The Jewish American Memoir on Film

[Spoilers ahead for A Serious Man, The Fabelmans, and Armageddon Time]

2022 has been my most Jewish year since I was bar-mitzvah’d 25 years ago. Early in the year, my wife and I went on a trip to Israel as part of Honeymoon Israel (a great organization that you should know about if you’re Jewish or in a relationship with someone Jewish.)

After my trip, my dad (a rabbi who just published his first novel, Zieglitz’s Blessing, which is a complicated story of Jewish faith throughout the title character’s life) gifted me a book that’s now out of print, Jewish People, Jewish Thought: The Jewish Experience in History by Robert M. Seltzer. It’s not an easy read, because it’s basically a textbook, but it helped me understand not only Jewish history, but how Jewish thought has worked to adapt to prevailing philosophies over the centuries.

And yet, I wouldn’t say that all this learning has made me more religious.

Judaism is tricky because it’s both a race and a religion. I struggle to define what it is beyond a monotheistic faith and a people united by their ancestors’ traditions. Beyond that, we’re full of contradictions and exceptions. This is true in me, my family, my extended Jewish community—and, it appears, in the various filmmakers that have tackled manifesting the Jewish experience on screen.

I can sympathize with critic Esther Zuckerman in her New York Times article Contemplating a Canon of Jewish American Films. To hold up a collection of works and say “this is the Jewish American experience” misses how much that experience is changing and has changed. Like most films, they represent a snapshot of their time, but what makes Jewish American movies difficult is the reluctance Jewish filmmakers have had in telling Jewish stories.

Part of that is not wanting to be pigeonholed, part of it is the hard financials of trying to get a studio to back a movie aimed at a minority audience, and part of it is knowing that although Jews have assimilated well in America, we’re still likely to be viewed through the lens of a prominently Christian or secular culture. Our “otherness” lives in how outsiders view us and how we’ve had to view ourselves as a diaspora people.

But it’s not as if we’re the only race and religion that feels like outsiders, and so there has to be some other ingredient that makes the American Jewish experience unique.

I want to take a look at three movies in which acclaimed directors drew from their own lives to explore what it means to grow up Jewish in America and the difficulties in reconciling Jewish and American identities.

A Serious Man (dirs. Joel and Ethan Coen, 2009)

A Serious Man is the most Jewish of these three movies in that it’s the only one really concerned with Judaism as religion rather than solely the cultural Judaism that most American Jews (myself included) tend to live. Leading off with a folktale about a dybbuk (a malevolent wandering spirit) in a 19th-century Eastern European shtetl, the film mostly takes place in 1967 suburban Minnesota and follows timid mathematics professor Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) who starts to live a Job-like existence. Upon learning that his wife wants a divorce and for him to move out of their house, as well as dealing with a student who seeks to bribe him for a better grade, Larry starts to despair and seeks the council of three rabbis—only to receive a platitude, a story without meaning, and a refusal to even meet in the first place. Meanwhile, Larry’s son Danny (Aaron Wolff) is on the verge of his bar-mitzvah, and he’s struggling to repay twenty dollars to an intimidating classmate.

A Serious Man never presents itself as memoir, but it’s clearly influenced by the Coens’ upbringing as Jews in a Midwestern suburb. Their scope in this movie (and throughout their filmography) clearly has a Jewish lens, especially looking at the chaos of a universe where death is swift but notions of justice are often darkly comical.

What makes A Serious Man such a great Jewish movie is not only its willingness to engage with text (it’s worth mentioning that Job is one of the richest stories in the Torah), but also their irreverence towards religion. When Danny gets high before his bar-mitzvah, the Coens aren’t appalled, but amused. When Danny gets to meet the rabbi who denied meeting with his father, he’s treated to lines from Jefferson Airplane’s “Somebody to Love” said with the weight of Talmudic wisdom followed by the return of his confiscated radio with the words, “Be a good boy.”

The film ends with Larry deciding to take his student’s payoff for a better grade, then immediately receiving a call from his doctor with grim news. We then cut to the schoolyard where Danny is finally able to repay his debt to his classmate, only to have an advancing tornado (the whirlwind) bear down on the school. It’s a closing designed not to comfort or even to offer answers, because A Serious Man recognizes that so much of Jewish life is in the questioning. Larry wants to be told what to do by a sage elder, but that’s not Judaism. Larry believes that avoiding conflict is the same as living well (“I didn’t do anything!” is his frequent refrain), and then wonders why his life is a mess. Larry believes he’s owed an answer to his misfortune because the moral equation he’s devised doesn’t make sense. And yet at the film’s climax, he knowingly sins and only then receives his answer.

