Two new films aim to confront -
The Goyish Problem

• Hiding and Seeking:  Faith and Tolerance after the Holocaust  (2003)

• Decryptage (2003)  

“Blessed are Thou God, King of the universe, Who did not make me a goy”

Everyday millions of Jews, from the little empty headed impressionable kids in grade one to the gray, unflappable minyan men, praise the Lord with these complicated, undoubtedly politically incorrect words. This is the precedent our sages have set for us and it is our legacy to be reckoned with, however not blindly – never blindly. I admit I am not comfortable with this bracha and the attitude I believe it represents within Judaism , the message it sends, and the ideology it promotes. The two blessing following this one , similarly themed, which we will not get into here, also invoke distaste, to the point that I ashamedly mumble the latter of the two hoping that one day it will just go away. They plainly don’t read well. There is no eloquence in their blatant, unfeeling chauvinism - and so there are issues to discuss regarding the ways in which we express ourselves to God and to fellow men. In light of two documentary films hitting New York screens in the next few weeks, there is no better time to give some of these concerns an appropriate forum. 

Who is a “goy” anyway? What does this broad, powerful weapon (or shield) of a word represent - not only historically and within halachah – but what does it mean socially and culturally for our generation and those going forward? The yeshiva faithful will tell me I’m jumping the gun, especially by beginning this essay with reference to the easily “misunderstood” benediction. Of course, they will say, I have it all wrong. These morning brachot are simply (simplistically is more correct) about mitzvoth. A free male Jew has more commandments from God than a slave, female, or “goy”, and we are merely thanking He who graciously bestowed this yoke upon us… if that is so… why not say just that? Why not: Good Morning God. Thanks for letting the rooster crow at dawn and thanks for giving me more mitzvoth than anyone else. Why the need to put down others in the process? Why the need to risk hurting a sensitive soul or alienating a tentative newcomer (or moreover make us look like a bunch of pretentious jerks).

Let us make this point as clear as possible, as Rashi might do, with a mashal (parable). Lenny is a bechor and he is thrilled to be one because as the first born he is privileged in a number of ways within his family structure (respect, best seat at the table, greater inheritance). Lenny wants to express to his parents the rapture he experiences daily by being the bechor, and he approaches mom and dad one blustery January eve and says, “Bless you guys for not making me Artie”, and Lenny walks away. Artie of course is the youngest son in the family who has difficulty not making in his pants. Did Lenny articulate his feelings as well as possible or did he just insult his brother and alarm his parents? 

Evidently and even with the slightest bit of intellectual honesty there is more to the blessing than a recognition of mitzvoth recipients. We are clearly putting up a wall and what’s left is to decide whether we appreciate and support the partition. Let’s begin by positing, at the very least, a subconsciously accepted concept. “Goy” does not colloquially mean nation (as the text book definition would have you believe). Goy does not really mean gentile either. To me, my friend Stephen from work, one of the best guys I’ve known – he’s not a goy, or a gentile, and I’m positive he’s not a nation. Best way to describe him: He’s not Jewish. If he’d been born to Jewish parents he’d be Jewish. He’d come over for Shabbos. We’d go to lunch to break up the monotony of the day and discuss our Israel year and how all the good camps are closing. No such luck – he’s not Jewish. Let’s continue being as candid as possible. “Goy” is a racist, Jewish-elitist slur. If it was not that way once upon a time (like when Breishit was written for example) it has evolved to be so. Remember, just because you specifically “don’t mean it that way” doesn’t make the word less offensive or inflammatory. The truth is we own this word and we wield it to blame, separate, and project – but is that bad (for us)? Basically, is it necessary for us to always reiterate in thought and deed, “They are the goyim and we are the Jews?” 

In the new scintillating documentary Hiding and Seeking: Faith and Tolerance after the Holocaust, we meet Menachem Daum whose wife has just returned from a shiur where the speaker incorporated into his lesson a passionate tirade against goyim – how we must hate them and block ourselves off from their very essence. We hear the voice of the rabbi spitting these words in a Yiddish rage. Daum, who flawlessly represents the first generation American orthodox Jew whose mind was expanded by the 60’s (i.e. our fathers), is upset and offended by the shiur. He is a student of Rav Shlomo Carlebach (his music and concert footage beautifully interwoven into the film) and has been taught to love all our brothers and sisters; all mankind is created in God’s holy holy image.  This sets into motion what ends up being a supremely emotional journey, expertly produced by Daum with Oren Rudavsky, into the heart of Poland, a place where millions were murdered by the Nazis, but according to the men and women who miraculously survived, by the “goyim.” Daum has no intention of unearthing and reopening the wounds of the past. He is a unifier. A believer in the good nature, in the tzelem Elokim. His mission is to prove that we are mistaken in filling our hearts with animosity for these Non-Jewish others. We shall get to his findings shortly – first, an argument to fill our hearts with anger.

Decryptage (French documentary translated as “Deciphering”) comes to us, if not in the same spirit as Relentless, at least in the same tradition. A movie made for Jews by Jews about Jews with a surefire motive to influence the…gentiles. Both films had their North American premieres in New York for audiences gathered via Jewish organizations (Relentless by Honestreporting.com and Discovery, Decryptage by the American Jewish Committee). Relentless drew mainly a young, yarmulke and sweater set crowd while the French Institute drew a more diverse, multi-cultured bunch on a frigid Thursday night.

