters.” What do you think that means?
They were fighters. They stuck together. Esther Stermer was an incredible mother and grandmother, a matriarch. She didn’t do the obvious thing. She decided to do what was necessary to survive and to protect her family. It’s an incredible story of what they accomplished. The lesson I take away from it is how much we depend on each other. they were greater as a collective whole than they were individually. Many of them would not have made it on their own. We do much better when we have each other than on our own.
The families were extended families, but it was a tough world. There had to be a group of people from each family who were willing to risk their lives on a weekly basis.
Tell me about the re-enactments of some of the scenes, which you shot in Hungary.
I was blessed with an incredibly great group of Hungarian actors, from Kati Lábán, who played Esther Stermer who is a very well-known actor in Hungary to some who had never acted before. We looked for approximation of physicality but I was not going to be completely literal because it is more important to have the person who has the right understanding of the story and the spirit. We did recreations, a hybrid between documentary and drama, because on the one hand you are in the presence of the last years of people who were eyewitnesses, who can say, “That happened to me. I saw it,” which is an incredible gift in documentary. On the other hand, the Stermers were fighters, as you said. They were actors on their environment. Lots of documentaries are about people contemplating their life. But the Stermers were fighters, not contemplators. They are doers. To show the incredible thing they accomplished, what they got up and did, that needed actors. Esther Stermer had a clock in her head. She kept a cooking schedule, a cleaning schedule. They knew when they could go out without moonlight. They observed the holidays. When they were buried alive, they did not give up and say “It’s over.” They said, “We need to do the following things in construction to even have a chance of figuring this out.” They were dramatic actors in real life, so we needed to match that.
And we had to show what it was like to live in the cave. I had never been in a cave except to walk by the opening on a hike. That world is a crazy strange world, the claustrophobic spaces, the mud, the darkness. It’s really hard to imagine, so we really needed to show people the world they were living in and navigating in, the world they ultimately found safer than the outside world.
You can see how dynamic they still are when they return to the cave, 67 years later. They were so young when they were in the cave.
You do hear Esther’s words in the book she wrote in 1960. And the leadership in the cave passed to young men. It shows how incredibly brave and honorable young men can be. Esther was running things underground but the father was afraid and so the leadership in the cave was teenage boys and young men in their 20’s because they were capable of doing things that kept everyone alive.
The story of the horse is almost like a fairy tale, especially when the families, who are so hungry, decide not to eat the horse but to let him go.
Even Sol did not believe his brother would come back with a horse. For Sol, it was this miraculous thing for his brother to find a horse to help them get supplies. They felt so blessed and lucky that they did not eat the horse.
And when they returned, no one in the town even said hello to them.
After the war, fighting continued in Ukraine. Partisans were fighting the Russians. Their possessions were taken by people who did not want to give them back. There was a lot of hostility to Jews, which is why there are no Jews in that town anymore. Their dog gave them the only greeting. We really wanted their return to be meaningful for them and it was. They are very special people.
Why was it important to show the photographs of the families of the survivors at the end?
What these 38 people did, each with individual experiences, each fighting hard, from the children to the grandparents — the ripple effect is life. All the children and grandchildren and great-children who became lawyers, doctors, construction workers, physical therapists, they are all alive because these people fought. Fighting and survival and preventing genocide, that starts one person at a time. One Polish woodcutter giving information, one person saying “We’re not going to leave our cousin behind,” that has a ripple effect of life with generations who make a difference.
Posted on March 27, 2013 at 8:00 am
The American Bible Challenge returns for a second season on GSN, featuring host Jeff Foxworthy and musical co-host Kirk Franklin. It airs Thursdays at 9 (8 central)
I had a chance to speak with one of this season’s teams, the Rockin’ Rabbis, Philip Weintraub (rabbi); Jeffrey Abraham (rabbi); and Eve Eichenholtz (student rabbi) about studying up on the Christian Bible, how they selected the charity they are playing for, and what they want viewers to learn about rabbis from watching them compete.
Did you practice a lot to prepare for the competition?
PW: Independently! We’re all in different places, so we did not have a lot of time to work together but we were doing a lot of reading. I’ll put it that way.
