I never thought of Warner Bros as a Jewish studio, but then I learned the brothers’ names—Harry (Hirsz), Albert (Aaron), Sam (Szmul), and Jack (Itzhak). These four Jewish brothers, who immigrated from Poland in the late 1880s, were a case study of Jewish success early in the movie business.
I’m writing this in response to a d’var Torah I heard at shul. The speaker said, “I love going to shul and feeling this sense of beauty and love. But I don’t think I believe in God.” I felt bad for her. Something was keeping her from believing in God that didn’t need to be there. I talked to her afterward and told her the following story.
We went to Israel in Passover of 2023. I wrote up my notes as we travelled but didn’t get to publish this until the atrocities of October 7th.
As I got off the overnight flight from Tel Aviv, I see a man standing at the end of the jetway with a sign that says, “Bennett, Naftali”. I know I’ve heard that name before, and I think he’s a member of the Knesset. But it can’t be that Naftali Bennett, can it?
The problem is, before this trip to Israel, I didn’t know much about the country. It’s like when I Ari, as a first grader, asked me, “Can you tell me about Andrew Cuomo.”
And I said, “Well… he’s the governor of New York… he’s a Democrat… and his dad Mario was also governor. People liked his dad a lot.”
Ari then shot back, “Tell me more. Like if you had to write a first-grade book report about Andrew Cuomo, what would you say?”
“Oh,” I said, “I don’t know enough about Andrew Cuomo to do that.”
You walk into the field and see a group of children huddled around a fire pit. They’re having fun, performing strange rituals, singing odd songs, and building a community. What do you call this? Summer camp. If the songs are in Hebrew and the rituals are thousands of years old, then you’d call it Camp Ramah.
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