So, our difficult job, if we are to be faithful
Catholic voters, is to carefully examine which candidates’ positions are closest overall to the Gospel and Catholic social teaching – and vote for them.

Making a Difference
By Tony Magliano
Put your political party, your conservative/liberal leanings, your wallet and your self-interest on the back burner. And instead, vote with a well-formed Catholic conscience – which requires moving to the front burner of your mind and heart the Gospel of Jesus Christ and Catholic social teaching!
In the Gospel our Lord is crystal clear that while he deeply desires what is best for each one of us, he especially teaches in his words and actions that the poor and vulnerable require his attention in a most special way – because their need is the greatest. And so likewise, our words and actions must imitate the Lord’s. We need to stand in solidarity with all those who suffer. In fact our very salvation hinges on this.
Near the end of Matthew’s account of the Gospel, Jesus proclaims with both hope and warning that he will judge each one of us according to how well we reached out, or failed to reach out, to those who were hungry, thirsty, strangers, naked, sick, imprisoned – essentially anyone and everyone who was in need (see: Matthew 25: 31-46).
Building on the rock-solid Gospel foundation of love for all people – even including enemies and especially the poor and vulnerable – a love for all of creation, and the call to be peacemakers, the Catholic church in the last 125 years has developed a rich comprehensive body of in-depth teachings called Catholic social teaching which emphasizes care for creation, as well as the protection of all human life and the promotion of human dignity from womb to tomb. Here’s a link to an excellent and enjoyable introduction to Catholic social teaching https://www.crs.org/resource-center/CST-101.
So, what does all of this have to with the elections? A lot!

Most unfortunately, very few politicians are committed to consistently enacting legislation and public policy which is Gospel and Catholic social teaching based. So, our difficult job, if we are to be faithful Catholic voters, is to carefully prayerfully examine which candidates’ positions are closest overall to the Gospel and Catholic social teaching – and vote for them.
It would be morally and politically ideal if we had politicians who were committed to protecting the lives and dignity of all – from conception to natural death – as well as the planet we all share. But we don’t. So, we need to choose politicians who will overall do the most good and the least harm. This is messy business. However, at present this is the best moral approach we have.
The U.S. bishops in their voters’ guide document “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship” write, “There may be times when a Catholic who rejects a candidate’s unacceptable position even on policies promoting an intrinsically evil act may reasonably decide to vote for that candidate for other morally grave reasons. Voting in this way would be permissible only for truly grave moral reasons, not to advance narrow interests or partisan preferences or to ignore a fundamental moral evil.” (see: https://bit.ly/30oDQxz)
Whether it’s abortion, war and peace, nuclear weapons, poverty, hunger, climate change, homelessness, immigration, unemployment, healthcare or COVID-19 the easy temptation is to pick candidates who line up with our one pet moral issue. But single-issue voting is both simplistically harmful and unfaithful to Catholic teaching. (see: https://bit.ly/3jjsrGL)
We absolutely need to do our best in caring for all. For as St. Pope John Paul II said so beautifully: “Where life is involved, the service of charity must be profoundly consistent. It cannot tolerate bias and discrimination, for human life is sacred and inviolable at every stage and in every situation.”

(Tony Magliano is an internationally syndicated Catholic social justice and peace columnist. He is available to speak at diocesan or parish gatherings. Tony can be reached at tmag6@comcast.net. )

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
The excusable doesn’t need to be excused and the inexcusable cannot be excused.
Michael Buckley wrote those words and they contain an important challenge. We’re forever trying to make excuses for things we need not make excuses for and are forever trying to excuse the inexcusable. Neither is necessary. Or helpful.

