January 7, 2013 | 2:07 pm

‘Zero Dark Thirty’ torture debate obscures bigger issues (Part 2)

Posted by Danielle Berrin

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[Read part I here]

The Oscar-hopeful film “Zero Dark Thirty,” about the ten-year manhunt for Osama bin Laden, has been the source of intense debate over its depiction of American use of torture.

Filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow, the film’s director and screenwriter Mark Boal have both been accused of promoting the effectiveness of torture, albeit misleadingly, as well as deeper insults such as artistic moral blindness.

The film’s impact has reverberated in the press and  in the corridors of power in Washington, igniting debate about the role “coercive” interrogation played in the eventual revelation of Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts. Last week, the Senate Intelligence Committee launched an investigation into the contact between the filmmakers and their sources at the C.I.A., citing “inappropriate” and misleading exchange of information.

But outrage at the filmmakers’ depiction of torture, and its questionable usefulness, is misdirected. Though some allege that the U.S.’s controversial interrogation program caused convulsions throughout the halls of government, the compromised behavior of the country during the ceaseless War On Terror was not only evident in its application of so-called “enhanced interrogation.”

To truly discern the country’s post 9/11 values in action, one need not focus on movie scenes of torture (that may or may not have helped find Osama bin Laden), but on the actual sequence of events that occurred during Operation Neptune Spear, just around Zero Dark Thirty, the night bin Laden was killed.

Since that fateful night almost two years ago, various and often contradictory accounts have emerged to explain the sequence of events leading to the death of the world’s most wanted terrorist. Early accounts from the White House, as well as the New York Times, depicted a valorous tale of U.S. bravery in the face of unmitigated danger. But as more information surfaces and more individuals step forward with firsthand accounts, a different, more complicated picture arises.

In his review of Mark Owen and Kevin Maurer’s book, “No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama bin Laden” (Owen is a pseudonym for retired SEAL Matt Bissonnette who participated in the raid) Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Steve Coll writes in The New York Review of Books that “there might be more to the subject of bin Laden’s killing than a straightforward story of justice delivered.”

In his essay, he pieces together numerous accounts and statements that unveil the potential moral hypocrisy of the U.S. strategy -- a strategy carried out by both the Bush and Obama Administrations -- claiming to want bin Laden “dead or alive.”

Coll suggests that although the U.S. government had stated its willingness to capture bin Laden alive, even claiming it as a goal, the facts suggest this was a dubious proposition: “a fig leaf created mainly for appearances’ sake.”

In his insightful and revelatory article, Coll points to the various moral and political dilemmas counterterrorism has imposed on the Obama administration, leading it to wrestle with the perdurability of American values. For example, Coll explains, both the public and political risks of putting terrorists on trial ultimately “led [the] White House to discover that ‘killing was a lot easier than capturing,’” a phrase coined by journalist Daniel Klaidman who used it to title his book “Kill or Capture.” 

How to ethically and responsibly handle the capture of terrorists proved a heavy burden. The failure, for example, of the Obama Administration and Congress to engender enough political will to shutter the prison at Guantánamo Bay is probably the most salient emblem of the its political usefulness, even though its existence exacts a moral cost.

Coll writes:


President Obama...never said publicly whether he favored putting bin Laden on trial or killing him. In early 2009, in a speech at the National Archives, Obama announced that he would end the policy of using interrogation methods judged to be torture by the International Red Cross, and that he would close Guantánamo’s prison. He indicated that he would be open to trying some terrorists before military commissions, rather than dispatching all of Guantánamo’s inmates to federal courtrooms, but he declared that we “cannot keep this country safe unless we enlist the power of our most fundamental values.” He promised policies based on “an abiding confidence in the rule of law and due process.” He added that “fidelity to our values” is the “reason why enemy soldiers have surrendered to us in battle, knowing they’d receive better treatment from America’s Armed Forces than from their own government.”

