Menashe

This yiddish-language film is so compelling as an ethnological study of the Brooklyn Hasidic orthodox Jewish community that we might overlook its universal theme. As Renoir put it in Rules of the Game, The terrible thing is that everyone has his reasons. 

The loser hero Menashe (that’s three syllables) wants to raise his young son Reuven whom he loves and enjoys being with. But the ruling rabbi cites the Torah injunction that a child must be raised by a couple. Menashe must marry if he wants his son back. 

But Menashe has already suffered through one loveless arranged marriage so doesn’t want another. On the other hand, he respects his dead wife enough to keep a movie of her on his cellphone. He insists on hosting her memorial service in his cramped flat instead of at her brother’s commodious home. That ceremony will prove he can be responsible — except it doesn’t. He burns the kugel. 

If the rabbi seems unfeeling when he rules against Menashe as a father, he has the saving excuse of total commitment to his faith. He brings a kind of order and stability to his people. He shows a saving grace when he insists Menashe’s kugel is not a failure, indeed “fit for a king.” The rabbi has his reasons. If the religious extremity seems inhumane the rabbi isn’t.

So has the brother-in-law, who resents Menashe’s callous treatment of his dying wife but is committed to giving nephew Reuven a life the boy’s father can’t. He’ll give the boy back when he can. 

The film focuses on the Hasidic male community. The men are seen praying, schmoozing, singing, dancing, drinking, everything together, no women present. 

The female fringe is their suffering largely invisible support: the mother on her third grocery trip that week to feed her eight children, the four-month widow on a date with the 12-month widower who insults her by saying she’s not his “type.” Another prospect is a beauty freshly divorced from her abusive husband. An unseen daughter wants to go to college but her father won’t let her.

When Menashe asks a neighbour for a kugel recipe she immediately offers to bake him one. The women’s reflex is to serve the men. That’s their place, their stability. In her kitchen, sullenly kneading the dough for the sabbath bread is another woman, beaten down, defeated.  

Quietly, the film traces Menashe’s reform. He’s criticized for not wearing a jacket and hat, for dressing like the grocery cashier he is. But his last appearance is in full suit and hat, striding through the Brooklyn streets. To recover his son he will accept the religious stricture, accept an arranged marriage, rein in his secular impulses and accept the regimen of his community. 

To the film’s credit this reform is only thus suggested. No specific explanation is given. Perhaps it was his failure to deliver even the supermarket kugel successfully, or the warmth of the rabbi’s support, or the realization that he had no alternative if he wanted his son back. Or it was the death of the baby chicken he was trying to raise on his own, for Reuven’s diversion and affection. 

But another scene is equally apposite. Menashe and two Latino coworkers get drunk and candid in the storeroom. The two Latinos sing their songs. They bemoan their wives and envy his bachelor freedom. That prompts him to recall the misery of his first marriage, his initial relief at her death. Then he reflects on his even greater misery now and perhaps at this point resolves upon his reform. He enjoys their community than remembers his difference. 
     He laughs away their suggestion they go get drunk together Friday night. That’s his people’s shabbes. So he takes the ritual bath and, purified of worldly contamination and self-interest, returns to the fold. A man as well as the women can abandon fulfilment for their restrictive faith.