We can learn a lesson from how Jesus dealt with those who betrayed him. A prime example is the apostle Peter, specially chosen and named the very rock of the apostolic community. Peter was an honest man with a childlike sincerity, a deep faith, and he, more than most others, grasped the deeper meaning of who Jesus was and what his teaching meant. Indeed, it was he who in response to Jesus’ question (Who do you say I am?) replied, “You are the Christ, the son of the Living God.” Yet minutes after that confession Jesus had to correct Peter’s false conception of what that meant and then rebuke him for trying to deflect him from his very mission. More seriously, it was Peter who, within hours of an arrogant boast that though all others would betray Jesus, he alone would remain faithful, betrayed Jesus three times, and this in Jesus’ most needy hour.
Later we are privy to the conversation Jesus has with Peter vis-à-vis those betrayals. What’s significant is that he doesn’t ask Peter to explain himself, doesn’t excuse Peter, and doesn’t say things like: “You weren’t really yourself! I can understand how anyone might be very frightened in that situation! I can empathize, I know what fear can do to you!” None of that. The excusable doesn’t need to be excused and the inexcusable cannot be excused. In Peter’s betrayal, as in our own betrayals, there’s invariably some of both, the excusable and the inexcusable.
So what does Jesus do with Peter? He doesn’t ask for an explanation, doesn’t ask for an apology, doesn’t tell Peter that it is okay, doesn’t offer excuses for Peter, and doesn’t even tell Peter that he loves him. Instead he asks Peter: “Do you love me?” Peter answers yes – and everything moves forward from there.
Everything moves forward from there. Everything can move forward following a confession of love, not least an honest confession of love in the wake of a betrayal. Apologies are necessary (because that’s taking ownership of the fault and the weakness so as to lift it completely off the soul of the one who was betrayed) but excuses are not helpful. If the action was not a betrayal, no excuse is necessary; if it was, no excuse absolves it. An excuse or an attempt at one serves two purposes, neither of them good. First, it serves to rationalize and justify, none of which is helpful to the betrayed or the betrayer. Second, it weakens the apology and makes it less than clean and full, thus not lifting the betrayal completely off the soul of the one who has been betrayed; and, because of that, is not as helpful an expression of love as is a clear, honest acknowledgement of our betrayal and an apology which attempts no excuse for its weakness and betrayal.
What love asks of us when we are weak is an honest, non-rationalized, admission of our weakness along with a statement from the heart: “I love you!” Things can move forward from there. The past and our betrayal are not expunged, nor excused; but, in love, we can live beyond them. To expunge, excuse, or rationalize is to not live in the truth; it is unfair to the one betrayed since he or she bears the consequences and scars.
Only love can move us beyond weakness and betrayal and this is an important principle not just for those instances in life when we betray and hurt a loved one, but for our understanding of life in general. We’re human, not divine, and as such are beset, congenitally, body and mind, with weaknesses and inadequacies of every sort. None of us, as St. Paul graphically says in his Epistle to the Romans, ever quite measure up. The good we want to do, we end up not doing, and the evil we want to avoid, we habitually end up doing. Some of this, of course, is understandable, excusable, just as some of it is inexcusable, save for the fact that we’re humans and partially a mystery to ourselves. Either way, at the end of the day, no justification or excuses are asked for (or helpful).
We don’t move forward in relationship by telling either God or someone we have hurt: “You have to understand! In that situation, what else was I to do too? I didn’t mean to hurt you, I was just too weak to resist!” That’s neither helpful, nor called for. Things move forward when we, without excuses, admit weakness, and apologize for betrayal. Like Peter when asked three times by Jesus: “Do you love me?” from our hearts we need to say: “You know everything, you know that I love you.”

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser, theologian, teacher and award-winning author, is President of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, Texas. He can be contacted through his website www.ronrolheiser.com.)

“While you are proclaiming peace with your lips, be careful to have it even more fully
in your heart.”

St. Francis of Assisi

Kneading Faith
By Fran Lavelle
We are amid a very divisive and heated political election cycle. The flames of division are stoked daily by news outlets, social media, family dinner tables, and yes, even the church. We seek validation of our political agendas by quoting people we respect, often political and religious leaders. I have threatened for years that I am going to write a book entitled, “If we are all right, who’s left?” That is to say that we cannot all be right, all the time. I believe that having deeply held beliefs is a good thing. What we cannot afford to do is judge and dismiss those who think differently than we do. Or worse yet alienate people because we do not see the issues through the same lens, especially those who are members of our family.

