The Believer: Confronting Jewish Self-Hatred [Paperback]

Henry Bean (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 9, 2002

The Believer relates the disturbing and provocative story of a Jewish skinhead from Brooklyn. Screenwriter Henry Bean (Internal Affairs, Deep Cover) was inspired by an actual case to write an original script exploring issues close to his own Orthodox Judaism—and then to direct what became the winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. Everywhere The Believer has been shown it has provoked passionate debate about fundamental assumptions of faith, belief, and ethnic identity. The Believer: Confronting Jewish Self-Hatred is intended to provide a context for the discussion sparked by this controversial film. In addition to the script with an explanatory essay by the filmmaker, The Believer will include additional essays on related topics from such authorities as Cornell Professor Sander Gilman (Anti-Semitism in Times of Crisis), Northwestern Professor Lester Friedman (The Jewish Image in American Film), and Professor of the Talmud and Rabbinics at Jewish Theological Seminary David Kraemer. The Believer will feature the script of the award-winning film and also be punctuated by shorter "reactions" to the film and its topic solicited from pivotal opinion-makers. "Henry Bean is a big talent and The Believer is his most courageous and thought-provoking work yet!"—Spike Lee

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In 1965, a young man named Daniel Burros was arrested at a Ku Klux Klan demonstration in Brooklyn, N.Y. He was a skinhead, a KKK Grand Dragon, a high-ranking member of the Nazi Party and a Jew. When the New York Times exposed his Jewish identity in a front-page article, Burros put a bullet through his head. His story has recently been made into a film called The Believer, which won the Grand Jury Prize at last year's Sundance Film Festival and has garnered much critical acclaim (although distributors have been shy of the film's controversial content). In The Believer: Confronting Jewish Self-Hatred, screenwriter Henry Bean presents the entire shooting script of the film, along with additional essays about the movie and its potential impact.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Bean's feature-length debut as director as well as screenwriter (his usual role) won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, the showcase for American independent films. But no national distributor picked it up. What made it unsalable? Well, The Believer is about a neo-Nazi who is also an Orthodox Jew. Young Danny Balint embodies Jewish self-hatred, and according to the three commentaries here appended to Bean's shooting script, that is a topic American Jews aren't ready to face. The early negative evaluation of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles wounded the film, and 9-11 made even its makers leery of releasing it. Ironically, screenings abroad were very well received, especially in Jerusalem. (Professor of rabbinics and former journalist David Kraemer argues in his essay that the Jerusalem press is freer than the American Jewish press and community.) The shooting script is caustic and fast-paced, and judging by the scenes Bean's notes say didn't make the final cut, the finished film is less gimmicky and harder hitting. The Believer premieres this month on Showtime. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (January 9, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 156025372X
• ISBN-13: 978-1560253723
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,913,979 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Rosenthal's book is better, November 23, 2004

By 

New York skyline - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Believer: Confronting Jewish Self-Hatred (Paperback)

Having read both books on Dan Burros I thought the older book on him by Rosenthal called "One More Victim; The Life and Death of a Jewish Nazi" was far better. That one was better researched, maybe because it was written only a year or so after Burros killed himself so the people he knew were still around to be interviewed. The fact that the New York Times reporter who "outed" Burros, which directly led to him shooting himself as soon as he saw the article on page 1 stating his history and that he was Jewish, stated he had no guilt or regret for having published this even knowing Burros 'delicate' state of mind sure wouldn't fly in this era. They would have been sued for that by Burros relatives after his death as there were several witnesses to his death. The other book is hard to find but worth getting if you can. Burros certainly was a fascinating twisted and tormented man.

7 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Self Hatred and Faithlessness", October 14, 2002

By 

Richard A. KUlick (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Believer: Confronting Jewish Self-Hatred (Paperback)

This is possibly the most intriging work of Jewish fiction published in the last decade. Based on the real life story of Jewish KKK Wizard Danny Burros (1938-65), this book explores the history, psychology and internal motivations of a young Jew, who out of his self hatred, turned violently against the Jewish people. The real life Danny Burros, committed suicide when the New York Times "outed" him as a Jew in 1965.

The book contains not only Bean's play ironically titled "The Believer" but also outstanding commentary by scholars David Kraemer and Sander Gilman. The play is set contemporaneously, but the course of a young Jew becoming a Nazi out of self hatred is somewhat archaic. Jews are more likely to support Palestinian "liberation" based on self hatred than Nazism these days.

But the truly interesting question is: Why the self hatred at all? This disease has struck Jews all through the history of the Jewish people, and frequently lead those who feel it to persecute the Jewish people, to the point of fanning massacres and riots. In the modern period, it began with towering figures like Marx and Heine, through Lenin and Trotsky, down to the present. Both David Kraemer and Sander Gilman give their own answers for this, derived both from Jewish tradition and modern psychology and literary criticism.

However, given that Jewish self hatred is as old as Judaism itself, these answers, for this reviewer ring quite hollow. I find the answers to this question in the nature of Judaism itself; in that Judaism is a religion of analysis, criticism and argument, which enshrines a tradition of severe self critique and reproof in the Bible itself. One sees the Jewish tendency toward almost violent disagreement from the Torah through the Writings to the end of the Prophets.

In general it takes a very strong individual, to observe and internalize this culture without finding it defacto flawed by excessive internal divisiveness. This reviewer so found Judaism similarly flawed for decades, until he made a thorough and searching study of the Bible and Jewish history, and realized that the God that inspired the Torah, is still with the Jewish people today.

I used this inspiration to write my own commentary on the ideas in The Believer; [...]However, in my case, I discuss in a much more profound way the true causes of Jewish self hatred, which is the illusion fostered by so many different'modernizing' Jewish groups, that God is a thing of the distant past.