Post by Rabbi Neil on Dec 22, 2017 18:30:55 GMT
The story of Luke Skywalker started in 1977, when I was three years old. It was fully developed as I started developing as a child, and I immediately latched onto him as a fictional character. A farm boy who grows to learn his own powers, who learns to fight the evil Empire, dressed in white while his arch nemesis, Darth Vader, is clothed in black. A New Hope was space opera, a western of heroes and villains, a story of simple ethics or right and wrong. A simple tale. I think that’s why I latched onto it so strongly as a child, because of its almost childish simplicity. The biggest moral dilemma in A New Hope is that faced by Han Solo, the smuggler who only wants money, and who realizes right at the end of the movie that in fact fighting against evil is more important than money. Well done, Han! The sequel - The Empire Strikes Back – was a much darker movie that showed that good doesn’t always win in the immediate present, and that good and evil are often connected to each other in ways that we may not have imagined. To close off the trilogy, The Return of the Jedi beautifully brought us a narrative of personal and communal redemption, of turning from evil. It wrapped everything up nicely and reminded us that ultimately good always wins.
Many years later, the prequels were introduced. They were deeply flawed in tone and in characterization, but one of the most challenging things about them was how the Jedi, who had always been heroes, were suddenly not as heroic any more. Dragged down into the drudgery of politics, they behaved problematically. We were introduced more fully to the Jedi Code, which included a ridiculously strict celibacy demand that ultimately led to rebellion against the entire Jedi order. The Jedi shifted from heroes to pseudo-religious fanatics who, while being clearly invested in peace, saw themselves as the only righteous group in the galaxy, forever committed to the destruction of the Sith, the villains who ultimately end up plunging the entire galaxy into war, which they believe is the natural state.
In 2015, Episode VII, called The Force Awakens, immediately plunged the galaxy back into war, a war that we had hoped had ended with the death of the Emperor at the end of Return of the Jedi. We had thought that good had won out over evil, but The Force Awakens showed us that conflict never ends. Yes, it brought a new hero, especially powerful because of her gender, but its repetition of the war tropes from A New Hope nearly forty years before seemed to me a clear statement of the idea that conflict never ends. Then, last year, Rogue One stunned audiences with its maturity as a war film. Members of the Rebellion were no longer squeaky-clean heroes, they were all shades of moral ambiguity whose redemption comes only through their self-sacrifice during conflict.
And that all leads us to the latest Star Wars film, The Last Jedi. Without giving anything away for those who haven’t seen it yet, there are a few lessons that can be drawn from it that need to be compared with a Jewish position. The first is the continuation of the war. Indeed, while this film has exciting battle scenes, it’s the long drawn-out conflict that really resonates. The fact that the Star Wars canon has shifted from the ultimate victory over evil to the endless cycle of violence in society is profound, and marks it as categorically different to a Jewish perspective. Judaism points towards a Messianic future, a time when war, and indeed even death itself, will cease. I’ve spoken before about how we in the Reform movement have shifted away from focusing on this supernatural eschatology, but watching The Last Jedi last night made me realise something else. In Judaism, we struggle because there is always an end to the struggle in sight. In Star Wars, there is an expectation that struggle is part of society. The struggle isn’t to win, but to try to tip the scales in favour of the good for as long as possible. That may seem defeatist, but I’m coming to realize that it’s possibly a more mature view of humanity. In fact, I’m beginning to think that it can be quite disempowering to believe that the world constantly improves and that people constantly get better, and then take a look at the world and realize that that’s just not borne out by the evidence. Yes, in some areas society has improved, but we cannot pretend that in others it hasn’t become indescribably worse. The new perspective for me, the one that says that struggle is constant, takes some effort to present as a Jewish perspective. One could note that on the High Holidays we talk of the need to tip the scales of merit for the world. Judaism doesn’t strive for balance, it strives for a tipping of balance. That, at least, might connect it to a Jewish position.
At the start of The Last Jedi, one of the major characters insists on Jedi finding balance. The film acknowledges that there is balance in light and dark, in good and evil, in life and death. But what does balance mean? If there is balance, and if we strive for balance, then we must sit in seclusion from society, because society itself is unbalanced. This is how we found Luke Skywalker at the very end of the last film, having retired from conflict and having sought his own personal balance. Judaism has no tolerance for such isolation for personal balance. In Talmud, Tractate Shabbat 33b-34a, Rabbi Shimon escapes Roman arrest with his son to a cave, where they remain for twelve years. When he eventually leaves the cave, he sees men ploughing and sowing. He shouts, “They forsake eternal life to busy themselves with this temporary life?!?” and everyone he looks at is consumed by fire. God rebukes him from heaven and he has to return to his cave for another year. The message of this story is clear. We don’t find balance in a cave or, in the case of Luke Skywalker, on a remote island. Or, at least, we can temporarily find balance but as soon as we come into contact with other people, we lose that balance, because society is, and has always been, unbalanced.
