SAN DIEGO—I know how ironic this sounds, and I don't say it lightly. I have not felt so assaulted by a movie since watching Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ.  In that movie, and in this one, Ever Again, which documents the resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe, audiences are subjected to unremitting, pounding, insistent violence.  In the former, it is the physical violence of the crowd and the Roman soldiers against Jesus; in the latter, it is verbal and physical violence aimed by Islamists and neo-Nazis, as well as intellectuals of the Far Left, at us, the Jews.  The message: The clock has been turned back.  The first "N" in "Never Again" has been erased in the 60 years since the end of World War II.

The Passion of the Christ came with a built-in theology for the predominantly Christian audiences who watched it.  According to Christianity, all that violence portrayed on the screen had a reason, a purpose.  In their theology, Jesus was meant to suffer, to atone for mankind's sins, past and future.  The more he had to suffer, the worse mankind's sins obviously are.  Christians therefore must feel gratefulness for Jesus; look how much suffering he had to endure on their behalf.  For the believing Christian, the message was not—as some of us Jews feared—that Jews should be blamed for the death of Jesus, for that would contradict their theology concerning God's purpose.  Rather it was that Christians can thank Jesus by trying to sin less, so that his sacrifice shall not have been purposeless.

On the other hand, Ever Again offers its audiences no such hope. There is no built-in theology upon which an audience can base its conclusions.  The movie offers scene after scene of Jews being reviled, our cemeteries and synagogues being desecrated, the Holocaust being either denied or laughed at, intellectuals and such European "leaders" as Jacques Chirac of France attempting to rationalize Islamist hatred for Jews, and Israel being vilified. For nearly 90 minutes, the movie pounds and bangs and screams at our consciousness.

With only a few voices challenging the volcanoes of ugly, spewing anti-Semitism—on-screen voices like those of Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz and film producer Rabbi Marvin Hier, who heads the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles—you find yourself wondering whether Ever Again will accomplish its goal of motivating good people to combat this scourge, or whether it simply will provide encouragement to all the anti-Semites in the world that their hatred is having an effect.  Is it possible that inadvertently such a movie will fan the very hatred that we feared The Passion of the Christ would?


Rabbi Marvin Hier, left,  greets Rabbi Scott Meltzer as Sandy 
Golden looks on at April 3 screening in San Diego of Ever Again

We all know how a lie, repeated again and again, will eventually be believed.  I am concerned that despite its best intentions, the Moriah Films Division of the Simon Wiesenthal Center may provide our enemies a better forum than they ever would have secured on their own. 

The film offers no conclusions, no ringing declaration that we must unite in opposition to this anti-Semitism, and that we can do so with the following series of steps:  (fill in the blank).  Whereas The Passion of  the Christ at least had an implied call to action—to be better Christians—Ever Again provides no such guidance.  It sounds the shofar, but does not tell the troops what to do. That void, that blank, is the film's major flaw.  It's not at all difficult to imagine that Gentile audiences who watch lie after lie after lie about us Jews will begin to believe that what they saw was truth, after truth, after truth—or at least must have some basis in fact.  Pogo like, we may find that by spreading the word, without framing it in a compelling context, we have become our own enemy.

I was among those who watched the movie at a special showing for members of the Jewish community  at the Edwards Cinema in the Mira Mesa area.  Rabbi Hier introduced the film by explaining that to reach unaffiliated Jews, who can't be found in synagogues or at meetings sponsored by other kinds of Jewish institutions, different avenues of communication need to be pursued, such as movie theatres and television. A film like this may alert them to the danger now walking the face of Europe.  Furthermore, he said, the film featuring pro bono narration by actor Kevin Costner is not for Jews alone, it will be shown via movie theatres and cable television  to predominantly Gentile audiences in Europe and the United States.

Following the movie, at a dessert reception in the lobby of the cinema—the sweets for our mouths in glaring juxtaposition to the bitterness just endured by our eyes and our ears—I asked Rabbi Hier why the movie sounds the shofar but does not urge any course of action.   Here is his answer, which I transcribed from our taped interview:

"The first thing is is to know what is happening. If you don’t know what is happening, you cannot participate in the solution—if you don’t really know what the problem is. The problem is, it is widespread in Europe, it is not just France, it is every single country. The other problem is that the leaders of the Islamic movement are young people. They have a future, these anti-Semites; they are not people who are 70 and 80 years old, and it ought to wake us up—we have too many Jews in the bleachers.  