And yet, Coll claims that the values propounded above are inconsistent with some of the actions the government has taken -- particularly on the night Osama bin Laden was killed, a drama that constitutes the climax and conclusion of “Zero Dark Thirty.” Here, again, as in the film’s early scenes of torture, the filmmakers have chosen to treat certain details with disturbing ambiguity.

Coll does a great service in attempting to reconcile Bissonnette’s firsthand account with other “official” accounts. And he goes not shrink from addressing the veracity of Bissonnette’s claims:

Typically, the authors of such memoirs submit their manuscripts before publication for official review, to scrub the works of classified information. Bissonnette declined to do so; he writes that he eliminated all secret information from his book on his own. The Pentagon has declared that Bissonnette is in breach of his legal obligations, but so far the government has taken no action against him.

The main thrust of Coll’s argument is this: Early reports of the raid claimed that a “firefight” took place between bin Laden and members of SEAL Team 6, that he used women’s bodies as shields during a gunfight -- thusly implying there was a struggle and bin Laden was “justly” killed. But revelations from Bissonnette’s book depict a scene in which none of that happened; he claims there was no firefight with bin Laden and that he was unarmed when he was killed. Coll recounts: “Bin Laden had stored a gun on a shelf nearby but it contained no ammunition; there has been no evidence that he tried to get hold of it; he was neither armed nor aggressive at the moment of his death.”

Nevertheless, the following is Bissonnette’s description of how bin Laden died:

The point man’s shots had entered the right side of [bin Laden’s] head. Blood and brains spilled out of the side of his skull. In his death throes, he was still twitching and convulsing. Another assaulter and I trained our lasers on his chest and fired several rounds. The bullets tore into him, slamming his body into the floor until he was motionless.

Though the SEAL Team commendably held their fire earlier in the raid when a woman exited the compound carrying a baby, their approach to bin Laden was altogether different. It seems this was due to orders.

"Having chosen to go in on the ground," Coll writes, "Obama evidently did not wish to design a mission that precluded the theoretical possibility that bin Laden might surrender. Instead, he approved rules of engagement that made bin Laden’s surrender all but impossible."

Coll adds that in Klaidman’s book, “Kill or Capture,” a Pentagon official is quoted as saying, “The only way bin Laden was going to be taken alive was if he was naked, had his hands in the air, was waving a white flag, and was unambiguously shouting, ‘I surrender.’”

Thus, the question about protocol arises, and whether or not that protocol was in line with American values of due process, enemy surrender, and other principles enumerated in Obama’s National Archives speech. Furthermore, it makes the issue of torture’s efficacy -- and the subsequent Congressional fury over a movie portrayal -- seem beside the point.

Again and again, the filmmakers of “Zero Dark Thirty” have claimed they did their best to recount events as they happened, without offering commentary or critique. It is the film's strength and its weakness. But to blame them for excising a moral debate about torture when the U.S. government's position is frightfully tenuous seems misguided.

In the end, “Zero Dark Thirty’s” brilliance is in its blankness. In presenting a decade-long sequence of events that will likely go down in history as the most pivotal and world-changing ten-years of the 21st century, the filmmakers are inviting audiences to think deeply and to reflect; not to garner meaning but to impose their own on the film’s morally blank slate. Seen that way, the vigorous responses to “Zero Dark” are quite refreshing, even promising, if in some way they indicate that true values can’t be prescribed by politics or presidents, but are gleaned through human instinct.  

January 7, 2013 | 12:22 pm

‘Zero Dark Thirty’ torture debate obscures bigger issues

Posted by Danielle Berrin

With Academy Award nominations just days away, the Oscar-winning team that includes director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal continue to endure harsh ignominy for their portrayal of torture in the Oscar-hopeful movie “Zero Dark Thirty.”

