(no subject)
In episode two of Hunters (the new Amazon Prime show in which Al Pacino plays a Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter who mentors the young Logan Lerman in the ways of Nazi hunting), Pacino's Meyer Offerman encourages Lerman's Jonah Heidelman to recite the Mourner's Kaddish for his grandmother, who was killed by a former Auschwitz guard turned toystore owner in the previous episode.
Offerman guides Jonah into a smallish, attractively decorated New York synagogue in the early 20th century style- without a mechitza. They enter as the sha'tz is reciting the final words of Alenu, "U'sh'mo echad". This of course is the prayer that precedes the recitation of Mourner's Kaddish in the evening service, so they have timed their entrance perfectly to spend minimal time in synagogue.
Jonah and Offerman pick up siddurim and Jonah haltingly starts reciting the kaddish. He is clearly familiar with it but a little rusty, and he's not clear why he's doing this, what value it will have to him as a non-believing Jew. Then the camera looks down at the siddur and we see it is open to the correct page, with the end of Alenu at the top of the page and the Mourner's Kaddish below. Typeset in what is recognizably Artscroll house style.
Hunters is set in 1977; The now classic Artscroll Siddur was first published seven years later in 1984.
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In the first episode of Hunters, Offerman describes to Jonah an event he recalls from Auschwitz. The same guard, we later learn, who killed Jonah's mother was a chess aficionado so annoyed that he could not beat a prisoner who was a chess champion that he would bring 32 prisoners into the woods where he had set up a life-sized chess board, arming the prisoners so that when they took a square, they would have to stab and kill the prisoner whose square they were taking.
There is no attestation that this actually happened in Auschwitz, and it has faced some criticism. The Auschwitz Museum has charged them with irresponsible storytelling, that by making up stories about what hapepned in Auschwitz, they make it easier for Holocaust deniers to argue that nothing horrible happened in Auschwitz.
But I am more bothered by the appearance of the Artscroll Siddur.
I think the reason is that, look, I've read a lot of stories about what actually happened at Auschwitz. And they are just as surreally horrific as the human chess story. So I'm not bothered by fictional atrocities here that capture the same character, as long as they're clearly done for plot reasons and not for the sake of horror. And that is clearly the case here- the show's opening credits feature a human chess match between the Nazis and the Nazi hunters, Offerman is multiple times represented as the chessmaster, the invention of the human chess game is about setting up the stakes and building the themes of the show, while maintaining a sense of the horrific proportions of the Holocaust.
On the other hand, the anachronistic Artscroll goof... as the rest of my description of the scene should make clear, the Judaism consultants on this show are quite good. There is a lot of texture to the portrayal of Jewish life and its interactions with ritual and faith, and the anachronism is a blemish I'm going to have to warn people about if I rec the show as being accurate about Jewish life.
Remains to be seen how much I'll rec the show, though. I'm through two episodes and there is a lot that is great, and also a lot that is annoyingly paced or unnecessarily gruesome or lazily constructed. But there's enough interesting stuff here, and particularly enough that feels rightly Jewish, that I'm going to keep going.
This entry was originally posted at https://seekingferret.dreamwidth.org/333030.html. Please comment there using OpenID. There are
comments.
Offerman guides Jonah into a smallish, attractively decorated New York synagogue in the early 20th century style- without a mechitza. They enter as the sha'tz is reciting the final words of Alenu, "U'sh'mo echad". This of course is the prayer that precedes the recitation of Mourner's Kaddish in the evening service, so they have timed their entrance perfectly to spend minimal time in synagogue.
Jonah and Offerman pick up siddurim and Jonah haltingly starts reciting the kaddish. He is clearly familiar with it but a little rusty, and he's not clear why he's doing this, what value it will have to him as a non-believing Jew. Then the camera looks down at the siddur and we see it is open to the correct page, with the end of Alenu at the top of the page and the Mourner's Kaddish below. Typeset in what is recognizably Artscroll house style.
Hunters is set in 1977; The now classic Artscroll Siddur was first published seven years later in 1984.
---
In the first episode of Hunters, Offerman describes to Jonah an event he recalls from Auschwitz. The same guard, we later learn, who killed Jonah's mother was a chess aficionado so annoyed that he could not beat a prisoner who was a chess champion that he would bring 32 prisoners into the woods where he had set up a life-sized chess board, arming the prisoners so that when they took a square, they would have to stab and kill the prisoner whose square they were taking.
There is no attestation that this actually happened in Auschwitz, and it has faced some criticism. The Auschwitz Museum has charged them with irresponsible storytelling, that by making up stories about what hapepned in Auschwitz, they make it easier for Holocaust deniers to argue that nothing horrible happened in Auschwitz.
But I am more bothered by the appearance of the Artscroll Siddur.
I think the reason is that, look, I've read a lot of stories about what actually happened at Auschwitz. And they are just as surreally horrific as the human chess story. So I'm not bothered by fictional atrocities here that capture the same character, as long as they're clearly done for plot reasons and not for the sake of horror. And that is clearly the case here- the show's opening credits feature a human chess match between the Nazis and the Nazi hunters, Offerman is multiple times represented as the chessmaster, the invention of the human chess game is about setting up the stakes and building the themes of the show, while maintaining a sense of the horrific proportions of the Holocaust.
On the other hand, the anachronistic Artscroll goof... as the rest of my description of the scene should make clear, the Judaism consultants on this show are quite good. There is a lot of texture to the portrayal of Jewish life and its interactions with ritual and faith, and the anachronism is a blemish I'm going to have to warn people about if I rec the show as being accurate about Jewish life.
Remains to be seen how much I'll rec the show, though. I'm through two episodes and there is a lot that is great, and also a lot that is annoyingly paced or unnecessarily gruesome or lazily constructed. But there's enough interesting stuff here, and particularly enough that feels rightly Jewish, that I'm going to keep going.
This entry was originally posted at https://seekingferret.dreamwidth.org/333030.html. Please comment there using OpenID. There are
comments.