Last summer, I was in Israel when the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival began, and I returned just after the showing of “Rachel” at the Castro Theatre.
Hearing of the controversy, I drove to Berkeley for the second showing, and after watching the film, I was surprised that such a heated debate had erupted. Only later did I learn that it was more about Cindy Corrie’s post-film Q&A session — and some of the audience’s rude behavior — rather than the film itself.
Since that time, I can hardly recall a single issue of j. that didn’t mention — in articles or letters — the controversy and its ensuing developments. As we all know, some in the community demanded public penance from SFJFF executive director Peter Stein, and severe repercussions from the S.F-based Jewish Community Federation.
My greatest fear since has been that the loud and consistent demands for vengeance might succeed in stifling the SFJFF’s responsibility to bring us the outstanding array of films we’ve seen for nearly three decades, including, and especially, its so-called controversial ones.
And despite reassurances in j. last month that they have no intention of backing away from challenging films, I am concerned that the memory of the uproar and the scars that remain might have taken their toll on the independence of the festival committee and federation leadership.
In the eight summers I have lived in San Francisco, I have been to every SFJFF and have made it my business to see almost every film. I have learned about the perspectives within the broad spectrum of Jewish life toward the Holocaust, homosexuality, Israeli life, intermarriage, Palestinians, rituals, Yiddish culture, the various religious movements and countless more.
The festival certainly provides me with incredible entertainment, but more importantly, it has enabled me to better function as a rabbi, keeping me up to date on the wide and tremendously significant civilization called the Jewish People.
A mistake was made, we see with hindsight, in the program that followed “Rachel” last year. But the overly critical and relentlessly unforgiving response throughout this past year — perhaps only from a small minority, but certainly a vocal one — is shameful and even dangerous if it stifles the content and courage of future festivals.
I understand the fears that may have driven the radical outcry of condemnation after that fateful evening. They are born from the feeling of many that we Jews are once again alone in the world. With the threat of a nuclear Iran, a self-blinding United Nations, an uncompromising Arab world and a European Union that seems to be transforming into an Islamic continent before our very eyes, it seems reasonable to want to close ranks.
And we are angered when we feel undermined by those whom we believe to be naive and gullible Jews who fail to realize that the enemy is using them as instruments of our own destruction. I understand that fear and that Holocaust-hardened perspective. But that is no excuse for narrowing the path of what we need to hear and see and understand.
My pride in being a committed Jew comes in large measure from our People’s willingness to look at ourselves critically; from our openness to ideas that at first may seem foreign; and from our penchant for questioning authority and the norm.
We are and always have been a People living along a continuum. Only extremists and fundamentalists demand that we all stand under one placard. I don’t want anyone condemning the festival for showing gay Jews davening, or secular Jews questioning, or traif-eating Jews laughing. I want to see Judaism and Jewish life and Jewish views as they are, not only as I might think they should be. I want to look at a screen when I attend the SFJFF, not a mirror.
As this year’s film festival is about to begin, I hope we will be acutely careful of the way we deal with our differences, and extremely suspicious of the eagerness to condemn those who welcome and encourage debate.
And that is what Mr. Stein and his committee have done so far and I hope will continue to do — expose us to our own differences and shake us from our complacency, even if it makes us feel somewhat insecure and even if once in a while an error is made.
I’d rather live with the occasional mistake than not ever be challenged.
Israelis can handle differences. I hope we can too. And to Mr. Stein’s inflexible critics, I urge you to rethink your stone-throwing — Yom Kippur is not that far away! If you must throw something, let it be breadcrumbs into the water on Rosh Hashanah. We all know that rocks break glass, but it’s challah that’s binding.
Rabbi Moshe Levin is the spiritual leader of Congregation Ner Tamid, a Conservative synagogue in San Francisco.