Over the past year and a half, they have been accused of various improprieties by the press, the left, and the right, including but not limited to: obtaining classified information from acting CIA operatives, using their extensive access to make a film that might boost Obama’s re-election campaign, and then, when the film’s release date was pushed from October 2012 to December 2012 (effectively cloistering it in the dark during the November election), the revelation of its content brought forth angry charges that the film promotes torture’s efficacy. Adding insult to injury, the film’s unflinching and uncritical presentation of torture prompted yet more accusations of moral equivalency and even moral bankruptcy.

Who said pursuing an Oscar was easy?

The conversation reached fever pitch over the last month with the film’s release and subsequently, the commencement of online voting for this year’s Oscar nominations. But although the film has captured national attention, it has been a Pyrrhic victory. 

In Washington, lawmakers are incensed at the film’s alleged intimation that coercive interrogation aided in the decade-long hunt for Osama bin Laden. As if the use of torture wasn’t bad enough, the suggestion that it might work prompted the Senate Intelligence Committee to call for an investigation into the communications between the filmmakers and their C.I.A. contacts.

At the behest of its chairwoman, California Senator Dianne Feinstein, the bi-partisan committee, which also includes Senators Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), contends that the C.I.A.’s cooperation with the filmmakers was “inappropriate” and “misleading.” In their view, the filmmakers were granted information that they should not have been granted and came to conclusions they should not have come to.

In a Dec.19 letter to Michael Morell, acting director of the C.I.A., the committee unequivocally states that the revelation of bin Laden's hideout was not at all an outcome of employing torture:

The Senate Intelligence Committee’s recently-adopted Study of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation program concluded that the CIA did not first learn about the existence of the bin Laden courier from CIA detainees subjected to coercive interrogation techniques and that the CIA detainee who provided the most accurate information about the courier provided the information prior to being subjected to coercive interrogation techniques.

The film has struck both political and moral nerves. But its turn from being seen as campaign season agitprop (Obama got bin Laden!) to inspiring political shame and moral outrage (torture is evil and pointless!) has more to do with political preening and posturing than the film itself. 

The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer provides the worst indictment, eloquently accusing the film of having "zero conscience" and Bigelow of “milk[ing] the U.S. torture program for drama while sidestepping the political and ethical debate that it provoked.

"In her hands," Mayer writes, "the hunt for bin Laden is essentially a police procedural, devoid of moral context.”

Mayer writes:

In reality, the C.I.A.’s program of calibrated cruelty was deemed so illegal, and so immoral, that the director of the F.B.I. withdrew his personnel rather than have them collaborate with it, and the top lawyer at the Pentagon laid his career on the line in an effort to stop a version of the program from spreading to the armed forces. The C.I.A.’s actions convulsed the national-security community, leading to a crisis of conscience inside the top ranks of the U.S. government.

Mayer’s beef is: How dare the filmmakers show lurid scenes of bodily abuse and human degradation without showing the concomitant agony involved in inflicting it.

The filmmakers have defended themselves by insisting their only goal was to make a realistic film without an agenda. “The film doesn’t have an agenda, and it doesn’t judge,” Bigelow told the New Yorker’s Dexter Filkins. But according to the film’s production notes, distributed to the press at a recent screening, the filmmakers were very much aware of the moral sensitivities surrounding their subject matter:

The film encompasses sweeping events spanning nearly a decade, journeying across multiple countries and involving a precisely chosen cast of hundreds...whose objective was to capture the on-the-ground reality of this mission as truthfully as possible. To that end, it pulls no punches in documenting the moral lines -- including torture -- that were crossed. The intention was to create a cinematic work with the sweep and human emotion of a historical novel.

The difference it seems, might be one of semantics. What do they mean by “crossed”? Judging by the film, crossed might just mean “happened.” But according to Mayer, “crossed” should mean crossing a boundary.

The filmmakers have also been accused of boundary-pushing when it comes to the truth. Mayer also unloads on them for “distort[ing] history,” in particular, the film’s alleged claim that torture helped obtain intelligence that led to the courier that led to Osama bin Laden’s Abbottabad hideout. This reasoning seems to cohere with the Senate Intelligence Committee’s view that not only is torture inhumane and immoral (and embarrassing), it is ineffective.     

