Thursday, January 22, 2015

"Selma": Was omission of Heschel on purpose -- or a Hollywood blooper?

As I discussed in my previous article, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel was front and center in the iconic photo of the Selma march, but was apparently replaced by a generic rabbi extra in the movie.   I have puzzled over this for several days, read lots of discussion about it, and come up with a few theories about why it might have happened.

The original photo:  John Lewis of SNCC, an unidentified nun, 
Rev. Ralph Abernathy; Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., 
Ralph Bunche (former U.S. Ambassador to the UN), 
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, and Rev. Fred Shuttleswort


Please note that these are only my personal theories, because Ava DuVernay has not, as far as I know, given any explanation other than "this is art not a documentary" and she did not want to make a "white hero movie."   But that does not explain why there is no actor made up to look like Heschel in this scene.  Especially since there are other white people in the lineup with King in her version.  So why no Heschel?  That's all it would have taken to avoid all this controversy.  Just show it like it was.

I would sure love to have DuVernay come here and tell us why she made this bad decision.  But since neither she nor Oprah answered my tweets on the subject, I suppose I'll just have to guess on my own.  Yes, I've read all the antisemitism and conspiracy theories, but I find myself wondering if it isn't something much simpler:  a major Hollywood blooper.  It would not be the first time.  But if so, it's a whole lot bigger blooper than a water bottle on Downton Abbey.  So here goes:


A still from the movie.  That guy on the right is no Heschel.
 And what's with that suitcase he is carrying?
Theory #1:  Maybe DuVernay didn't know who Heschel was, and thought she could just plug in some generic rabbi to fill the slot.  I'm pretty sure she had no idea how iconic his image is to Jews, or she would not have made this blooper.  I mean, would she have substituted some generic priest for the Pope in a famous scene?   Heschel was, in his own way, equally important, as one of the foremost theologians of the 20th century.  But what if DuVernay did not know that?

Theory #2:  Maybe Heschel did not look "rabbinical" enough for her take on the scene.  If you compare her version with the original, you'll see that Heschel is not the only change in the lineup.  The original doesn't have an Eastern Orthodox priest in clerical garb or a minister (priest?) in a visible clerical collar.  On the other hand the movie version does not have the "unidentified nun" dressed in a habit like the original.  So it appears that DuVernay was doing a sort of visual smorgasbord, plugging in what she thought would be easily recognizable to her viewers as an interfaith scene.  ("A rabbi, a minister, and a priest marched at Selma...")

Theory #3:  If she didn't know who Heschel was, then maybe DuVernay did not recognize the Heschel figure as a rabbi, and thought he was just some old hippie.  So she did a switcheroo to fit her visual imagery.  After all, Heschel usually wore a beret, not a yarmulke, which is what most gentiles think of as Jewish clergy garb.  But if this is the case, then her research crew really blew it.

Theory #4: Maybe DuVernay thought Heschel was too disheveled and hippie-like for her 21st-century take on the scene.  Again comparing the original to the still, there has been quite a bit of sprucing up.  The original characters all look a bit wrinkled, as indeed they would be, after hours of getting ready for the march.  Heschel himself flew out immediately after the Sabbath ended on Saturday in order to be there on Sunday -- no time for a trip to the barber.  But Duvernay's actors are as natty as can be, not a wrinkle or speck of dirt in sight, not a hair out of place.  And the substitute rabbi is perfectly neat and clean-shaven.  Maybe that is the "art" part of it that DuVernay refers to.  Creating a tableau instead of a recreation of history.

But if personal appearance was why Heschel was removed, then I wonder what she would have done with a movie about Einstein?  Given him a shave and a haircut?  But then, she would have known who Einstein was, would have realized how instantly recognizeable his "disheveled" appearance is.

Heschel and King
Which brings us back to my original question:  Did DuVernay even know who Heschel was?  Of course, I have no way of knowing what was in her head.  I just have a hard time believing she would purposely edit out Heschel if she knew how close he was to King, who called him "my rabbi" and compared him to the biblical prophets.   I really do think she had no idea how important Heschel was in the Jewish community, or how well-known the original photo is.  This does not excuse ignorance or bad research, but maybe it does explain why she made such a terrible blooper on this famous historical scene.

Sunday, January 18, 2015

No Rabbi Heschel in "Selma" movie? Inexcusable!