We just celebrated the Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi a few days ago. Imagery of St. Francis evokes a sense of serenity and peace. He is often featured with deer and forest creatures in painted works and in carvings and statutes there is often a bird on his shoulder or in his hand. He is the patron of animals, merchants and the environment. But he is also well known for a prayer he wrote simply known as the St. Francis prayer. In 1967 the prayer was adapted by Third Order Franciscan and South African songwriter Sebastian Temple. The song is literally part of the soundtrack of my Catholic upbringing. I am certain some of you are humming the familiar tune now. Perhaps the familiarity of the prayer and song has overtime cheapened the message. It begins, “Make me an instrument of your peace … where there is hatred let me sow love.” Notice, St. Francis used the word “instrument.” Miriam Webster defines instrument as a means whereby something is achieved, performed, or furthered. When we pray this prayer, we are asking God to use us to fight the agency of hatred, injury, doubt, despair, darkness and sadness. Further we are asking God to replace them with acts of love, forgiveness, faith, hope, light and joy. If I offer myself as an instrument of His peace, I need to mean it.

In thinking about St. Francis and his feast day, I asked myself how I am doing with the challenge of this prayer. I joke that I am Jesuit trained but hold a deep Franciscan spirituality much like another Francis (wink). There is a great gift in the blending of these two powerful spiritualities.

St. Francis offers a reminder that we are to be instruments, that is we are to be used to make peace. St. Ignatius offers a tool to help us assess how we are doing. In Ignatian spirituality one is asked to perform a daily examen, a review of one’s day if you will. The examen utilizes time set aside for reflection on where God is in your everyday life. There are five steps: offer thanks to God, ask the Holy Spirit for light to see what God is revealing to us, review the day, face your shortcomings, and look toward the day to come. For sure, I fall short. Sometimes my ego gets in the way. Sometimes it is my pride. But as in all growth, awareness is the first step to change.

The spirituality of St. Francis and St. Ignatius both offer great resources to help us navigate an increasingly divisive culture. Following Jesus is not merely an intellectual pursuit. Following Jesus requires action.

While none of us are perfect in this pursuit we are called to live out our faith in word and deed. That brings me back to the contentious political environment we are living in. How do we communicate that we are a Christians? Do our conversations and posts on social media reflect Jesus and his teachings? Our words matter. Are we instruments of love, forgiveness, faith, hope, light and joy? If not, are we adding to the hatred, injury, doubt, despair, darkness and sadness that the world already possesses too much of? I am reminded of a story and quote that I first heard in a homily. It is a fitting reminder that our words matter.

In 1977, Frank Outlaw the president of the Bi-Lo stores is attributed in a Texas newspaper to having said, “Watch your thoughts, they become words. Watch your words, they become actions. Watch your actions, they become habits. Watch your habits, they become character. Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.”

Let your words and your light shine that you may illuminate a path for others to follow that they too may reflect Christ. Be kind to one another, after all we belong to the same Father.

(Fran Lavelle is the Director of Faith Formation for the Diocese of Jackson)

ON ORDINARY TIMES
By Lucia A. Silecchia

Respect Life Month is an annual October opportunity to recommit to respecting the unique dignity of each human being, made in the likeness of God and created with an irreplaceable part in the human family that no other will ever fill. This year’s theme, “Living the Gospel of Life,” invites a thank you note to all those who live this “Gospel of Life” in their ordinary times by welcoming the most vulnerable. So …

Thank you to the elderly couple with full hearts and an overflowing basement bursting with the cribs, strollers, clothes, diapers, formula and toys they collect for expectant mothers in need. They know what may seem small never is.

Thank you to the man who sits in a quiet bar while his friend confides that his wife is pregnant with their fifth child and he just lost his job. Hearing this despair and knowing the desperate thoughts that fill the fearful father’s mind, this loyal friend pledges his support. He means it. This friendship means the world and can save a life – or two.

