25/07/2012
Knitting Our Fraying Society Together
Book and Film Club 2012-2013
Benjamin Library
Marsha Razin
While we attempt to express ourselves as individuals, we also try to build meaningful relations in our family, with our friends and as members of our community, as Jews and even as people of the Middle East. Yet daily, we face threats of dishonesty, disintegration, and even violence. Some of us may just feel entitled to what we want and fail to recognize in ourselves any need for regret and change no matter what we have done. In Crimes and Misdemeanors, Woody Allen exposes the world of such people, as he seeks the watchful eye of G-d who sees all. Some of us have behaved so badly that we feel unworthy and in need of expiation and punishment. Nathaniel Hawthorne, in his brilliant novel that helped shape America, the Scarlet Letter, guides us to explore the inner feelings of those who live in a world of religiosity. We will watch Billy Wilder’s classic film “Witness for the Prosecution” for the fun of it as we observe people use and manipulate the law for their deceitful purposes.
Some of us with deeply held beliefs see in our world difficult and frightening enemies and believe we may do anything to crush them. In that context, we will look at the impact of religion in the Middle Ages with the film “In the Name of the Rose.” As well, in George Clooney’s Good night and Good Luck, we watch the television journalist, Edward R. Murrow, struggle to confront Joseph McCarthy’s dangerous anti-Communist politics.
Many of us fear our Jewish world disintegrating under attack from secularism, anti-Semitism, and internal discord, and seek to hide in a shell of “a people who dwell alone” or turn to for a false messianism. Edmund De Wall, treasuring his inheritance of a miniature figurine, the hare with amber eyes, used it as a portal to learn and cherish his multi-generational Jewish family history. In Future Tense, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks examines our situation, its roots, and offers a glimpse of a confident and embracing Jewish life. In Waltz with Bashir, we will look at the impacts of war on those who experience it, in this case, the war between Israel and Lebanon. We will also examine the impact of modern technology. On one hand, Shelly Turkle worries in Alone Together that our modern technology has made us much lonelier individuals. On the other, Saul Singer and Dan Senor in Stand Up Nation analyze how modern technology has enabled Israel to build a strong modern economy despite threatening neighbors. In our rich program this year, we will look at experiences out of religion, law, journalism, and technology, and even war and ask whether they have been able to be forces to knit our society together.
Monday, September 10- Crimes and Misdemeanours (F): Woody Allen deals with sin and morality in the face of G-d and the Universe. He examines a story that involves personal arrogance, dying relationships, adulterous affairs, and even murder. Do the righteous get rewarded and the evil punished? How do people deal with their own feelings of guilt? How does it feel to be responsible for the death of another person? Who are we, in reality-Are we the people society sees or are we altogether different? Allen’s film is a dramatic discussion of these issues.
Monday, October 15- Scarlet Letter (B):
Written in 1860 by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the great American novelist, The Scarlet Letter takes on the themes of pride, sin and vengeance with a burning passion that made it one of America’s key controversial and influential novels. While it exposes human hypocrisy and ugliness, it also explores human strength and ultimate dignity and salvation. Set in Puritan Boston in the mid 1600’s, it talks to a nation beset with its own sin of slavery on the edge of a catastrophic civil war.
Monday, November 5 (tentative)- Good Night and Good Luck (F): nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor for David Strathairn, and Best Director for George Clooney , “Good Night and Good Luck" is a passionate, thoughtful exploration of truth-telling, power, and responsibility. Set in 1953, during the early days of television broadcast journalism. Edward R. Murrow and his dedicated staff in the CBS newsroom—defy corporate and sponsorship pressures, and discredit the tactics used by Joseph McCarthy during his crusade to root out Communist elements within the government.
Monday, December 3- Future Tense (B): Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, believes that in the 21st Century, in our globalized world, we Jews have retreated into our protective cave as a “A people who dwells alone” at our own peril. We have lost our collective sense of unity and mission as we see all criticisms as anti-Semitism or self-hatred. Indeed we are losing our children and communities as they drift away. He calls on us to create a shared approach to meet the challenges that are as serious as those we faced at the time of the destruction of the Second Temple. This book is his attempt to offer a vision and an approach to face our demanding time.
Monday, January 14- Witness for the Prosecution (F): This 1957 film directed by Billy Wilder and based on the play and short story by Agatha Christie deals with the trial of a man accused of murder. It was nominated for 5 Oscars including for best picture and leading man (Charles Laughton.). The air in the courtroom fairly crackles with emotional electricity, until that staggering surprise at the very end. Don’t miss this marvelous “blast from the past.”
Monday, February 11- Alone Together (B): Shelly Turkle, a psychologist and professor in the Department of Social Sciences at the Massachusetts Institue of Technology has been commenting on our age of technology for well over 15 years. In 1995, she saw our brave new world of technology as a marvellous gift for personal development. However in this book, she expresses a concern that the technology is like a “tar baby” that has entrapped us. In seeking each other online, we become satisfied with shallow human contact expressed in clichés or tweets. We give up the hard work and joy of actually being together.
Monday, March 4- In The Name of the Rose (F): This award winning film based on Umberto Eco’s book uses the structure of a murder mystery to explore various expressions of Medieval Christianity including monasticism, great libraries, terrible poverty, theological debates, superstitions, inquisitions, and terrible punishments. The Medieval Monastery in which it takes place perfectly reflects the world of this society. This work raises all kinds of questions i.e. Should religious leaders live kingly lives to reflect the glory of G-d, are women temptresses sent by the devil, does literary expression seduce people to sin. How should one build a society? How should one approach a life of “walking with G-d?” This film will engross and challenge us to think.
April 8- The Hare with Amber Eyes (B): Edmund de Waal wrote a memoir of generations of his (Jewish) family that is a wistful portrait of human mutability. Following the netsuke, 264 miniature works of art, which passed from one generation to another, De Waal depicts how even the lofty, beautiful and fabulously wealthy can crack and shatter as easily as Fabergé glass -- or, sometimes, be as tough and enduring as netsuke, those little Japanese figurines carved out of ivory or boxwood. Being so small, they survived even the N**i takeover in Europe. Following the Netsuke, we see the picture of a crust of European Jewish society from the late 1800’s to the present.
Monday, May 6- Waltz w/ Bashir (F) In his brilliant, gripping animated film, Ari Folman, who co-wrote and directed this film, explores his own experience of lost memory from the 1982 Lebanon War. As A.O. Scott of the NY times notes, “the film is at once a memoir, a history lesson, a combat picture, a piece of investigative journalism and an altogether amazing film”. Among the many honors bestowed on this film include its being Israel’s official entry into Cannes Festival, winner of 6 Ophir Awards, and nominee for the Oscar for Best foreign film.
Monday, June 10 Start Up Nation (B): The authors, Dan Senor and Saul Singer, address the question: how Israel, a 60-year old nation with a population of 7.1 million, was able to reach such economic growth that "at the start of 2009, some 63 Israeli companies were listed on the NASDAQ, more than those of any other country outside the U.S. They ground their analysis in fascinating anecdotes that make this positive look at technology a great read.
