Charlap: 1894 - The prologue or pilot starts with Reb Yaakov Charlap either teaching Cheder to boys or in a Beit Din, then leaving his job and going to his house where he's met by all eleven of his sons, all of whom are now Bar Mitzvahed and teenagers, his wife (probably unnamed) having had four sets of triplets. They do a l'chaim, and Reb Yaakov explains that an angel appeared to him in a dream, and that so long as he named his children after the twelve tribes of Israel, Hashem would bless his house. He has a rich twin brother in Warsaw who sends them lots of money but notes in his speech that he wishes his brother was here for this day but they haven't seen each other in ten years because his wife doesn't like Reb Yaakov. He tells them that after Shabbos, the shatkhan will be coming with matches for all of you. Very soon you will all be married and have kinder of your own, this is going to be a year of Simcheh. The eleven brothers drink with Reb Yaakov and they start making plans for the bris. They talk about the first events in the Dreyfus affair. It has been more than thirteen years since the mother had Yosef, Dinah, and Zevulun, but a Warsaw doctor brought by Yaakov's brother warned that he would endanger the health of the mother if they ever had another child. At the birth of Benyamin, the mother dies, and it causes a bitter fight among the children with their father who said that Reb Yaakov endangered their mother. A few minutes later, they get a letter from Yaakov's sister-in-law that the brother in Warsaw died, and the payments must stop immediately. The family knows they must break apart. It ends with a mini-pseudo sermon from the father lamenting that he knows that most of the children will cease to be Jewish, will be answered by others.
Shimon: 1902 - about the Second Boer War: British and the guerrillas and why the Boer guerrillas care much more than the British do, but also why the British imperialism may be more benevolent than Boer imperialism, but maybe worse because it is much further reaching. Shimon (Simon) is an officer at a concentration camp. The commandant is an aristocrat whose father was from an old Portuguese Jewish family (possibly also named Charlap). We hear the British interacting with the Boers but we do not meet the Boers. The other officers are from all around the British empire, we meet them either in the mess hall or over a game of cards. Simon has to interrogate a Boer prisoner, who argues with him that the British are no better than the Boers and just want the blood diamonds. And eventually rather than wear the Boar down, the Boar wears him down because the Boer realizes that he's Jewish and tells him he'll never be British, and the non-violent supposedly principled British interrogation turns extremely violent. Ends with motivational speech from Commandant telling him he knows exactly what happened without having to read any report. Don't worry, here you're an Englishman, not a Jew, but ends on a not of ambiguity that Simon is not sure he wants to be English.
Judah and Zebulun: 1903 - Sixth Zionist Congress in Basel, the motion to have a Jewish state in Uganda. We meet Theodore Herzl who hates his most passionate followers. We hear Herzl over the phone with some famous Jewish businessman, perhaps Nathaniel Rothschild, perhaps Karl Wittgenstein, is idolized by the people he The Kishnev pogrom is in the minds of everybody and what might soon happen elsewhere around Russia and Europe. Judah is a law student who clerked at a Jewish firm in Kishnev, dutiful and circumspect, Zebulun is the firm's errand boy, rebellious and wayward. They are there because their firm's boss was killed in the pogrom and need to make connections or find work. Judah's real hope is to work for Herzl. He waits in line for days and days for an audience, which of course he doesn't get. Zebulun is not interested at all in anything about the conference or Basel, but he ends up drinking in a Basel inn and unwittingly ends up talking and getting drunk with Chaim Weizmann while having no idea who Weizmann is. Weizmann drunkenly tells the young man about his problems convincing Arthur Balfour to let Jews have a state in Palestine, to which Zebulun replies 'Would he give up London to live in Canada?" Weizmann immediately realizes this is the argument he needs to use, and Zebulun, suddenly impressed that he can be useful to someone, becomes so committed a Zionist that out of enthusiasm, Zebulun becomes the one who stands up in the convention and leads the chant of 'Am Yisroel Chai' which leads to the adaptation of Palestine as the only possible home for a Jewish state.
Reuven: 1904 - Reuven ends up servant in urban palace of a Russian Count who is a general in the army. At the palace, Reuven is Roman, and tries to conceal from the staff that he is Jewish, but a person on the staff runs into him on his way to his apartment which he shares with Gad, who is a student, and sees that he is Jewish. So he blackmails him. But the Count grows to like his footman, thinking him very competent and funny. The house is preparing for Leo Tolstoy to come, and they have to take extra care to accommodate Tolstoy's eccentricities. When Tolstoy comes, he can't care less about the noblemen and wants to spend all his time with the servants rather than the masters, and his extremely personal questions make the servants deeply uncomfortable. In front of the entire dinner, Tolstoy puts Roman on the spot and asks him his life story. Reuven can't help it at this point and has to confess the whole thing. Upon hearing that Reuven is Jewish, Tolstoy sermonizes about the importance of tolerance, but the other servants are antisemitic, and in the kitchen one deliberately drops hot soup on his hand, scalding him. The Count sends for Reuven, and Reuven and the other servant expect for him to be fired, but the Count promotes him to head of the house because the Count too has a terrible secret. When the count asks what happened to his hand, he has to lie about why. 'I sent for you because you BOZHE MOY WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR HAND! (Reuven lies). I sent for you because you have a terrible secret, and I must tell someone myterrible secret.' The Count confesses to him about the plans for the Russo-Japanese War and how it will be a disaster that kills tens of thousands, but the Czar's word is law. 'You must count yourself fortunate that I know you're a Jew. If it were not known, you would come as my personal valet, and you would die along with everyone else.' It ends with the aristocrat leaving for it with one of the crucial commands, but knowing he will die and his men will be slaughtered.
No comments:
Post a Comment