“Oy Gevalt!”: Celebrating the Friendship of America and the Jewish People.

Parashat Hukkat-Balak 5769 – 4 July 2009

Like Tommy and Avram in The Frisco Kid, America and its Jews have learned from one another and benefited from both our common values, as well as our differences.

This summer, the HEA has been featuring a fantastic summer film series. We’ve been having a lot of fun watching movies together and discussing them. Most of the films chosen for this summer are quite serious so we tossed into the mix one comedy: The Frisco Kid staring Gene Wilder and Harrison Ford. Made in 1979 by director Robert Aldrich, The Frisco Kid is a Western comedy set it 1850 about a Polish Rabbi – Avram Belinski – who is sent by his Yeshiva – with a Torah scroll under his arm – to America to serve as the Rabbi of a new congregation in San Francisco. Shortly after arriving in Philadelphia – “The city where all brothers love each other” – he is taken in by con men who rob him and leave him for dead on the road. After a comical encounter with a group of helpful Amish, whom Avram mistakes for “Landsmen” he sets off alone to trek across America. Not being accustomed to life on the frontier, Avram soon gets lost until he meets up with Tommy, a bank robber played by Harrison Ford, who agrees to show him the way to California. The two of them set off on an adventure, which, as you can imagine, has many comical detours.

I had seen the film 4 or 5 times before and never thought much of it beyond my favorite lines. Like when Avram is chasing a wild chicken and he yells, “Come hear little chicken… I don’t want to hurt you, I just want to make you kosher!” I love that line, but it also says something about the thought that was put into the film. The filmmakers knew enough about Judaism to know that kosher slaughter is meant to minimize the pain of the animal. And indeed there is a lot that is authentically Jewish in the film. There are instances when we see the Rabbi praying… and (in contrast to most Hollywood films) he’s actually saying the correct prayers! Sure there are a few halakhic mistakes in the movie, but for the most part a lot of care was put into portraying Avram accurately.

The Frisco Kid is a pretty funny movie… but seeing the film again in this context – knowing that I’d have to lead a discussion afterward – I saw it as a very serious film as well. I think it is trying to say something about the Jewish encounter with America. Avram clearly embodies the immigrant generation and its values. At the opening of the film, Avram’s old world ways seem to the audience quaint and naïve. And, in every encounter, aspects of American life challenge his Jewish values – like the Indian chief who gives him a choice: would he risk his life to protect the Torah? But, Avram never wavers. He never strays from his ideals, which at times frustrates his hot tempered sidekick. Tommy the bank robber even curses Avram at times: call him an “ignorant Jew!” At first Tommy mocks Avram’s goodness and honesty. But there is also something powerful about Avram and his values that compel everyone around him to see things differently.

Interestingly, this week’s Torah portion also contains a comedy with a serious message and a non-Jew who can’t help but embrace us. In one of the most crafted stories of the Torah, the evil King Balak – feeling threatened – seeks out the wizard Bil’am to curse the Israelites. Like Harrison Ford in The Frisco Kid, Bil’am is a kind of comical character himself. Instead of riding a horse, though, he rides a talking donkey who mocks him for his moral blindness. When King Balak compels him to curse the Jews, Bil’am – looking upon the camp of Israel and struck with awe for God – cannot help but bless Israel, saying: “ma’ tovu ohalecha ya’akov; mishkenotecha yisrael” – “How fair are your tents, O Jacob; Your dwellings, O Israel.” But it isn’t just our pretty tents that Bil’am admires. What really moves him is our fear of God and our values. He can’t help but tell it like it is and bless us. And, so compelling and true are his words that we have adopted them (the words of a non-Jew) as our own, which we say upon entering a synagogue.

At the end of The Frisco Kid (don’t worry I won’t spoil it) Avram, in an encounter with the men who had robbed him at the beginning, feels that he has violated his own values and thus can no longer be a rabbi. He dons the cowboy garb of his sidekick and, in one particularly funny scene played masterfully by Wilder, he tries to mask his Yiddish accent and talk in a Texas drawl. He desperately wants to run away from who he is and has been. And, I find it very interesting that it is Harrison Ford’s character – the real American cowboy – who demands that the Rabbi embrace his true identity. The man who had once cursed the rabbi’s naïveté now declares: “You can fall in the mud, you can slip on your ass, you can travel in the wrong direction; but, even on your ass, even in the mud, even if you go in the wrong direction for a little while, you’re still a rabbi! That’s WHAT YOU ARE, right!” If the film is really trying to say something deeper about America and its Jews, I feel as though Harrison Ford could just as well be saying to all of us, “no matter what, you’re still Jewish.”

Indeed, like Avram and Tommy, we Jews have had a great friendship with America. It’s had its set backs, but by-in-large America has embraced us and we have embraced America. Like in the film, America didn’t understand us at first. We were abused and mocked at times; ridiculed for our old world ways. But to the extent that we pursued our essential ideals and identity, we came to thrive here. Like Tommy and Avram, we’ve learned from one another and benefited from both our common values as well as our differences. This country has been very good to us and for us. The fertile soil of religious freedom allowed us to flourish here and maintain our distinctive culture and religion like in no other country. And like Avram, we too embraced America and learned from it. It has changed us for sure. We no longer live as our grandparents and great grandparents did. Like Avram, we’ve learned to dress differently, talk differently, and we even learned to adapt our religious practices, where we could. And, we have taken the best of American society and made it our own to the point that values like justice, freedom, fairness, and respect for human dignity feel just as American to us as they feel Jewish. And we have given back abundantly, contributing disproportionately to the arts and sciences, to public service and the pursuit of justice, and to the building of institutions that serve the common good.

This country has surely blessed us. So, on this Independence Day, I want to celebrate the friendship of the Jewish People and America. May our friendship continue to grow; may we never waiver from our enduring values that have allowed us to thrive here; may America’s values continue to be our values, and may we continue to learn from one another.

Shabbat Shalom