So, it’s interesting that in The Last Jedi, even though balance is essential in an isolated meditative sense, it is impossible to maintain in society. I would suggest that Judaism says the same – we can be balanced in prayer and in the quiet, but once we go out into the world, we are forced to make moral choices that tip the scales one way or another. If this is true, which is the most appropriate motivation for leaving a place of balance? Is it that we must choose good in order that we may eventually overcome evil, or it is that we must choose good because it’s the right thing to do now, even in the knowledge that there will be dark times in the future as well despite all our efforts? I think there can be advantages to either perspective. One contributes to the greater good not just in the immediate present but also for future generations – that’s the perspective of Judaism. The other – the perspective of Star Wars – is that contributing to the greater good is just the right thing to do now, regardless of whether it has longer-lasting effects. Judaism, of course, speaks in two voices on this! On the one hand, the Mishnah (Avot 4:2) tells us that mitzvah goreret mitzvah – the reward of a good deed is another good deed, which means that when we unbalance ourselves and choose good, there is a reward, a future consequence. On the other hand, the very same text (Avot 1:3) tells us not to be like those who serve a Master for a reward. In other words, focus on the act itself, not on any potential reward. So, both perspectives have potential support in Judaism!
The biggest challenge to the Star Wars canon, and indeed to Judaism as well, is the division of life into two moral categories – right and wrong, or light and dark, or good and evil, whatever you want to call it. Where last year’s Star Wars film Rogue One excelled was in the greying of the moral lines between the Rebellion and the Empire. Yes, in that film and in this one, the villains do acknowledge their villainy, which actually rather frustrates me because most real-life villains believe they’re doing the right thing. But in Rogue One especially, characters from the Rebellion had to do highly questionable things, including killing people on their side, in order to achieve their ultimate victory. There was no clear distinction between right and wrong, between light and dark. And it is widely viewed as one of the best Star Wars films, perhaps partially because of that. Having a clear distinction between light and dark is convenient, but it isn’t entirely real. During Chanukah, we often talk of light overpowering darkness, and we turn the victors into flawless superheroes. The Chanukah war against Hellenizers is painted in our tradition as a war between the forces of good and evil, but as we explored last week, it’s really not that simple. The moral grey of Rogue One is mirrored in the Chanukah story, where the Maccabees are clearly the heroes who ensure Judaism isn’t wiped out, but at the same time in order to achieve this, they have to kill the Jews who oppose them. We tell kids the story of light and dark because we want them to be inspired to do good, but when they get older the story has to shift, to the difficulty of even determining what is right and what is wrong. Torah lays it out clearly – uv’charta l’chayyim – choose life! Deut. 30:19). Perhaps that is the determining factor, anything that extends life. But if that were the case, Mattathias wouldn’t have killed the Jew and the Greek at Modin. War in order to preserve life is very rare, and the Chanukah story certainly doesn’t fit that bill. We can look at prophetic literature for guidance as to what is wrong and wrong. Micah (6:8) says that the upright path that a person should follow is to do justice, love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. While that may sound more like life in the cave or on the isolated island than in real society, I think that can apply at all times. Even in conflict, we can try to act as just as possible, we can try to be as merciful as possible. Once again, though, I question whether Mattathias acted justly or with mercy when he killed the Jew and the Greek at Modin and started a civil war. He certainly wasn’t walking humbly with God when he did that!
So, where does this leave us? I think we’re left with a development of our morality, from one that simply divides between the light and the dark, to one that acknowledges that there is a great deal of grey in the world. It would be easy when confronted with that moral ambiguity to retreat into extremism, but the strength of Reform Judaism is not in extreme behaviour but in facing the ambiguity and trying to work our way through it. I think we’re also left with a question as to the motivation to do good – is it because we believe in the ultimate triumph of good or evil, or is it because we believe it’s the right thing to do in the here and now? Does it matter, so long as we choose to do good? Maybe not, but maybe that question at least reveals a little more about ourselves. And, finally, maybe we’re left with questions of our Jewish narratives, whether they are too simplistic in their moral presentation or whether they reveal conflict as an ever-present element of humanity, and more. On this Shabbat Chanukah, may we be ever-aware of the struggles our society faces, may we explore our own selves in the face of conflict, and may we not shift to extreme polarized behaviour as a response to conflict. And, of course, may the Force be with us, always.