In a Skinhead’s Tale, a Picture of Both Hate and Love

On the subway, a muscular young man with a shaved head steps on the toes of a college student wearing a yarmulke and glasses. Outside, the skinhead grabs his book, knocks him down and beats him. The scene has the eerie familiarity of a nightmare, but for one jarring detail. “Get up, yeshiva bucher,” the attacker yells at his fallen prey. How many skinheads know enough Yiddish to employ the favored locution for a shy, unworldly boy?

The scene is from The Believer, a film, based on a true story, about an Orthodox youth who becomes a neo-Nazi leader. “When people would ask me, ‘What’s your film about’?” Henry Bean, the 56-year-old writer and director of “The Believer,” said recently over a bagel (naturally) in a New York coffee shop, “I’d say, `It’s about a Jewish neo-Nazi. But it’s not your typical Jewish neo-Nazi movie’.”

NY Times

Meaning?

“It’s not just about some guy eaten up with self-loathing and wanting to kill people,” he explained. “The film is also my love poem to my religion.”