The Believer

RAV ZINGESSER: And you, if you had come out of Egypt, you would have been destroyed in the desert with those who worshipped the Golden Calf.

12-YEAR-OLD DANNY: Then let Him destroy me now. Let Him crush me like the conceited bully He is. Go ahead. Kill me. Here I am. Do it!!

RAV ZINGESSER: Watch your language....

12-YEAR-OLD DANNY: I think the whole Jewish people were permanently scarred by what happened on Mt. Moriah, and we still live in terror....

RAV ZINGESSER: You think?! Based on what?

12-YEAR-OLD DANNY: There's midrash supporting this. My father read a book by Shalom Spiegel that -- Isaac actually died and was reborn.

RAV ZINGESSER: No one follows that midrash.

12-YEAR-OLD DANNY: I do; I follow it. But okay, say God provided the ram. So what? Once Abraham raised the knife, in his heart it was as if he'd killed him. He could never forget that. And neither could Isaac. Look at him: he's traumatized, he's a putz for the rest of his life. By the end he can't tell Jacob from Esau....

RAV ZINGESSER: But, Danny, if HaShem is everything, and we are nothing how are we to judge His actions?

12-YEAR-OLD DANNY: We have free will and intelligence -- which God allegedly gave us....

DANNY: Read the early Zionists on European Jewry; they sound like Goebbels.

AVI: They sound like you.

DANNY: The Nazis did everything the fhrer told them. You do everything the Torah tells you. Or the rebbe. Identical slave mentality.

DANNY: What's a fascist?

AVI: I rest my case. He's a Jewish Nazi. He always was.

DANNY: Whereas Avi's a Zionist Nazi.

AVI: The Zionists aren't Nazis.

DANNY: They're racist, they're militaristic, they act like bullyboys in the territories....

AVI: They don't have extermination camps.

DANNY: They had Sabra and Shattila.

DANNY: They only kill them when they love them?

AVI: What are you doing here, I thought you were a Nazi.

CARLETON: Didn't you see Raiders of the Lost Ark?

BILLINGS: What??

CARLETON: That was an ark, man. That was a Torah. They fucked around with it, and the Torah melted their faces.

BILLINGS: That's a movie, you moron.

CARLETON: Fine, go ahead. Touch the letters.

CARLETON: Fucking Danny, man...

BILLINGS: He's an asshole.

BILLINGS: ...So she takes the pants in back -- where they try them on? And I think fuck it....

CARLETON: Are you shitting me?? Right in the store?

BILLINGS: She's been giving me the eye. She's hot. So I wait till the owner goes up front....

DANNY: Yeah, but not on the letters.

BILLINGS: Why the fuck not?

DANNY: Just don't.

BILLINGS: How come you know all this shit?

DANNY: How come you don't know it? How can you say you hate the Jews when you don't know anything about --

BILLINGS: Fuck you. I hate the Jews at least as much as you do.

DANNY: No, you don't.... If you hated them, you'd study them, so you'd know why you hate them. You know what tefillin is? Tsitsis? Shotness? You know the kaddish from the kiddush? Eichmann? He went to Israel. He studied the Torah, the Talmud, the Mishnah, the whole bit. He hated Jews.

DANNY: It's called the flame alphabet. It's supposed to be the word of God written in fire.

BILLINGS: Fire...

DANNY: The mystics tried to read the white spaces around the letters. They thought there was a whole alternative language hidden there, with secret, alternative meanings.

BILLINGS: What do you care?

DANNY: I don't, but...

BILLINGS: Let's look at the fucking thing.

DANNY: Where did you read this? Robert Faurisson?

BILLINGS: Yeah. He's a respected scholar. Even No-am Chomsky says he --

DANNY: Billings, if Hitler didn't kill six million, why is he your hero?... Concentration camps all over Europe, and he only gets rid of a measly two hundred thousand.... He's a putz.

DANNY: Oh, please...

BILLINGS: Danny, it's true. There were no six million. At most, two hundred thousand Jews died in the camps. And the majority of them were from disease and --

BILLINGS: Do we have to listen to this shit?

DANNY: Yes.

BILLINGS: Why'd we have to leave so fast?

BILLINGS: You coming?

DANNY: We'll go to the country sometime, okay?

BILLINGS: What, do you like it here?

DANNY: Read Mein Kampf? Hitler had all his best ideas in prison.

BILLINGS: Bring your friends.... We're not his friends.

DANNY: Then I won't bring you....

DANNY: What do you think you're doing?

BILLINGS: Who the fuck are you?

DANNY: Who am I?? Who are you, you schmucks, you can't even make a decent swastika.... Give me the paint. Give it to me.

BRAND: Forget the Jewish stuff. It doesn't play anymore. There's only the market, now, and it doesn't care who you are.

DANNY: People still need values, beliefs....

BRAND: No, they don't. Not the smart ones. Look, I'll give you five grand if you can document your tax-exempt status.... But when you fall off this horse, come see me. I can show you how to make a lot of money.