Thank you to the high school teacher with the picture-perfect family life who consoles a student facing an unexpected pregnancy and fearing her bright future is lost. After the standard words of encouragement fail, this teacher takes a deep breath and confides in her student what she has always kept private: “I was once there too.”

Thank you to the woman who carries her child for months, knowing she will place her greatest treasure into the heart and home of another family. She also knows this great act of love will exhaust her body and break her heart in ways few will understand.

Thank you to the parents with full hearts and empty arms who adopt children and raise them with a love that, in turn, inspires others to see the beautiful gift of adoption and continue this circle of selfless, aching love.

Thank you to friends who console a mother who miscarries her child. They understand this grief is deep and raw because a life has ended. So, they do not blithely say “it’s better this way” or “you’ll have another” because they know far more than a dream or a hope died within.

Thank you to those who speak kindly and with respect for women who give birth to and raise children in less than perfect circumstances. The children in their lives will overhear them – and remember their words more than anyone will ever know.

Thank you to all who dedicate their lives to caring for, teaching, employing and advocating for those who live with disabilities. In the opportunities you provide, families facing an unexpected pre-natal diagnosis might just see a glimpse of a promising future for their child. They may desperately need your witness to resist the pressures they are so likely to face as they wait to welcome their child.

Thank you to the parents of boys who teach their sons to respect the dignity of women, the sacredness of sex, and the obligation to support the children they father in every way they can. Thank you to those same parents who care for the mother of their son’s children – regardless of whether she is a beloved daughter-in-law whose pregnancy answers years of family prayer or a frightened teenage girlfriend whose name they do not even know.

Thank you to the religious sisters who, in so many ways, live the radical hospitality that welcomes women in need and their children by offering the love and material support that our busy world pays lip service to say but too often neglects to do. Thank you to the priests who hear the pain-filled confessions of those who carry heavy burdens and lifetimes of regrets. Through the ministry of the church they grant the pardon and peace that frees so many who are so broken to become some of the best protectors of life I have ever met.

Thank you to the friends of a frightened young woman, abandoned by her boyfriend, who accompany her home when she fears telling her family she is pregnant. Thank you to the friends of an overwhelmed father-to-be when they have the courage to tell him that fathers support both their children and the women carrying those children – and then help him to do this. Extra thanks if those friends also have the courage to tell him that, popular opinion notwithstanding, saying “I will support you in whatever you decide” is not support at all.

Thank you to the friendly Mass-goer who gives a wink and a smile to a crying infant rather than a cold stare and a judgmental glare. The harried parents trying to keep their children corralled in their pew will appreciate this and be grateful that those who celebrate the sanctity of life are not curmudgeons when they see the beauty of that life in the house of God.

Thank you to the knitters and quilters in retirement homes who make baby blankets for infants they will never know and donate them to pregnancy centers. They hold the loving hope that an exhausted mother may derive the strength to carry on just knowing a handmade gift was specially prepared for her unborn child.

Thank you, most of all, to parents who welcome children into the world in so many situations that are unexpected, unsupported, and unappreciated. What you do is sacred – not only on day one, but each and every day.

To all of you, and so many others, my “thank you” seems so small. May God bless you all for all the ways you live the Gospel of Life in all the days of your ordinary times.

(Lucia A. Silecchia is a Professor of Law at the Catholic University of America. “On Ordinary Times” is a biweekly column reflecting on the ways to find the sacred in the simple. Email her at silecchia@cua.edu.)

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
What kinds of things help induce mysticism in our lives? I was asked that question recently and this was my immediate, non-reflected, answer: whatever brings tears to your eyes in either genuine sorrow or genuine joy; but that response was predicated on a lot of things.

What is mysticism? What makes for mystical experience?

In the popular mind mysticism is misunderstood badly. We tend to identify mysticism with what’s extraordinary and paranormal, and see it as something for the spiritual elite. For most people, mysticism means spiritual visions and ecstatic experiences which take you outside of normal consciousness.

