Jewish World Review June 3, 1998 / 9 Sivan, 5758
CBS's Touched by an Angel
Even Moses himself couldn't redeem this show
By Elliot B. Gertel
FOR WHATEVER REASON, Touched By An Angel waited until after
Passover and Easter to offer up its little morality play about a Jewish slumlord
sentenced to spend Passover in a property in which he exploits minority
tenants, a property that also happens to be his childhood home and the
place his father died of a heart ailment.
Yet, the timing of the broadcast itself is symbolic of a depiction of a sacred Jewish Festival in a way that is neither Jewish nor Christian, but mixes together elements of both faiths
for the purpose of scuttling both.
Writer Michael Berenbeim makes a point of mentioning several times that the
nasty slumlord, Jacob Weiss (Bruce Davison) had a pious and generous
father -- a cantor, no less -- who was always good to his tenants. Weiss also has a kind
Jewish mother, and a decent wife and son, whom he has estranged, but who
want to be close to him. But is hard for the writer to isolate his
Whatever the writer's disclaimers to the contrary, Weiss very definitely comes across as
representing the cruel Jewish landlord, an embittered exploiter in the
tradition of The Pawnbroker. Ironically, the scenario is a throwback to the
Sixties.
I suspect that statistics in the 1990s would reveal a rather small
percentage of ghetto properties owned by Jews. More and more, the slumlords
taken to task are African American. But in this episode, there is not even
black on black crime. All the driveby shootings in the ghetto are done by
white mobsters (who are at the beck and call of streetwise black youth). It
is the presence of the white, Jewish exploiter which provokes both crime
and substandard living.
African American angel Tess (Della Reese) is careful to observe that Weiss
is an "equal opportunity offender," hurtful to both the people he hates and
the people he loves. He fires anyone who won't get him what he wants and
who dares to tell him the truth. He has no use for Judaism or Passover, but
when he finds out that his sentence begins the night of the first seder,
even after stating his unwillingness to come to the seder and at least see
his wife and child, he exploits the Jewish holiday to appeal the judge's
decision.
As it turns out, however, the judge is Jewish, and a member of the same
synagogue to which Jacob belongs, and reminds Jacob that he has only seen
Jacob's wife and son in synagogue on Pesach. That dialogue rings true as an
effective indictment of the way that some Jews exploit Judaism when it is
convenient, but the overall message of the episode is that the angels have
to wait for after the seder, for outside the Jewish family, for some place
other than the synagogue, to work their redemption. Jacob will change, but
not because of any transformation caused by Judaism or the Jewish calendar
or Jewish songs or traditions. He will change by being enabled by the
angels, and by the G-d that they represent, to exploit Jewish rituals to
beat the Angel of Death with the right technique.
While under house-arrest, Jacob enlists the help of a young
African American boy, a tenant in the building, to find someone
who can tamper with the police foot-monitor. His young "helper"
demands $1,000 to make the connection. The implication of the
script is that the young boy is not really a gouger, like Jacob, but
is teaching the latter a "lesson" for neglecting the building to the
point that the boy's father was injured in a kitchen fire. Thinking
that Jacob was planning to do some good with the thousand
dollars, his son brings his bar mitzvah money to his dad, and
then is shot in a drive-by attack by Caucasian foot-monitor
adjuster gangsters.
The Irish angel, who has already preached to Jews twice before
on this series, makes her general statement about how G-d loves
Jacob, and then reminds him of his father's last words, quoting
from the biblical words found in the daily Hebrew prayers, that
we must love G-d with all our heart, soul and might, and teach
this to our children.
During his stay in the old tenement building, Jacob has heard his
father's voice singing Eliyahu Hanovi, the Passover seder song
inviting Elijah the Prophet to bring freedom, redemption and
peace to all people. But Jacob has resisted and fled the song.
"Freedom is for rich people," he told his father on the seder night
that the latter died, "and we don't even have enough money to
pay for a doctor."
Jacob has bitter memories of black youths beating him up on the
way home to that tragic seder after he had picked up candles at
the synagogue. His father told him that Jews and African
Americans must get along because the black slaves identified
with the Jewish hope for freedom and peace. He sings both
Eliyahu Hanovi and the African American spiritual, Go Down,
Moses to make his point, just moments before his death. (One
wishes that this "cantor" had sung the Pesach Kiddush in the
proper mode.)
Reflecting on his dad many years later, Jacob tells his mother
that if he managed the building like his father, spending a fortune
on maintenance and letting rents slide, "We'd still be stuck in that
dump praying for G-d to provide. G-d didn't get us out of
Brooklyn. I did."
During her little "epiphany," the angel tells Jacob that he must
humble himself before G-d, that this requires great strength and
that he must put his wounded son in G-d's hands. As if by
instinct, Jacob washes his hands with his son's blood and then
rubs a bloody handprint on the door, near to where the mezuzah
used to be in his father's old apartment. Neither Jacob nor the
angels know what to expect next. Their test of "faith" seems to
consist of waiting out the efficacy of the blood. Sure enough, the
Angel of Death walks to the door, but then strolls off. It is as if no
one in heaven or earth knew whether the old Bible story would
still work, but felt that it was worth a try.
Here too, salvation comes not from G-d, but from Jacob's money
(could that be why the main character is named after the biblical
Jacob?), which is now a religious money. He just seems to
manipulate skillfully, both in the business and religious realm.
The African Americans in the hour are totally helpless, unable
either to help Jacob or ignore him (the writer himself cannot
decide how they respond); they are so caught up in their own
inability to keep track of their children or to stand up for
themselves that they make no decisions of any kind. The only
thing they choose to do as African Americans is to break into a
few choruses of Go Down, Moses with Della Reese. The scene is
so silly and demeaning to blacks that it comes off as a comical
parody on the use of hymns like Swing Low, Sweet Chariot in
Marx Brothers films.
Jewish songs are treated no better. Jacob sings Eliyahu Hanovi
as a mantra after his son is shot, but it is a mantra chosen for
nostalgia and seasonal purposes. Jacob's new "faith" is just
another form of pulling himself out of a bad situation, and his
black tenants are not even given credit for being able to do that.
In the Bible, the lame is, in fact, an in-your-face message to the
Egyptians that the Israelites have such faith in G-d's promise of
redemption that they will sacrifice something sacred to the
Egyptian religion and use its blood to identify Jewish homes.
That said in no uncertain terms that they were not afraid of the
Egyptian incarnate god, Pharaoh.
Berenbeim's Touched By An Angel episode moves awkwardly
into the realm of Christian symbolism where the son's blood
becomes the atoning sacrifice --- and Angel Monica does use that
word, "sacrifice," to describe Jacob's son. But the "theology"
really combines a crass take on the "Old Testament" concept of
the "sins of the fathers" with the belief that the movers and
shakers of the world will, as a class, instantly clean up their bad
karma if they use their superior talents to manipulate biblical
rituals. In the process, they can feel good about helping the
docile folk of the world. That way, no one need be "judged" by
codes of personal or communal responsibility and activism.
Could we have here TV's first sampling of a pop form of
Hinduism with shades of pop Buddhism?
character as extreme case when he has African American tenants booing Weiss
in court for hating them because they are "not Jews."
Contributing writer Elliot B. Gertel is JWR's resident media
maven. He is based at the National Jewish Post and Opinion.
