{"id":85520,"date":"2021-06-02T17:05:33","date_gmt":"2021-06-02T15:05:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=85520"},"modified":"2021-05-24T16:15:13","modified_gmt":"2021-05-24T14:15:13","slug":"03-05-64","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=85520","title":{"rendered":"A Place to Call Home"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>A Place to Call Home<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/h5>\n

MICHAEL OREN<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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ACORN TV \/ Marta Dusseldorp as Sarah Nordmann in a \u2018A Place to Call Home\u2019<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

The Australian series, set in the aftermath of World War II, portrays religious life (and Jews) with bracing sincerity<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n

.<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n

In one of the final scenes of the hit Australian series A Place to Call Home<\/em>, Sarah Nordmann lights the Sabbath candles. She blesses the wine and the bread and passes them around the table. The moment is extraordinary, not only because Sarah, born Bridgette Adams, is a convert to Judaism, but because all her guests are gentiles. Some of them were formerly anti-Semites. Sarah embraces them and wishes them an ardent \u201cShabbat shalom<\/em>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Sarah ranks as one of the most complex characters to appear in contemporary television\u2014principled, passionate, long-suffering, and intrepid. Her decision to convert, made after falling in love with a Jewish doctor during the Spanish Civil War, leads to her excommunication from the Catholic Church and subsequent estrangement from her mother. It results in her internment in the Ravensbr\u00fcck concentration camp and her torture by the Nazis. Yet the most insidious challenge to Sarah\u2019s identity comes after the Holocaust, when a wealthy Australian widower invites her to work as a nurse in his quiet country town. There she must wrestle with almost daily displays of anti-Semitism.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It comes in various stripes, from the \u201cHitler should have gotten you all\u201d variety to the aristocratic \u201cto be born a Jew is misfortune enough, but to become one is a tragedy.\u201d Jew-hatred is shown to permeate every stratum of Australian society, along with prejudice against gay people, women, and Blacks. Sarah stands up for them all. Though not formally observant, she is fiercely attached to her adopted faith and what she regards as its liberal ideals. She confronts the bigots and, for the most part, defeats them. When chancing on a former Ravensbr\u00fcck guard, she seeks not closure but vengeance, and after giving birth to a son, insists on having him circumcised. Along the way, Sarah befriends other Jews, many of them Orthodox, all of them noble.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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If glowing in its portrayal of Jews and Judaism, A Place to Call Home<\/em>, which is streaming on Acorn TV, is no less admiring in its treatment of Israel. Sarah is unreservedly proud of the Jewish state, defending it from detractors and yearning to visit at the earliest opportunity. Zionism serves as an inspiration to other liberation movements, she believes, as do several of the series\u2019 protagonists. \u201cIsrael \u2026 it gives a man hope,\u201d an aboriginal worker observes to her. \u201cTwo thousand years for your mob and only 200 years for ours \u2026 so maybe there\u2019s light at the end of the tunnel.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Such a positive portrayal of Jewishness and Israel might be understandable if the makers of A Place to Call Home<\/em> were themselves committed Jews or evangelical Christians. But writer Bevan Lee, a renowned gay-rights activist, wrote the series not as a tribute to Jews but to the veterans of World War II. Marta Dusseldorp, who plays Sarah, is also a non-Jew. She prepared for the role by watching Claude Lanzmann\u2019s Shoah <\/em>film, visiting Sydney\u2019s Holocaust Museum and speaking with a convert. \u201cSarah doesn\u2019t walk around as a victim,\u201d she explained. \u201cHer life is about \u2026 being positive and enriching the world.\u201d A search of the producers\u2019 backgrounds reveals no Jewish connections whatsoever.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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By contrast, one would be hard-pressed to find an American series in which Jews did not play a significant if not dominant role. And Jewish characters have long been a staple of American television\u2014from the presumed-to-be Jewish stars of Rhoda<\/em> and Seinfeld<\/em> to the over-the-top Jews of Curb Your Enthusiasm<\/em> and The<\/em> Marvelous Mrs. Maisel<\/em>. The progression from subtle to flagrant portrayals no doubt reflects the increasing success and security of Jews in the entertainment field, but it also mirrors their own sense of identity. For them, it seems, Judaism is less a source of pride and values than of ethnic quirks, psychological fragility, and angst\u2014less a religion than a syndrome. And it is funny, easily caricatured: an ongoing Jewish joke. Donny\u2019s Bar Mitzvah<\/em>, a new Amazon Prime comedy, seeks to be \u201cthe raunchiest Jewish movie ever made.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But other series, most graphically Our Boys<\/em> and Unorthodox<\/em>, dispense with humor altogether to show a Judaism that is racist, anti-feminist, cruel, and ultimately violent. Israel is painted as heartless at best, and at worst, evil. These themes converge in Messiah<\/em>, a Netflix production that touches on almost every anti-Semitic trope, from the hideous IDF soldiers who torment a Christ-like figure and his unarmed Palestinian followers to the Israeli security personnel determined to kill him.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Our Boys <\/em>and Unorthodox <\/em>were created by Jews, but not Messiah<\/em>, which was written by an Australian Catholic. This is unusual, for Australia may be one of the few countries in the world capable of producing a program like A Place to Call Home<\/em>. Free of Europe\u2019s anti-Semitic baggage and without the American Jews who poke fun or take aim at their heritage, Australian producers have no problem in presenting Jews who are steeped in their tradition and committed to their faith. They can still see Israel as a blessing.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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That sympathy applies not only to Judaism but to religion in general. An upper crust family saga similar to Dynasty<\/em>, Downton Abbey<\/em>, and Dallas<\/em>, A Place to Call Home<\/em> is uniquely focused on faith. The Catholics are staunch in their religious convictions as are the members of the Church of England\u2014the \u201cC of E\u201d as they lovingly call it. \u201cWhat would we do without prayer, whoever our God?\u201d Doris, a Protestant, asks Sarah after the funeral of a common friend. Sarah responds by reciting Psalm 23, in Hebrew, \u201cv\u2019yeshavti bavait Adonai le\u2019orech yamim<\/em>,\u201d and Doris concludes, \u201cwith your son and the Holy Spirit forever and ever.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Perhaps this is a nod to the period in which the drama takes place, in the early 1950s, when Australians were presumably more observant. But Downton Abbey<\/em>, set in 1920s England, is effectively desacralized, with its historical adviser having been instructed to \u201ckeep religion out of it.\u201d At a time when television priests are more likely to be pedophiles than role models and born-again Christians are invariably fanatics, A Place to Call Home <\/em>is a paean to piety.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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And audiences loved it. Discontinued after a mere two seasons, the series was brought back by popular demand for an additional five. It won every Australian television award\u2014including most outstanding drama series\u2014four times.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cShabbat shalom,<\/em>\u201d <\/em>the guests in that final scene reply to Sarah. She has triumphed over ignorance, hatred, and genocide. But religion, too, has won, and especially Judaism. A Place to Call Home<\/em> proves that Jews, God, and Israel needn\u2019t be lambasted or lampooned to achieve high ratings. On the contrary, portraying them favorably, even heroically, just may be the secret to a hit.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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A Place to Call Home MICHAEL OREN ACORN TV \/ Marta Dusseldorp as Sarah Nordmann in a \u2018A Place to Call Home\u2019 The Australian series, set in the aftermath of World War II, portrays religious life (and Jews) with bracing sincerity . In one of the final scenes of the hit Australian series A Place […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85520"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=85520"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85520\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85760,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85520\/revisions\/85760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=85520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=85520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=85520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}