As much success as the Coens have had over the course of their careers, they’ve always positioned themselves as outsiders making odd movies without much studio oversight because they typically don’t demand high budgets for their stories. They’re guys who know they will never be totally mainstream, and seem pretty pleased with that outcome. They’re happy to have John Goodman shouting “Shomer Shabbos” and don’t really care if some audience members don’t get the joke. They’re a pair of storytellers amused by the intersection of Judaism and American life.

The Fabelmans (dir. Steven Spielberg, 2022)

Steven Spielberg is arguably the most popular director of the 20th century; a man whose movies changed the landscape of American cinema. Spielberg’s journey feels more historically in line with his generation of Jews, even though he’s only about a decade older than the Coens.

Spielberg didn’t lean heavily into his Judaism in his early works—which echoes early Hollywood studios run by Jewish men (Louis B. Mayer, Jack Warner, and Harry Cohn) who were reluctant to tell Jewish stories because they knew what happened when Jews were on people’s radar.

By his own admission, Spielberg did not come to Schindler’s List readily. At one point, Spielberg was going to direct a remake of Cape Fear, and his friend Martin Scorsese would direct Schindler’s List—but the two agreed it would be better to swap pictures. The Holocaust is an incredibly difficult story to tell, yet once he had the reins, Spielberg pulled it off masterfully, using his clout and power to drive 90s audiences to a 3-hour-and-15-minute black-and-white movie about an incredibly dark chapter of history.

And yet I can’t help but remark that the protagonist of the film is Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson), an outsider and war profiteer whose heart is changed by the plight of the Jews. It’s Spielberg consciously making the movie for both Jews and non-Jews.

Like all the great directors, Spielberg understands the power of an image to reach across tribes, and that power comes to the fore in The Fabelmans, which is Spielberg’s most personal movie to date.

Based on his own upbringing, the story follows Sammy Fabelman (Mateo Zoryon Francis-DeFord as young Sammy, Gabriel LaBelle as teenage Sammy) and how he learns that his passion for filmmaking isn’t the thing that will tear his family apart, but has the power to change hearts and minds.

The Fabelmans is, as its title suggests, a fable. The whole movie shines through the light of Spielberg’s memory (it feels like a film that should have a framing device or narrator, but Spielberg and co-writer Tony Kushner are confident enough to avoid those tools) and his struggle between the teenager he was and the man he is now. The film has a purposeful gloss, not to paper over the painful parts of his upbringing, but to try and show more humanity and depth to the adults in his life. If anyone ever gets flattened, it’s Sammy. One particularly humorous scene has Sammy in the bedroom of an attractive Christian classmate (Chloe East). In reality, this girl’s bedroom was probably pretty normal, but filtered through Spielberg’s memory and Sammy’s perceptions, she has a giant crucifix overhanging her bed with heart-shaped lights to show how much she loves Jesus.

This contrasts well with Sammy’s Jewish life, one where Judaism only notes him as a minority at best (“Ours is the house without any lights on it,” young Sammy bemoans as he drives with his parents to suburban New Jersey home, a sentiment that echoes my own childhood) and a victim of anti-Semitism at worst. For Sammy, the notion of being proudly Jewish doesn’t seem like an option, and even if he was, how would you even go about displaying it when Jews have never been in a position of power (it’s worth noting that Spielberg’s movie featuring Israeli Jews, Munich, far from being a tale of empowerment, carries far more ambivalence and moral ambiguity than perhaps any of his other features).

In Fabelmans, Sammy derives power not from Jewish faith (neither of his parents are particularly religious beyond lighting Hanukkah candles), but from movies. Movies are, in a sense, Sammy’s religion—they’re what give him purpose, strength, and identity.

It’s interesting to note that while the Coen’s Larry Gopnik goes looking to rabbis for wisdom, Fabelmans concludes with legendary director John Ford (played by another legendary director, David Lynch) stepping into the role of wise man/elder.

Armageddon Time (dir. James Gray, 2022)

Of the three films, Armageddon Time hits closest to home for me. Part of that has to do with Gen X-er James Gray being closer to my age than baby boomers Spielberg and the Coens. But there are also surprising parallel reflections in Gray’s story and my own.

Broadly speaking, Armageddon Time is about Gray’s uneasiness with the breaks he got as a young white kid in Brooklyn—but it would be a mistake to say it’s simply a story of white guilt. The Jewishness that runs through the narrative is about assimilation driven by fear.

Sixth-grader Paul Graff (Banks Repeta) has a good friendship with Johnny Davis (Jaylin Webb), a Black student who’s repeating the grade, and both kids get on the nerves of their mean-spirited teacher Mr. Turkeltaub (Andrew Polk). Every time the duo get in trouble, Paul’s advantages push him away from danger, whereas Johnny gets no such breaks.