I was looking forward to seeing the new movie, Selma.  Emblazoned in my heart is the iconic photo of Dr. Martin Luther King marching with Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel in the front row.  A photo that for my generation has come to symbolize the unity between Jews and African Americans during the 1960s.  For years I have told friends, family, and students to "watch for the man with the bushy white hair and beard" in the original Selma footage.  Unfortunately, in the new movie Rabbi Heschel does not appear in this scene or anywhere else!  The omission has me -- along with a lot of the Jewish community -- wondering why not.

Marching from Selma to Montgomery: 
John Lewis of SNCC, an unidentified nun, 
Rev. Ralph Abernathy; Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., 
Ralph Bunche (former U.S. Ambassador to the UN), 
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, and Rev. Fred Shuttleswort


I can understand film director Ava DuVernay's desire to make a film that focuses strongly on Black leadership.  There have been too many civil rights films already with white sympathizers as the main characters.  (I have the same complaint about Holocaust films that focus on non-Jewish supporters -- of which there are also too many.)

And this is not the only revisionism in the film.  The King estate did not allow the filmmakers to use King's real speeches, so his words are paraphrases. That's not so bad, viewers say.  But to omit showing Rabbi Heschel -- or any rabbis for that matter -- is puzzling.  I find it hard to believe that DuVernay could not have known who Heschel was, given how close he was to Dr. King in those years.  Surely she did her research?  Or did she think the guy with the bushy beard was just some sort of hippie?  (Read more on that theory...)

The appearance of Heschel (second from the right) in that famous photo was not tokenism.  Rabbis and lay Jews alike were involved in the lunch-counter sit-ins, the Freedom Rides. the early protests.  Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner -- both martyred on the same night as James Cheyney -- were both Jewish.  And while it is true that Southern rabbis tended to lay low publicly, for fear of antisemitism and violence against their congregations (some synagogues were actually fire bombed) many helped behind the scenes.

Rabbis from other parts of the country were more vocal.  Peter Dryer, in his January 17, 2015 article in the Huffington Post, Selma's Missing Rabbi,  lists the following rabbis who came to Selma (Plus Rabbi Leon Jick, who is not on Dryer's list but was at Selma, according to this article):

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (grey beard on the left),
Dr. King (center) and Rabbi Maurice Eisendrath
(holding the Torah) in front of the State Capitol in
Montgomery, Alabama
Israel Dreisner (Temple Sha'arei Shalom, Springfield, NJ)
Maurice Eisendrath (president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations)
Albert Friedlander (rabbi for Jewish students at Columbia University)
Herbert Teitelbaum (who led a congregation in Redwood City, California)
Gerald Raiskin (Peninsula Temple Sholom in Burlingame, California)
Joseph Gumbiner (director of UC-Berkeley's Hillel)
Joseph Weinberg (Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco)
Saul Berman (Berkeley's Congregation Beth Israel)
Mathew Simon (spiritual leader of a Los Angeles congregation)
Steven Riskin (New York City's Lincoln Square Synagogue)
William Braude (Temple Beth-El, Providence, R.I.)
Saul Leeman (Cranston Jewish Center in Rhode Island)
Nathan Rosen (director of Brown University's Hillel center)
Maurice Davis (Indianapolis Hebrew Congregation)
Arthur Lelyveld (Cleveland's Fairmount Temple)
William Frankel (Beth Hillel Congregation, Wilmette, Illinois)
Sidney Shanken (Temple Beth-El, Cranford, N.J.)
Allan Levine ( Temple Emanuel of Rochester, N.Y.)
Andre Ungar (Temple Emanuel of Pascack Valley, N.J.)
Perry Nussbaum (whose synagogue, Temple Beth Israel in Jackson, MS, was bombed in 1967)
Leon Jick,  Professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University

And that doesn't count unknown Jewish laypersons.  But most visible of all was Rabbi Heschel, right up there in the front row, only one person away from Dr. King.  Messing with this image is, to me, a sort of historical sacrilege, like changing the profile of the flag raising on Iwo Jima or the 13 stars on Betsy Ross's flag.  Some things are not meant to be changed.  I'm not asking that Jews be given equal time.  All it would have taken was to have an actor made up like Heschel for this scene.  Would that have been so hard?

King and Heschel had met at a conference on "Religion and Race" at the National Conference of Christians and Jews in 1963, where Heschel gave the opening speech and King gave the keynote address.   After the first Selma March, known as "Bloody Sunday" (March 7, 1965), Heschel led a delegation of 800 people to FBI headquarters in New York City, protesting the lack of protection for the marchers.   King invited him to come to Selma for the next march and he did.