"The main message of this film, if there is any other message, is a few organizations cannot clean up this mess. It takes every Jew— and we don’t have every Jew right now engaged in this battle—writing letters to an editor, doing something. Every Jew can be an activist and we don’t have every Jew as an activist. That’s the message of this film. If they are frightened about it, if they are concerned about it, the film did its job."

I wandered around the lobby collecting reactions to the film from members of our San Diego Jewish community. Here, in alphabetical order, are the reactions to the movie of  the 14 people with whom I spoke.

Teedie Appelbaum—I will tell you the truth: it overwhelmed me. It (anti-Semitism)  is so bad that I have to do something about it. 

Carol Davidson Baird—Being a child of  survivors of the Holocaust, I have an interest that  my parents always did talk about it, and I know it wasn’t new with my father, what he said, but he always did tell me that things like this happen when good people do nothing. And so I was raised with that thought, and I now go back and when I go to Germany I have a lot of friends over there and what I do notice, they are doing something, they are doing something actively to suppress, get rid of, eradicate anti-Semitism and they are doing it through educating non-Jews to Judaica, to Jewish heritage, to the Jewish people.  And so, when we go back on these return- or restitution-trips, it is basically I think that they can show that we are not the ugly nasties that these neo-Nazis portray us as.

Stephen Baird—It seems to me that historically anti-Semitism is just a cultural given.  It keeps coming up over and over and over again. There are a lot of people who wonder why, a lot of reasons have been proposed, but it always keeps happening.  We may have to accept that.  

Q. And?

A. And what can we do about it?  I don’t know what to do about it.  I think education is the answer and I think that teaching people that hatred is pointless would be very helpful, but hatred is an easier emotion to stir than love is, and hatred is an easier emotion to stir than rationality. Rationality is not an emotion. So if you have people bent on stirring up hatred in order to further their own cause, they are going to have an easy time of doing it. And Jews are the canary in the cage; they really are.  

{This metaphor was also used in the film; that like the canary in a cage, brought down into a mine to test for poisonous gas; the way that we Jews are treated in a society is a measure of how much poison is flowing in that society.}

Gerry Burstain—Unfortunately there was nothing really new, but it is interesting that after the Holocaust it was unfashionable to be an anti-Semite and now after the memories are gone, now the whole story of anti-Semitism is back with us again, and it is not that bad to be an anti-Semite.  Sixty years ago right after World War II  it was unfashionable, and now back to the old thing.  Nothing has changed, really nothing has changed.

Mitch Dubick – I thought it was very well done and was something that we all need to be aware of. I thought the points made (by Rabbi Hier in his introduction)  about the importance of sharing this with the rest of the world, not just other Jews, is absolutely critical. 

Q. Were they advocating any particular course of action?
A.  I think bringing the story of what is going on in Europe today was the main message of the film.

Q. Is it enough?
A.  Yes.  Well,  I think we need to be vigilant; I think we need to do what we can and we need to count on the good people in the world, Jew and Gentile alike, to fight against extremism.

Claire Ellman—Scary, very, very scary.  The tragedy is unless we have the AIPACs of the world, in Europe, to consolidate their efforts, we are looking to write our history in a very tragic way. I think what really was interesting, I was a bit disappointed that there was no action item at the end..  It didn’t show really what actions are being taken by these various countries, and Israel, or America in their behalf.  So are we letting them sink on their own? What is the role of Americans in the Jewish survival in Europe?  Between the Muslims and the neo-Nazis, we have our work cut out for us.

Sandy Golden—Much of it was very depressing and yet very, very necessary. I felt like I couldn’t watch it, I couldn’t see it, I couldn’t look— and I had to see it.  And I think I want more people to see it, I want more people to talk to people about it, and for more people to know what the message was.

Rabbi Scott Meltzer, Ohr Shalom Synagogue—Another very important film from Moriah Films. The only question is how to get it so everyone sees it.

