Chabad of Palm Beach Gardens recently screened the premiere viewing of the film Tragic Awakening with Producer and Director Wayne Kopping. Unlike countless other films that document antisemitism, this movie is an analysis of the reasons that motivate antisemitism. The arguments are clear, concise, and compelling, exhibiting out-of-the-box thinking that is both refreshing and empowering.
The main character of the documentary is 42-year-old Rawan Osman, a Syrian-born German activist who advocates for the normalization of relations between Middle Eastern Arab states and Israel. Born into a radically antisemitic culture, she found the courage to break free from the brainwashed society of her youth, in which the highest achievement was the murder of Jews.
In the film, she asks rabbis, thinkers, and historians why the Jews are so reviled. Eventually she discovers that the hatred is actually far less about the Jews and more about Judaism. Adolph Hitler believed that human beings, like animals, are subject to the rule of survival of the fittest. Only the toughest will survive — hence the Jew, who value kindness, compassion, moral conscience, and mutual responsibility — needed to be eradicated. This drove him to attempt genocide on the Jews, to free the world of their values.
Rawan discovers that the Talmud points to Mount Sinai as the source of antisemitism, observing that the word sinai in Hebrew also means “hate.”
The film left viewers with a question that Rabbi Vigler highlighted in his Q&A with Kopping: “They know what they’re fighting for — the question is whether we do?”
