NYT: New Film Lets Germans Laugh With (Not at) Jews

[DeepModem Mom]

New Film Lets Germans Laugh With (Not at) Jews
By KIRSTEN GRIESHABER

Published: March 9, 2005


BERLIN, March 3 - It has been a while since Germans last laughed openly at a Jewish joke, especially one that pokes fun at Jews themselves. Sixty years after the Holocaust, most Germans still feel too guilty or insecure to address any Jewish matter in a lighthearted manner. But now a new movie is encouraging them to get rid of their postwar anxieties and join in for a good laugh.

Mixing slapstick humor and political incorrectness, "Alles auf Zucker!," or "Go for Zucker!," said to be the first German-Jewish comedy since World War II, has attracted huge audiences all over Germany. Its success suggests that humor could be an unconventional form of therapy for the strained relations between Jews and gentiles in Germany.

The movie, directed by Dani Levy, a German Jew who grew up in Switzerland, is a lively family comedy about a notorious East German gambler, who long ago distanced himself from his Jewish roots, and his Orthodox brother, who escaped to West Germany before the Berlin Wall was built.

The estranged brothers and their families meet for the first time in 40 years at their mother's funeral in Berlin. By the terms of her will they can inherit the family fortune only if they reconcile and mourn in the traditional Jewish way, by sitting shiva for seven days. The inevitable clash of secularism versus traditional religion paves the way for 90 minutes of quarrels, revealed family secrets and, eventually, a happy ending....

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Paul Spiegel, the president of the Central Committee of Jews in Germany, publicly encouraged Germans to see the movie "because it helps bring Jews and non-Jews back on track to normality."...


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/09/movies/09zuck.html