The Marsha Razin A”H Book and Film Club for 2014-2015 @ 7:30 p.m.
Once a month on Mondays. (Dates Below)
Our theme this year will be “Balancing Religion and State: Choose Life.”
All meetings will be at 7:30 p.m. at the Benjamin Children’s Library, located in the Meyerhoff Community Center, 9 Hadekel Street, Givat Sharett, Beit Shemesh. Based on the program developed by Marsha Razin A”H. Facilitated by Jackie Rouder, Orah Mosak and Abby Hochhauser.
Overview:
Religion offers us a river to travel in search of meaning in our lives. It offers us shared perspectives, customs, and community. Yet sometimes we find hypocrisy, superstition, small mindedness, and even violence flowing out of religion. The state offers us a secure community in which we can build meaningful lives. Yet that same state may demand of us such utter allegiance that we ourselves become automatons for violence-Darth Vaders, or their victims. How then do we maximize the blessings of both religion and state but not get trapped by their dangers?
Graham Greene, in one of his great novels, Power & Glory, helps us to follow a very fallible priest who is trying to survive being captured by the government which is intent on killing priests. Can a church-or indeed a synagogue- be meaningful if it is lead by persons like that very imperfect priest?
What if government unites with the church? What if the freedom to think is blocked by religion’s “Right belief” being enshrined in law? In, Son of Hamas, Yousef, the son of a founder of Hamas, decided that he could not support the violence with which he grew up. Not only did he become an important member of Israel’s secret service, but he wrote this memoir to explain his choice. Was he a traitor or a hero?
A similar dilemma is posited in the film, Hahesder, Time of Favor, Joseph Cedar’s debut film. In this case, the rebbe of the Yeshiva would like to see the Bet Hamikdash rebuilt. To do so, he taught that blowing up the mosques on Har Habayit would be a good thing. What should his talmid do? Here the dilemma involves “right belief” as defiance of law and peace. We grapple with the impact of the state intertwined with secular religion as well as traditional religion.
In Darkness at Noon, we confront the corruption of ideals and the brutal persecution of individuals under Stalinist Russia.
In Water, we see the lives of widows, sometimes painfully young girls, curdled by the rules imposed.
We examine the Jewish world as portrayed by Shmuel Yosef Agnon in this anthology of his short stories, A Book that was Lost & Other Stories . Through his view, we see a people grappling with their shared or fragmented perspectives of Yiddishkeit as they faced oppression, confusion, and an idealization of Israel
November 24, Kick-off Meeting: The Crucible by Arthur Miller (film)
Based on historical people and real events, Arthur Miller’s play uses the destructive power of socially sanctioned violence unleashed by the rumors of witchcraft as a powerful parable about McCarthyism.
December 8: The Power and The Glory by Graham Greene (book)
Considered one of the very great novels of the Twentieth Century, this book deals with man’s fallibility and ability to seek redemption. Is a state correct to try to crush a very corrupted church? Greene recognizes that religion can be full of hypocrisy but shows that a state that uses anti-religious policies can do as much harm as it does good. How then to find meaning in life? Can a sinful man of such a church draw people closer to G-d? Is G-d involved in our lives?
January 19: Son of Hamas by Mosab Hassan Yousef and Ron Brackin (book)
Yousef, a son of a founder of Hamas Sheik Hassan Yousef worked undercover for the Shin Bet from 1997-2007 and was considered invaluable in preventing suicide attacks and hunting down terrorists. This well written gripping account is Yousef’s story of growing up inside Hamas, and turning his back on his family and religion to seek more than in his words enslavement to a “religion of war.” This book is listed on the NY Times best seller list.
February 9: Time of Favor (film)
Joseph Cedar’s debut film Time of Favor, which the New York Times calls “an art house thriller,”, won wide acclaim in Israel, earning six Israeli Academy awards, including Best Picture, and was the nation’s official entry for the 2000 American Academy Awards. Rabbi Meltzer, a charismatic teacher who quotes Maimonides on the subject of martyrdom for one’s beliefs: a dead lion, he preaches, can be more alive than a living dog. Those are fighting words that can easily be taken the wrong way. ”Time of Favor” is about the near-catastrophe that ensues when Pini, a young soldier who is the star pupil in the rabbi’s yeshiva, takes his teacher’s words too literally and plans a terrorist attack to blow up the Dome of the Rock.
March 16: Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler (book)
Listed among the top ten English novels published in the Twentieth Century, this novel is set in 1938, during the great Stalinist purge and Russian show trials. At the center of the story is Rubashov, an old Bolshevik who had helped establish the government and was now being accused of treason. Facing interrogation and meditating on his life choices, he struggles with his loyalty to this government, to the purity of ideals for which he strove, and to his treatment of other individuals.
May 11: Water by Deepa Mehta (film)
This poignant and moving film by Indo-Canadian Deepa Mehta focuses on the deprivations experienced by Hindu widows. The Manusmriti, an ancient Hindu text, says that in life a woman is half her husband and if he dies, she is half dead. A widow has three choices: she can throw herself on his funeral pyre and die with him; she can marry his brother, if one is available; or she can live out the rest of her days in isolation and seclusion. If she chooses the latter, the ascetic path, she enters an ashram, shaves her head, wears white as a sign of mourning, and tries to atone for her husband’s death. In the film, we follow Chuyia, an adorable eight-year-old, who has just been widowed. Her marriage, which she doesn’t even remember, was arranged by her family for financial reasons. But no matter what her circumstances, Hindu law says she must now leave society. This deprivation is still an issue today in a country with 33 million widows. This film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film and winner of three Genie (Canada’s Oscars) Awards.
June 8: A Book That Was Lost & Other Stories by Shmuel Yosef Agnon (book)
This collection of short stories offers us a full view of this master’s sweep. He portrays the Polish Jewish world that was lost, the irony of a German Jewish family missing the erupting danger that would engulf them, and, of course, the life of Jews in the land of Israel. With humor and irony as well as erudition, he explores the great questions that occupy human life. Nobel Prize winner, Shmuel Yosef Agnon, transformed traditional themes and sources in works that speak eloquently of community and dislocation, of longing and loss. We will read selected stories from this collection.
July 6: Like Dreamers by YK Halevi (book)
In Like Dreamers, acclaimed journalist Yossi Klein Halevi interweaves the stories of a group of 1967 paratroopers who reunited Jerusalem, tracing the history of Israel and the divergent ideologies shaping it from the Six-Day War to the present. Following the lives of seven young members from the 55th Paratroopers Reserve Brigade, the unit responsible for restoring Jewish sovereignty to Jerusalem, Halevi reveals how this band of brothers played pivotal roles in shaping Israel’s destiny long after their historic victory. While they worked together to reunite their country in 1967, these men harbored drastically different visions for Israel’s future.