Mysticism can be that sometimes, though normally it has nothing to do with visions, altered states of consciousness, or states of ecstasy. Rather it has to do with a searing clarity of mind and heart. Mystical experiences are experiences that cut through all the things that normally block us from touching our deepest selves, and they are rare because normally our consciousness is cut off from our deep, true, virginal self by the influence of ego, wound, history, social pressure, ideology, false fear and all the various affectations we don and shed like clothing. Rarely are we ever in touch with our deepest center, without filters, purely; but when we are, that’s what makes for a mystical experience.

Mysticism, as Ruth Burrows defines it, is being touched by God in a way that’s beyond words, imagination and feeling. God, as we know, is Oneness, Truth, Goodness and Beauty. So any time we are genuinely touched by oneness, truth, goodness or beauty, without anything distorting that, we’re having a mystical experience. What might that look like?

Ruth Burrows describes a mystical experience which radically changed her life when she was eighteen years old, a senior at a private high school for young women operated by an order of nuns, on a retreat preparing for graduation, and not very mature. She and one of her friends were not taking this retreat very seriously, passing notes to each other and pulling pranks during the conferences. At a point, their antics were disturbing enough that the nuns pulled them out of the group and had them sit in silence in a chapel, chaperoned by a teacher, whenever the rest of the class was at a conference. At first, Burrows confesses, they continued their joking around, but the hours were long and the silence eventually wore her down. Sitting alone, bored and irritated, a mystical experience graced her, uninvited and unexpected. And it came upon her not as a vision or an ecstasy, but as a moment of searing clarity. At a certain moment, sitting alone, she saw herself with absolute clarity for who she really was, in all her immaturity and in all her goodness. It changed her life. From then on she knew who she was – beyond ego, wound, immaturity, peer pressure, ideology and all affectation. In that moment she knew her deepest self purely (and the only thing that was extraordinary was its extraordinary clarity).

So, what kinds of things might induce mystical experiences in our lives? The short answer: anything that takes you beyond your ego, your wounds, your affectations, and the powerful social pressures within which you breathe, that is, anything that helps put you in touch with who you really are and makes you want to be a better person. And this can be many things. It might be a book you read; it might be the beauty of nature; it might be the sight of a newborn baby, a crying child, a wounded animal, or the face of someone suffering; or it might be what you feel deep down when you receive an expression of love, bless someone, express genuine contrition, or share helplessness. It can be many things.

Several years ago while teaching a course, I assigned the students a number of books to read, among them Christopher de Vinck’s, Only the Heart Knows How to Find Them – Precious Memories for Faithless Time. This is a series of autobiographical essays within which de Vinck simply shares very warmly about his marriage, his children, and his home life. At the end of the semester a young woman, with de Vinck’s book in her hand, said to me: “Father, this is the best book I’ve ever read. I’ve always fancied myself a very free, liberated person and I’ve slept my way through several cities, but now I realize that what I want is what this man has. I want sex to take me home. I want a home. I want the marriage bed. I know now what I need!”

Reading Christopher de Vinck’s book had triggered a mystical experience inside her, not unlike the one described by Ruth Burrows. Reading the Story of a Soul by Therese of Lisieux generally does that for me.
So, here’s my counsel: seek out what does that for you. It doesn’t have to bring tears to your eyes, it just has to point you with searing clarity towards home!

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser, theologian, teacher and award-winning author, is President of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, Texas. He can be contacted through his website www.ronrolheiser.com.)

From the hermitage
By sister alies therese
Perhaps you’ve read a couple of the wonderful books by L. Van derPost of South Africa? Besides drawing you into a tender story and then challenging you with a hard truth, he writes and shares with us an exploration of his life. Often writers (both fiction and non-fiction) take us on a trip of some sort that either ‘tells the truth’ or ‘implies a truth within a fictionalized setting.’ In either case one might discover much of the richness of the writer’s testing of his/her own life as well as the readers. The writer may offer several different threads that might, or might not, come together at some point showing some continuity and often great patience, especially when things ‘go wrong.’

