Ushpizin

That night, that year / Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.

- Gerard Manley Hopkins, from Carrion Comfort


Ushpizin is a storytelling visitor not frequently seen in these parts. Watch it, and you will see a man wrestling with his God. His God!

Most of the best people I know are religious. It baffles me that popular culture routinely portrays religion darkly. It is de rigueur to depict religious characters as a molesting priest, a rigid parent, a hypocritical teacher. Hackneyed modern storytelling uses such simple devices to portray authority, as foils for young heroes and heroines to defeat with their dancing, writing, or poetry reciting. What passes for spiritual enlightenment in most stories is but a whiff of the censer. Spiritual depth is a mere appreciation for Ghandi, or a peaceful "place" in a life at the moment. Surviving a divorce, for example, is profound and spiritual in the contemporary rhetoric. One of the worst examples of spiritual feeling, One Hour Photo, has a mother telling her son to send warm thoughts to a sad man. Perhaps the scene is meant to be sardonic, but if so it was less than clear.

But consider a story, a comedy really, about a couple, Moshe and Malli, and their trial of faith. Moshe wrestles almost as Jacob wrestled with God, that is, physically. At the height of his troubles, he races from the scene of his test into the woods, crying to God, "Do not let me be angry!" This is depth of character on the screen before us. This is spirituality.

Allow for a moment, that the same people to whom now is granted a miraculous gift of $1000 to subsidize a religious holiday were not granted a miracle by God some 60 years ago, and died. Allow that the granting or withholding of miracles is a mystery. Allow that a story with such depth of feeling can also have a conventional resolution. Ushpizin deserves to be seen for its transcendent moments, when, no matter your faith, you identify with Moshe, who wrestles with his God the same way you wrestle with whatever it is you wrestle with.

And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.

--Genesis 31:30