But in other circles, torture’s usefulness is still a matter of debate. When C.I.A. acting director Michael Morell responded to the Senate Intelligence inquiry, he wrote: “Some [intelligence related to bin Laden’s location] came from detainees subjected to enhanced techniques, but there were many other sources as well.” Furthermore, according to the New York Daily News, Morell has also said: "Whether enhanced interrogation techniques were the only timely and effective way to obtain information from those detainees, as the film suggests, is a matter of debate that cannot and never will be definitively resolved."

As Mayer points out, whether or not torture “worked” is not the most important issue in this debate (she also subtly suggests that any defense of torture likely comes from “self-serving accounts of C.I.A. officers implicated in the interrogation program”). But what no one -- including Mayer -- seems to want to say is that all this rage at the filmmakers is sorely displaced. Regardless of agenda or implication, the filmmakers included torture in their movie because America has included torture in its war on terrorism.

Is all this outrage really about Hollywood’s misunderstanding of American wartime conduct -- and/or its refusal to denounce it? Or is it sadness and shame at America’s failure to enforce its own values in a bind?

To truly discern the country’s post 9/11 values in action, one need not focus on movie scenes of torture -- that may or may not have helped find Osama bin Laden -- but on the actual sequence of events that occurred during Operation Neptune Spear, just around Zero Dark Thirty, the night Osama bin Laden was killed.

Read Part II

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January 3, 2013 | 2:34 pm

Even in Hollywood, Noah’s Ark survives a flood

Posted by Danielle Berrin

In retrospect it was a gross misnomer and an audacious assumption to call the Titanic “unsinkable.” But in theory, the notion that such a designation should apply to a water vessel is rather basic and logical, and can probably trace its origins to the biblical story of Noah.

When God promises to bring flood waters upon the earth so vanquishing they will “destroy all flesh under the sky,” he instructs Noah to build an ark to withstand it. 
Said ark is made of gopher wood, various compartments, and according to God’s instruction, measures about 450 ft x 75 ft x 45 ft. It is completely enclosed, saved for “an opening for daylight” and in fact weathers the calamitous storm intended by God to reset life on earth. 

For remarkable feats to occur in the Bible, though, is really unremarkable. It often seems the bible’s very purpose is to imbue the many miserable conditions of human life with a sense that the miraculous is possible. In reality, for anything to be as “unsinkable” as Noah’s Ark would require both superlative (or supernatural) design and the unintended (or preordained?) kindness of nature.

In no small feat of irony, a Hollywood film about Noah and his Ark had the right mix of the aforementioned blessings. The Darren Aronofsky-directed movie which stars Russell Crowe as Noah was filming on location in Oyster Bay, Long Island when Hurricane Sandy hit last November. The actress Emma Watson, who also stars in the film, then tweeted: “I take it that the irony of a massive storm holding up the production of Noah is not lost.”

According to the New Yorker, who reported from the set in late November, “Aronofsky’s ark stood fast against the winds of Hurricane Sandy, even as they ripped up more than three hundred trees from the surrounding arboretum."

Perhaps that’s because, as production designer Mark Friedberg explained to the magazine, the crew closely followed the biblical dictates. As the New Yorker’s Julian Sancton noted, the ark looked like a “gigantic windowless log cabin crudely slathered in pitch.”

“The Bible itself lays out the dimensions of what this thing is,” Friedberg told him.

Sancton continued:

Per Genesis, Friedberg built the ark with three levels: one each for birds, reptiles, and mammals. Insects will bunk with the reptiles. “At first there weren’t going to be insects, for budget reasons, Friedberg said, “but Darren decided, ‘We can’t not have insects.’” (Friedberg made cheap bugs out of Lucky Charms cereal, bulgur wheat, and coffee beans.) Instead of the Biblically prescribed gopher wood, which appears nowhere else in the Scriptures or in any botanical almanac, Friedberg’s team used pine and carved foam.

