Liberty Heights…

For some reason I was thinking of an old movie I saw when I was still in High-School, named ‘Liberty Heights.’ It was released in 1999. It starred Ben Foster, Adrien Brody, Orlando Jones, and Joe Mantegna. The film centers around the separate lives of two Jewish brothers living in Baltimore in the year 1954. Integration had just become legally binding for public schools in the state while prejudice, bigotry, and bitterness was still the norm. Ben (played by Ben Foster) is in his last year of High-School, while Van (Adrien Brody) is going to college at the University of Baltimore. Their father Nate (Joe Mantegna) runs a burlesque and is involved in the ‘numbers racket.’

Ben is intrigued by and becomes attracted to his fellow student Sylvia, a black girl who has been attending the school due to the recent integration law. He finds the courage to talk to her on the bus after school, and tells her that he is going downtown because he ‘always’ goes downtown (assuming she lived in that area because she was black.) Startled that she doesn’t live there, he follows her off the bus and asks her why she lives in a suburban neighborhood. She politely rebukes him for his assumptions, and offers to drive him home.

Van is into politics and is very skeptical about Judaism and religion as a whole. Unlike his friend Yussel, Van doesn’t harbor a persecution complex and bitterness against all things ‘gentile’ (although understandable during a time when public swimming pool signs would read ‘No coloreds, dogs, or jews.’) When the two of them go to a party in a suburban ‘gentile’ neighborhood, Van becomes enchanted with a blonde girl he sees in the basement. Plans to talk to her are foiled when he finds out a fight has broken out between Yussel and and a ‘gentile.’ The fight is broken up when a popular guy named Trey crashes his car in the field due to his drunkenness.

A lot more happens in the movie, but I don’t want to give away all the details

Happy Rosh Hashanah

I know I’m technically a day late, but here is a belated ‘Happy Rosh Hashanah’ to all of the Jewish friends out there.