About a Menorah
Aug. 15th, 2011 11:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretThese are the facts as I have them:
-X-Men First Class is an exciting, technically well-executed movie in which Erik Lehnsherr, the future Magneto and a Holocaust survivor, teams up with Charles Xavier, the future Professor X, to fight a former Nazi war criminal named Schmidt who becomes the X-Men superbaddy Sebastian Shaw. The characters were created by Jews, including Jack Kirby and Stan Lee (formerly Jacob Kurtzberg and Stanley Leiber). The screenplay concept was by a Polish-American named J. Straczynski with a confessed affection for writing Jewish characters (Ivanova's Rabbi uncle on Babylon 5 being a stunning if perplexing example), the screenwriters were a mixture of American Jews and non-Jews, and the film was produced by a Jew named Bryan Singer who has always linked his affection for the X-Men to his Jewish experience.
-The movie has sparked some controversy within LJ's Jewish fandom community. Some of the conversation has been public, while much of it has been private. The Holocaust is an issue that always grips my community's attention, and everyone involved has, well, to say strong feelings would be to understate the manner. Let me put it this way. Everyone in my community knows someone who survived the Holocaust. Everyone in my community knows someone who didn't. That's the kind of feelings everyone coming into this conversation has, and figuring out how to have conversations like this without trampling on those feelings is not the easiest thing in the world. Therefore much of the conversation has been private.
Incidentally, and I'm going on a bit of a tangent because I think it's important to note, incidentally I think there are ways in which these conversations are more difficult for American Jews to have on the Internet than Israeli Jews, because for Israeli Jews these things have been national, public topics of conversation among Jews for years, while for American Jews these are conversations we're used to trying to have quietly without our goyish neighbors listening in. The posts from the Jewish fandom community that I've seen get slung around the most include those of Abigail Nussbaum and Marina, both Israelis. I don't think this is entirely coincidental. On the other hand, it's dangerous to stereotype, it's complicated to assume, and relations between Israeli and American Jews are pretty tense right now for a variety of reasons. I don't want to say anything about this too categorically, but I think it's worth keeping in mind as you explore the conversation.
-The reason we're still talking about this movie is because, for whatever its faults, nearly everyone agrees with my first fact. X-Men First Class was a well-made movie. It has all the hallmarks of a well-thought out action-adventure story, with attention to detail, attention to character, attention to storytelling basics. It has some pacing problems, a lot of critics have said (and I agree) but that doesn't take away from the fact that, for a Hollywood film, it does many things right. Because of this, many people are still engaging with the movie. Also because of this, many people find the parts that do stick out as poorly executed as particularly glaring.
-One subject of controversy is a scene in which Charles invades Erik's mind and brings up a childhood memory of his mother lighting candles. There are a varying number of candles and afterimages of candles visible on screen, but when the shot is most focused, there seem to be seven candles in a row. 3 already lit, the fourth being lit with an eighth candle, and three more waiting to be lit.
-A menorah is an object used in Temple worship to symbolize, according to Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch, the unity of the Jewish people in the service to God. it consists of a single beaten piece of gold with seven branches of even height. Each branch holds oil which is lit on a daily basis in the Temple in Jerusalem. When you light a menorah, you always light all branches.
-A Chanukah menorah or Chanukiah is an object used on Chanukah to remember a miracle involved the Temple menorah. It consists of eight branches on the same height and a ninth branch at a different height. Often, but not always, this consists of four branches on each side of the ninth, higher branch. There are alternate arrangements, however, where the eight branches are in a row and the ninth is to one side. I own chanukiot of both types, personally. When you light a chanukiah you light the candle in the ninth slot, the shammes, every night. You also light an ascending number of the other candles- one on the first night, two on the second, up to eight on the eighth night, using the shammes to light the other candles.
-The candles we see in XMFC are not arranged in the typical chanukiah arrangement. The 7 candles suggest it might be a menorah instead, but this is baffling because there is no occasion when European Jews light menorahs and there is no occasion when a menorah is lit from a candle as if it were a Chanukiah. It is also possible that this is a chanukiah of the rarer type, with all the candles in a row and the shammes on the end, but this is problematic because it is a rare, somewhat obscure type of chanukiah (though as I said, I own one, so it's not that rare), and because it seems a little odd to show the candles set up for the 7th night of Chanukah. Why the 7th and not the 8th, with its fuller display of lights, or the 1st, when the first bloom of excitement is still on? It is also possible that the filmmakers half-assed their research and got this so completely wrong we cannot even comprehend what they got wrong. Many people think this is case, and it's probably Occam's explanation.