At a time when the ark could have been rendered digitally, Aronofsky’s insistence on a life-size set was equated as a “Herzogian extravagance,” but the filmmakers aspired to as much verisimilitude as possible. And also: artistry. 

According to the article, the ark’s design is influenced by the German painter and sculptor Anselm Kiefer, who is not Jewish, but whose work is said to bear the influences of Jewish mysticism, the Old Testament and especially the German history of the Holocaust, among others.

Aronofsky, who is Jewish, has said that making this film is the realization of a lifelong dream. Last July, when he first laid eyes upon his modern-art-modern-ark, he tweeted: “I dreamt about this since I was 13. And now it's a reality. Genesis 6:14.”

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December 20, 2012 | 1:49 pm

Judd Apatow’s big Jewish (Journal) moment

Posted by Danielle Berrin

Judd Apatow's latest flick, "This is 40" is a comic meditation on marriage and family and arguably his most personal film yet. It stars his wife, Leslie Mann, as well as his two daughters, Maude and Iris, and in a strong supporting role, his Jewish heritage.

In fact, there is a very funny scene in the movie about The Jewish Journal. As our own Naomi Pfefferman, the Journal’s arts and entertainment editor described it:

a shlubby journalist wearing a yarmulke shows up to do an interview and is described as being from the “Jewish Journal” — much to the chagrin of Pete (Paul Rudd), a record-label owner whose career and marriage are on the rocks. The only reporter who’s shown up to profile Pete’s star client, rocker Graham Parker, is (gasp!) from the Journal. “Apparently old Jews are the only ones who still buy hard copies of records. ... Because they don’t know what downloading means,” one of Pete’s employees explains. 

“Why is this album different from all other albums?” the reporter, played by Rolling Stone journalist David Wild, asks Parker. “It isn’t,” comes the tart reply.

Apatow was probably channeling Pfefferman, who has interviewed him several times over the years, when he thought of including a “Jewish Journal reporter” in his movie. It’s because of her, really, that our local, niche paper won a starring role in a big Hollywood flick, and so, you know, even though the Jewish journalist doesn’t come off as the hippest person ever, we’re still really proud.

“I insult myself all the time in my movies, so why not you?” Apatow joked during his recent interview with Pfefferman. “Remember,” he added, “I only make fun of the people I love.”

Yesterday, I called David Wild, the Rolling Stone contributing editor, author and TV writer to ask him how he prepared for his role as “Jewish Journalist”. “I prayed in a non-Jewish way that this would happen,” Wild said, upon answering the phone.

Wild was a rock journalist before becoming a go-to writer for television specials like the Grammys, Oscars and tonight’s CMA Country Christmas special on ABC -- but he never knew he was an actor. One fortuitous day, however, he got a call from an agent at Creative Artists Agency, where he is repped as a writer, who told him he was being offered a part in Judd Apatow’s new movie.

 

Wild was both confused and elated. He had known Apatow previously, after contributing some music-related writing to the NBC show “Freaks and Geeks” and “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story,” both Apatow projects.

“I am very happy and grateful that somehow, when Judd thought of ‘Jewish journalist’ he thought of me,” Wild said. “As we all know, Jews have never made it in the media.”

Apatow offered scant direction for Wild’s big debut, though he asked him to bring a yarmulke to the set and to think of some questions Wild might ask in a real interview. Even though the original script didn’t offer the journalist any lines, Wild felt compelled to do some real “method work” and come up with questions that had “Talmudic relevance.”

On the day of the shoot, Wild did the Passover seder proud: “Why is this album different from any other album?” was his big Jewy query. The ad-libbed line made it into the film and Wild is very proud that during the premiere it elicited a “chortle” from Seth Rogen. “That’s when I felt the gods were on my side -- that was very gratifying for me.”

