If you have a chance to see the movie called The Keeper, I strongly suggest you do. At this point I don’t think it’s easy to find but soon on a site called Chaiflicks it will be (Chaiflicks is a Jewish Netflix which has Jewish-oriented movies from all over the world). I saw The Keeper via the Baltimore Jewish Film Festival a couple of months ago, but we had the participants in our rabbinic kallah view it before our retreat began and then discuss it as a group just last week.
The movie is a true story about a German soldier in a British POW camp. To make a long story short, it becomes obvious that the POW whose name is Bert Trautmann is a superb soccer player. Instead of submitting him to hard labor, the local soccer coach takes him out of the camp to play the goalie for his team. He catches the attention of a major league soccer team and becomes the star goalie, leading them to championships in the early 1950s.
But the sports angle is only tangential. The movie focuses on forgiveness, atonement, and everything else upon which this coming holyday season focuses. To tell you more is to not do justice to the movie and to give away aspects of the plot that I’d rather have you see and consider for yourselves.
The discussion around this movie was very intense; after all, the topic is so close to our community because of the nature of the High Holydays but also because of the fact that Trautmann had been a Nazi in the army of the Third Reich. Some of my colleagues were far more forgiving than others, but that all revolved around whether you believed that Trautmann was “just following orders” or was quite aware of the atrocities and supported the idea of the Final Solution and the other goals of Hitler.
When The Keeper is available perhaps, we can also view the film individually and then have a discussion via Zoom. I’ll keep checking with the distributor (he allowed me to show it in a narrow space of time to the rabbis but was adamant that everyone else had to wait and, I assume, pay to join Chaiflicks). If you happen to find it, let me know and I’ll tell everyone so we can set up a Zoom session for a discussion.
I guarantee that you’ll find it most worthwhile. After all, if thirty or so rabbis agreed on its high quality, either it was truly good or we’re entering the era of the Messianic Age!
(Speaking of the messiah, a couple touring Jerusalem came upon a beggar at one of her gates. “What are you doing sitting here?” was the inquiry. “I’m waiting for the messiah.” The couple walks away giggling to themselves. Seeing this, the beggar gets up on his shaky legs, walks over, tugs on the pant leg of the tourist and says, “Just to tell you, the pay stinks but it’s a steady job!”)