-The other issue raised is why a menorah is what is being lit at all. Chanukah is a major American Jewish holiday, because it falls roughly at the same time as Christmas and the practice of amplifying Chanukah is connected with American Jewry's ambiguous assimilatory impulse, which I've written about many times. Chanukah is not a particularly theologically significant holiday and it's not a holiday with very much in the way of ritual observance- the menorah and a single added prayer in the morning service is about it.
-If I were making a movie about a Holocaust survivor recalling a single Jewish memory from his childhood, there would be two obvious choices that would come before the Chanukah menorah. First would be the lighting of the Shabbat candles. It's a weekly observance, fundamentally about family, with the same bright lights that make for good cinema. And it's much more central to Jewish life than Chanukah. The second would be the recitation of the nighttime Shema, specifically because of a legend about Jewish orphans held in Catholic orphanages during the Holocaust. According to the legend, a Jew trying to reclaim the children after the War proved which ones were Jewish by singing the Shema. All of the Jewish children, says the legend, called out for their mothers. A callback to that legend would have been particularly potent. Chanukah, a ritual not marked as fervently nor held in as high esteem, seems an odd, American-centric choice.
-However, there are significant symbolic reasons why Chanukah licht does make a good choice. First, there are more candles than on Shabbat, and it's thus a brighter, more cinematically memorable scene. And frankly, I have bright, vivid memories of my own childhood Chanukah licht for exactly this reason. I can easily recall standing around with my family, chanting the prayers and looking at the candles and out the window. More significantly, the Chanukiah is a rare moment where the specific obligation is to make a public display of your ritual. Unlike the Shabbat candles, the Chanukiah must be placed in a public-facing window if at all possible. It is a public declaration of our belief in God's miracles and our identity as Jews in the midst of powerful majorities. I can see that as being an important signpost for Erik, whose whole identity is crafted around the idea of never having to be ashamed of who he is. Thirdly, Charles is the one who triggers the memory and he is an upper class American goy, so for all the reasons discussed above Chanukah might be the first place he'd seek out Erik's "Jewish" childhood memories.
-Alternatively, the filmmakers may have considered other options and chosen the Chanukah licht because they assumed that their primarily Christian audience would get it more easily. They may have chosen not to worry about the details of the Chanukiah because again, they assumed their primarily Christian audience would not notice.
-There has been a tendency to dismiss elements of this film that ring false to one's Jewish experience as "typical Hollywood". I think this is probably a partially valid criticism, but I want to reiterate the point from the first paragraph: A blockbuster comic book adaptation is a complicated thing and it's hard to point to who the 'creator' is, but many of the creators of this film are Jewish. And also, you know, the thing I said in paragraph two: Everyone in my community knows someone who survived the Holocaust. Everyone in my community knows someone who didn't. Same applies for the Jewish creators of this film. Worth keeping in mind.
-I've tried to focus on facts. The movie struck some very personal nerves for me and I have strong opinions about it, but in this post I'm simply seeking to lay out the many, many sides of the debate and not to invalidate anybody's position. Hopefully that is something of value.
(Some posts to check out:
http://oaktree89.livejournal.com/147318.html
http://wrongquestions.blogspot.com/2011/06/x-men-first-class.html
http://marina.dreamwidth.org/1128951.html
)
-X-Men First Class is an exciting, technically well-executed movie in which Erik Lehnsherr, the future Magneto and a Holocaust survivor, teams up with Charles Xavier, the future Professor X, to fight a former Nazi war criminal named Schmidt who becomes the X-Men superbaddy Sebastian Shaw. The characters were created by Jews, including Jack Kirby and Stan Lee (formerly Jacob Kurtzberg and Stanley Leiber). The screenplay concept was by a Polish-American named J. Straczynski with a confessed affection for writing Jewish characters (Ivanova's Rabbi uncle on Babylon 5 being a stunning if perplexing example), the screenwriters were a mixture of American Jews and non-Jews, and the film was produced by a Jew named Bryan Singer who has always linked his affection for the X-Men to his Jewish experience.