DANNY: I don't care about money.

BRAND: You will.

DANNY: You're a Jew. Maybe you don't realize it, but you are.

BRAND: Maybe I am. Maybe we're all Jews now. What's the difference?

BRAND: You write that? Come work for me. You've got a lot to learn; I can teach it to you.

DANNY: I have a job.

BRAND: This? This is a joke. I'll give your group a thousand bucks.

DANNY: You gave fifty thousand to that college magazine.

BRAND: Fifty's an exaggeration. Anyway, that was a different moment. Things were possible that aren't now.

DANNY: Actually, I think this moment has possibilities that --

BRAND: Yeah, I read your piece. It's very smart. And very wrong.

CARLA: Miriam called, looking for you. She said you might come, so I...

DANNY: You gotta get out of here.

CARLA: You don't own this place.

CARLA: Look, just light the candles with me. Then we'll eat. You have to eat.

DANNY: You eat first, then you light. Once you light, it's Yom Kippur, which means you're fasting, so you can't...eat.

CARLA: Come on, we can be like Eichmann. He studied Torah. He hated Jews.

DANNY: Is it like Eichmann? Are we goofing?

CARLA: I don't know. I just want to try it.

DANNY: Shit... Did you talk to your mother today?

CARLA: No. What are you looking for?

DANNY: Nothing. Why are you doing this? I thought God didn't exist.

CARLA: He commands it whether He exists or not... Look, we can fight him and be crushed. Or we can submit.

DANNY: And be crushed.

CARLA: Yeah, okay. But what if...what if... submitting...being crushed, being nothing, not mattering, what if that's the best feeling we can have?

DANNY: You can't. Do you know how many people I've brought into...the movement...?

CARLA: Lina, come here!

DANNY: The real Nazis. Hitler, Goebbels, they talked about Jews incessantly.... You ever read their diaries?...

CARLA: Is that why you became a Nazi? So you could talk about Jews incessantly?

DANNY: Believe me, Adolf Hitler couldn't possibly have hated the Jews as much as I do. Not in a billion years. You know why?

CARLA: 'Cause he wasn't a rabbi.

DANNY: You want a punch in the mouth?

CARLA: Okay... Why don't we light candles on Friday? Let's light candles.... And say the kaddish.

DANNY: Kaddish is the prayer for the dead.

CARLA: I mean kiddush. Let's say kiddush. And shave my head, fuck through a sheet, all that stuff... Come on, just for fun. To see what it's like...

DANNY: Nazis talk about it all the time.

CARLA: Do they?

DANNY: What...? You think I'm Jewish?

CARLA: It's all you talk about. Jewish, Jewish, Jewish. Nobody talks about it that much except the Jews.

DANNY: You're learning the Hebrew really fast.

CARLA: I told you, I'm good at this.

DANNY: Plus you have nothing else to do all day.

CARLA: Oh, am I learning it faster than you did? Maybe I'm smarter.

DANNY: No, I think you shouldn't.

CARLA: Judaism doesn't even need God. You have the Torah, the law. That's your fucking God.... The book's closed.

CARLA: Payn tash-chiton v'ashiytem...

DANNY: V'asitem...

CARLA: V'asitem lechem pessel to-monat. And make no graven image of the Lord, or the form of any figure, or of man or woman, or beast or fowl or fish or anything that looks like anything. Because He's not like anything. Not only can't you see Him or hear Him, you can't even think about Him. I mean, what's the difference between that and Him not existing?

DANNY: No difference.

CARLA: Christianity's silly, but at least there's something to believe in. Or not believe. Judaism there's nothing.

DANNY: Nothing but nothingness...Judaism's not about belief.

CARLA: What's it about?

DANNY: About doing things. You light candles, say prayers, keep the Sabbath, visit the sick....

CARLA: And belief follows?

DANNY: No. Nothing follows. You don't do it because it's smart or stupid or it saves your soul. You're not saved. Nobody's saved. You do it because the Torah tells you do. You submit to the Torah.

CARLA: Fuck that.

DANNY: Don't curse in front of it.

CARLA: Why should I submit?

DANNY: You shouldn't.

CARLA: You think I should just because there's no reason?

CARLA: Who gets contaminated, the Jews or the gentiles?

DANNY: Good question. Both. Aleph...

CARLA: It looks a little like a swastika.

DANNY: It's silent. It holds a place, takes a vowel. The vowels are little dots that go under the letters.

CARLA: Where are they?

DANNY: They don't put them in the Torah. I'll get you a chumash, they'll have them there...Bet...Gimel...Dalid...Hay... How come you're here instead of with Curtis? Besides the Hebrew lessons...

CARLA: The sex is better.

DANNY: Even though his dick is so big?

CARLA: With you there's a tragic dimension.

DANNY: Vuv...Zayin...Chet...Tet...

DANNY: See, the Jews love to separate things: the holy from the profane, milk from meat, wool from linen, the Sabbath from the week, the Jew from the gentile.... As if one little scrap of this was going to completely contaminate that.

