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Interfaith Celebrities: Revisiting Exodus and Narnia

May 13, 2008




Paul Newman in Exodus
Paul Newman in the Exodus movie trailer, 1960.

Exodus starred the incredibly good-looking Paul Newman as Ari Ben-Canaan. The Ari character is fictional--a composite of a lot of real life people. Ari is an almost too perfect hero.

The movie is set in Palestine in 1947 and Ari Ben-Canaan has served through World War II in the Jewish Brigade of the British Army (the Brigade, made up of Jewish volunteer soldiers from what was then called Palestine, really existed). As the movie opens, Ari is an officer in the Haganah, the para-military force created by the more politically moderate elements of the Jewish population then in Palestine. Ari's father is a leading political moderate, while Ari's uncle is a radical--determined to use whatever force is necessary to get the British to leave Palestine and thereby allow free Jewish immigration to the country and the creation of an independent Jewish state.

The British, who controlled Palestine from 1918 to 1948, appeased the Arabs by keeping Jewish immigration to Palestine at very low levels throughout the 1930s and '40s. This policy deprived most Jews fleeing Hitler of a safe refuge.


Kitty's character is a very useful dramatic device. As she, a non-Jewish skeptic, gets converted to the Zionist/Jewish cause, the audience--mostly non-Jewish--also presumably was persuaded.

And--let's face it--it was hard for a huge portion of the film audience not to be persuaded when the hero was Paul Newman, then just about at the height of his sexiness.


For the most part, Newman has rigorously eschewed organized religion or identifying with a religion, once telling a reporter that he didn't believe in any religion and "I've been worked over by experts." On the other hand, he once said that if he was really "pressed," he would say he was a Jew, "because it is more of a challenge."



In a more general sense, whether defined in terms of Jewish, Christian, or secular charitable ideals--virtually no celebrity has lived a life of more useful public service than Paul Newman. Amid his charitable work, he has also had in a film career that is as significant as almost any actor in American film history.



Newman actually became a better actor as he aged and he gave gritty dramatic performances in some of the best films of the '50s, '60s, '70s, '80s and '90s. He also showed some flair for comedic or light acting work, as in Slap Shot and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. He has been nominated for the best actor Oscar eight times, winning once for The Color of Money. In 2002, at the age of 78, he earned a best supporting actor Oscar nomination for The Road to Perdition.


Paul Newman in 2005
Paul Newman in 2005. REUTERS/Jim Ruymen

In 2007, Paul Newman announced his retirement from acting. He is scheduled to direct a stage play that will open in October. There have been rumors that his health is failing. I hope they aren't true. Newman has lived a life as "well-lived" as any American alive today and every day he contributes, as he puts it, "to the common good."

An Odd Jewish Connection to Narnia

The children's fantasy adventure The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, opens in theaters on May 15. It is a sequel to the hit 2005 film, The Chronicles of Narnia: the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Both films are based on best-selling children's novels by the late British author C. S. Lewis (1898-1963).


The Narnia film series almost didn't get made because Lewis' heirs, Douglas Gresham (a paid producer on both Narnia films) and his brother, David Gresham, aren't on speaking terms. Douglas is a fervent evangelical Christian, while David is an Orthodox Jew. It isn't exactly clear what role religion has had in their decades-long estrangement, but it seems to be a major factor in the split.

The Narnia films' "dealmaker" worked overtime as a go-between, and the brothers finally signed off on the film rights.

The Gresham brothers' mother, American writer Joy Gresham (1915-60), was born Jewish to a Hasidic family, but switched from being a communist to a Christian in the '40s (She was influenced to convert by Lewis' books). Joy moved to England with her sons in the '50s and eventually married C.S. Lewis. He adopted Douglas and David and left them his estate when he died.



David subsequently learned Yiddish and became a Hasidic Jew and a Talmudic scholar. While he's still Orthodox, he is no longer a Hasid.




Hebrew for "pious," commonly refers to a member of an Orthodox Jewish mystic movement founded in the 18th century in Eastern Europe by Baal Shem Tov that reacted against Talmudic learning and maintained that God's presence was in all of one's surroundings and that one should serve God in one's every deed and word. A language, literally meaning "Jewish," once widely used by Ashkenazi communities. It is influenced by German, Hebrew and Slavic languages, and is written with the Hebrew alphabet. It is comparable to the language of many Sephardi communities, Ladino. A supporter of the ideal that Israel be defined as a Jewish nation state. Hebrew for "fit" (as in, "fit for consumption"), the Jewish dietary laws.



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