Was Bambi Jewish?
On Parshas Ki Savo, God's comfort, and Felix Salten's Book
The accompanying shiur is available on the Orthodox Union's parsha learning app: All Parsha.
Do you want the good news or the bad news first?
I like getting the bad news out of the way first. No one likes negative news, but at least, if it’s shared first, you still have something good to look forward to.
People don't like hearing negativity, but they often don't like sharing it either. I've noticed that when it comes to bad news—whether it's a layoff, a health issue, or a breakup—it usually takes the person delivering it some time to really open up. They might start with something bad and gradually reveal worse and worse details as if they need to ease themselves into sharing the hardest part.
“You’re performance has been weaker lately,” is a good intro to the far harsher formal probation.
I think a lot about cushioning tough news when reading this parsha.
Ki Savo includes the tochacha, the rebuke, of Moshe to the Jewish People. As opposed to the earlier tochacha of Parshas Bechukosai, which Ramban writes focuses on the destruction of the First Beis Hamikdash, the focus of the rebuke of Ki Savo is on the final exile. We always read this tochacha before Rosh Hashana to end the year with curses, שֶׁתִּכְלֶה הַשָּׁנָה וְקִלְלוֹתֶיהָ, in the hope that just as the year is ending so should the exile.
A closer examination of the rebuke, however, highlights how strangely it is structured.
Firstly, unlike the tochacha in Bechukosei, the tochacha in Ki Savo does not include any parting words of comfort. The earlier tochacha of Bechukosai ends with the comforting words that God will remember his covenant with our Forefathers. Not so in our parsha. It ends with curses but no comfort.
שאלת ממני למה לא נכתבת נחמה בקללות של והיה כי תבא אל הארץ כמו בקללות של אם בחקתי
Why doesn’t the tochacha of Ki Savo end with any words of comfort?
Secondly, after a long list of curses, the final curse seems to end on a strange note.
אָרוּר אֲשֶׁר לֹא־יָקִים אֶת־דִּבְרֵי הַתּוֹרָה־הַזֹּאת לַעֲשׂוֹת אוֹתָם וְאָמַר כׇּל־הָעָם אָמֵן׃
Cursed be whoever will not uphold the terms of this Teaching and observe them.—And all the people shall say, Amen.
What is this final curse about? Simply put, as explained by Rashi, it is a catch-all—a general curse for not fulfilling the words of the Torah. The Ramban, however, offers a very different explanation: The final curse refers to the importance of doing hagbah—showing the Sefer Torah to the rest of the congregation.
וְאָמְרוּ עַל דֶּרֶךְ אַגָּדָה, זֶה הַחַזָּן שֶׁאֵינוֹ מֵקִים סִפְרֵי הַתּוֹרָה לְהַעֲמִידָן כְּתִקְנָן שֶׁלֹּא יִפְּלוּ. וְלִי נִרְאֶה עַל הַחַזָּן שֶׁאֵינוֹ מֵקִים סֵפֶר תּוֹרָה עַל הַצִּבּוּר לְהַרְאוֹת פְּנֵי כְּתִיבָתוֹ לַכֹּל, כְּמוֹ שֶׁמְּפֹרָשׁ בְּמַסֶּכֶת סוֹפְרִים (יד יד), שֶׁמַּגְבִּיהִין אוֹתוֹ וּמַרְאֶה פְּנֵי כְּתִיבָתוֹ לָעָם הָעוֹמְדִים לִימִינוֹ וְלִשְׂמֹאלוֹ, וּמַחְזִירוֹ לְפָנָיו וּלְאַחֲרָיו, שֶׁמִּצְוָה לַכֹּל, אֲנָשִׁים וְהַנָּשִׁים, לִרְאוֹת הַכָּתוּב וְלִכְרֹעַ וְלוֹמַר, וְזֹאת הַתּוֹרָה אֲשֶׁר שָׂם מֹשֶׁה וְגוֹ' (דברים ד':מ"ד), וְכֵן נוֹהֲגִין
Granted this is obviously a more aggadic approach to the final curse, as Ramban himself acknowledges, but it is quite a bizarre ending. Why would all the painful curses and suffering end on such a note? The final curse is for those who don’t perform hagbah properly?! Really? I struggle with hagbah as much as the next out-of-shape Jew, but why should the final curse of the tochacha serve as an allusion to neglecting this mitzvah?!
