The Believer: Movie Analysis

In The Believer, a movie about a man named Daniel Balint who was a former follower of Judaism and who later becomes into a Neo-Nazi who still holds some Jewish values, is a movie that not only intrigues the audiences mind by showing this odd contrast of someone who has a strong hatred for Jewish people and their past but who also can still hold many important aspects of the Judaism religion, also shows a true continuation of the central tenets of Judaism with Daniel’s alternative interpretation of the religion .
Throughout the movie, Daniel questions Jews why they follow and accept so willingly what the Torah says or why victims of the Holocaust did not fight back and let Hitler do as he pleased. His hatred towards Jews only becomes stronger when no one has a true answer besides saying “It’s what god wanted us to do,” or “There was nothing we could do or we would have been killed too.” This fear that Daniel believes the Jewish have goes back to the belief of what the Pharisees, a Jewish group in Rome that by 70 CE were the only standing group and fundamentally got to decide how Judaism gets to be to modern time believed which was to be politically peaceful …show more content…
In the Torah there is a story that explains how Israel got its name. In it, Jacob is given a new name, Israel or “wrestler of God”, because of one night he got into a fight with a stranger who would not tell him his name and who he believed was God because the stranger has blessed him and given him the new name. The story enforces the closeness to God that is done when the individual is “wrestling with God” and doubting him, and standing before