CARLA: What assholes.

DANNY: You can't curse in front of it either.

DANNY: Put something on. You're not supposed to be naked in front of it.

CARLA: Why not?

DANNY: They think it's the word of God, and it's holy, and the flesh isn't....

CARLA: That's stupid.

DANNY: Yeah, it's stupid. Put it on, or I won't teach you.

CARLA: I want to learn to read it.

DANNY: Why?

CARLA: Know your enemy.... 'Cause it's a basic text of Western culture. I want to read it in the original. Okay?

DANNY: Hebrew's very difficult. It would take years.

CARLA: I'm good at languages.

DANNY: Va-yomer... And he said. It goes the other way.

CARLA: Oh, yeah...

DANNY: Va-yomer adonai el Avram: lech lecha mayartzcha oo-mimohlad-tcha oo-m'bayt avaycha el ha-ertez asher arecha...

CARLA: What's it mean?

DANNY: And God said to Avram, take yourself away from your land and from the place you were born and from your father's house into the land -- a different land -- and I will show you....

CARLA: How come there's no punctuation?

DANNY: That was a later invention, it's not in the scrolls.... Anyway, the Jews know where the sentences end. They know the whole thing by heart. Every word. Every letter.

CARLA: Do you know it like that? By heart.

DANNY: No.

CARLA: But you can read it, the Hebrew.... Right?

DANNY: What do you care?

CARLA: 'Cause I want to know.... What is this word? This one here...

CARLA: Where'd you get this?

DANNY: I stole it. From a synagogue.

DANNY: I'm coming to your room tonight.

CARLA: No.

DANNY: Your father??

CARLA: He's at a home out here.

DANNY: When can I see you?

CARLA: You can't.

CARLA: Who's Linda?

DANNY: Why won't you talk to me?

CARLA: I'm talking to you right now. Who's Linda?

CARLA: Too many good players down here. I'm with one right now.

DANNY: Oh, really?

CARLA: Bigger and better.

DANNY: Then how come you're talking to me?

CARLA: I bet. He didn't realize that nobody who talks such a good game ever plays one.

DANNY: You weren't complaining about my play last time.

CARLA: You're not like the others, are you?... Your friends.

DANNY: Yes, I am. Basically I am.

DANNY: You think people ever commit suicide out of happiness?

CARLA: That's stupid. Why would they?

DANNY: "...und die Worte zerfielen mir im Munde wie modrige Pilze..."

CARLA: "And the words fell apart in my mouth like moldering mushrooms..."

DANNY: How come so many of the books are in Spanish?

CARLA: They're my father's. He's from Argentina. My mother's family went there during the war. That's where they met.

DANNY: Are they still together?

CARLA: He's in a mental institution.... He's been there for ten years, off and on. Mostly on.

DANNY: Is he a Nazi?

CARLA: I guess. His parents are. He doesn't care about that.

DANNY: What's he care about?

CARLA: Killing himself.

CARLA: Why no silencer?

DANNY: You want it to be an event.

CARLA: You're not in school? What do you do?

DANNY: I work at the Big Boy warehouse. In Queens. I drive a fork-lift.

CARLA: Where'd you read all that stuff?

DANNY: I just read it....

CARLA: Which is what?

DANNY: At first, no one will know why the victims are being killed.

DANNY: Have you read Toynbee? Spengler?

CARLA: Nobody reads that stuff anymore.

DANNY: Too difficult?

CARLA: Too Christian. You know Jameson? Paul Virilio?

DANNY: The point is, the modern world is a Jewish disease.

CARLA: Disease? What disease?

DANNY: Abstraction. They're obsessed with abstraction.

CARLA'S VOICE: That's a much easier game.

DANNY: Why don't you come visit, we'll have a rematch.

DANNY: Carla?... It's me, Danny...Danny Balint...? We met at that...[meeting at your house.]

CARLA'S VOICE: Yeah, I remember.... Kill any Jews yet?

DANNY: I didn't realize you cared.

CARLA'S VOICE: I don't. I was just curious how full of shit you were.

DANNY: Did you know that there was a New York Times reporter there that night?

CARLA'S VOICE: Really, which one? I bet it was the guy with the Prada shoes.

DANNY: I didn't notice his shoes.... Did your mother know he was there?

CARLA'S VOICE: I doubt it. How did you find out?

DANNY: He called me up. He wanted to talk to me about my ideas.

CARLETON: Why are you taking that?

DANNY: I'm stealing it.

DANNY: Shema yisrael adonai elohenu adonai echod.

CARLETON: What'd you say?

DANNY: Nothing. Let's go....

CARLETON: Who's Eichmann?

DANNY: Who's Eichmann?!!?

CARLETON: I thought there were people here....

DANNY: I'll go look....

CURTIS: Danny, the night we met, you said the name Ilio Manzetti. We were impressed. We were excited. But here it is September, and Mr. Manzetti is still walking around breathing the air.