To understand this let’s explore the Jewish roots of the most iconic Disney characters.
A while back, I saw someone post on social media a prompt asking people to show the same actor in two roles that show their range. The person who began this trend showed a picture of Marlon Brando as Don Corleone from The Godfather and Jor-El from Superman. It was a fun game and a solid choice.
I came up with a better game. Instead of an actor in two different roles, I asked people to post a picture of one author in two books that show their range. I posted a picture of Rambam’s Mishneh Torah and his Guide for the Perplexed.
My suggestion was good, but I know it was not the best answer I could come up with. Undoubtedly, the best answer is Felix Salten (originally Salzmann). A grandchild of an Orthodox rabbi, Felix’s family moved from Hungry to Vienna in 1869 when he was an infant after Jews were formally granted full citizenship. He grew up in a world that was rapidly changing, adjusting, and re-considering its relationship with the Jewish People.
He began his career as a writer, penning short stories and theatre reviews. Shortly after Herzl passed away, he wrote a tribute to his legacy. In 1906 he anonymously published an erotic novel (whose full title I don’t even feel comfortable typing) about a prostitute named Josephine Mutzenbacher. His fame, however, would come nearly two decades later when in 1923 he published a book about a deer living in the forest with his friends. That deer’s name was Bambi.
Quite the authorial range, no?
Bambi, of course, is most well-known from the Disney movie adaptation released in 1942. The book, originally written in German, was first translated into English by Whittaker Chambers, a fascinating individual in his own right—he worked as both a writer and a spy. Salten later sold the film rights for $1,000, which were eventually purchased by Walt Disney.
Most people who grew up watching this movie, are unaware of its deeply Jewish undertones, let alone the sordid writing past of its author. Most likely they remember the trauma of watching Bambi’s mother get killed or, like me, the scene where all of Bambi’s animal friends pair off in romantic relationships leaving him by himself.
Yet, as Paul Reitter argues in his book and article on “Bambi’s Jewish Roots,” the original story is really a reflection of being a persecuted minority. Even before the debut of the movie, Karl Krauss, the Nobel prize-winning Jewish author, detected Jewish themes under the surface of Salten’s Bambi. It is clear throughout the story that this is about more than just a deer in the forest. Every reference to mankind in the story is stylized with capital letters—He, Him—normally used for references to God. The story is really about the author and his lonely journey as an assimilated Jew, avoiding persecution and trying to find purpose.
As Jack Zipes writes in the introduction to the republication of Bambi’s translation into English:
Bambi is indeed Salten, and Salten is Bambi. The name Bambi, based on the Italian word bambino, or child, is Salten’s way of identifying the newborn fawn as a common animal without exceptional status. Bambi is an everyman, just as Salten was an ordinary Austro-Hungarian Jew, even if he sometimes thought otherwise. The reader is never certain whether Bambi is the old prince’s son. Indeed, the old prince “adopts” him, but he might have done this with other young bucks in the forest before Bambi was born. For most of the story, Bambi is on his own: he must learn how to survive in the wild forest by himself, with some help every now and then from the old prince. Part of Bambi’s youth involves self-education, the way that Salten himself withdrew from his family and managed to overcome obstacles in Währing, the proletarian neighborhood of his youth, where he was often persecuted for being Jewish and where his father was not much help to him. Just as Bambi becomes an intrepid roebuck, Salten rose to fame and then was belittled and alienated from Austrian and German culture. He was treated just like all the other European Jews in the 1930s and 1940s.
