A Cantor and an Adult Bat Mitzvah Student Meet in a Bar — The Revealer

When Cantor Ben Gottlieb (Jason Schwartzman) tells Carla Kessler O’Connor (Carol Kane) that she is a “funny lady” in Nathan Silver’s film Between the Temples, she asks, “then how come you don’t laugh at my jokes?” Ben replies, “It’s a different kind of funny.” This repartee between the two protagonists who rescue one another from grief and loneliness aptly characterizes the film itself. Between the Temples IS humorous, but its humor is part poignant, part acerbic. There’s plenty of Jewish funny business here, but Judaism is more than the butt of a joke. In sharp contrast to most other American Jewish movies featuring cantors or Jews coming of age, Between the Temples uses offbeat comedy to embrace Jewish practice.

(Movie poster for Between the Temples)

The source of Ben’s tears is the untimely death of his wife, a hard-drinking writer who died from a brain bleed after falling while drunk. Consumed by grief, he has lost his cantorial voice. Early on in the film, which premiered at Sundance, Ben returns to his synagogue to lead services after a considerable absence. Although he tries to open the Kabbalat Shabbat service with Yedid Nefesh, “My Soul’s Beloved,” he is unable to cough his way through more than the first notes. Fleeing the synagogue, he listens to the last voicemail his wife left him, then lies down in the street, clutches his tallit (prayer shawl), and waits for a truck to run over him. In the next scene, he is waving goodbye to the truck driver, who has dropped him off at a bar. There he will drink too many mudslides, pick a fight with a patron who punches him out, and then be rescued by his old music teacher, Mrs. O’Connor. She reveals herself to have been born Carla Kessler and now has a deep desire to have the bat mitzvah denied to her as a “Red diaper baby” (i.e., the daughter of Communist atheists).

Almost a century ago, a different loss of cantorial voice ushered in the talkie in movies. The Jazz Singer (1927) is the classic Hollywood assimilation story of a cantor’s son who realizes his dream of moving from the temple to the nightclub via blackface and faux jazz. In the 1980 version of that film, Neil Diamond’s belting out of “Coming to America” completes his journey from the synagogue to the stage. But in Between the Temples, assimilation doesn’t stand a chance against the enduring power of Jewish tradition. Rather than desiring to free himself of the cantorial yoke like his cinematic predecessors, Ben mourns his inability to perform ritually. By the end of the film, Ben finally recovers his voice during Carla’s bat mitzvah. Between the Temples powerfully reverses American Jewish cinematic history by combining a coming-of age ritual with a Jewish return to the cantorial fold.

Carla’s bat mitzvah takes place at the edge of the wilderness and is, not surprisingly, profoundly unorthodox. Of course, it’s worth remembering that the coming-of-age ritual for women is a modern phenomenon. Judith Kaplan, the daughter of Rabbi Mordechai Kaplan, was the first girl to have a bat mitzvah. In 1922, at the Society for the Advancement of Judaism, the Reconstructionist Synagogue that Rabbi Kaplan founded, Judith was not allowed to read from the Torah scroll. Women were considered too impure to have direct access to such holiness, and there was a limit on rocking the boat. In her memories of what retrospectively turned into a revolutionary Jewish feminist development, Kaplan says her grandmothers were horrified and wanted to prevent the ritual display of gender equity from happening. Nonetheless, Judith’s Jewish womanhood was liturgically marked. As she recounted:

“l was signaled to step forward to a place below the bimah [platform in a synagogue] at a very respectable distance from the scroll of the Torah, which had already been rolled up and garbed in its mantle. I pronounced the first blessing, and from my own Humash [book containing the first five books of the Hebrew Bible] read the selection which Father had chosen for me, continued with the reading of the English translation, and concluded with the closing brakhah (blessing). That was it [sic] The scroll was returned to the ark with song and procession, and the service was resumed. No thunder sounded, no lightning struck. The institution of bat mitzvah had been born without incident, and the rest of the day was all rejoicing.”

The 1970s saw a rapid expansion of bat mitzvahs, and women who had not had the opportunity to have their Jewish womanhood ritually recognized in their youth began to train for and complete this ritual in adulthood, sometimes in late adulthood. Director Nathan Silver’s own mother, Cindy Silver, started this process in her 60s but did not complete it. But her experience and desire were the germ for this film.

Silver mentions that his mother, who has a small role in the movie, is the most important critic as she has seen the film and given it a positive review. Meanwhile, Carla, in the film, recites a different version of bat mitzvah history to Cantor Ben, emphasizing the importance of Jewish innovation. This revisionist approach to history highlights the individualistic nature of American Jewish culture portrayed in the movie. Just as Cantor Ben and Carla’s dedication to their rituals is unique in cinema, the film challenges traditional portrayals of Jewish coming-of-age ceremonies, which are often depicted as burdensome or lacking meaning.

Carla’s insistence on having a “shotgun bat mitzvah” after a health scare showcases a feminist declaration of independence. The film not only delves into Jewish content but also features predominantly Jewish casting, in contrast to the trend of non-Jewish actors playing Jewish roles in Hollywood. The movie’s title reflects its intertwining of psychological and Jewish themes, making it a valuable addition to Jewish cinema, especially in the wake of recent events.

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