The Movie Munich

By Rabbi Alan Yuter
Posted Friday, February 10, 2006

There are Steven Spielberg fans who found that Schindler's List was too Jewish, so his Munich was a statement of his disengagement from the parochialities of Jewish identity. When understood in the context of his biography, Spielberg's Munich makes a coherent statement, a clear editorial, and a uniquely American version of Jewish identity.

According to Abigail Pogrebin, Spielberg was twice married, first to Amy Irving and then to Kate Capshaw, both of whom were born Gentiles but the second converted to Judaism, and who loved Steven to rediscover his early, Jewish ethnic roots. Kate converted out of a commitment to unify the household and appreciation of Jewish history. But this commitment is secular, humanist, not theological, and certainly not grounded in a commitment to the Torah's sanctifying commandments. Spielberg's ethnicity shines in his fond remembering of the waning observance of kashrut in his youth. His current religious practice includes lighting candles most Friday nights, and fasting on Yom Kippur as an option but not as a religious command. He appreciated his childhood rabbi, but became ashamed of his Jewish parochialism, which over time, he tried to shed.

A close viewing of Schindler's List indicates that Spielberg's Judaism is concerned about anti-Semitism, and pleads for a world where people get along. By focusing upon Oskar Schindler, a non-Jew who, according to the screen play (which reflects a view of who Schindler was that is not historical) responded courageously to anti-Semitism, Spielberg was imagining a utopian world in which Jew and Gentile need not be different. We must remember that the word "utopia" means "no place," because in our flawed, human world, there can be no utopia.

Historians and humanistic writers select facts and interpret them. There is no such thing as a completely objective interpretation, there cannot be in life or in literature a thoroughly innocent reading. Since every reading is the emotional/intellectual intersection of a living reader and a writer, the reading is itself an interpretation of facts, the selection of which is also subjective. The Munich massacre of Israeli Olympians is a matter of uncontested fact; how responses are made and the justification of those facts are for interested parties and political partisans to determine. The Olympians were not political advocates or, at that moment in time, warriors in a military battle. Arab terrorists killed Israeli Jews because they were Israeli, they were Jews, and their existence was an affront to their cause. The Israeli reprisal affirms that Jewish blood after the Holocaust will not be shed cheaply, that Israel has a right to exist and will defend that right to live to the death.

In Munich, the hero/narrator comes to question the "family" of the Israeli state, its penchant for vengeance, the murdering of the murderous prostititue who seduced the Israeli operative on the vengeance operation, and whether in America, where one need not be concerned with a cycle of violence that has no hend in sight, one may better live one's life and raise one's children. By refusing to break bread with the hero/narrator, the Israeli who supervised the vengeance operation rejected the humanity of the narrator/hero because he did not want to live in Israel, the land of vengeance, any more.

As in Schindler's List, Munich articulates a propositional message. Spielberg identifies with the underdog, and loathes the dirtiness of war, the ugliness of murder, and the baseless hatred of the "other" who is different. Given Spielberg's biography, the committed ambivalence of a searching soul is manifest. In his Judaism, holiness must be beautiful, and this beauty must not be compromised. Like the founder of American Reform Judaism, Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, Spielberg can only accept a Judaism that is a "religion without tears." There were times he was ashamed of a Judaism that did not appear to be sufficiently American. His recovered/discovered Judaism derives from his converted spouse, not from his own unmediated choice.

The Israeli reality is that there are dirty choices that sometimes have to be made in a real world. Suicide is not an option for an Israeli polity. The terrorists were avenged because they were murderers. In the Jewish tradition, individuals may not take vengeance, but the courts may do so as prescribed by law. In battle, the fear of reprisal is a deterrent. Potential killers may be disinclined to kill if they are aware that they too will be at risk when they kill others.

Hollywood Jews, like 19th Century liberal Judaism, is Left of the political Center. Judaism is important as a matter of nostalgic pride, but is not "our life and length of our days," it is an important but not ultimate concern, and excessive ethnic parochialism violates our Jewish contract with America in this land of the free. We hope for a world in which both Jew and Christian will shed the ethnic and theological edge for the greater good of a unified humankind. A Judaism of vengeance is a Judaism with tears, and must be rejected. To be "too Jewish" is to render Judaism unattractive, and therefore to this sensibility, un-Jewish. We must sacrifice some of our Judaism to remain authentically Jewish in the modern age.

The movie's implicit meaning is that the Jew must take the moral lead and be the first to turn the cheek in order to end the unending cycle of political violence. The Judaism that is an expression of ultimate concern, a Judaism that cannot be negotiated into oblivion for a serene peace, is rejected by Halakhically committed Jews and by the State of Israel. Jews are under no obligation to commit suicide for the happiness of those who hate Jews.

The world will not find greater peace if there are no Jews. It is a sign of assimilation that Jews with the power of the screenplay pen are, like the Christian and post-Christian West, uncomfortable with Jews who fight and who fight well enough to win. Nevertheless, Spielberg's criticism and dissent is imporant, even sacred. Contrary to other conservative ideological systems, authentic Judaism allows dissent. The purity of arms and the morality of war are issues that must inform the choices we make. When killing as deterrent stops and killing that is murder for the sake of murder and bloodlust begin are legitimate topics for discussion. If indeed another terrorist murder will surface after every Israeli reprisal, and the only way to end the violence is to walk away either from the thick culture of Jewish living or the intense culture of the State of Israel, then Spielberg suggests that giving up thick culture and, ultimately, Jewish perpetuity is an answer. If Israel's adversaries are not immoral for terrorizing unto death, than Israel's right to live cannot be immoral, either.

We should applaud the fact that Spielberg articulates an intelligent, liberal point of view that takes anti-Semitism seriously. His Judaism moves his moral compass to make a propositional polemic in cinema, and by doing so advances the conversation regarding Jewish identity, spirituality, and definition, and he does so with the insight of the artist and the precision of the theologian. As a religious liberal, he should be challenged by the fact that pluralism may or not be an ideal, but it is for sure a fact. There are Jews who will not walk away from Judaism and Israel because of tears and the need to be violent in self-defense. It is one matter to kill on a battlefield; by making the Olympic Village a field of battle, killers of Jews violated the standard held to be accepted by humanity. The fact that humankind endorses a moral double standard, that Jews should be willing to die for the peace of the world is hardly a humane moral or political posture.

Spielberg's Judaism is poignant and conflicted. He is to be applauded and not criticized for the courage to challenge our moral sense. And I hope that he has the courage to accept the challenge that Judaism usually survives through transmission by those for whom thick Jewish culture, either nationalist or Orthodox, is a matter of ultimate concern.

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