Apatow later declared on Twitter that Wild’s was the “best yarmulke performance in any of my films.” 

Wild believes the yarmulke came from Temple Israel of Hollywood, where he is a member and where his sons were Bar Mitzvahed. But like Apatow, he stops short of calling himself “religious.”

“I’ve been told by one of my best friends, who is Orthodox, that I’ve always had a very Jewish soul,” Wild said. “If I have one, I think it is very Jewish, and in that same sense as with Judd, [Jewishness] comes out all the time.”

So in the end, "Jewish Journal reporter" was exactly the right way to start his acting career.

“No one is enjoying their nine words of fame more than me,” he said.

Except for THE JEWISH JOURNAL, that may be true.

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December 19, 2012 | 4:09 pm

The Elon Gold standard

Posted by Danielle Berrin

INT: Cigar Bar, Melrose Avenue. A cold afternoon in early December. A young-looking comedian sits alone, intensely focused, furiously typing through a cloud of smoke and eating a tuna sandwich.

“Oh, please don’t start with: ‘He was eating a tuna sandwich,’ ” Elon Gold says, half playfully, half pleading. 

What’s wrong with a tuna sandwich?

“It’s not technically from a kosher restaurant,” he says.

The 42-year-old stand-up comic is hardly the first Jewish entertainer to insist on “looking cool” while exhibiting a healthy dose of religious Jewish anxiety. But he may be the only person ever to have asked “Baywatch” babe Pamela Anderson if she’d adjust her work schedule so he could celebrate Shabbat. 

“ ‘Oh, I love Shabbos!’ ” Gold recalls her saying. “She totally got it.”

But their show together, the Fox sitcom “Stacked,” helmed by Steven Levitan, pre-“Modern Family,” only lasted 19 episodes, so Gold will probably have to have that conversation again. And again and again.

Being Modern Orthodox in modern Hollywood isn’t uncomplicated (or uncompromising), but Gold says reconciling his religious life with his professional life has been more blessing than curse. For starters, there is the mine of material, a glut of kitschy stand-up routines like “Elon Gold: Half Jewish, Half Very Jewish” or this week’s “Merry Erev Christmas,” his fifth annual event, at the Laugh Factory in Hollywood. 

“You can’t get away from the Jewish thing when it comes to me,” Gold said. “I own it, and I’m proud of it.”

The more pressing dilemma of his life, rather, is that he’s just plain frustrated. “I’m sexually frustrated, creatively frustrated, politically frustrated; I’m frustrated about life.” 

This comes as a surprise, given how well he lives (with four kids and his wife, who was his high-school sweetheart, in a big house in Westwood) and how successful he is (a routinely employed actor and comedian who makes a bundle emceeing Jewish events nationally — “I put the ‘fun’ in fundraiser,” he quipped), not to mention, his spiritual proficiency. What could possibly be so vexing? 

“At this point in my life, I thought I’d already have a hit show under my belt, a couple of movies, be on my second or third HBO special and my 30th ‘Tonight Show,’ ” he said, explaining that he’s only on his 10th. “If I died tomorrow, there would be nothing on the shelf with me on it — and I want to leave a legacy in comedy before I leave this planet.”

Although he has appeared on several sitcoms and works fairly consistently on television, Gold came up amid a generation of comics that includes Ray Romano (“Everybody Loves Raymond”), Dave Chappelle (“Chappelle’s Show,” “Half Baked”) and Louis C.K. (“Louie”), so, by comparison, he feels a bit behind. Especially since the New York native got his first gig at 16, at the Manhattan hotspot The Comic Strip, following a young Adam Sandler in the lineup. By the time Gold matriculated at Boston University, he had built up a lucrative career touring college campuses with his stand-up show. 

“I bought my first Lexus at [age] 20 because of the college tour,” he said. “And then struggled for the next 20 years. I’m still, like, in school, waiting to graduate. You don’t get to do what you can do — what I feel I was born to do — to its fullest if you only get to do a fundraiser here, a Laugh Factory set there, an occasional guest appearance. It’s like you’re doing it in little spurts. 

