The movie opens with a quote, "I love and Hate, but I don't know why" or something along those lines. I don't know if you have ever had an ex-girlfriend or anything like that. But I do know that people who have had bad break-ups, claim to hate the person that they broke up with even though they really love the person. The love is very strong, yet they can no longer be with the person that they love which leads to feelings of hatred that are actually sourced in love.
This movie really played on Danny's relationship with God in a similar way, and this is just one of the ideas that "The Believer" provoked. In the movie Danny, as a child, "dumps" HaShem (literally "the name"--the Jewish God) right in the middle of the classroom. While he hates God on the one hand, on the other hand he loves God and desires to think about Judiasm and Torah all the time. Thus he becomes a Nazi. He can obsess over God and Judiasm, yet still claim to hate them both. This is an extreme version of a dynamic which is at play amongst many Jews and non-Jews today. They spite religion, hate practitioners, and despise God. The movie really outlines this idea well, and it really answers how one can come to love God without this hatred. One must lose his ego and submit to God and his faith based Law.
Because of the protagonist's hatred for God and Torah he believes in the anti-thesis of the Jewish God and Torah--that is Nazism. Yet in order for him to hate God, the Jews and Torah, he must first love it and assert its truth. You can't hate something you don't even believe in. Thus it is absurd to call Danny an atheist in any sense. His hatred presupposes a strong belief and a strong love. When he sees the Torah being desecrated he realized this dynamic, this love-hate relationship between God and himself. His obsession with Jews, God, and Torah was his love not his hatred, but yet he could not lower his own ego enough to say that he loves it. He could not submit God and the Torah.
This happens to many Jewish people as well as non-Jewish people today. I hope that by making this dynamic explicit, people will read this article and realize that this dynamic is at play in themselves, and it will help them submit in love, rather than fight in hatred. That is why this movie is so good, it makes clear something so difficult to explicate. In order to get a lot from watching this movie one must really think about the psychological and theological dynamics that are at play. It is really very accurate and very thought provoking.
This movie really played on Danny's relationship with God in a similar way, and this is just one of the ideas that "The Believer" provoked. In the movie Danny, as a child, "dumps" HaShem (literally "the name"--the Jewish God) right in the middle of the classroom. While he hates God on the one hand, on the other hand he loves God and desires to think about Judiasm and Torah all the time. Thus he becomes a Nazi. He can obsess over God and Judiasm, yet still claim to hate them both. This is an extreme version of a dynamic which is at play amongst many Jews and non-Jews today. They spite religion, hate practitioners, and despise God. The movie really outlines this idea well, and it really answers how one can come to love God without this hatred. One must lose his ego and submit to God and his faith based Law.
Because of the protagonist's hatred for God and Torah he believes in the anti-thesis of the Jewish God and Torah--that is Nazism. Yet in order for him to hate God, the Jews and Torah, he must first love it and assert its truth. You can't hate something you don't even believe in. Thus it is absurd to call Danny an atheist in any sense. His hatred presupposes a strong belief and a strong love. When he sees the Torah being desecrated he realized this dynamic, this love-hate relationship between God and himself. His obsession with Jews, God, and Torah was his love not his hatred, but yet he could not lower his own ego enough to say that he loves it. He could not submit God and the Torah.
This happens to many Jewish people as well as non-Jewish people today. I hope that by making this dynamic explicit, people will read this article and realize that this dynamic is at play in themselves, and it will help them submit in love, rather than fight in hatred. That is why this movie is so good, it makes clear something so difficult to explicate. In order to get a lot from watching this movie one must really think about the psychological and theological dynamics that are at play. It is really very accurate and very thought provoking.