The Na’avi Are Not Jewish!

Finally got around to seeing Avatar. I don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade, but count me among the (apparently) very few naysayers. If you hadn’t seen it already (which you probably have), I’d say don’t bother; you’ll have a much better time with a DVD of Disney’s Pocahontas, EXACTLY the same story as Avatar, but with nice music!

Nearly all the reviews I’ve seen said that story was no big deal, but the effects were… and they were, for the first hour. Maybe it’s because we were sitting in the first row of the theater, but I found myself getting a headache watching after awhile (I’m usually pretty good with not getting headaches). Or maybe it was the glasses, which I found rather clunky.

Yeah the effects were nice, but I thought the preview for Alice in Wonderland was a much better use of 3D than Avatar; the 3D didn’t really contribute much to most of the film (although there were scenes where it was indispensable). And who says that carefully handcrafted Pocahontas-style animation isn’t as good a medium as 3D? The similarities between the two movies are well documented and just too numerous to list, but the first hour and a half of Avatar – where the human Avatar learns the ways of the Na’avi – can be summed up much more efficiently and elegantly in the three minutes of “Colors of the Wind!”

Regarding articles like this one, in which the author bends over backwards to find connections between Judaism/Israel and Avatar (the “Na’vi,” etc.); Judaism is relevant even if it does not keep up to date with the latest Hollywood blockbuster, and trying to squeeze Jewish content from a pagan/eastern/new-age stone just makes us look desperate (interestingly, the author of the article makes a case for Titanic, another James Cameron blockbuster, as also being “Jewish”!)

Avatar’s “we are all part of the divine” philosophy is diametrically opposed to Judaism’s approach to kedusha, holiness – a word the commentators have defined as “separation.” The little “bracha” the Na’avi make over animals they kill for food (something like “thank you for giving up your life for me to eat – now you are part of me and I am part of you”) is a Chassidic/Kabbalistic concept via new age Madonna-style “Kabbala” (the Jewish concept has to do with the ascension of a creature’s soul to a higher level of existence, not the Na’avi’s pan-nature Zen-style “being-ness”). If you’re looking for religious similes to Avatar, look at Christianity, not Judaism, where a “divine being” comes down to the world to save it, (almost) dying to salvage a world damned by “the Law.”

In addition, saying that Avatar is somehow a “Jewish” movie based on James Cameron’s throwing some Hebrew/Biblical sounding terms (Na’avi means prophet in Hebrew, and the Aish article says that the Na’avi’s deity “aiwa” is related to the Hebrew term for the ineffable name of G-d) is the same as calling the Chumash Indians one of the lost tribes of Israel (“chumash” is the Hebrew term for the five books of Moses). And speaking of deities, Avatar’s plot was such a ripoff of Pocahontas that the “aiwa” deity was located in a tree – just like the prophetic oracle in Pocahontas, and another concept diametrically opposed to Judaism (a tree-deity is called an “ashera,” and worship of it is punishable by death). Avatar? Two and half stars, max (all for the effects).

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