What 'The Last Jedi' Means to Me as a Post Bais Yaakov Girl

Warning: This post contains major spoilers for 'The Last Jedi.' Read at your own risk.
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Luke Skywalker holds a light-saber, its light glittering green. A dark-haired boy lies asleep at his feet. Skywalker searches within the youth's mind, finding to his horror that the child has turned to the Dark Side. In a moment of weakness, Skywalker determines that the best way to rid the Force of this incumbent threat is to murder the boy. Before he can do it, he comes to his senses, planning to walk away. But by then it is too late. Waking to find his master standing over him, holding a light saber and wanting to end his life, Ben Solo fights his way free and escapes. He burns down Luke's Jedi Temple, taking apprentices vulnerable to the Dark Side with him and killing the others. Skywalker admits that the last time he saw Ben, he looked into the eyes of a frightened boy.

Luke misjudged Ben. Over the course of 'The Last Jedi,' it becomes clear that Ben's choice had not been made. He was conflicted, and remains conflicted still. In assuming Ben was evil and needed to be snuffed out, Luke causes him to turn to the Dark Side. To Ben's mind, if his own master, the person who is supposed to represent light, turns against him, what is the point of goodness? If he does not have faith in Ben, why should Ben have faith in him?

In a later scene, Kylo Ren (as Ben Solo now styles himself) sees Luke and orders that every gun in his army be trained on "that man." He blasts him with everything he has, rage radiating off him in waves. When Luke still does not die, Ren comes out to face him himself. He spits out that he hopes Luke hasn't come to say that he "forgives him" and hopes to "save his soul." Luke says that he has not come for that, instead admitting that he failed Ben.

These scenes resonated strongly with me as a post Bais Yaakov girl. Longtime readers of this blog are aware that I attended a Bais Yaakov school. At this point in my life, I recognize the complexity of my experience there. As a teacher, I realize that most of the teachers were ill-equipped to deal with me or my questions, were juggling multiple roles, and couldn't always correctly read my motivations. Part of that has to do with me as a teenager - opinionated and unafraid to show it. Certainly, there were times when I could have been more respectful, more deferential, where I could have chosen my words more precisely. At the same time, the way I was treated was and remains unacceptable. They were adults, and I was fifteen. Fifteen! 

Kylo Ren and his rage? I recognize that. I felt that. And at that time, if I had been given the opportunity to smite down all the people who harmed me, to blast them with every gun in my arsenal, I would have taken it. And even then, it wouldn't have healed the hurt inside me.

Many of my teachers did not look for the good in me. Instead, they passed judgment. They told me I was "speaking apikorsus and krum." They passed on their misconceptions rather than checking to hear my side of the story. An administrator sided with a teacher, who was lying, over me, who was telling the truth. A rabbi told me he "was not mekabel" my story.

There are people who wonder what makes people leave religion. It is exactly what made Ben Solo turn into Kylo Ren. There are those who assume they know us in our entirety, and determine that we are bad. They claim to stand for what is good and right, and yet it is these supposedly good people who betray us. This happens for different reasons. Malice. Ignorance. Fear. Maybe the person holds a lightsaber over our heads while we sleep. And maybe the person tells us that we are the problem, the ones who need therapy and are unstable. When in truth, they are the ones hurting us.

The judgment passed on us? It doesn't come from a place of goodness. There are people who set themselves up as being good, and we see they are not good. So of course we'll throw our lot in with whatever they aren't, whatever does not represent them. Maybe we'll find goodness there. At the very least, we'll find acceptance.

When I watch Ben Solo turn into Kylo Ren, I watch a part of my story.

I hope that in future installments, we'll see Kylo Ren develop. I hope we'll see him recognize that just because Luke wronged him doesn't mean the entire Jedi way, and the quest to achieve balance, is wrong. But that's a long and hard journey, and the odds are not in Ren's favor.

I'll hope anyway.

Perfidy

Perfidy by Ben Hecht is one of the most horrifying books I have ever read.

Horrifying. Soul-searing, something that will scorch your flesh and leave you frozen. I read it on the way back to Chicago tonight. Started crying on the airplane; it's a good thing the lady next to me was asleep, else she would have wanted to know what was wrong.

Perfidy tells the story of the Kastner Trial and Joel Brand and the Israeli government that was complicit and collaborated with the Nazis in sending Jews to their deaths. It is While Six Million Died as it pertains to Israel versus America.

Perhaps one of the most chilling scenes in the book:

"It was mid-April, almost a month before my trip to Turkey (1944). One of the German agents in Budapest instructed me to wait at an appointed street corner and said that I would be brought before Eichmann.

"A half hour later, I was taken to the luxurious hotel where Eichmann had his Headquarters. I was ushered immediately to his room.

"The words which then passed between us I have imprinted themselves on my memory till I die.

