A Jewish Reflection on the Spiritual Message of “Avatar”

A Jewish Reflection on the Spiritual Message of “Avatar”
Rabbi Fred Guttman
January 8, 2010
(No Spoilers here!)

James Cameron’s new blockbuster movie Avatar is now showing in theaters. The movie was the most expensive film in history to make. As of last week, the movie had taken in more than one billion dollars in revenues.
The movie is stunning in its technology and beauty. I saw it both in regular and 3D versions.

What I found most interesting in the film was its spiritual message and how the film spoke to my Jewish soul.

The people of Pandora are called the “Navi.” In Hebrew, the word “Navi” means “prophet.” I found myself wondering if Cameron is trying to make these people into “prophets” for us. Perhaps the Navi in the movie are not only predicting our future, but they are also warning us and chastising us in the present. By the way, the great biblical prophets did more “chastising” that predicting. After all, the cry for righteousness and justice was an integral part of the prophetic narrative.
The Navi when they are in a total reciprocal relationship with someone will say “I see you.” This is a deep type of seeing, the type that the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber would have called and “I Thou” relationship.

Now what does it mean to truly see someone else?

Here again the bible gives us an answer.

After almost sacrificing his son Isaac, Abraham looks up and sees a ram caught in a thicket. (Genesis 22:13). I have always felt that the ram was always there for him to see, but it was only at that moment that he actually saw it. It was only at that moment that he learned to see deeply and with God’s eyes and not just the superficial eyes of most human contact. Notice as well that Abraham names the place it “Adonai Yireh” – the place of “God vision.”

Similarly in Exodus 3, Moses sees a bush burning which was not consumed. The greatness of Moses in my opinion was that he saw deeply enough to see that this was no normal occurrence. Moses was able to see with the eyes of God.
So when the Navi say “I see you,” their type of seeing resonates with me both biblically and in terms of the I-Thou philosophy of Buber. Through the Navi people, Cameron is warning us that when we do not truly see others as what they really are; namely, holy manifestations of the divine, we will indeed become destructive towards them.

Later this month, the Jewish world will celebrate the holiday of Tu Bishvat, the New Year of the trees. From the beginning, our ancestors realized the importance of trees and set aside time to celebrate and educate about trees.

In Deuteronomy 20:19, we read “ki ha'adam ets hasadeh,” “for the human being is a tree of the field.” In Psalm 3:8, the Torah is referred to as a “tree of life.”
In Genesis 2:5 we read “when no shrub of the field was yet on earth and no grasses of the field had yet sprouted, because the Lord God had not sent rain upon the earth and there was no man to till the soil,” The Hebrew here is “v'chol siach hasadeh terem yi’yeh ba’aretz” - “when no shrub of the field was yet on earth” can be translated as “when no conversation of the field was yet on earth.” Perhaps the implication here is that after the world of trees and vegetation is created, the human being is to enter into dialogue with it.

So perhaps Tu Bishvat is a time when we are not only supposed to see trees, but also to enter into discussion with them. By the way, the philosopher Marin Buber who I mentioned earlier, maintained that one can have an I-Thou relationship even with a tree.

And trees figure prominently in the movie Avatar. The place where the Navi live is called “Hometree.” Hometree is a giant tree which sits on top of a large amount of “Unobtainium,” an element which provides energy. Human beings from earth are now trying to get this element because the energy resources on earth have been depleted. As the movie progresses, the humans will first attempt to convince the Navi to abandon Hometree and when this does not succeed, the humans will destroy the tree. The environmental message is clear here. Having, destroyed the trees of the earth through exploitation, global warming and deforestation, the humans now will destroy THE tree of another planet.

It is also interesting to me that the roots of Hometree are said to be connected to the roots of all of the other trees of the planet. For me as a Jew, this is reflective of the Kabbalistic teaching that we all are connected to the Source or God. In the Kabbalah, the unity of creation is its Oneness. We are all interconnected to each other and to God and the ultimate advancement in the history of humankind will be when we recognize that oneness. The prophet Zachariah (14:9) tells us, “On that day, the Lord shall be one; and God’s name, One.” Indeed, the theological basis of Judaism is that one God created the universe and that all of creation; trees, shrubs, animals and human beings, has intrinsic worth and is holy.

After the Hometree is destroyed, the Navi flee to a tree called the “Tree of Souls.” This is the tree which enables them to connect with the souls of their ancestors. In order to do this, they take the strings at the end of their tails and connect them to the strings of the tree. This reminds me of the Jewish tradition that when we recite the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4,  “Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord”) the prayer which asserts the unity of God, we take the four fringes or strings of the Talit (prayer shawl) and put them together.

In the movie, it is this connection with the Tree of Souls which will enable the Navi to overcome their persecutors and prevail. What a wonderful message to us as Jews! When we truly listen to the voices of our mothers and fathers, our grandmother and grandfathers, the ancient rabbis and teachers, the matriarchs and patriarchs, we truly can connect with the wisdom of the past and received guidance from it.

For the Navi, the Tree of the Souls is also the way in which they connect to “Eywa,” the mother God, the God of the planet and the one and only God in their tradition. Here I find it very interesting that the word “Eywa” seems to approximate the sound of a breath. This by the way is also the sound of YHVH in the bible. YHVH is the holiest word for God in the bible and is virtually unpronounceable, except as a breath. For the Navi and for we Jews, God is the breath of all humankind. Without Eywa, and without YHVH, without the breath; we cannot survive.

So James Cameron has created an incredibly spiritual movie. I have no idea whether or not elements of Judaism and Jewish mysticism influenced him, but I do know how the spirituality of the movie resonates with me as a Jew.

In the end of the movie, some humans from earth join the Navi in resisting the crass exploitation of both the natural resources and the people of the planet Pandora. This is James Cameron's "Nevuah" or prophecy to us in a biblical sense. With the threats now facing our planet through the scourge of war and global warming, I begin to wonder if we as human beings will be able to come together to resist the forces of greed which seem to be destroying our hometree, our precious blue green planet which sustains us? Will we be able to learn how to truly see the “other,” not as an opponent, but as part of the Oneness of God’s creation?
Perhaps most important though, will we be able to come together to save and heal the planet and humankind? Will we be able to eliminate the exploration of people and resources, to destroy the forces of bias bigotry and racism and to create what Jesus, who after all was a great Jewish teacher, once described as a “beloved community?”

I hope that you will go to see this extraordinary movie. More than that, it is my prayer that we all will take its spirituality and its message to heart. May we be able to truly see the oneness of creation, the holiness that exists in all people and things. This is so important that the ability of future generations to might very well depend on how well we heed the words of James Cameron's warning to human beings as presented in this wonderful movie Avatar.