(RNS) — When the envelopes were opened at the 98th Academy Awards, one film dominated the evening: “One Battle After Another,” the political epic by Paul Thomas Anderson that took home six Oscars, including Best Picture.
But the second most celebrated film of the night was “Sinners,” directed by Ryan Coogler, which won four Academy Awards: Best Actor for Michael B. Jordan, Best Original Screenplay for Coogler, Best Original Score for Ludwig Göransson and Best Cinematography for Autumn Durald Arkapaw, the first woman ever to win in the category.
When I watched “Sinners,” it first felt like a Spike Lee drama about the experiences of Black Americans. The movie takes place in the Mississippi Delta in the early 1930s. The protagonists are two gangster brothers, Smoke and Stack, identical twins, played by Michael B. Jordan, who dream of opening a juke joint. Before long, the Spike Lee sensibility gave way to something closer to Jordan Peele — a supernatural horror film in the tradition of “Get Out” and “Us.”
But beneath the genre shifts, the movie is really about something else: Empathy, and the strange ways histories and cultures enter into dialogue with one another. It is about the burden and blessing of memory — something Jews, like African Americans, know all too well.
Consider the scene when the white strangers approach the juke joint. They are vampires, though the Black patrons inside do not yet know it. Their leader, Remmick, an Irish vampire, politely asks for admission.
The Black characters hesitate. Their experience has given them reason to be wary.
Remmick pleads for fellowship: “We believe in equality. And music. … Can’t we, for just one night, all be family?”
Remmick, seated left, played by Jack O’Connell in “Sinners.” (Photo © Warner Bros. Pictures)
The white visitors begin playing instruments and singing. They start with “Pick Poor Robin Clean,” an old blues song, which, in the context of the film, carries a dark symbolism. They follow it with “Will Ye Go, Lassie Go?” and later “Rocky Road to Dublin.”
Remmick claims he wants to build a bridge between the two peoples. What serves as the bridge? The very instrument he plays — the banjo — has its origins in Africa. He uses it to lead his friends in singing Scotch-Irish songs that centuries earlier traveled from the British Isles to the American South. That music eventually produced Appalachian string-band music, bluegrass, American folk and country. There is a straight line from the old Scotch-Irish songs to Bob Dylan to the Eagles.
Meanwhile, the music inside the juke joint — the blues — emerged from African musical memory, plantation life and gospel traditions. That music eventually produced rhythm and blues, and then, rock music. There is a straight line from the old blues to popular Black performers in recent generations. But, white performers like Eric Clapton and The Rolling Stones would borrow its riffs — or, some would say, vampirically drain its power.
Remmick is pure evil, but he gives a message about how we can share our different histories and wounds with each other. And rather than simply create a “kumbaya” moment that erases differences, perhaps we can learn from each other’s pain and joy.
Another moment in “Sinners” could, all by itself, have won the film an Oscar. The young blues singer, Sammie, performs “I Lied to You.” What follows is a surreal, visionary montage where we see Black musicians from across history — rap artists, DJs and rock guitarists. The scene stretches backward and forward through time. The music of the Delta merges with plantation songs, then reaches back to ancestral African drummers and forward again.
Past, present and future collapse together as all of Black musical history gathers in one breathtaking collage.
Law enforcement escort families with children away from the Temple Israel synagogue Thursday, March 12, 2026, in West Bloomfield Township, Mich. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
I re-watched “Sinners” the night after the attempted attack on Temple Israel, one of the largest Reform synagogues in the United States. As I watched that scene, another montage began forming in my mind: last week’s attack in West Bloomfield Township, Michigan. The 2018 Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh. The Poway, California synagogue shooting in 2019. The Colleyville, Texas, synagogue hostage crisis in 2022. The burning of the synagogue in Jackson, Mississippi, this year.
Every attack on an American synagogue seemed to crash into that moment. Then, the frame widened further.
Since Oct. 7, 2023, there have been attacks on synagogues and Jewish gatherings in Toronto, Armenia, Tunisia, Germany and Australia.
And then the camera of history zoomed back further still.
Between 1957 and 1959, there was a wave of synagogue bombings and attempted bombings connected to white supremacist opposition to the Civil Rights Movement. The most famous was the bombing of The Temple in Atlanta in October 1958. But also: Charlotte and Gastonia, North Carolina; Birmingham, Alabama; Little Rock; Miami; and Nashville, Tennessee — all in the space of a two-year period.
Expand the camera lens further to Kristallnacht, when Nazi mobs burned synagogues across Germany and Austria in 1938, and to the destructions of the Temples in Jerusalem.
Every new act of hatred brings Jews back to every other act of hatred; they all collapse upon each other. In the words of the Haggadah: “In every generation someone rises up to destroy us, and the Holy One, Blessed Be He, saves us from their hands.”
But, it’s not just hatred. Liberation also arises in every generation: “In every generation, every one must see themselves as if they personally went out from Egypt.”
When we sit at our Seder tables for Passover next month, we will live our own montage of memory. We will see ourselves as a people who carries memory, music, faith and hope from one generation to the next.
With that comes a question: Beyond our own montage of history and memory, can we reclaim the empathy? And, can we hear other people’s stories and songs as well?