“I want to be Jewish rock-star comedian, not an old-school Catskills comedian,” Gold said.

Gold prides himself on his two acts — his “Jewish act” and his “secular act” — that he’ll perform selectively, according to his audience. “I have a Jewish act that’s for my people, for people that are living Jewish lives that will get all the references,” he explained. That act, which can be seen at the requisite organizational dinners every week, is actually what has sustained him over the years, even though he says Jewish audiences in Los Angeles don’t support Jewish-themed culture enough. 

“I love performing for Jewish audiences because of the deep connection we have, but Jewish audiences are the worst audiences for comedy,” Gold said. “They’re more skeptical. We can’t let loose and have a good time. And we’re the worst laughers — it’s more of a reserved laugh, followed by thinking and planning: ‘You know, he’d be good for a fundraiser next month.’ It’s like sex with Jews. It’s always satisfying, but it’s never off-the-charts, blow-your-mind, unbelievable.” 

Despite his discontent, Gold is a pretty solidly stable guy who counts being away from his family on Shabbat as his toughest misfortune. “I’ve always had my doubts about religion, but I have really found comfort in it,” he said. 

And, for the most part, Hollywood understands. Except for that one time he turned down the season finale of a hit show because it was taping on Passover. “You just don’t do that,” he said. “When those things aren’t, ‘Oh, he’s doing a movie with Spielberg in Europe,’ but rather, ‘He’s staying home with his family to have dinner.’ It’s like, ‘How dare he? We’re not using him anymore.’ ”

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December 14, 2012 | 11:23 am

Wonder Wall

Posted by Danielle Berrin

In 1995, the musician Stevie Wonder traveled to Israel for the first time to promote his album, “Conversation Peace.”

Over the course of a late summer week, he toured the country, visited holy sites, met with Israeli and Palestinian political officials and performed for “some ten thousand fans,” Reuters reported, outside the gates of Jerusalem in Sultan’s Pool.

"I'm very excited to be in this part of the world for many reasons,” Wonder told the news agency. “Many years ago when I was a little baby and my mother was still troubled with the fact of me being visually impaired, she wanted to take me to the holy city in the hopes that maybe I would get my sight again," he said.

During his final concert, then-Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert presented Wonder with a medal of Jerusalem. Wonder expressed his gratitude by ad-libbing through one of his best-known songs: “I’m only here… in Jerusalem… because I love you.”

The following day, he met with PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat’s aide, Ahmed Tibi at Tibi’s East Jerusalem home. After presenting Wonder with gifts, the PLO spokesman reportedly said, "[Stevie Wonder] is loved by all - Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and Arabs. He's a symbol of study for equality, peace and freedom and we are very proud that you are here between us. We like your songs and we like you," he told Wonder.

But fast forward to 2012, and Stevie Wonder wouldn’t be caught dead even at a Los Angeles fundraiser for Israel. So the question must be asked: What happened? How in Wonder’s world did Israel go from Holy Land – that can cure blindness! – to hornet’s nest?

Among the various reasons for his withdrawal -- and there were many – it was reported on this blog that internal pressure from the African-American community may have played a part. And while it would be irresponsible and brash to extrapolate from this one occurrence, of which we know so little, any sweeping conclusions about the current state of relations between the Jewish and black communities, it does seem like a good time to revisit this historic alliance and ask serious questions about its perdurability.

Whatever the status of the macro-relationship between Jews and African-Americans, Jews have shown themselves to be a strong voting bloc for Obama, the first black President. In the aftermath of yet another historic moment when the American people (and indeed a majority of Jews) have chosen to re-elect a black President over a patrician white guy, and who, coincidentally, will inaugurate his second term on Martin Luther King Jr. day, there's evidence that we are entering a post-racial world.

