It’s been a horrific start to Hanukkah 5786, to say the least.
A yet-to-be-caught shooter killed two students at Brown University on Saturday evening, injuring nine others, after opening fire on students studying for an economics final. The next day, two assailants opened fire on a Hanukkah celebration on Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, killing 15 people and injuring 42 others. News broke later that evening that legendary Jewish director and actor Rob Reiner and his wife Michele, a photographer and filmmaker, were murdered in their home. The LAPD arrested the Reiner’s 32-year-old son Nick under suspicion of the murders. Both the Bondi Beach massacre and the Reiner murders took place on the anniversary of the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre.
All of these crimes are surreal tragedies on their own. Together they are unbearable. As the Talmud dictates that every human life is an entire universe (Sanhedrin, 37a), we have lost so many universes over the last few days.
I feel like I’ve been walking through the world in gelatin, mired in the thick of this horribleness that slows me down, maddeningly, as I try to get through it. All I want to do — all I’ve wanted to do for the last few days — is turn my phone off, close my blinds, pull myself into the most animal shape possible, preferably under a blanket, turn off my mind and turn on a movie. But not just any movie. It’s both a cosmic, cruel irony and a bittersweet memorial that I could could go for just about any Rob Reiner movie right now.
It feels trite to say at this point, given just how many tributes there have been, but it’s undeniable that Reiner was a quintessential American director. His oeuvre was impressively diverse, spanning romantic comedy, coming-of-age, fantasy, mockumentary (a genre he invented with “This Is Spinal Tap”) and crime thriller. At the same time, all of his work shared an authentic, warm vibrancy of human spirit that is so hard to capture. Given the entertainment industry’s current hyper-focus on cash-grabby I/P and sloppy, impersonal AI, it’s a soulfulness in film that’s becoming all too rare.
Think of the moment in “Stand By Me,” when Chris comforts his sobbing friend: “You’re gonna be a great writer someday, Gordie.” Or when Wesley stares into Buttercup’s eyes for the first time and utters, “As you wish” in “The Princess Bride.” Or the end of “When Harry Met Sally…” when Harry declares his love for Sally on New Year’s Eve, to which Sally retorts, “You see? That is just like you, Harry. You say things like that and you make it impossible for me to hate you! And I hate you, Harry. I really hate you.” Do you not feel those moments crackling inside you? And do you not feel like a better person for engaging in art that connects you back to the human experience — especially in a world continually urging you to be devoid of empathy? I absolutely do.
It’s likely no surprise that as a Jewish culture writer, “When Harry Met Sally…” is Reiner’s film that speaks to me the most. When I do find the time to watch a movie this week, inevitably it’ll be this one. To me, “When Harry Met Sally…” is the matzah ball soup of movies. I feel at home when I watch it.
I feel that literally, of course, in the sense that New York City is my home. The sweeping shots of fiery-leaved Central Park trees in autumn, Washington Square Park as the morning haze welcomes the day and the still water of the Temple of Dendur at the Met then, in the late ’80s, are the sweetest reminder that New York is still where I want to be now.
But the movie is also home for me — and maybe also for you — in its unmistakably Jewish sensibility. The Katz’s Deli scene, with its “I’ll have what she’s having” moment (a line delivered by Reiner’s mother, Estelle), is the most iconic and concrete. On a wider scale, though, Jewishness is in the oxygen that the characters breathe in “When Harry Met Sally…” It’s imparted in Nora Ephron‘s wry, quick-witted dialogue. It’s seen in Reiner’s directorial point of view, influenced by his father Carl Reiner, and the legendary Jewish comedians Rob Reiner grew up around, Norman Lear, Mel Brooks and Sid Caesar.
“When Harry Met Sally…” exists in a world that’s scrutable to me. One where the love two friends find in each other endures because it’s based upon Rob Reiner’s real-life experience of falling in love with his wife, Michele. The good is abundant there, and the darkness and conflict are manageable. It’s the perfect 96-minute sojourn. And then when it’s done, perhaps I’ll be girded with the hope of possibility to reckon with the world I do live in, to say the blessings for light over the Hanukkah menorah and mean it. All thanks to Rob Reiner.
