CHRISTOPHER NOLAN AS THE NEW KING AHASUERUS

 "At loooooonnnng last, sir, have you no shame?  Have you no sense of decency?"--Counsel Robert Welch to Sen. Joseph McCarthy, in a dramatic, but unfair moment.

But I'm not being unfair with Christopher Nolan, the new Ahasuerus.  Nolan has chosen to create a film that has not only inspired righteous outrage amongst all people who revere the majesty and power of Homer's Odyssey, but has also managed to light an extra flame of hatred for the Jews in the modern anti-Semitic flood.  A two-fer!

As we learn from the Tanakh and the Midrash, Ahasuerus was the king of Persia who ruled over most of the world's Jews in exile after the fall of the First Temple.  In the 3rd year of his rule, he calculated that the prophecy by Jeremiah that the Jews would return to Israel after seventy years in exile had officially expired, and therefore he ordered a grand celebration to which he invited all the top Jewish notables in the kingdom.  Ahasuerus specifically had all-kosher meals of the finest quality prepared and served at the feast.  He actually opened up his royal storerooms to have the holy vessels and cookwares that had been looted by Nebuchadnezzar's army from the Holy Temple removed, and used them to serve his honored guests.  And he specifically clothed himself in the captured vestments of the High Priest of the Temple, as he presided over this feast.

Interestingly, we are taught that all of the Jewish notables at the time accepted the invitation to come to the feast.  All, that is, except for Mordechai.  He had a young cousin, Hadassah, better known in the modern literature as Esther.  Are you recognizing the story of Purim now?

So why did Mordechai refuse to attend and share in this opulent feast?  Wasn't it a great honor for the Jews?  Wasn't it a priceless chance to improve their influence in the court of this immensely powerful ruler?  Wasn't the king specifically singling out the Jews for recognition?  Wasn't this a good thing?

Well, obviously NOT.  The whole thing was meant to be a chillul HaShem, a spit in God's face, a dishonor of the most profound and cosmic kind, a celebration and recognition that the God of Israel had been proven to be fake and conquered and of no import whatsoever.   Certainly nothing to concern the ruler of Persia!

Which brings us to Christopher Nolan and the Odyssey film.  He has taken a classic of literature and culture that has been universally honored for literally millenia, and somehow conjured up a total mockery of everything it stands for, especially the ancient Greek culture that actually produced it!  It really is a colossal fraud that he even gets away with using "The Odyssey" and "Homer" in the marketing of the film.  Uggghhh, the whole thing is so profound and total and gross, yet I see intelligent people throwing out all types of frivolous, insultingly dumb reasons to find a nugget in the muck.  "Ohhhh, a new way of viewing Odysseus!...Ohhhh, maybe golden haired means African!  Ohhh, such a musical score!...Ohhhh, very moving!...Ohhhh, the kosher food!  Ohhhh,  the holy laver!  Ohhhhh, the High Priest's breastplate!"  

People, people, people, the whole thing is a deliberate insult, a deliberate spit in the face to this incredible poem, its author, and the people whose astonishing heritage made it possible.   Are we really so blinkered and naive that we can't see it?

I sure can.  I hope you can, too.

Finally, we should note that Ahasuerus, like Christopher Nolan and his backers, also made a fatal miscalculation.  We are taught that the King used the wrong dates to calculate the running of the seventy-years clock for Jeremiah's prophecy, and therefore there were a couple of years left.  Ouch.  And then a new King of Persia, Cyrus the Great, came to power, and encouraged the Jews to return and rebuild the Temple.  Which they did.

Just like Ahasuerus, Nolan's project will fail, mark my words.  Let's all pitch in to make sure.