In a Christmas Movie

GET THE LATEST AT FORWARD.COM YOUR SHABBAT EDITION • DECEMBER 27, 2019 A printable best-of-the-week curated by Forward editors. Sign up at forward.com/shabbat. Courtesy Of The Collection Of Shelley Stamp Culture In 1913, A Rabbi Appeared On Film For The Very First Time — In A Christmas Movie By PJ Grisar As the winter winds whipped through lower Manhattan But while the rabbis didn’t appear to object to the in the days before Christmas in 1913, a group of rabbis film’s conceit, it’s just as troubling as the title, playing took shelter in a screening room to watch a film that into the time-worn prejudice that suggests Jews are claimed to be about them. bigoted toward Christians and stubbornly resistant to assimilation, choosing instead to adhere to the antique It was the first American movie to feature a rabbi as a laws of their faith. It’s a theme that Weber kept going — character. Shortly after the screening, a report from in a more vengeful fashion — with her next project, Moving Picture World noted that the rabbis, gathered “The Merchant of Venice,” her first feature and the first to evaluate the picture, “were pleased with the story, American feature film directed by a woman. with its treatment and with the fidelity with which the producers had followed Jewish ceremonies and Some in the press were aware of the film’s willingness customs, but were inclined to look with disfavor on the to play into these harmful tropes. George Blaisdell’s title.” glowing review of “The Jew’s Christmas” in Motion Picture World conceded that “if in this picture there be The film was called “The Jew’s Christmas.” offense it should not be for the Christian. Undoubtedly The three-reel picture was written by Lois Weber and there will be Jews who look upon it with coldness, and co-directed by Weber and her husband Phillips some with reprobation.” Smalley — both of whom were Christian. The details we know of the film come from It’s easy to see why the rabbinical test audience wasn’t contemporary coverage and a detailed fiction thrilled with the title. Even the chosen article —“The” adaptation of made for a fan publication. Those instead of “A” — is uncomfortably definitive, almost specifics are cartoonish in their early 20th-century exoticizing, seeming to put the film forward as a sensibility, but still deeply offensive. documentary look at what Jews do during Yuletide. In 1913, A Rabbi Appeared On Film For The Very First Time — In A Christmas Movie 1 GET THE LATEST AT FORWARD.COM In the film, Smalley plays Rabbi Isaac, billed in outcome suggests that he must do the work of promotional materials as “the ancient Jew… narrow as accommodating his son and daughter by moving away to customs, strict disciplinarian in his home” but from the strictures of his faith. Seeking Leah’s hand, “lovable and kind to strangers.” Isaac’s daughter, Leah, Rupert wonders, according to the film’s prose played by Weber, incites his rage when she falls in love adaptation, “Could he ever hope to stand against this with one Rupert Julian, a non-Jewish floorwalker at the age-old strength of racial hatred, typified, it seemed to store where she works. him, in Leah’s father?” When Isaac learns that the lovers have married in “It’s a film about religious intolerance, but the secret, he orders Leah from his house and, according prejudice of the rabbi is central,” Stamp said. “It’s not a to John Olden’s 1914 novelization in Motion Picture film about anti-Semitism, it’s a film about how the Story Magazine, shouts, “May the God of our fathers rabbi has to recognize the kindness of non-Jews — not curse you and your Gentile husband… May you be cast the other way around. He must accept their traditions out from our faith and spurned in our synagogues! May of Christmas.” the dogs of Gentiles spit upon you as they have done Surviving accounts of the film suggest that its plot these many years! Now begone!… you are none of my never truly addresses the racial hatred faced by Jews. blood.” The direction of the film’s sympathies is made even Later, Isaac also ousts his son, Samuel, when he shows more clear by the fact that Rupert is the character in it up drunk for the Sabbath after attending a wedding. who suffers most in the world, losing his legs in a Sloshed, Sam tells his father, “When you come to life trolley accident. It’s implied that Isaac, in shunning his and keep the Christian Christmas — I’ll come back.” daughter and son-in-law — and their daughter, Eleanor Earlier the two had quarreled because Sam wanted to — has contributed to their sad fate. If he were a part of work on the Sabbath, an intergenerational tension no their