Q.  And why was it important, what do you feel was the reason that this film needed to be made?

A:  Because of the original footage shown in the movie. Because of listening to the virulent anti-Semitism. It is very different from reading the newspaper, it is very different from looking at statistics. This is the face of the current wave of anti-Semitism that is raging in Europe that shows its face here, and we need to look at it, talk about it and defend the whole world.

Alan Rusonik—The film was obviously depressing, and it just tells us how much work we have to do in terms of the Jewish community in San Diego, around the country, and around the world to fight anti-Semitism and to try to make a difference.

Q. Disappointed that there was no game plan laid out in terms of what to do about it?

A. I think the future is in our hands. I think what we have to do is to mobilize. There is leadership outside of the people here in this theatre who are working towards making a difference.  We just need to recruit the troops and get the job done.

Charlene Seidle—I think we have to pay close attention to it, I think it is an important movie, and now what matters are the action items that come out of it.  That is the most important.

Q. Those were not suggested in there.
A.  Yes, right, but we will come up with a few, I am sure in the community.

Q. In watching this, did you sense there will be a net effect of this movie?

A. Well, I think, it is important that this movie is shown to non-Jewish audiences and audiences in Europe who aren’t Jewish and who aren’t affiliated, and not preaching to the choir, because otherwise we are going to be doomed to repeat the past.

Andrew Viterbi (a financial backer of the film)—Very sad, and very true, unfortunately.  It is a necessity to make all of us aware of what is going on and especially the young people.

Q. Although it sounded the shofar, it didn’t tell us in which direction we ought to march. Did you feel that perhaps we need some direction now that we understand the dimensions of the problem?

A.  Well as Americans we don’t really face that kind of situation. We have mostly allies in this country.  In fact, there is anti-Semitism, but it is very much contained and the strident version is not acceptable. In some ways, showing it on film is useful. I think these imams and their violent followers are really hurting their own cause. Even so, we can’t be still; that was a mistake that we made 60 years ago and we have to find our friends and make them aware of what is happening and try to combat all this.

Leonard Warren (an organizer of the theatre event) —It is an extraordinary powerful movie. It should be seen by so many people who weren’t here this evening. We invited numbers of students, but they didn’t come unfortunately.

Q: There were a lot of events competing tonight.

A: Yes there were, there was the opening of the baseball season, there was the NCAA championships, Jacob Goldberg was lecturing at the JCC so we had lots of competition, but we are delighted with the turnout.  We had close to 200 people. 

{For the record, the San Diego Padres won their season opener at Petco Park by a score of  6-1 over the San Francisco Giants; in a nationally televised NCAA Men's Basketball championship game, Florida defeated UCLA 73-57, and Goldberg's lecture was delivered at the Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center.}

Q. In terms of the movie itself, what is your reaction to the movie and the message that it brings us?

A: Well, it is just that it was so real, it made us aware of so many things going on that we weren’t aware of otherwise:  the dangers of this resurgence of anti-Semitism in all these places.  And the only regret is that there weren’t more people here to see it, but it is available now in DVD. And, as you know, it will be shown subsequently on television. {Arrangements are being made for it to be seen on cable, but specific details have not yet been announced}.

Rabbi Leonard Zoll—My reaction is that at Passover, at the seder, we are going to talk about this, because in every generation someone arises who wants to destroy us. Why don’t we pay attention to that line?  Why are we so chicken?  Why are we standing around doing nothing about it?  We know these guys are out there. We need to get all of our Christian friends, who number two billion, to assist in this matter.  They seem to ignore the fact that Moslems are killing Christians. I discussed this recently with a minister, and I asked him why he didn’t want to do something about it.  "Well, what can do, there are only a few of us…" So we need to mobilize other people to pay attention to reality, stop fooling around.  This is Amalek, and we know that Amalek never goes away. So why don’t we deal with it?  We want to sleep, we don’t want to pay attention?

Molly Zoll—There is no question that we need to organize and have some group to work on this because it is not a problem that is going to disappear by ignoring it . We really need to organize people and discuss it, and make others aware of it, and what the ramifications of it are.