Brand spoke in German. He now articulates in the dog-bark of a Nazi S.S. officer. The court hears Eichmann's menacing yips out of Brand's mouth:

"Do you know who I am?" he asked me. "I am the man who carried out all the actions [the Jewish extermination] in Germany, Austria, Poland and Slovakia. My next task is Hungary. I have checked up as to whether you and the Joint Distribution Committee are capable of getting things done, and I want to make a deal with you. Blood for Cargo and Cargo for Blood. Now tell me, what is it that you want to salvage- women who can bear children? Men in their prime? The aged? The young? Speak up!"

"I was sitting. A civilian was standing beside us. No other Jews was present. A young woman sat behind the desk, pencil in hand. I presumed that she was taking down our talk in shorthand.

"The meaning of his words dawned on me. I sat there thunderstruck. I never was a politician nor statesman and blurted out the first words that came to my mind:

"I am not empowered to decide as to whom you are to murder!" I said. "I would like to save everybody. I don't understand this deal. Where are we to get the cargo? You have confiscated everything." Then I became full of hope and went on- "The local Jews and our friends abroad may perhaps muster sums of money, if lives are to be saved."

"Eichmann answered, 'Go on then. Go ahead. To Switzerland, to Turkey, to Spain, wherever you please; so long as you can produce the cargo!"

"What sort of cargo do you want?" I asked.

"Anything at all," Eichmann said. "For example- trucks. Ten thousand trucks are worth a million Jews to me." He paused a moment and added. "Tea and coffee, too, and soap. One thousand tons of tea and coffee. All these I am in need of."

"To this I replied, 'I haven't the vaguest idea where all these cargoes are to be obtained. Who on earth will treat this offer seriously? Which official body will believe that delivery of the trucks will in fact induce you to spare a million Jews?"

"Eichmann answered that he was willing to offer one hundred thousand Jews in advance, and on receiving the proportionate payment, he would release another ten per cent. 'Pick them anywhere you want,' he said, 'Hungary, Auschwitz, Slovakia- anywhere you want and anyone you want."

~pages 219-220

Hecht speculates on why the Germans would have been willing to make this offer. The third reason he offers is the most damning:

Reason three is the most obvious, and the most German. Should it turn out that the Allies do not give a hoot about saving a million Jews, and that they regard the offer with contempt and derision- that, in itself, will be a psychological victory for the Germans. The Allies will then be on record as having had no wish to save Jews when they could. How, then, will they be able to denounce Germans for killing them? Let Emissary Joel Brand come back to Budapest empty-handed, without ransom for a single Jewish child, and Germany will have proved its case against the Jews- nobody likes them. Or, more practically, will have established the fact that Germany's deliberate torture and murder of six million defenseless and unmenacing humans (Jews) did not make it an outcast from Western civilization. Germany's case?- "You not only made no protest against the slaughter, you refused to negotiate for the saving of the last million unslaughtered.

~pages 230-231

Hecht then relates how the Jewish Agency in Palestine decide to obey Britain's White Paper. As he puts it, "[t]hey decide on the criminal deed that must wreck all hope of saving the million men, women and children from German slaughter. They will betray Joel Brand to the British" (232). Brand is handed over to the British and kept for four and a half months. Finally, they release him. As Hecht interprets it, "Nobody feels too happy about the Joel Brand business. On the other hand, nobody feels too unhappy. Political objectives exonerate leaders from feeling guilt. They regard their actions, however cruel and vicious their results, as impersonal deeds dictated by national demands" (243). He continues, "Thus it comes to pass that though there are six million Jews murdered, there is no guilt. Neither German, Briton, American, nor Jew feels guilty" (243).

This book is damning. Had I read it in 10th grade, when Rabbi Carmel suggested I should, he would have achieved his objective. I would have been turned into an ardent anti-Zionist, scandalized, horrified and shocked by the crimes its leaders had committed. So we shall be glad I did not do so and am a little wiser now.

Why did Rabbi Carmel suggest I read Perfidy? Well, it was not his original idea. Rabbi Avigdor Miller instructs everyone to read it in his work Awake My Glory. Rabbi Avigdor Miller has an interesting view of Zionists; he sees them as pure evil. However, Rabbi Miller is wrong. He has misunderstood Hecht's intentions in writing this book. I know this because Hecht states them clearly, something Rabbi Miller chose to gloss over.

Hecht is appalled by the power of the ideal. He is horrified by the fact that people can do anything, no matter how horrifying it may be, due to the power of their ideals. He explains this vividly:

Guilt does not make a politician outcast- be he Jewish, British, or Nazi. For the politician is never guilty as a wrongdoer; only as a wrong thinker or a wrong guesser. Even if his thoughts and guesses set bonfires raging in the world and rain disaster on large areas of it- he is still immune from guilt in the eyes of the law, and in the eyes of his contemporaries. History will sometimes take a look at him, dead in his grave, and give him a bad mark. But the contemporary verdict is nearly always the same- not guilty by virtue of serving an ideal.

Although shaken and embittered by the continuing revelations in Halevi's court room, the statement of Israel offered no visible or audible sign of any suffering.

