When I first watched A Serious Man, I left unsettled and slightly irritated. The rabbis seemed unhelpful. Larry felt weak. The suffering felt unexplained, and the ending felt almost unfair. My first reaction was that the movie was doing something unkind to Judaism, making it look hollow, passive, or evasive.

Sitting with it longer, I realized that reaction said more about my expectations than about the film.

This is not a movie that attacks Judaism. It is a movie that quietly exposes how many of us now expect religion to work. We want explanation. We want reassurance. We want suffering to make sense. We want someone in authority to tell us what is going on and why.  Larry Gopnik wants this too. In fact, that may be his central mistake.

Larry is a decent man. He follows the rules. He tries to be fair. He does not rebel or rage against God. But he is also deeply passive. He waits for permission to act. He defers decisions to committees, rabbis, procedures, and signs. When his wife asks for a divorce, he goes along with it. When she suggests his exile to live at the Jolly Roger, he accepts it. When his career is threatened, he waits. When his life becomes unbearable, he asks what it all means and cannot bring himself to act without knowing.

Watching this passivity is painful. It feels like Larry is absent from his own life. I think that discomfort is intentional. The film is not just showing us a man who suffers; it is showing us a man who mistakes moral seriousness for moral inactivity.

Judaism never praised passivity. Abraham argues with God. Moses protests. The prophets confront kings. Even Job speaks loudly before the whirlwind. Larry does not. He seems to believe that being good means staying out of the way and waiting for the universe to explain itself. The film quietly suggests that this is not humility, but a misunderstanding of the moral responsibility and courage demanded of a religious life.

Larry’s brother, Arthur, makes this contrast even clearer. Arthur is not just........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)