-The movie has sparked some controversy within LJ's Jewish fandom community. Some of the conversation has been public, while much of it has been private. The Holocaust is an issue that always grips my community's attention, and everyone involved has, well, to say strong feelings would be to understate the manner. Let me put it this way. Everyone in my community knows someone who survived the Holocaust. Everyone in my community knows someone who didn't. That's the kind of feelings everyone coming into this conversation has, and figuring out how to have conversations like this without trampling on those feelings is not the easiest thing in the world. Therefore much of the conversation has been private.
Incidentally, and I'm going on a bit of a tangent because I think it's important to note, incidentally I think there are ways in which these conversations are more difficult for American Jews to have on the Internet than Israeli Jews, because for Israeli Jews these things have been national, public topics of conversation among Jews for years, while for American Jews these are conversations we're used to trying to have quietly without our goyish neighbors listening in. The posts from the Jewish fandom community that I've seen get slung around the most include those of Abigail Nussbaum and Marina, both Israelis. I don't think this is entirely coincidental. On the other hand, it's dangerous to stereotype, it's complicated to assume, and relations between Israeli and American Jews are pretty tense right now for a variety of reasons. I don't want to say anything about this too categorically, but I think it's worth keeping in mind as you explore the conversation.
-The reason we're still talking about this movie is because, for whatever its faults, nearly everyone agrees with my first fact. X-Men First Class was a well-made movie. It has all the hallmarks of a well-thought out action-adventure story, with attention to detail, attention to character, attention to storytelling basics. It has some pacing problems, a lot of critics have said (and I agree) but that doesn't take away from the fact that, for a Hollywood film, it does many things right. Because of this, many people are still engaging with the movie. Also because of this, many people find the parts that do stick out as poorly executed as particularly glaring.
-One subject of controversy is a scene in which Charles invades Erik's mind and brings up a childhood memory of his mother lighting candles. There are a varying number of candles and afterimages of candles visible on screen, but when the shot is most focused, there seem to be seven candles in a row. 3 already lit, the fourth being lit with an eighth candle, and three more waiting to be lit.
-A menorah is an object used in Temple worship to symbolize, according to Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch, the unity of the Jewish people in the service to God. it consists of a single beaten piece of gold with seven branches of even height. Each branch holds oil which is lit on a daily basis in the Temple in Jerusalem. When you light a menorah, you always light all branches.
-A Chanukah menorah or Chanukiah is an object used on Chanukah to remember a miracle involved the Temple menorah. It consists of eight branches on the same height and a ninth branch at a different height. Often, but not always, this consists of four branches on each side of the ninth, higher branch. There are alternate arrangements, however, where the eight branches are in a row and the ninth is to one side. I own chanukiot of both types, personally. When you light a chanukiah you light the candle in the ninth slot, the shammes, every night. You also light an ascending number of the other candles- one on the first night, two on the second, up to eight on the eighth night, using the shammes to light the other candles.
-The candles we see in XMFC are not arranged in the typical chanukiah arrangement. The 7 candles suggest it might be a menorah instead, but this is baffling because there is no occasion when European Jews light menorahs and there is no occasion when a menorah is lit from a candle as if it were a Chanukiah. It is also possible that this is a chanukiah of the rarer type, with all the candles in a row and the shammes on the end, but this is problematic because it is a rare, somewhat obscure type of chanukiah (though as I said, I own one, so it's not that rare), and because it seems a little odd to show the candles set up for the 7th night of Chanukah. Why the 7th and not the 8th, with its fuller display of lights, or the 1st, when the first bloom of excitement is still on? It is also possible that the filmmakers half-assed their research and got this so completely wrong we cannot even comprehend what they got wrong. Many people think this is case, and it's probably Occam's explanation.
-The other issue raised is why a menorah is what is being lit at all. Chanukah is a major American Jewish holiday, because it falls roughly at the same time as Christmas and the practice of amplifying Chanukah is connected with American Jewry's ambiguous assimilatory impulse, which I've written about many times. Chanukah is not a particularly theologically significant holiday and it's not a holiday with very much in the way of ritual observance- the menorah and a single added prayer in the morning service is about it.
