The Angel Belafonte: Holiness in All Its Forms

A friend* brought to my attention a movie from 1970 called The Angel Levine in which a Jewish man played by Zero Mostel loses hope in his life until an angel appears in his kitchen with the assignment of showing him that he should have faith. But It's a Wonderful Life, this is not.  Mostel’s character Mishkin is beset by travails, chief among them his beloved wife Fanny is very ill and he has very little money as his own back problems have made it almost impossible to make a living as a tailor.  He is not looking for a Divine assist or reminder of how many people he’s touched like Jimmy Stewart’s George Bailey, but closer to Job, without a clue how his misfortunes can be squared with the G*d whose rules he has followed all of his life.  And the angel who appears in his kitchen is a recently deceased Jew named Alexander Levine, who has his own problems to deal with.

Levine is played by none other than the great Harry Belafonte, whose death this week marked the end of a truly remarkable life, unparalleled in bringing artistic talent to bear as a tireless advocate for justice and liberation.  Belafonte, unlike the troubled Alexander Levine, always knew the score and the next step to take to get a little more heaven down to earth.  

The Angel Levine, based on a Bernard Malamud short story, is  raw, unsparing in its depiction of prejudice and inequality. The world-weary Mishkin has an uneasy relationship with the man in his kitchen who insists that he is a Jewish angel sent from G*d with a scroll apparently written on napkins.  Levine has no power to show Mishkin without a doubt what the world would have been without him and the movie comes to no triumphant conclusion with ringing bells and new wings.  Instead, the story ends in minor keys, no revelation and nothing more certain than a single floating feather  And yet Mishkin has a glimpse behind the curtain that our lives have consequence.  That what we do matters.  That are lives are sacred.

The double Torah portion this week Acharei Mot-Kedoshim touches on two sides of this holiness.  It begins with the very detailed, exact way in which Aaron as High Priest must approach the Day of Atonement, one occasion that he and only he can go into the Holy of Holies under the cover of a cloud of incense.  The very words that begin the portion allude to the violent and implacable consequences of malpractice - the death of two of Aaron’s sons who offered their incense in an unacceptable way.  So he know faces a moment of terrifying holiness in which he is the only one who may enter this one place with precise yet inscrutable instructions just to survive the experience.

On the other side of the double portion we learn that every person, no exceptions, in every moment must be holy in the way of G*d’s holiness.  How?  Many of the ways that are listed are ethical actions or prohibitions - loving your neighbor, leaving the corners of the field for the pure, not being corrupt, and not tripping the blind.  Pretty straightforward and maybe even a low bar for this holiness, certainly compared to the Day of Atonement and its high stakes mystery.  

Right before Shabbat, the world lost another transcendent figure who might well have been the more traditional counsel for those with troubles like Mishkin or Levine.  Rabbi Harold Kushner was a tower of rabbinic wisdom, best known for his daring compassion in facing life’s cruelties. Countless people have and will continue to find comfort in Rabbi Kushner’s human-centric approach to what it means to live a meaningful life in a world that is so often unfair. The Angel Levine, though, touches on that other side of holiness, the one on the other side of the curtain that even Aaron can only enter with a cloud of incense.

 

We need both. Life is made meaningful by how we pursue everyday holiness, how we treat each other with kindness,  how we experience G*d in the world around us.  Yet life is also absurd, dealing hard blows that seem to turn upside down any semblance of that meaning.  Those are the times set aside for the holiness of incense, the vision of artists and the angel without wings.

May the memories of Harry Belafonte, singer who made the complacent find questions and Harold Kushner, sage who helped so many questioners find comfort be a blessing, inspiring holiness in all forms.