EE: With the Hebrew Bible, we all had different areas of expertise. Jeffrey’s teaching a class on Judges at his synagogue, so he took that. I’ve done a lot of work on the writings of the later books. With the Hebrew Bible, we all felt we had strengths going in, and the Christian Bible was basically new to all of us. So, we each dove in and just started reading. We all used the American Bible Challenge app, which was really fun, to keep studying and get exposure to the questions and get used to the format. That was definitely part of our strategy.
JA: We reviewed a lot of our Hebrew Bible facts we learned in school and tried to cram as much as we could on the New Testament part. We literally got the Cliff’s Notes guide.
PW: I was literally on vacation with my family, sitting by the pool reading the New Testament. I had never read it all the way through before, cover to cover. But you pick up a lot just from the culture and literature.
Is it harder to answer questions under the pressure of the game?
PW: It was amazing to me — when you’re in the room, it suddenly gets a lot harder.
EE: One of the questions I was like, “I know it! I just taught it!” But I could not get it. But that’s part of the excitement also. In some ways the pressure of the game show was a lot like our real life! You never know in a synagogue when someone will raise a hand and say, “Rabbi, I just learned this random fact. What do you think about it?” We are asked random questions about random parts of the Bible and are expected to be able to speak eloquently on that. Sometimes you can and sometimes you say, “I’ll get back to you on that, which is not a luxury you have on the show. That part was a lot of fun to prepare for.
You had an enormous challenge to play against people who spent years studying the Christian Bible.
EE: One of the things we joked about was that our hardest problem was going to be answering questions in English, not Hebrew. As I watched some of the other episodes, I would say, “I know that answer! I just don’t know the English word for it.” Different things are emphasized even in the texts we share and we have not studied the Christian Bible. I talked with some of my Christian clergy friends and my colleagues and it was great to have my eyes opened to a new set of texts and texts I hold dear but in a different way. For me, that was one of the highlights of this whole process. I know this text, and I know it really well, but I don’t know it the way you know it. To really push myself past the way I know a text doesn’t diminish my love for it or how I know it, or change the way I will use it, but to experience how somebody else sees the text is a powerful moment for me.
PW: I agree with Eve. I’ve been doing Daf Yomi . It includes little pieces of the Bible but it is about how we live our lives as Jews. So much of rabbinical school is not so much focused on the Bible as the Talmud and how you turn the Bible into a practical way to live. The Bible is wonderful and fabulous and amazing but it gives you all these instructions and leaves you in the dark about what you are supposed to do. The rabbinic literature, the Responsa, the Mishnah, the Talmud, are, as Jews, our bread and butter. So for me, the hardest part was just looking at a different perspective. It’s not just a building block for some people. That’s it for them. For us, the Bible is the foundation where everything else comes from, but it’s just the beginning.
Is The American Bible Challenge sort of the Jeopardy version? More factual questions than interpretation?
EE: The questions are factual. I commend the writers and Jeff Foxworthy because they are also funny and interesting. You have to know your Bible but you make fun connections. It is not just “what are the names of Noah’s sons.” It’s a second layer of thinking.
Would you ever use a game like this to teach kids about the Bible?
PW: I actually think it would be kind of fun! I’d like to get the app but modify it just for the Hebrew Bible.
JA: It would be a wonderful way to teach the kids.
What inspired you guys to get on the show?
PW: It was a funny journey in that I didn’t even know about the show when I applied for it. I was trying to get on “Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader” but missed the deadline. So I saw that Jeff Foxworthy was doing a show about the Bible and said, “I have to do this right this second!” But the deadline was that day and I needed a team and it was shabbat, so I could not get it together. I turned it in a day late and missed the deadline for the first show, but they kept it and we got on the second season.
What did you have to do to qualify to compete?
PW: We had a Skype interview and we had to print out a quiz and answer thirty questions. All three of us, with all of our different levels of preparation, all made it through that quiz, though it was a bit of a nail-biter at times! The quiz was pretty heavily focused on the New Testament. Then there was another round of interviews and they sent someone out to tape the montage to show us behind the scenes.
What do you want people to learn about rabbis when they see this show?
JA: The most important thing is just to see that there is more beyond the stereotype. There are cool, young rabbis out there who are trying to make an impact on a community at large. And that, in our own way, we do know something about the Bible!
Tell me about the charity you chose for your winnings.
PW: All of us were affected in some way by Hurricane Sandy, family, friends, congregants. Everybody was touched in some way. We went through the United Jewish Appeal and their special fund for Hurricane Sandy. That was our way of supporting our community in a time of need.