MRS. MOEBIUS: We need intellectuals, we have enough thugs already.

CURTIS: An investment banking house.

MRS. MOEBIUS: He's Jewish? Manzetti?

CURTIS: ...I thought we agreed, no anti- Semitism...it's exactly what we're trying to put behind us.... Trash the blacks, fine; but...

MRS. MOEBIUS: Did you see how they reacted to him?

CURTIS: Yes, of course. But that only plays in this room, with people who aren't embarrassed to call themselves Nazis. If you want a modern fascism, you don't mention Jews.

MRS. MOEBIUS: It's a romantic movement, Curtis. It always has been.

CURTIS: Lina, the Thousand-Year Reich barely lasted a decade.... Do you really want to go down that road again? In America of all places, where obedience and discipline are not exactly the national virtues...

DANNY: What about...Manzetti, the synagogues....

CURTIS: That doesn't seem to be happening, does it?

DANNY: I've been stuck out in the country with those guys who just want to paint swastikas and heil Hitler. How am I supposed to --

CURTIS: We want to build bridges to certain positions in the political mainstream: works like The Bell Curve, Sociobiology, anti-Zionism, anti- immigration, the com-munitarian issue.... We'll hold conferences: invite liberals, blacks, Jews. Chomsky, Cockburn, Stanley Crouch, Shahack....

DANNY: I've been waiting all my life for something like this.

CURTIS: Leo Strauss... I've got to go to Boston. I came to say goodbye.

DANNY: What about Mrs. Moebius and...?

CURTIS: They left an hour ago. You mind some personal advice? Forget Carla. That's not the side your bread's buttered on. How soon can you get back to the city?

DANNY: A week or so. There's something I want to do here first.

CURTIS: What's that? Okay. Surprise us...

CURTIS: ...Insulting people who were in the camps. ...What's the point?

DANNY: They're liars and cowards.

CURTIS: I'm sure they are. But what do we accomplish by pointing it out?

DANNY: It's the truth....

DANNY: Totally. The family emigrated from Bulgaria when he was eleven.

CURTIS: How would you kill him?

DANNY: I'd have to research it, study his routines, his security.... But ideally on a New York street at midday, using a small-caliber automatic without a silencer.

CURTIS: You wouldn't announce it?

DANNY: I'd say nothing. After two or three, people will try to find a pattern. A reason.

CURTIS: But when it comes out, the public will be outraged. It will look like Germany all over again.

DANNY: Isn't that what we want? Germany all over again? Only done right this time...

CURTIS: That would be a catastrophic mistake.

DANNY: People hate Jews. Do you agree?

CURTIS: They used to. Today it's not an issue.

DANNY: No, but deep down, beneath the "tolerance" they learn on television, nothing's changed. The very word makes their skin crawl. It isn't even hate, really. It's more the way we feel when a rat runs across the floor. We want to step on it. Crush it. We don't even know why. It's a physical reaction. Everyone feels it.

CURTIS: More cultural than political.

DANNY: Obviously.

CURTIS: Decentralized, nonviolent, increasingly mainstream. We'll see antiabortion, anti-immigration groups form alliances with the gun lobby, Christian identity types, tax resisters and even some libertarians....

GUY: Two days ago you addressed a Nazi rally. Last week you went to a Torah study group.

DANNY: What were you, following me?

GUY: How do you reconcile the two?

DANNY: I don't. Look, stay out of what you don't understand.

GUY: Explain it so I can.

DANNY: You work for the New York Times. Your whole job in life is not to understand things like me.

GUY: I don't think you know what you are.

DANNY: Yeah, and what are you? A Times man? A Presbyterian? Impotent? A prick?

GUY: Who killed Manzetti?

DANNY: If I tell you, will you pull the story? Not write about me?

GUY: It's too late.... If I didn't, somebody else would. Yom Kippur starts at sundown. Will you go to synagogue?

DANNY: Get the fuck away from me.

GUY: Did you kill Ilio Manzetti?

DANNY: No.

GUY: But if the Jews are strengthened by hate, wouldn't this "destruction" you speak of -- by love or by any other means -- in fact make them more powerful than they are already?

DANNY: Yes. Infinitely more. They would become as God.

GUY: Were you ever bar mitzvahed anywhere else?

DANNY: Do you know who you're fucking with here?

GUY: That's what I'm trying to find out, Danny. Who am I fucking with here?

DANNY: Listen to me....

GUY: Why would Nadelman lie?

DANNY: To discredit me. Because I know who they are. Look, I thought I explained it to you. Those people can say or do anything. And they will. It's all narrative to them, it's... Are you going to print what this guy said?

GUY: Give me a reason not to.

DANNY: It's slander. It's reckless disregard. I'll sue you and your fucking Jew paper.

GUY: Does that mean you deny what he says is true? Yes or no.

DANNY: What? Excuse me?... You're kidding, right?

