I’m a big proponent of making the Torah relevant for modern society and everyday life. Maybe it’s my whole Orthodox Jew trip of believing that Torah was given to us as a gift. Maybe it’s because I’m a writer, and I want to believe that the stories we tell have life beyond when we tell them, and that they can pertain to different people in different circumstances — and that the Torah, as the greatest story of all, can apply to anyone, anywhere.
But I don’t think I have any excuse for loving this video as much as I do. Except, possibly, that I have dreamt all my life of someone turning my book into the next Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
OK, so the addition of Samuel L. Jackson “as Principal Firebush” at the end is a bit of a stretch, and doesn’t at all fit with the tight-as-anything leitmotif that the rest of the video established. But who doesn’t love themselves some Samuel L.? He didn’t even totally suck playing a one-eyed black Nazi in The Spirit.
(One more note: yes, it is creepy that the narrator says “we’ll see who can get the girl” just as Basya — otherwise known as Moses’s freakin’ ADOPTIVE MOTHER — comes onscreen.)
Torah
Pronunced: TORE-uh, Origin: Hebrew, the Five Books of Moses.
