Jew and Cardinal Both

By Allen Ellenzweig for The Jewish Daily Forward

French-German television network, Arté, “The Jewish Cardinal,” screening January 20 at the New York Jewish Film Festival, nevertheless has the scope and sobriety of a feature film.

Without much of the bloat of the standard biopic, its focus is the period of French prelate Jean-Marie Aron Lustiger’s elevation through Church ranks, from being named Archbishop of Orléans in 1979, to his elevation as Archbishop of Paris in 1981 and Cardinal in 1983, all under the guidance of the new Polish Pope, Jean Paul II. But the screenplay, co-written by director Ilan Duran Cohen and Chantal Derudder, has more than career chronology on its mind.

Lustiger was born a French Jew of Polish immigrant stock, willingly converted to Christianity in the shelter of a Christian family during the war, and was quoted at the time of his elevation to Archbishop: “I was born Jewish, and so I remain, even if that is unacceptable for many. For me, the vocation of Israel is bringing light to the goyim. That is my hope and I believe that Christianity is the means for achieving it.”

Duran Cohen and Derudder attempt the difficult task of presenting both the emotional toll his conversion had on his family — for this rely on several familial scenes and flashbacks — and the philosophical conundrum of maintaining a dual identity as Christian and Jew, relying here on several encounters with members of the Church hierarchy and the French Jewish community.

Lustiger’s refugee father never reconciled with his son’s conversion. While he was hardly a practicing Jew, the loss of his wife Gisèle — Aron’s mother — at Auschwitz, left him embittered. In the film, his son’s Catholicism is taken as repudiation, although the junior Lustiger denies any such motive. Within some Church circles, Jean-Marie’s avowed Jewish identity creates suspicion, and among the French Jewish communal hierarchy, suspicion and wariness are compounded by Lustiger’s seeming to want it both ways.

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