GUY: Do you know Rabbi Stanley Nadelman? He used to be at Congregation Beth Elohim in Ozone Park...?

DANNY: Who? How would I know him?

GUY: He says you were bar mitzvahed there, in March 1988.

DANNY: You believe that? And you call yourself a reporter?

GUY: So you're saying it's not true.

DANNY: Look at me. DO I look Jewish? Look...

DANNY: Deracinate... Tear out the roots. A people -- a real people -- derives its genius from the land: the sun, the sea, the soil. This is how they know themselves. But the Jew doesn't have soil.

GUY: He has Israel.

DANNY: Those aren't Jews.

GUY: Of course they're Jews.

DANNY: Notice the Israelis: a fundamentally secular society. They no longer need Judaism because they have soil. The real Jew is a wanderer, a nomad. He has no roots, no attachments. So he "universalizes" everything. He can't hammer a nail, plow a field. He can only buy and sell, invest capital, manipulate markets. He takes the life of a people rooted in soil and turns it into a cosmopolitan culture based on books, ideas, numbers. This is his strength.... Take the great Jewish minds: Marx, Freud, Einstein. What have they given us: communism, infantile sexuality and the atom bomb. In a mere three centuries since these guys emerged from the ghettos of Europe, they've taken us from a world built on order and reason and hurled us into a chaos of class warfare, irrational urges and relativity, a world where the very existence of matter and meaning is in doubt. Why? Because it is the deepest impulse of the Jewish soul to unravel the very fabric of life until nothing is left but thread, nothing but nothingness. Nothingness without end...

GUY: Are all Jews the same?

DANNY: Differences exist, of course, but they're irrelevant. For the Jew, his Jewishness dominates everything. Even the ones who renounce it, who hate it, who want to cut it out of their hearts a knife...can't escape. They're still just Jews.

DANNY: The Jews are different.... Blacks are disgusting and inferior, but it's like criticizing a retarded child. The Jews are...a poison in the human well....

GUY: A poison...?

DANNY: Let me give you an example.... Sexuality.

GUY: Sexuality??? What do you mean?

DANNY: You ever fuck a Jewish girl?

GUY: What??!?

DANNY: Did you ever fuck one, Guy?

GUY: What's that go to do with...I've gone out with a, with Jewish women. Why?

DANNY: And? WHat did you notice?

GUY: Notice? Like what...?

DANNY: Jewish girls like to give head, right?

GUY: I don't know. Is that right?

DANNY: And Jewish men like to get it.

GUY: Everybody likes to, don't they?

DANNY: Yes. It's very pleasurable. But the Jews are obsessed with it. You know why?

GUY: Why?

DANNY: Because the Jew is essentially female.

GUY: Female...

DANNY: Real men -- white, Christian men -- we fuck a woman. We make her come with our cocks. But the Jew doesn't like to penetrate and thrust -- he can't assert himself that directly -- so he resorts to perversions. Oral sex is technically a perversion, you know that, don't you? After a woman has been with a Jewish man, she never wants a normal partner again. A normal man.

GUY: Does that mean the Jew is the better lover?

DANNY: You're not listening. He isn't better. He gives pleasure, but that's actually a weakness.

GUY: Danny, what makes you think you know all this?

DANNY: Let's just say I've done due diligence.

GUY: So, fine, it's not that the Jew, the Jews own the media and the banks. It's that they're sexually corrupt.

DANNY: The Jews clearly control the media and the banks. Investment banks, not the commercial ones. But the point is they carry out in those realms the same principles they display in sexuality. They undermine traditional life; they deracinate society.

GUY: Is it okay if I record this?

DANNY: No... Yeah, fine, go ahead... So what's this about? Is this about me?

GUY: I'm trying to figure out where the radical right is going to next....I thought you were the most interesting person at that meeting.

DANNY: What about Curtis Zampf?

GUY: Curtis is a politician -- and a bit of a hustler. He's not a thinker.

DANNY: I agree.

GUY: The other night you said the modern world is a Jewish disease. Could you elaborate on that?

DANNY: In the movement -- the racialist movement -- we believe there's a hierarchy of the races. Not just in IQ, but in the civilization, the art, the forms of government, the civilizations that each race produces... Why are you writing this down if you're recording it?

GUY: It helps me concentrate.... So does that mean you're a white supremacist?

DANNY: What should I be, a white inferior- ist? A multicultural Zulu egalitarian? Let me ask, where are your people from?

GUY: My mother's family is French, my father's was German, originally.

DANNY: German. Mine, too. So who do you think's given more to the world, the Germans -- Beethoven, Goethe, Nietzsche -- or the entire continent of Africa? Ibos, Bantus, Mandingos...

GUY: Danny, what about the Jews?

MIRIAM: You shut up. Who do you think you are?

DANNY: There's a bomb here. It's going to go off at seven-thirty.

MIRIAM: All right, what if all along you were actually infiltrating the Nazis -- to expose them....

DANNY: But I wasn't.