Paul has a close relationship with his grandfather Aaron Rabinowitz (Anthony Hopkins), who provides the young boy with the warmth and attention his wry mother (Anne Hathaway) and stern father (Jeremy Strong) aren’t quite able to give. While Aaron has made peace with his place in the world and the affluence he’s been able to give his family, he also sees it as a tool for their protection. The notion of a better life for Jewish Americans means you never fall to a place where people will come to kill you. America, with its immigrant melting pot and freedom of religion, offers a unique experience for Jews to not only survive but thrive. And yet there’s the underlying message—this could all be taken away in a moment if you’re not careful. In Jewish history, you’re only safe until you’re not.

I’ll depart for a moment to tell two quick personal anecdotes. Aaron reminds me of my Zaide (Yiddish for grandfather). My grandfather and grandmother are responsible for the breaks I got in life. Like Aaron, they didn’t run from their Judaism, but it was essential that their affluence filter down to me, my brother, and our cousins—because that’s not only how you make a better life; that’s how you survive. I’m on the receiving end of a decent amount of privilege because my grandfather was a successful doctor who could amass wealth in Tulsa in the 20th century. Not all residents of Tulsa were so lucky.

The other story is about me and Eric. Eric, who was Black, was my best friend in 5th and 6th grade. In 6th grade, we were horsing around one day, and we accidentally knocked over the overhead projector, damaging it. Our teacher was furious and dragged us to the principal’s office. The Principal, Mr. Tippins, could have handled things differently. He could have, like the characters in Armageddon Time, treated me preferentially and treated Eric with draconian measures. Instead, knowing that neither Eric or I were exactly flush with cash to pay for a new overhead projector, asked that we each pay $3 to replace the mat that was part of the projector. We received the same punishment, it wasn’t extreme, and we were allowed to go on our way (Eric and I grew apart in 7th grade because we moved over to the middle school, and aside from adolescents just growing and changing, we were on different class schedules).

Gray’s story is one of moral awakening and the uneasy place of Jews in American society. While it would be easy to tell a story (and many have) about a Black friend whose suffering teaches a lesson to the white protagonist, that’s not what Gray is doing here. The whole movie is viewed at Paul’s level. He thinks his mom has supreme power because she’s head of the PTA. He thinks his family is rich because he can swipe a couple twenties from her jewelry box without her saying anything. He doesn’t understand Johnny’s difficulties or lack of opportunities. When Paul tries to help Johnny by enacting a harebrained scheme to steal a computer from Paul’s posh private school and pawn it so they can get money and flee to Florida so Paul can be an artist and Johnny can be an astronaut, Paul once again catches a break that Johnny doesn’t when they’re quickly arrested while trying to pawn the computer. Even when Paul confesses to the officers that the scheme was his idea, they won’t hear it.

The lessons the world is looking to impart on Paul are all ones that come at the cost of Johnny (Gray frequently shoots Johnny looking drained and weary, not to take away his humanity, but to show that every blow that grazes Paul comes full force on a Black youth). The private school Paul moves to (one his grandfather pushed for him to attend) is heavily influenced by Paul Trump (John Diehl) and his daughter Maryann (Jessica Chastain) and their Reagan-era “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” garbage. Further down the spectrum, you have Paul’s own family, who see his desire to be an artist as a fanciful hobby that can only exist if it’s secondary to upward mobility because as American Jews, that’s the only way to survive.

But young Paul’s realization at the end of the movie is that it’s not worth it. His grandfather told him to be a mensch and to stick up for people like Johnny, and yet when he tried to do just that, the white supremacist systems in place smacked Johnny back down while giving Paul a pass.

In the end, Paul has to walk away from all of it. The film’s final shot of Paul walking down the sidewalk at dusk isn’t one of triumph, but of loneliness. He’s lost his friend and his grandfather, and the adults in his life are preaching a system of uplift that comes at the cost of being a decent person. There’s an unresolved tension between being a mensch and Jewish assimilation in America.

A Serious Man, The Fabelmans, and Armageddon Time are only the tip of the iceberg of where Jewish storytelling can go in cinema. I should note that all three films I chose were by Jews who are white men, and the stories of Jewish women and Jewish people of color are bound to be different as they explore various intersectionalities.

As I saw in Jewish People, Jewish Thought, the Jews are a people rooted in tradition yet whose story is always changing. What’s unique about this moment is how Jews are stepping up to tell their stories against the American backdrop and have something to say beyond the typical glib shorthand of, “They tried to kill us. We survived. Let’s eat.”

Although these three movies are all about looking back, they’re also looking forward to Jewish identity in the 21st century. They’re personal stories about Jews feeling their faith differently than their parents, but not entirely sure what it means for them today. I see myself in all three of these movies—in the irreverence of the Coens, the cinematic refuge of Spielberg, and the family tension of Gray.

What I’ve seen in this past year from my own experiences and these movies is that when it comes to Judaism, we are called not to follow blindly, but to question—even if the answers may not provide comfort.