It is a French film and therefore contains and enumerates upon several topics that are foreign to the average American. For instance, did you know the word “colonialist” is derogatory, emanating from French occupation of Algeria and the ensuing massacres? This allegory, Algeria as Palestine, is ever present in the French national consciousness as they focus viciously on Israel as occupier and colonialist. However, minor language barriers like this do not detract from the overall effectiveness of the film’s message for those of us on this side of the Atlantic.

The film begins, unlike Honestreporting’s picture, by being honest.  Decryptage does not profess to be an objective account of Mideast turmoil. It is born of frustration, bitterness, and presents itself in a way that avoids the “who’s right” question, but rather concentrates on exposing who’s wrong.  And this is where the mystique of the “goyim” sweeps obnoxiously into the theater air, captures our imagination, and allows us to consider and know that “Esau despises Jacob”, with all the biblical, eternal ramifications of the principle. 

Step by step we witness the senselessness of the media and public bias, the irrationality of blaming Jews everywhere (anti-Semitism) for all the world’s problems, because Israel has occupied the defenseless, stone throwing Palestinians (anti-Zionism). Notice how we are not justifying or criticizing the right to a Jewish homeland, we are only pointing out an absurd foundation for hate, vandalism, and abuse across the globe against Jews, Zionists or otherwise. Decryptage puts this terrifying reality on prominent display. It will have you nervously chanting, like an entranced lost boy out of Pinchas Pan, “I do believe in goyim.” 

Goyim, as Decrpytage presents them, have no cognitive control over their opinions – they are zombie beasts. They do not have a single human face, but rather a larger collective distorted mask. They eat and breathe hatred and would drive us into the sea if given the choice – would smear Jewish bloodstained hands on a window and throw a corpse down to a jubilant mob for pummeling. They doctor a photo and flub a byline to make a bloody Tuvia Grossman appear as though he is a Palestinian youth being beaten by an IDF soldier, when in fact the soldier saved his life. They make Daniel Pearl confess “I am a Jew, my father is a Jew, my mother is a Jew” before executing him. How could they be anything but goyim their outlook is so vile and chaotic? So much the antithesis of what we would like to consider a Jewish mentality. 

We must not fool ourselves. There are goyim. You could find them in a most shocking animalistic display at the Durban Conference where the prime issue was putting an end to racism. So why was the conference dedicated to spewing poison against Israel and the Jews; where entire parades of men and women who I can safely say never met a Jew in their lives held banners that equated the Magen David to a swastika and shouted “Death to the Jews!” Unfortunately, this type of madness is not an isolated event; it’s the status quo throughout Europe. It is a scary thing to watch goyim slither out from the woodwork and multiply in the shadows.

But if we follow this line of thinking to its devastating end and assume that all Non-Jews are goyim who secretly plot our destruction and revel in our defeats, - that they all have black heart and a rodent conscience - we would be hating and labeling as illogically as they. This is why a counter punch (perhaps counter slap) like Hiding and Seeking is so important.

Menachem Daum’s two boys live in Israel and learn in kollel. They are content in with what a more worldly person would consider a sheltered life. They have no need for goyim – good, bad, alive, dead, smart, stupid – no need. Daum plays the tape for them of the anti-goy shiur and they admit the preacher is a bit fanatical, but they get him, they follow. According to the two amiable (but painfully yeshivish) bochurs, even if the goyim aren’t itching at every moment to plunge daggers in our backs, there is no need to have contact with them – they are incapable of adding anything positive to a Jew’s life.

Their father, disappointed in their outlook (though I can’t imagine that he would be surprised considering how they appear to have been raised), tells them, “every Jew alive today is here because of the good will of a goy” …and he sets out to prove it, starting with themselves. 

Daum spends the rest of the film resolved to open the sealed tomb of his boys’ minds. What ensues is a revelatory, stunning trip to Poland to rediscover the family’s history through landmarks and finally by contacting the Polish farmers who hid Mrs. Daum’s father during the war at grave risk to their own lives.  In the euphoria inducing finale of the film, the ancient farmers and their lovely young family are awarded by Yad Vashem (Israeli Holocaust Society) as “Righteous among the Nations”.

Everything about this movie makes it a must see for all Jewish men and women. At this point I could go into details about the countless moments that tore at my heart (Mrs. Daum praying above the hole where her father hid for two years is particularly overpowering), stirred my spirit, and drew tears from the wonder of it all (BEING JEWISH! – so strange a thing), but instead I encourage (out of love of course) anyone who can to make it their business to catch this one. It touches on our[1] past, present, and future so poignantly that my words would not do it justice.

When the Daum’s return from Israel, in one of the most impactful scenes, the boys sit with their maternal grandfather, an old wrinkled Jew with a short white beard, and ask him why he never tried to contact the Polish farmer who selflessly saved his life. His answer will haunt you for a very long time - and it brings them to their next question. If the roles were reversed would you have saved them? In a thick accent, “If you were caught you would have been killed…no...no, I wouldn’t have.”  The Talmudic scholars who spend their days emulating God’s manners b’chol d’racheyhem (in all pathways), are silenced.  

You have gotten this far, but I can’t provide an answer. Some things in Judaism baffle me and this quandary is right up there. We are the people of Na’aseh V’Nishma and so we do, but we are also a people who value a good question above a mediocre answer.

How can we say categorically everyday, “Blessed are you God Who did not make me someone who may be better, braver, wiser, and a more ethical person than myself?” I can understand thanking The Almighty for not having born me to a family that teaches to blow yourself up and kill innocent strangers on a bus, but to go as far and give praise by saying I’m happy I’m not a goy – any goy – even one far superior in every way than myself – I don’t see how that could be the will of the Father of all mankind.