I wonder if we’re in a time of rummaging around in our own lives, the church’s (especially) and our cultures to find those threads that may, or may not, come together? At what level is there no anguish? Huge fires/climate change, pandemic, hurricanes, interpersonal strife, loneliness, international disregard, where indeed is the thread that draws us together? These are a part of deficit culture … what brings us to see a culture of beneficence?
Back in 1984 Michael Ignatieff, in The Needs of Strangers, reflected this: “If we deceive ourselves about what we need, we are likely to be deceived about what strangers need. There are few presumptions in human relations more dangerous than the idea that one knows what another human being needs better than they do themselves … if we need love, it is for reasons that go beyond the happiness it brings; it is for the connection, the rootedness, it gives us with others.”
Notice our strange mixtures. Consider a blood family of three children and parents, for example, and wonder sometimes if they are connected! Maybe it will be facial, or the sound of voice, or a certain talent, or hair color. Some things will indicate that they are ‘related.’ What are the things in God’s family that show, though in very different ways, ‘we’re all related?’ What are those ‘six-degrees’ of separation that bond us? How do we put together those many strands and threads and celebrate?
Within the human community, and indeed within the community of believers, there are as many differences as similarities. Bottom line stretches to ‘human’ (all bleeding red blood), ‘we all have certain needs’ and we are on a path that calls us forward from ‘birth to death.’ Beyond that almost everything else, social status, color, attitudes, beliefs, fears, competences and the lot are as individual as we can imagine. We are strangers as often to ourselves as to others.
One stereotypical image of a beggar is perhaps a homeless person blinded by disconnection from self, family, housing, medical care and food. We have a persistent beggar within, the unwillingness to be born/change things by refusing to allow the Spirit to prompt growth. We can spend inordinate amounts of time telling others what they need, what they should do/not do, what they ought to understand. Rather we might remain silent and allow them to discover their own threads. Or we might ask questions that will help reveal the beggars within us.
We might agree that racism, not telling the truth, or the –ism you pick are evil, sinful, horrid. We might agree but what to do about it needs input from the sufferers outlining some change. Opinions and political implications and others have dictated what to do for many years and have been relatively unsuccessful. Where is my heart stuck? What does my heart have to contribute?
Ignatieff reminds us: “the theory of human needs is a particular kind of language of the human good. To define human nature in terms of needs is to define what we are in terms of what we lack, to insist on the distinctive emptiness and incompleteness of humans as a species.” To know our ‘beggars’ is to discover not only what we need, but what we have to share. To define others (the poor, the wayward, the unborn, the prisoner, the weary, the old) by what they lack is a deficit culture and we never see beyond as Jesus sees.
Van derPost in his 1973 The Seed & Sower, points this out: “… I did not understand the sabotage in the invisible dimension of my being… There is a strange, persistent beggar at a narrow door asking to be born; asking again and again, for admission at the gateway of our lives.”
If we want to be born, or allow those threads to come together within, we might encourage ourselves to act, to build the Beloved Community. Perhaps that’s the kind of love that makes a difference, that ‘good trouble’, the kind that ‘relates’ us? Might even be the beginning of real change?
BLESSINGS.

(Sister alies therese is a vowed Catholic solitary who lives an eremitical life. Her days are formed around prayer, art and writing. She is author of six books of spiritual fiction and is a weekly columnist. She lives and writes in Mississippi.)

THEOLOGY AT THE MOVIES
By James Tomek, Ph.D.
How do we read “Unorthodox,” a recent four-part series on Netflix of a woman, Esty, who flees from a Hasidic community in New York in search of a new community in Berlin? Is the film about the problems of Jews to maintain their culture in the “diaspora” – the land outside of Palestine/Israel? Esty rebelling against the Hasidic culture? About how women are imprisoned in their religious cultures? Do we have the right to “educate” women and men who live “happily” in a culture that could be repressive? Ultimately, do we really learn anything specific about Hasidic culture other than seeing the stark clothing and witnessing devotions without understanding the words? Can we, in turn, question our Catholicism about some of its customs? We are all in the diaspora – “scattered” from our origins seeking security.

