By Eli Kavon

Twenty years ago I first encountered the genius of Akira Kurosawa. At the time I was a sophomore in Columbia University in New York City. The Metro Theater on Manhattan’s Upper West Side was presenting a film festival to honor fifty years of movie making in Japan. My oldest sister worked for the company that owned the Metro, so I was able to finagle some free passes to see the best of Japanese cinema.

I had heard about the legendary Kurosawa—especially his greatest work “The Seven Samurai”—but I wanted to see for myself what made his films such masterpieces. Although the festival featured the works of many of Japan’s great directors, my main interest was in discovering the cinematic treasures of one of the world’s finest filmmakers.

I was not disappointed. In such films as “Rashomon,” “Yojimbo,” and “Kagemusha,” Kurosawa presents himself as a master storyteller with a sharp eye for detail, a keen sense of humor and pathos, a deep understanding of the acting craft and, in his later films, a brilliant ability to exploit color.

Yet Kurosawa’s use of Japanese history as the backdrop of his films is what impressed me most. ‘The Seven Samurai’ is a fictional tale about a band of warriors who protect a village from marauding bandits. For that film—one of the greatest movies ever made—the director places the story in the period of civil wars that wracked feudal Japan during the medieval period. Both “Yojimbo” and “Sanjuro” take place in the early modern period and depict the life of the samurai—Japan’s warrior class—during their decline in the 18th century. “Kagemusha” is a wonderful story set during the period of the Tokugawa shoguns, the leaders who united Japan in 1603. Kurosawa adapted the works of Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, and Gorky to a Japanese setting.

Seeing these films both exhilarated and disappointed me. I discovered a world of which I knew nothing and found the great works of a master craftsman. Yet, I wondered why more Jewish filmmakers, both in Israel and the Diaspora, were not making movies that reflected thousands of years of Jewish history. Why have not Jewish directors and screenwriters followed Kurosawa as a role model in using their culture, religion and history as either a backdrop to their movies—or the main focus of their films?

Why, for example, are not Jewish screenwriters and directors setting their films in Muslim Spain during the medieval period, an exciting epoch that produced such great figures as Hasdai Ibn Shaprut, Judah Halevi or Moses Maimonides? The true story of Samuel Hanagid, a Jew who commanded Muslim armies as Prime Minister of Granada, would make a wonderful film that could rival such epics as “Lawrence of Arabia,” “Braveheart” or “Gladiator” The life of Gracia Nasi, a woman who made a name as a philanthropist and political activist five hundred years ago in the Sephardic world, is tailor-made for a film biography.

The historical material available to imaginative filmmakers does not end with Jews of Spanish and Portuguese descent. The rise and fall of the ancient Jewish kingdom of the Hasmoneans in Israel, from the triumph of the Maccabees to the domination of Judea by Rome, is a story that resonates for Jews today. Why haven’t Jewish filmmakers created works that would incorporate the chronicle of the Jews of Ashkenaz during the First Crusade in 1096? Why has no director or screenwriter brought to life the intriguing story of Theodor Herzl, the legendary founder of political Zionism? Isaac Babel’s colorful accounts of Jewish criminals in Odessa before the Bolshevik Revolution, as well as his description of his life as a Jew fighting with the Cossacks, are waiting to be translated into celluloid. Jewish history provides thousands of stories that deserve to make it to theaters and a mass audience of Jews and non-Jews.

The reason Jewish history has not made its way to the big screen is ignorance. Both Jews and non-Jews know little of the Jewish epic besides the Holocaust, the rise of the State of Israel, and the American-Jewish immigrant experience. While I applaud the efforts of Steven Spielberg and Roman Polanski to bring the horrors and heroism of the Shoah to the public, I believe it is a tragedy that the world has yet to see a more in-depth picture of the Jewish people. There is more to Jewish history than pogroms and genocide. Jewish creativity in the religious, cultural, economic and political realms, whether in Israel or the Diaspora, should not be overshadowed by the disasters that have befallen us.

Historian Salo Baron warned of the tendency to view Jewish history as lachrymose and dark. He devoted his life to piercing the myth of Jewish history as a string of endless pogroms by illuminating the facts and exploring the details. Jewish filmmakers following in his footsteps would be challenged with a lifetime of work. They would no longer be able to fall back on images of Jews being herded into gas chambers, images that make us numb. Jews are not history’s official victims. Our ancestors, in both the Ashkenazic and Sephardic realms were advisors to kings and prime ministers. Jews were physicians, inventors, community leaders, great thinkers, artists, poets, musicians, as well as successful businessmen who propped up governments with their wealth. Yet we see them not for who they were but only as a prelude to the horrors of the Warsaw Ghetto and Auschwitz. The worst of times is our obsession. We judge the past by our narrow band of experience. How selfish and self-defeating!

Akira Kurosawa died only a few years ago, yet his legacy will live on in his films. He masterfully incorporated the history of his country and people into many of his works. As Jews, we could learn many important lessons from the life and art of one of the world’s greatest directors. If we are to live lives of both Torah and derekh eretz, it is incumbent upon us as observant Jews to incorporate the best of the world around us, and by doing so, strengthen both our visibility, our creative energies and, ultimately, our faith.

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