-If I were making a movie about a Holocaust survivor recalling a single Jewish memory from his childhood, there would be two obvious choices that would come before the Chanukah menorah. First would be the lighting of the Shabbat candles. It's a weekly observance, fundamentally about family, with the same bright lights that make for good cinema. And it's much more central to Jewish life than Chanukah. The second would be the recitation of the nighttime Shema, specifically because of a legend about Jewish orphans held in Catholic orphanages during the Holocaust. According to the legend, a Jew trying to reclaim the children after the War proved which ones were Jewish by singing the Shema. All of the Jewish children, says the legend, called out for their mothers. A callback to that legend would have been particularly potent. Chanukah, a ritual not marked as fervently nor held in as high esteem, seems an odd, American-centric choice.
-However, there are significant symbolic reasons why Chanukah licht does make a good choice. First, there are more candles than on Shabbat, and it's thus a brighter, more cinematically memorable scene. And frankly, I have bright, vivid memories of my own childhood Chanukah licht for exactly this reason. I can easily recall standing around with my family, chanting the prayers and looking at the candles and out the window. More significantly, the Chanukiah is a rare moment where the specific obligation is to make a public display of your ritual. Unlike the Shabbat candles, the Chanukiah must be placed in a public-facing window if at all possible. It is a public declaration of our belief in God's miracles and our identity as Jews in the midst of powerful majorities. I can see that as being an important signpost for Erik, whose whole identity is crafted around the idea of never having to be ashamed of who he is. Thirdly, Charles is the one who triggers the memory and he is an upper class American goy, so for all the reasons discussed above Chanukah might be the first place he'd seek out Erik's "Jewish" childhood memories.
-Alternatively, the filmmakers may have considered other options and chosen the Chanukah licht because they assumed that their primarily Christian audience would get it more easily. They may have chosen not to worry about the details of the Chanukiah because again, they assumed their primarily Christian audience would not notice.
-There has been a tendency to dismiss elements of this film that ring false to one's Jewish experience as "typical Hollywood". I think this is probably a partially valid criticism, but I want to reiterate the point from the first paragraph: A blockbuster comic book adaptation is a complicated thing and it's hard to point to who the 'creator' is, but many of the creators of this film are Jewish. And also, you know, the thing I said in paragraph two: Everyone in my community knows someone who survived the Holocaust. Everyone in my community knows someone who didn't. Same applies for the Jewish creators of this film. Worth keeping in mind.
-I've tried to focus on facts. The movie struck some very personal nerves for me and I have strong opinions about it, but in this post I'm simply seeking to lay out the many, many sides of the debate and not to invalidate anybody's position. Hopefully that is something of value.
(Some posts to check out:
http://oaktree89.livejournal.com/147318.html
http://wrongquestions.blogspot.com/2011/06/x-men-first-class.html
http://marina.dreamwidth.org/1128951.html
)
(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-15 04:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-15 06:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-15 06:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-15 04:45 pm (UTC)*even if your point still stands
(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-15 08:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-15 05:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-15 05:33 pm (UTC)Everyone in my community knows someone who survived the Holocaust. Everyone in my community knows someone who didn't.
It is not my intent here to claim to be part of the Jewish community: I am not and I know that. However, I am of European Jewish ancestry, and I always thought that somehow I was one of the few who didn't have any ties to the Holocaust. If we had, surely someone would have told me. I forget if I've mentioned this to you already, but earlier this summer my father was contacted by a relative of ours now living in Australia. She told my father of some relatives of ours who did not survive the Holocaust. What is the most shocking thing to my father is that he had no clue that these family members even existed. They just weren't talked about by our American relatives, it's as if my grandparents and grand aunts/uncles didn't want to acknowledge that their cousins in Europe existed at all. It makes me wonder if the family had some falling out, or just lost touch, or if this was a defense mechanism by my grandparents' generation to separate them from the horror of it. I still don't know these people's names, or how many there were, but I do know how they were related to me and I've read some translated letters they wrote to my ancestors in the US.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-15 05:59 pm (UTC)The birthday cake point is a valid one, I think, and again a reminder to avoid assumptions. To me the scene looks very clearly like a Chanukah licht with the candles shuffled up, particularly because she is using one candle to light the others, but you could be right. We never see the fixture that the candles are sitting in.