lives, he might have provided some measure of doubt present in the newly-arrived immigrant hope and help. community. Isaac claims that non-Jews in America are taking “the young of our race” from them. After Rupert’s accident, the couple are forced into a life of poverty selling artificial flowers. Their choice of The domineering patriarch that Isaac embodies is a abode just so happens to be the tenement unit above common figure in Weber’s films, said Shelley Stamp, Leah’s father’s. (Somehow, in a twist that only tracks author of “Lois Weber in Early Hollywood” (2015) and a with melodramatic logic, Isaac and his wife, Rachel, are film professor at UC Santa Cruz. This particular film, unaware that their daughter has become their upstairs Weber’s first three-reel picture — a 30 minute affair neighbor.) when, at the time, one- and two-reel pictures running 10 and 20 minutes were the norm — is also in keeping Years later, Isaac develops a tender relationship with with the auteur’s interest in religious and social issues. Eleanor, not realizing that she is his granddaughter. Near Christmas, the little girl, whose family doesn’t But while the film addressed religious intolerance Jews have the means for a conventional celebration of the might direct at Christians, its plot betrays a more holiday, asks the rabbi why she doesn’t have a significant pattern of intolerance faced by Jews: Christmas tree like other children. The question gives namely, the pressure to assimilate and become fully Isaac an opportunity to break with his rigid customs Americanized. out of charity for an innocent. Isaac’s redemption comes when he observes his first “This child was a Gentile, but, after all, perhaps Christmas. Only then is he reunited with his family, Gentiles did have feelings — especially Gentile children who have all but abandoned orthodox Jewish — most especially this Gentile child,” Isaac thinks in the traditions in pursuit of love and money. novelization. “And the God of his fathers would not The film treats this departure as a good thing. But hold it against him that he brought the gladness of a beyond that, it depicts orthodoxy as toxic to a younger child heart among his offerings to the High Seat of generation. The rabbi is painted as an unkind, small- Mercy.” minded father for not allowing his children to integrate Moved by her sadness, Isaac sells one of his books to into the mainstream of American life, and the story’s In 1913, A Rabbi Appeared On Film For The Very First Time — In A Christmas Movie 2 GET THE LATEST AT FORWARD.COM pay for her tree — it’s implied that it’s a religious book, Merchant of Venice.” and therefore a swap that comes with a loaded “She’s likely making or thinking about both films at the significance — and is reunited with Leah, who he learns same time,” Stamp said. “She’s thinking about Jewish is the child’s mother. Sam, true to his word and flush figures in society and in literature. I don’t think it’s an with cash from his successful (and likely Sabbath- accident.” breaking) business, returns with an armful of gifts on the occasion of his father’s first Christmas. Interestingly, the man who gave the green light for both films was Universal Pictures president Carl “The appeal in the eyes of all his family, now for the Laemmle, who was Jewish. Moving Picture World first time in a dozen years about him, is too strong,” reported that Laemmle wanted Smalley to play said the write-up in Moving Picture World, describing Shylock after seeing his performance as the rabbi in the rabbi’s reaction to his first Christmas. “The tie of “The Jew’s Christmas.” blood overbears the pride and prejudice of religion.” Laemmle, Stamp believes, was perhaps the most The film appears to claim that the fix for this religious significant Jewish person in Weber’s life, serving as a prejudice is the melting pot, and specifically mentor and supporter of her work and even giving her intermarriage. But in that stew of mixing traditions, the a plum distribution deal when she left to form her own orthodoxy of Isaac isn’t diluted in the name of studio in 1917. secularism — it’s watered down in the name of assimilating into a dominantly Christian nation. In subsequent years, Weber made a series of other social films that were controversial for their time and “I think what Weber thought is that it would work both almost unthinkable in the mainstream of today, ways, that it was a message of assimilation for Jews including 1916’s “Where Are My Children?”, which and maybe other immigrant families as well,” Stamp depicts abortion as a frivolous recourse for wealthy said.

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