There's the thing I find most ominous in my day- the rhinoceros hides that encase politicians' hearts. They will not react to the truth that exposes them any more than to a drop of rain. For they are never exposed. The evils proved against them reveal only that they were devoted servants of an ideal, a party, a national destiny.

Exposed in the Kastner case, the Israel politicans do not need to disprove any of the facts in order to prove themselves not guilty. They need only to flash into the eyes of their constituents the "ideal" they served. Who attacks them, attacks Zionism. Who attacks Zionism attacks the finest development in two thousand unhappy years of Jewish history. Tyrants, dictators, and all power-drunk leaders operate always behind the screen of some Ideal. The Ideal exempts them of any guilt for what they do. More, it magically converts their connivings and wicked deeds into proof of how valorously the served the Ideal.

"I understand Kastner," Eichmann writes in his autobiography, published in Life magazine. "He is an idealist like I am."

~page 162

Hecht states this again when he questions how Israel could ever have embarked on the case against Kastner, knowing as they did what the outcome must be. He answers:

The answer is that authority has an unshakable faith in the image of virtue it calls itself. Authority knows the thousand lies and shenanigans out of which it was created. But authority does not regard these as its true character. Its true character is not what it is, but what it can induce people to believe it is. Thus, until it is led off to the guillotine for its villainies; its true character is always glory and beneficence.

Like the actor, authority has faith in its false whiskers.

But its deepest faith is in the human hunger for illusion. People will hang on to illusion as eagerly as to life itself.

~page 188

It is this concern over governments that can allow anything in the name of its ideals and the blind worship of authority that lead Hecht to write his book. As he concludes:

The government of the Jews could not save the Jews. The "situation was too complex." No more can the governments of the United States and Russia save their own people. Their "ideals" are too important. Intoning implacably its ideals, government must ride its course to the Apocalypse. It cannot pause in its heroic dash for oblivion to look where it's going.

At least, so it seems as I write these last pages. I hear no voices challenging the death's-head ideals of the United States. I hear only the ideal speaking, its tongue speaking as always of love. The love of country, the love of freedom, the love of a better way of life.

What a dire word love has been in history. It has launched more carnage than any war cry of the species. For it is never love that an ideal has to offer, but love and death. It is always, "Love me, or I'll kill you."

[...]

No voices rise to challenge Authority in my country.

~252

Perfidy is an indictment, yes. But it is meant to be far more than that. Hecht has tackled an ambitious project- he wishes the reader to see what happens when one excuses all in the name of the ideal, refusing to challenge authority to stand up for what is right. How greatly ironic it is that Rabbi Avigdor Miller chose to enshrine this work against authority by utilizing his own authority to teach scores of Yeshiva Bochurim and Bais Yaakov girls that Zionism is evil! How amusing the fact that due to the authority of our Gedolim, we must believe in that! To use Perfidy to support an argument against the entirety of Zionism is to totally misunderstand the book. Hecht had a great and abiding love for the land of Israel. It was precisely because he loved it so much that he was so shaken by the actions of its leaders.

What does this book means to me? It shows me that all humans are flawed. There are Madoffs in the world who create Ponzi schemes that dazzle us in their horror, rabbis who abuse and molest children, men who refuse to give gets and keep their wives chained to them and leaders that chose to put their own interests ahead of those of innocent people. But does this mean that every trustee, every rabbi, every man divorcing a woman and every Israeli official is automatically flawed? That we should do away with Zionism and disregard all Zionists due to the horrors perpetrated by a few? Of course not. That makes no logical sense. As men we commit crimes in the name of our ideals and the crimes are grave. But to suggest an entire ideology must be disposed of due to the actions of some of the leaders of a society is to indict every country and every leader. The British were cruel to the Puritans and Quakers, whereas the Puritans and Quakers were awful to the Native Americans. Man has killed and murdered and shown how little other men mean to him across the strata of time. Why decide the entire institution of Zionism is monstrous without deciding humanity on a whole, every government and every country, is monstrous?

Had Rabbi Carmel succeeded in placing this book in the hand of the innocent fifteen-year-old girl that I was, he would have done me a great disservice. First, he would have shattered my illusions for absolutely no cause. It was not that he simply desired me to acquire more knowledge and information and then make up my own mind; no, he wished to turn me into an anti-Zionist. And as a child who believed wholly in the goodness of men this book would have totally confused me. It is darkly amusing that the same book which preaches that one ought not to permit everything in service of The Ideal is utilized to brainwash those within the religious camp in service of their ideal. My teachers at Templars hurt me irreparably in the service of their ideal - and yet believed they were helping me by acting as they did. The same people who place this book in the hands of innocent boys and girls with the intent to emotionally persuade them to dismiss an entire philosophy and ideology based on the actions of several flawed people are the ones who have totally ignored the message of this book. Dear my rabbis and teachers, you cannot have it both ways. Either cite the book in its entirety or don't cite it all, but to selectively teach it is to lie in precisely the manner Hecht detests. Indeed, his indictment can be extended to you, those who don the mask of false authority.