Volume 4 No 1 - Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

338 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 4:337
world-class contemporary Talmud Department. For example, during a
cocktail party toward the beginning of the film, two scholars joke at each
other with a mocking discussion of Daniel Boyarin’s book Unheroic Conduct:
The Rise of Heterosexuality and the Invention of the Jewish Man.
Boyarin’s notions, while certainly not without their merits, are more
characteristic of Footnote’s popularizing—“dumbing-down type,” if you
will—the Talmudic scholar character, Uriel Shkolnik (Lior Ashkenazi),
than of his classically rigorous scholar-father Eliezer Shkolnik (Shlomo Bar
Aba)—shkolnik being a Russian word for student. Shkolnik père is palpably
embittered that his most cherished student, Shkolnik fils, rebelled
against the critical lesson of scholarship qua scholarship—whether or not it
is applied to theological disciplines)—namely, that it should be considered
as though it were like an inviolable religion unto itself.
Uriel is a glad-hander, a people person—and people have rewarded
him with popular success. Eliezer, by contrast, has alienated himself from,
and been alienated by, others, because—though he adheres to the strictures
of his academic discipline with unimpeachable integrity—his Sisyphean
labors have never earned him any significant recognition. The despicable
character that pays most attention to Eliezer’s professional activities,
department head Yehuda Grossman (Micah Lewensohn), views and treats
him with sadistic disdain.
Through force of his formidable, hateful will, Grossman sets Footnote’s
plot in motion by getting the Israel Prize committee to award the
Israel Prize to Uriel. In reality, the Israel Prize is awarded to a variety of
figures and organizations, but truly never in the field of Talmudic studies to
a popularizer like Uriel. For example, the towering man of Hebrew letters,
Yehuda Even-Shmuel, won the Israel Prize in 1973. In 2000, the Prize for
Talmudic Studies was awarded to Avraham Goldberg, responsible for critical
editions of Massechtot Oholot and Bava Kamma as well as of other key
texts. In 2008, David Weiss Halivni was awarded the Israel Prize for Talmudic
Studies; his seminal source critical analysis of the Talmud caused an
earthquake, and he is noted for his theological perspectives on the Holocaust,
in which he concludes that God was wholly absent at the time (in
marked contrast to theologians who see the Holocaust as constituting part of
a divine plan).
Grossman had schemed to award the Israel Prize to Uriel only to spite
Eliezer, whom he knew suffered absurdist delusions that he might one day
win this ultimate Israeli distinction. Grossman’s malevolent depravity is
further illustrated when he has a committee official call Eliezer to tell him
that he has won the Israel Prize, but pretend not to notice that she is not
speaking with the correct Shkolnik. As a result, Eliezer believes that his just
reward is coming due, whereas Uriel would not be a likely Israel Prize