MIRIAM: And only talked about killing Manzetti to convince them you were an anti-Semite. If you'd had any idea somebody would take it seriously, you never would have said it.

DANNY: I can't say that.

MIRIAM: Think about your father. Your sister.

DANNY: The truth doesn't mean anything to you, does it?

MIRIAM: Danny, I'm trying to -- save you.

DANNY: Fucking kike.

MIRIAM: You're telling me you killed him? You? Killed him? Bullshit. What kind of gun did you use?

DANNY: A forty-five.

MIRIAM: It was a nine millimeter.

DANNY: You're lying.

MIRIAM: So are you... But they'll believe you.... Lina Moebius is saying the whole thing was your idea. That you proposed it in a meeting at her house. Ah, Jesus, Danny... What were you thinking? Are you glad Manzetti's dead? Do you really want to kill Jews? You want to kill me?

DANNY: I was just talking. I -- look, I can't help what I think.

MIRIAM: Tell me about Lina Moebius.

DANNY: How did you...?

MIRIAM: I work in the DA's office. You go to those meetings, half the people there are informants.

DANNY: You mean the Times guy?

MIRIAM: Which Times guy?

DANNY: With the shoes... There was more than one?

MIRIAM: You know the joke: a Jew's shipwrecked on a desert island. When they rescue him, they see he's built two synagogues. They say, for vhat do you need two synagogues? He says, vun to pray in, and vun I'd never set foot in so long as I live, so help me God. You pray in the one you'd never set foot in...and vice versa.

DANNY: I can't help what I think.

MIRIAM: This is me.

MIRIAM: Why did you come tonight? To see me?

DANNY: To hear them read Torah.

MIRIAM: I thought you hated Torah.

DANNY: That doesn't mean I don't like hearing it.

MIRIAM: Point out all the lies and fucked-up thinking.

DANNY: I always won.

MIRIAM: The arguments, anyway.

DANNY: How did you get the fucking number?

LINDA'S VOICE: I want you to say kaddish for her. It's the only thing she asked from us....

DANNY: I don't do that.

LINDA'S VOICE: You do it on the inside....

DANNY: Don't tell me what I --

LINDA'S VOICE: ...I want you to do it on the outside, too.

DANNY: No!

LINDA'S VOICE: Yes!

LINA: Hello...?

DANNY: Lina... It's happening. Tonight.

LINA: What is happening?

DANNY: Beth Shalom. Like you wanted.

LINA: Beth Shalom? What are you talking about? Who is this...?

DANNY: Lina, you said if I was going to plant a bomb, I should --

LINA: How have things been going?

DANNY: Fine.

LINA: We want to talk to you about something.... We're about to launch an aboveground, intellectually serious fascist movement.

LINA: Do you feel you're making progress here?

DANNY: You mean Ilio Manzetti?

LINA: Forget Manzetti.... Take on something simple. Something you can actually accomplish. Maybe he'd be more valuable in the city.

DANNY: Without blood -- a willingness to spill it -- there's no real power, no authority.

LINA: Curtis is afraid you'll marginalize us.

DANNY: We're already marginal. We are saying what no one else has the guts to say. Isn't that precisely our appeal?

LINA: So what Jew would you kill first?

DANNY: Ilio Manzetti...former ambassador to France. Managing partner at Damon, Schwarzchild.

LINA: Lina Moebius. And you are...?

DANNY: Daniel Balint.

LINA: Balint?

DANNY: It's German.

LINA: What part of Germany are you people from?

DANNY: From the Rhineland originally.

LINA: Are you with the FBI, Mr. Balint?... Or any other law enforcement agency?

DANNY: I was going to ask you the same thing.

DANNY: What about chicken?

FIRST WAITER: That's meat.

DANNY: The Bible only says don't seethe a kid in its mother's milk. But chickens don't give milk.

FIRST WAITER: Look, you want cheese, go someplace else.

DANNY: But it's stupid, right? You admit it's stupid.

FIRST WAITER: No, I don't admit it's stupid.

DANNY: You can have chicken with eggs but not with milk. Why is that?

FIRST WAITER: I'm not here to talk about religious law, if you don't like --

DANNY: But you already talked about it: you said it's not stupid. Why isn't it stupid?

FIRST WAITER: Steve...

DANNY: Steve's going to explain it.

LINDA: Ah, Jesus Christ, Danny, how can you wear that thing?... You know what it means? To your people...

DANNY: They're not my people....

LINDA: Tell it to Hitler.

DANNY: Oh, he decides? Hitler's the chief rabbi now?...

LINDA: Is this because of those kids who used to beat you up?

DANNY: What kids?...

LINDA: The Polacks? From Sacred Heart?

DANNY: Nobody ever beat me up. Look, Linda, there're fifty reasons. Even if you knew them all, there'd be another fifty you didn't know.

LINDA: Do you know them? I made him some noodles for dinner. You can heat them up and --

DANNY: I've got to get back to the --

LINDA: You can heat them up and eat with him.