In “Unorthodox,” Esty, escapes an unhappy marriage and flies to Berlin where she tries to fit in with a group of student-musicians. Flashbacks reveal how she was raised by her grandmother in a Hasidic community in Williamsburg, Brooklyn; entered into a prearranged marriage with Yanky Shapiro; was naive in the sexual facts of life; became pregnant, and at present, decides to flee the closed community to go to Berlin. Why? Her mother, excommunicated earlier from the community, had gone to Berlin where she now lives with her partner and works as a nurse.
The Hasidic (meaning pious/piety) form of worship started in the 18th Century in Poland. In the face of persecutions, the Hasidic Jews devoted themselves to preserve their form of worship. The black suits and head wear were ways of reminding themselves who they were, especially in the diaspora. The Williamsburg community people are more recent descendants of the Satmar community in Hungary, preserving their religion from the horrors of the World War II Holocaust.
Is Esty a descendant of the biblical Esther? Esty, like Esther, is a heroine in a foreign land. The book of Esther is about Jews living in Persia after the Exile in 486 BCE. The King chooses Esther, a Jew, to replace his first wife as Queen. Esther’s cousin, Mordecai, enrages the current Prime Minister, Hamon, who wants to annihilate all the Jews. Mordecai convinces the King of Hamon’s evil plot. The Jews are accepted and Hamon is executed. The Jews celebrate their victory over death in a foreign land with the Feast of Purim. The Talmud, ethical commentaries on the Hebrew Scriptures (in a way, a Jewish New Testament), is ambiguous about Esther. It is a difficult book to love since it is about vengeance and with little or no mention of God’s providence.
Is our Esty a new Esther in a foreign land? She meets with musicians studying in a Berlin conservatory. In an early outing, she enters a lake, and joyfully, baptismally takes off her sheitel, a wig used to hide her hair when out in public. She has an intimate relation with one of the group and finally is admitted to take a test to enter the conservatory. She finally chooses to sing a Yiddish folk song for her audition. She is pursued in Berlin by her equally naive husband Yanky, and a relative, Moishe, who is equally at home in Hasidic ceremonies as well as in capitalistic casinos and bars. Esty refuses Yanky. Moishe, at first aggressive in wanting to bring Esty back, undergoes his own baptism as he seems torn between the two cultures, seen in his symbolic undressing and wading in the Spree.
Do we have a right to educate people who are happy in a culture or religion that may imprison them? The Jewish community in Williamsburg seems to be getting along very well. Is Esty being deprived of the freedom to grow? Do we have a right to “free” this woman from her religious community? Do we know enough about our own religion?
The Hindu religion has four ways to the divine – four ways of being religious: knowledge (jnana) [study], devotion (bhakti) [ceremonies], duty (karma) [good deeds], and meditation (raja) [prayer]. The Hasidic Jews emphasize devotion. The film succeeds in showing the appearances of this Hasidic community and how its marriages are arranged and the Sabbath celebrated. However, it is short on the “knowledge” part. Why the elaborate headdresses or stremeil for the men? The growth of side locks of hair? What is the meaning of the Yiddish folk song through which Esty wins over her audience?
I prefer the way of “knowledge,” so by that I mean studying why we do certain things in our devotions. Some enjoy the karma or duty – doing good deeds. Others find pleasure worshiping without questioning the whys.
The film “Unorthodox” succeeds in showing appearances of a Hasidic community. But, how do these showings reflect their memories? We are all in the diaspora – away from our origins. Our Catholic way of remembering is in the Mass – not necessarily in the priest’s vestments or shape of the church and altar – but in the scriptures read and the shared meal where we remember Jesus’s sacrifice.

(James Tomek is a retired language and literature professor at Delta State University who is currently a Lay Ecclesial Minister at Sacred Heart in Rosedale and also active in RCIA at Our Lady of Victories in Cleveland.)