Afterward, Heschel made that moving statement that has become a watchword among Jews and gentiles alike:

"For many of us the march from Selma to Montgomery was about protest and prayer.  Legs are not lips and walking is not kneeling. And yet our legs uttered songs. Even without words, our march was worship. I felt my legs were praying."

Heschel and King remained close friends and continued to work together.  When King won the Jewish Peace Award, it was Heschel who presented it.  In fact, King was looking forward to attending a Passover Seder at Heschel's home, but was assassinated before that could happen.  Rabbi Heschel was the only rabbi to speak at King's funeral.


A still from the movie.  That guy on the far right sure doesn't
look like Heschel, even though he is in the same place.
So, with all these iconic images and events, why don't we see Rabbi Heschel -- or any other rabbi -- in the movie, when we do see King embrace a Greek Orthodox priest, and can recognize a Roman Catholic priest, a Protestant minister, and other clergy in the front row?  One reviewer does make mention of "an elderly Jew in a yarmulke" -- and there is such a gentleman standing in the place occupied by Heschel in the original photo.  But Heschel usually wore a beret -- not a yarmulke.  And this stand-in, if indeed he is supposed to be Heschel, lacks the bushy hair and beard of the real Heschel.  So much so, that Jewish reviewers do not see him as such.  Neither do I.

Which brings us to another production detail that was pointed out by Ulrich Rosenhagen in The People's Legs Are Not Praying: Why "Selma" was not the Interfaith Movie I was Hoping For.  In the original film footage, King and others are wearing flower leis. given to them by a Hawaiian delegate.  In Hawaiian culture, the leis are a symbol of peace between rival or warring clans.  By extension, a symbol of racial and religious unity.  But as Rosenhagen writes:

"In the movie the protesters aren't wearing flower leis. I don't point this out to quibble with the director's costume choice but rather to draw attention to the curious absence of the spiritual sentiment that held these marchers together. They firmly believed that only a religious faith capable of transcending clannish religious divisions could challenge the deep injustices of American society. This confidence in a divine love that made the overcoming of such religious parochialism possible swelled in the hearts of the marchers and anchored the close friendship between King and Heschel. The activists truly felt that the many faces of God had their eyes on Selma."

Maybe the leis are gone for costuming reasons, out of concern that modern viewers might find them strange or puzzling.  Then again, that could have been solved by showing the Hawaiian representative giving them and explaining the significance.   Or maybe -- sadly -- the spiritual-political unity my generation felt back in the 1960s is gone.  Maybe the film unconsciously (?) ended up reflecting that.  In recent years there has been a lot of tension between the Black and Jewish communities, something that makes me very sad.

I had hoped this movie might bring back the story of how Jews and African Americans had once worked together for freedom.  But with Jews omitted from the script, that message is lost.  And that, too, makes me very sad.

(This article was updated by the author on May 6, 2019)

* * * SEE ALSO * * *



What Selma Meant to my Dad, Abraham Joshua Heschel -- Suzannah Heschel in The Forward, also reprinted in several other Jewish pubs

Following in My Father's Footsteps - Suzannah Heschel.  Interesting personal memories.

Why My Grandfather -- and my Dad - Marched in Selma -- Zoe Hick in Haaretz

Another Failure of the Selma movie: Why Did It Leave Out Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel? -- Jeff Dunetz in The Lid.  Has nice photos, including  a telegram Heschel sent to King in the Birmingham jail.

Negro Marchers from Selma wear Yarmulkes in Deference to Rabbis -- reprint of a March 22, 1965 article about a little-known show of solidarity

Jewish Voices from the Selma Montgomery March  -- some interesting firsthand stories -- including a Sabbath service -- about Jewish participation at Selma, from the Duke University Library, which houses the collection of Heschel's papers.

When we marched together in Selma - S.L. Wisenberg in The Forward.  Some Selma history plus a look toward hope for the future.

Praying with my Legs  -- a two-hour upcoming documentary on the life and teachings of Rabbi Heschel.  A worthwhile project -- and definitely needed, as all of this controversy over Selma will attest.  Visit the site and consider donating to the project.

On Anniversary of Selma, Remembering the Civil Rights Activism of Rabbi Heschel (VIDEO)