LINDA: He's going to die. He won't take his medicine. He eats dairy. He probably still smokes when I'm not around. I asked him to come live with us. Alex offered to share his room, unsolicited.... But he didn't want to be any trouble.

DANNY: Then he couldn't be bitter about living alone.

LINDA: Why deprive him of his greatest pleasure?

LINDA: What are you doing here?

DANNY: I just came to get some stuff. I'll be out in five minutes. He doesn't want me around.

DANNY: Who knows what that is?

VOICE: A Jewish prayer.

DANNY: Can anybody imagine why I would say a Jewish prayer?

VOICE: I'm doing a piece on right-wing groups, post Oklahoma City. I hear you're an important figure in those circles. You have a lot of interesting ideas....

DANNY: Who told you that?

VOICE: Isn't it true?

DANNY: No, it's...yeah, it's true, but... how'd you get this number?... No, not here... Maybe Sunday? There's a place off Queens Blvd. Near the courthouse...

DANNY: Hello...?

VOICE: Daniel Balint? My name's Guy Danielsen. I'm a reporter with the New York Times.

DANNY: New York Times...?

KYLE: When do you want it to go off?

DANNY: Seven-thirty tomorrow evening.

KYLE: So that's what? Nineteen thirty minutes...what time is it now...

KYLE: If I went back to the lumberyard, the guy'd give me all the dynamite I wanted. Untraceable, you wouldn't -- need to...

DANNY: No, it has to be tomorrow. You won't get this many of them in here for another year. It'll be fine.

KYLE: It's not going to be fine. It's --

DANNY: Just do it.

DANNY: Take a right on 59th... We'll put it someplace else.

KYLE: Where?

DANNY: I have an idea....

DANNY: Not too fast.

KYLE: You said they didn't have night guards.

DANNY: They don't. I checked twenty times.... Somebody must have talked.

KYLE: Who even knew?

DANNY: Mrs. Moebius.

KYLE: Why? Why would she?

DANNY: The Manzetti thing must have scared her. She thinks she'll get implicated.

KYLE: So what do we do with the device?

KYLE: Oh, what is this shit?

DANNY: Keep driving. Don't slow down.

KYLE: Christ...

KYLE: Didn't you get anything?

DANNY: I'm not hungry.... Come on, let's drive around.... We don't want to be spotted here.

KYLE: That's all we've got left.

DANNY: It'll be enough if we use it right. Okay, the service'll go about another hour. Say an hour for the janitors, then one more just to be safe... We'll go in at midnight.

DANNY: What about Drake, did he ever show up?

KYLE: No, it's weird, man. Nobody knows where he went.

KYLE: This will be a different kind of device.

DANNY: That damn thing. You know how it made me look...?

KYLE: I'm sorry, Danny. It won't happen again. I'm going to use a brand-new power cell. Plus we'll have a back-up timer.

DANNY: I've gotta kill some Jews, Kyle. I'm serious. I'm always talking about it. This time it's gotta happen.

KYLE: It will.

KYLE: Open it up.

DANNY: Here...

DANNY: Shut up. Fuck you....

KYLE: What...?

DANNY: What is it?

KYLE: Green dot -- shotgun powder. For pipe bombs. A guy in a lumberyard gave it to me. A donation to the cause.

KYLE: Which one were you aiming at?

DANNY: The mother.

KYLE: That was unbelievable what you did to Lucas. The guy's an animal.

DANNY: You could do it.

KYLE: Get out of here....

DANNY: You look right through him. He's there, but there's something on the other side of him that you want. It's all you want. And whatever's in the way doesn't matter.... Then it's easy.

DANNY: Where's Mrs. Moebius?

KYLE: Her place is down the road. But she just comes out for weekends sometimes.

DANNY: Which was his room?

KYLE: Number ten.

STUART: Danny, listen, people expect me to daven; they don't want someone they don't know -- leading their prayers.

DANNY: Get out of my way.

STUART: Listen, Danny, you can't just barge in and --

DANNY: Shut up...

STUART: She's at Yale Law -- interning with the district attorney... We're getting married next spring. In Israel.

DANNY: Wow, that's uh...great...

STUART: You remember Miriam....

DANNY: Yeah, hey, how're you doing...

STUART: Jeez, it's been since, what, Kenny's wedding.

DANNY: Yeah, uh... So how are you? What's going on?

STUART: I'm in the rabbinic program at JTS...

DANNY: JTS...?

STUART: What about you? What are you doing? Something strange, I bet.

DANNY: I'm in a kind of...underground...thing.

STUART: Are you an artist?

DANNY: No, no... Not that kind of... underground. More a private... business. Private.

DRAKE: You missed on purpose.

DANNY: I didn't. I told you, I can't --

DRAKE: What's that?

DRAKE: Shoot him in the head. Always shoot a Jew in the head.

DANNY: I'm a bad shot. I don't think I can --

DRAKE: Just get him in the cross-hairs. With those shells, anywhere you hit him, it'll bounce around, rip his insides all up.