Many characters that only appear in the book provide further clues as to the underlying Jewish message of the original book. One important example is Bambi’s cousin Gobo, a character completely missing from Disney’s adaptation. In the book, Gobo is captured by the humans and released afterward with a neck brace. Bambi notices how “strange and blind” his cousin now seems. Gobo brags and says “It’s the greatest honor to wear His collar.”
It is no wonder why Kathryn Schultz titled her New Yorker article on the historical roots of Bambi: “‘Bambi’ is Even Bleaker than You Thought.” Schultz elaborates on the character Gobo as the obvious analogy for the assimilated Jew:
Every subjugated minority is familiar with figures like Gobo—individuals who have assimilated into and become defenders of the culture of their subjugators, whether out of craven self-interest or because, like Gobo, they are sincerely enamored of it and convinced that their affection is reciprocated. Such figures often elicit the disdain or the wrath of their peers, and Salten leaves little doubt about how he feels: Bambi “was ashamed of Gobo without knowing why,” and the half-tame deer soon pays the price for his beliefs. One day, ignoring the advice of other animals, Gobo strolls into the meadow even though the scent of humans fills the air. He is confident that they won’t harm him, but he is shot in the flank while his love interest looks on. As she turns to flee, she sees the hunter bent over Gobo and hears his “wailing death shriek.”
Iris Bruce points out in A Companion to the Works of Authur Schnitzler, that Bambi can be read as a consideration of the promises of Zionism. Bruce suggests that the older deer, the King of the Forest, should be seen as a stand-in for Herzl—a figure that enchanted Salten in his youth. “Bambi has Zionist overtones,” Bruce writes, “because the critique of assimilation and the longing for a new Herzl figure are prominent themes.”
As opposed to the more cheerful movie, the pessimism of the book demonstrates the uncertainty with which newly-emancipated Jews confronted the world. Zipes, in his introduction, highlights dialogue from the book between leaves that are slowly falling from a tree as a reflection on the uncertain future Jews faced:
“It’s no longer like the old days,” one leaf said to the other.
“You’re right,” responded the other leaf. “So many have fallen this evening that we’re almost the only ones left on our branch.”
“No one knows who is going to fall next,” the first leaf said. “When it was still warm, and the sun still provided heat, when a storm came or a cloudburst, many of the leaves were already torn off then, even if they were still young. You never know whose turn will come next.”
“The sun rarely shines now,” the second leaf sighed, “and even when it shines, it doesn’t strengthen us. We need to renew our strength.”
“Do you think it’s true,” the first leaf asked, “do you really think it’s true that other leaves come and replace us when we’re gone, and then others come and even others after them?”
“It’s certainly true,” the second leaf whispered. “Our minds are too small to think about this. It’s beyond us.”
“Plus, it’s all too sad if you think about it too much,” the first leaf added.
They were silent for a while. Then the first leaf said quietly to himself, “Why must we disappear?”
“What happens to us when we fall from the tree?” the second asked.
“We flutter to the earth.”
“What’s lying down there?”
“I don’t know,” the first leaf answered: “Some say one thing, some say something else. Nobody knows.” “Do we still feel anything? Do we know anything more about ourselves when we are down there?”
The first leaf responded: “Who knows? None of those who have fallen down there have ever returned to tell us about it.”
Reading this haunting dialogue, it is hard not to agree with Kathryn Schultz’s assessment that for Salten the Jewish People themselves are a parable for the human condition. She writes, “The omnipresence and inevitability of danger, the need to act for oneself and seize control of one’s fate, the threat posed by intimates and strangers alike: this is Salten’s assessment of our existence.”
And this brings us back to our parsha.
The dire imagery in the rebuke of our parsha describes our current world of exile.
Why doesn’t it end with words of comfort like the previous rebuke in Parshas Bechukosai?
The Ridvaz suggests two fascinating answers.