Furthermore, the Jewish holiday of Chanukah is yet another reminder of the power of individuals and groups to take a stand and change the course of history. There was a time when Jews and blacks were united in their dream for civil equality, bonded by a shared past of enslavement and the miracle of worldly redemption. During the civil rights era, these partners walked side-by-side. They worked together tirelessly to realize not a goal, but a civic good: the American political affirmation of b’tzelem elohim – that all men are created in God’s image.

But just a few weeks ago, someone prevailed upon an old friend not to express his friendship for the Jewish ancestral homeland. The same place this man once walked and sang, bringing with him the light of peace, the illumination of music and the possibility for healing has now become a moral morass.

Was Wonder’s pullout a critique of Israeli policy? An act of cowardice or fear? Or just a quiet opt-out? If he wasn’t acting of his own volition, what does it tell us about the resounding effects of behind-the-scenes influencers and their values? Does it reveal something about the status of the relationship between blacks and Jews?

To be sure, the relationship between the two communities has evolved, sometimes messily, in the years since 1963. But is that alliance now broken? Or simply a reasonable disagreement between friends? It would seem that if reasonable Jews can disagree with each other about Israel, than reasonable people outside of the Jewish community also have that right.

To be fair to Wonder, it is understandable how the perpetual politics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be a muddled mire for a star, but it is also a quandary in need of new light.

For now, it is too soon to know what all of this means, if this will prove a standalone event or a portent of further discord. It is the black hole, the space not seen, its presence revealed by the glittering dust particles floating around it. And yet, now that that perimeter has pushed up against politics, what do we do?

Do we write off the abandonment of a friend as a victory for our enemies? Or do we try to win our friend back? Do we try to fill the frozen silence with words, with compassion, with the virtue of our cause and with love?

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December 14, 2012 | 8:04 am

Miracles at the movies

Posted by Danielle Berrin

It sometimes feels hard to grasp the magnitude of a miracle. But we are fortunate to live in a society in which our culture serves as an astute documentarian of human majesty.

It is true of literature, film, music and other arts but it occurred to me that the themes of Hanukkah are especially prevalent right now at the movies. The theaters are filled with reverberations of the miraculous, miracles large and small, tender and hard won, encompassing and discrete.

As in the Hanukkah story, about the triumph of a small rebellion over a mighty army, there can be seen grand miracles that bring sweeping change and alter the course of history (Les Misérables). Historic achievements that free the fettered and elevate the dignity of humankind sometimes depend on the radical courage of one brave soul (Lincoln). Others require an army, and prove that in the service of great miracles, such as bringing evil to justice, complicated, even ugly work is required (Zero Dark Thirty). And it is something of a miracle itself that in the movies, even history can seem small, shrunken, and ephemeral in the scope of cosmic connection (Cloud Atlas), the nature of the universe and the existence of God (Life of Pi).

Where do these reverberative effects begin? With the power of one: a Matthathias, an Abraham Lincoln, a CIA operative who risks his life to rescue others (Argo). Because it is sometimes in the small, private act, the secret contours of the heart that the deepest miracles are felt. There is wonder in the enfoldment of arms (The Sessions), the constant friend (The Twilight Saga), the resilient marriage (This is 40), the enduring love (Amour).

All of these stories are reflections of the religious, the journey from darkness to light, from estrangement to intimacy, hopelessness to faith. Hanukkah, the light-filled holiday takes place during the darkest part of the year. Each night (and indeed at every Jewish holiday), we kindle flames at sundown. It is a reminder that darkness is the beginning of light, just as a dark theater signals the beginning of illumination.

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December 10, 2012 | 4:08 pm

Jewish celebs light up [Chanukah VIDEO]

Posted by Danielle Berrin

What do Chelsea Handler, Sarah Silverman, Scarlett Johansson, Drake and Jack Black have in common?

They'll all (presumably) light up tonight for the third night of Chanukah. Here's some quick, cute proof from NowThis News:

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