DANNY: How did you know they were Jews?

DRAKE: I can tell....

DANNY: How?

DRAKE: I was a Jew in a previous life.

DANNY: Who'd you kill?

DRAKE: Four. But no one this important.

DRAKE: Lie on your stomach and come up on your elbows.

DANNY: Why me?

DRAKE: You want to kill a Jew. I already did.

HATE COUNSELOR: Where do you think you're going?

DANNY: ...We have nothing to learn from these people. They should learn from us.

DANNY: SO THEY SHOT HIM! SO HE WAS DEAD. SO WHAT. HE'S WORSE THAN DEAD NOW. HE'S A PIECE OF SHIT...

HATE COUNSELOR: Okay, that's it. You're going back to --

DANNY: What do you think you should have done?

HATE COUNSELOR: You can't say that....

DANNY: The Nazi's killing his kid. He could've jumped the guy. He could've gouged his eyes out, grabbed the bayonet and gutted him.... What would you have done if they were killing your son?

DANNY: And what did you do?

HATE COUNSELOR: What are you trying to say?

DANNY: What did you do while the sergeant was killing your son?

FATHER: There's some maple walnut in the freezer.

DANNY: Linda says you're not supposed to have dairy.

FATHER: Just a little... What's the difference?

FATHER: After your mother died, that's when you stopped going to shul. Doing your homework. Everything.

DANNY: And that's when the Mets started to stink.

FATHER: 'Cause they got rid of Johnson. He knew how to deal with the assholes. Dallas Green, please...

DANNY: Valentine...

DANNY: Adam Sandler.

FATHER: Funny?

DANNY: Not like Mr. Dorfmann.

FATHER: He was funny.

DANNY: Howard Stern.

FATHER: Obviously.

FATHER: Who's this?

DANNY: Dennis Leary.

FATHER: Leary?

DANNY: No.

FATHER: The Torah says not to light a fire on the Sabbath, because it's work, correct? But if alternating current's running through the wires every second of every day, and I throw a switch, send it here instead of there, how is that lighting a fire?

DANNY: "Do chickens give milk?"

FATHER: Exactly.

DANNY: It's Friday....

FATHER: Do I give a shit?

DANNY: Do you think I...

MRS. MOEBIUS: Danny, please, we don't want to know.

MRS. MOEBIUS: Are you out of your mind?!

DANNY: I was just trying to make a point. If --

DANNY: We tested the new bomb.

MRS. MOEBIUS: What?

DANNY: We redesigned the timing mechanism. It can't possibly malfunction.

MRS. MOEBIUS: Danny, please. Just give your speech.... And nothing about Jews, okay?

MRS. MOEBIUS: Do you have a suit? Let's get him one.... And a cell phone too. And if you insist on blowing up a synagogue, make it that big one on Fifth Avenue, would you?

DANNY: Beth Shalom? It's Reform.

MRS. MOEBIUS: So what?

DANNY: They're not that Jewish.

MRS. MOEBIUS: I don't care what they are. I know those people, and I don't like them. The rest are just a bunch of kikes, aren't they?

DANNY: I'm not an intellectual.... I mean, I read, but... Fund-raising isn't what I...

MRS. MOEBIUS: Look, if you want to kill Jews on your free time, fine. We need you to raise money. Will you do that for us?

MRS. MOEBIUS: We want you to help run it. Give speeches, lead seminars... Handle the fund-raising.

DANNY: Fund-raising??

MRS. MOEBIUS: We think you'd be good at it.

DANNY: Oh, fuck you...

RABBI: As you know, Cindy, thirteen is a mystical number in the Jewish faith. We believe that God has thirteen attributes...

RABBI: May He cause the light of His countenance to shine upon you and be gracious unto you....

DANNY: Eat shit....

RABBI: ...May you be blessed in your going forth as you were in your coming....

DANNY: EAT SHIT, ASSHOLES....

RABBI: And let us say...

REPORTER: In the Third Reich, weren't a number of high-ranking Nazis of Jewish origin?

MRS. MOEBIUS: Yes, and they were said to be the most virulent proponents of the Final Solution. Really, who but a Jew would want to kill Ilio Manzetti simply because he was Jewish? Who thinks about such things?

REPORTER: The papers are going to report tomorrow that your colleague, Curtis Zampf, has been a federal informant for the past two years. Do you believe that?

MRS. MOEBIUS: Curtis is always more complicated than he seems. Even now.

REPORTER: And so, on this, the most solemn day of the Jewish year, a former yeshiva student is being sought in connection with a monstrous hate crime that --

REPORTER: ...You're saying that when he first appeared at your house, you had no idea he was Jewish....

MRS. MOEBIUS: None whatsoever. But I have to admit, I'm not terribly surprised.

REPORTER: What do you mean?

MRS. MOEBIUS: I think anti-semitism today is largely a Jewish phenomenon. Wouldn't you agree?