ומה שנ"ל לתרץ כי אין צריך נחמה בפרשת כי תבא לפי שנחמתם בצדם שאין פסוק ופסוק שלא הוזכר בו שם ההויה המורה על הרחמים להודיע שהמדה היא ברחמים על דרך ומחץ וידיו תרפנה ואין לך נחמה גדולה מזו
Firstly, Ridvaz suggests that God’s name within each of the curses is written as the tetragrammaton, שם הוי”ה, which represents mercy. Even God’s absence is only a reminder of his closeness and care for the Jewish People.
עוד יש לתרץ כי פרשת אתם נצבים היא קשורה למעלה עם פרשת והיה כי תבא והרי הוא בכלל הברית והכי משמע מדכתיב לעברך בברית ה' אלהיך ובאלתו וגו' והרי יש בסופה נחמות דכתיב והיה כי יבואו עליך וגו' ושבת עד וגו' ושב ה' אלהיך וגו' עד סוף הפרשת כולה נחמה והרי זה נכון
Secondly, the Ridvaz suggests that the entire next Parsha of Nitzavim serves as a comfort for it predicts the inevitability of Jewish history culminating with the Jewish People collectively doing teshuva.
Personally, I think both of these answers are connected.
What lies at the heart of this exile?
וּבַגּוֹיִם הָהֵם לֹא תַרְגִּיעַ וְלֹא־יִהְיֶה מָנוֹחַ לְכַף־רַגְלֶךָ וְנָתַן יְהֹוָה לְךָ שָׁם לֵב רַגָּז וְכִלְיוֹן עֵינַיִם וְדַאֲבוֹן נָפֶשׁ׃
Yet even among those nations you shall find no peace, nor shall your foot find a place to rest. God will give you there an anguished heart and eyes that pine and a despondent spirit.
וְהָיוּ חַיֶּיךָ תְּלֻאִים לְךָ מִנֶּגֶד וּפָחַדְתָּ לַיְלָה וְיוֹמָם וְלֹא תַאֲמִין בְּחַיֶּיךָ׃
The life you face shall be precarious; you shall be in terror, night and day, with no assurance of survival.
Absent Jewish sovereignty and overt prophecy and miracles, the Jewish People will turn to the nations of the world for validation. Perhaps you can explain our mysterious persistence? Perhaps your acceptance could validate our survival?
Like the plaintive Bambi, the Jewish People hungered for some sense of meaning within their immutable Jewish identity. Gobo, Bambi’s cousin, is a reminder of the sad state of a Jew who becomes a slave to his master to find meaning. The Jewish People did not understand the purpose of their own survival, the meaning of their own Jewish identity—ולא תאמין בחייך—they didn’t find faith within their own lives.
This is why the final curse culminates with an allusion to hagbah, the synagogue service where the Sefer Torah is lifted before the entire congregation for each member to see the letters within the scroll. The Arizal emphasized the importance of each person in the congregation being able to read the letters within the Sefer Torah when it is raised for hagbah. The ultimate redemptive vision is when the Jewish People can find their letter in their scroll, when they can see their own lives reflected in the Torah, the eternal story of the Jewish People. This is the ultimate realization of the comfort of Parshas Nitzavim—the inevitability of the collective teshuva of the Jewish People, the ultimate testament to the immutability of our connection to God. And it is this realization, after 2000 years of exile, which is the ultimate expression of the tetragrammaton, the שם הוי”ה, latent within the suffering of exile—that even within the absence we can still uncover the presence of God. That our very existence is worthy of faith—ותאמין בחייך.
Shabbos Reads — Books/Articles Mentioned
Bambi’s Jewish Roots, Paul Reitter
Bambi's Jewish Roots and Other Essays on German-Jewish Culture, Paul Reitter
A Companion to the Works of Authur Schnitzler, Iris Bruce
“Bambi” is Even Bleaker than You Thought, Kathryn Schultz
The Original Bambi: The Story of a Life in the Forest, Jack Zipes
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Reading Jewish History in the Parsha has been generously sponsored by my dearest friends Janet and Lior Hod and family with immense gratitude to Hashem.