Climbing the Mountain - An Interview with Kirk Douglas

I was in a helicopter and we had just lifted 50 feet above the ground. At the same time, a small plane was taking off with an instructor and his student. We collided. Our helicopter crashed to the tarmac. But the plane exploded. Its two passengers were killed.

I woke up in the hospital, tormented by a wave of guilt -- why did those two young people die? Why was I alive? That haunted me. And I tried to find the answer.

Where do you find an answer to a question like that? Where would you go? See a fortune-teller -- have your cards read? An astrologer? Or maybe go to India -- find a guru? An audience with the Dalai Lama?

See, Judaism and I parted ways a long time ago, when I was a poor kid growing up in Amsterdam, N.Y.

Back then, I was pretty good in cheder, so the Jews of our community thought they would do a wonderful thing and collect enough money to send me to a yeshiva to become a rabbi.

Holy Moses! That scared the hell out of me. I didn't want to be a rabbi. I wanted to be an actor. Believe me, the members of the Sons of Israel were persistent. I had nightmares -- wearing long payos and a black hat. I had to work very hard to get out of it.

But it took me a long time to learn that you don't have to be a rabbi to be a Jew.

I got frightened away from Judaism at age 14 after reading the story of Abraham and Isaac: God orders Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac.

I remember the picture in my hebrew school book. Abraham with a long beard. In one outstretched hand holding a large knife, in the other -- a frightened little boy. And that kid looked an awful lot like me! A hovering angel was having a hard time restraining Abraham. How could he convince him that this was only a test.

I grew up, went to college, but my Judaism stayed stuck in a 14-year-old boy's hebrew school book.

It has been pointed out to me that no rational adult would make a business decision based on what they knew when they were 14. You wouldn't decide who to marry based on what you knew about love and relationships when you were 14. But lots of us seem satisfied to dismiss religion based on what we learned at 14, and I was one of those that stupid.

Of course, I always knew I was a Jew. I even auditioned to join a Yiddish Theater in New York. They looked at my blonde hair and blue eyes and said: "If we have a part for a Nazi, we'll call you."

Although I felt drawn to the drama and the mystery of Judaism, other aspects pushed me away. What did I have in common with those black-hatted, bearded men with their long payos?

The catalyst was my son Michael. One day he asked me: "Dad, where did our ancestors come from?"

That startled me. I wasn't sure. I knew my parents came from Russia, someplace called Mogilev.

I suddenly realized that I knew nothing about my background. Anyone who could tell me was now long dead. I had no ancestors.

This thought depressed me. It haunted me. I had no ancestors! Can a man know who he truly is, if he doesn't know his ancestors?

I was lying in my room pondering this question for the umpteenth time, when I happened to look up over my bed. There on the wall hangs my collection of Chagalls -- the lithographs from his Bible series. It hit me. Here were my ancestors!

Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Solomon, David, Rebecca, Rachel, Ruth, Esther. There were musicians in my family, warriors, poets, lawgivers.

I started to read about them and the more I read the happier I felt. Why? They all came from dysfunctional families. Like me. They all had problems.

Cain kills Abel. Jacob deceives his father. Joseph gets sold into slavery by his brothers. One sinner after another and despite that they were given a second chance. They all overcame the odds and accomplished great things!

What an inspiration to a sinner like me. And what a load of guilt off my shoulders.

I was very grateful to Chagall for reminding me what an incredible lineage I had come from. Then I found out that Chagall, a Russian Jew, came from a town near my parents' in White Russia. In fact, my father and Chagall both left that region, known as Pale of Settlement, about the same time. Chagall became a famous artist in Paris, and my father became a famous ragman in Amsterdam, New York. Jews have diverse talents.

How did we survive? Lost in different parts of the world, among strange cultures -- constantly persecuted. Yet, our tormentors rose and fell, and we still hung on. The Babylonians, the Persians, Greeks, Romans, all are long gone but we remain.

And that is when I realized that we should thank those pious, black-hatted, bearded Jews -- for keeping Judaism alive for so long.

They understood something very deep that we more secular types never learned. God gave us the Torah -- and that made us the conscience of the world.

The ideas of love, compassion, kindness to strangers and the poor, the ideas of holiness of human purpose, a reverence for life and self-discipline all -- ALL come from the Torah.

Hitler was right. It's all about the battle between good and evil. I'm just beginning to realize what that means for us Jews, and it scares me. It carries such an enormous responsibility.

No wonder that so many Jews have tried to escape into the safety of assimilation. But that safety always turns out to be a trap.

Amazing isn't it -- before the Nazis came to power, Germany was the country where Jews had assimilated to a staggering degree. Judaism was dying out. And then the German people, who had absorbed the Jews with such open-arms, turned on them with such hatred.

How odd that, with all the persecutions we have been subjected to, the worst comes when we've moved away from Judaism. Is God telling us something? I'm beginning to think so.

Throughout my life, when I was moving farther and farther from Judaism, I always clung to a single thread -- Yom Kippur. On that one day I fasted. I might be shooting it out with Burt Lancaster or John Wayne but I always fasted.

You see, there was something frightening to me about that book in which is written -- who shall live and who shall die -- who will survive a helicopter crash, like me, and who will be killed.

My helicopter crash brought to my consciousness what had been roiling under the surface for all those years.

I made a visit to Israel after a 12-year absence. I had filmed four movies there. I had been there many times but I stayed away too long. I was excited.

We drove up to the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. Everyone seemed so glad to see me again. They ushered me and my wife into our room. I walked to the window and stared out at the magnificent view of the Old City, the Ottoman Empire walls surrounded by grass and flowers.

The first time I looked out of that same window more than 40 years ago, I saw Arab soldiers, pacing back and forth, keeping me out of the Old City, making sure I couldn't get to the Kotel, the Holy Wall.

How Israel had changed since then. So many new things. But more important, so many OLD things.

The OLD is what brought me back. I didn't wait to change my clothes. I rushed out of the hotel. The sun was just setting.

The Wall was crowded with worshippers. The energy emanating from all the praying Jews, davening at a wild pace, was overwhelming. I moved through the crowd. It was difficult to find a place to touch the wall.

I looked around for a crevice where I could put the tiny piece of paper with my prayer. I found one. As I reached deep, my fingers touched other pieces placed there before me. Had those prayers been answered?

I took a walk through the tunnel along the foundations of the Temple. That tunnel takes you deep along what once was the most sacred place to all Jews.

As I slowly walked along following my guide, I let my fingers caress the huge blocks of stone that enclose the mountain where the Temple once stood.

And then we stopped at the point where we could touch bedrock. My guide, a young girl from Pittsburgh who had moved to Israel, spoke softly: "This is the rock of Mount Moriah."

She finished for me. "Yes, this is where Abraham took his son Isaac to be sacrificed."

The picture from my hebrew school book flashed into my mind. But it no longer frightened me. Now I knew that Abraham lived at a time when sacrificing your son to idols was a common practice. The lesson of Mount Moriah was precisely that God does not want human sacrifice -- that God is not Someone to be afraid of.

This place represented the beginning of my doubts. And, at long last, the end of them.

That night I had Shabbat at a home in the heart of the Jewish Quarter. We sang songs, happy songs. I felt good. Through the open window I could hear the same songs echoing in the night, and see other houses lit by the warm light of candles.

I closed my eyes and I could see the face of my mother through the candlelight, saying the Shabbat prayers.

When I first picked up the Torah, I was encouraged. It has only 350 pages. But when I began to study seriously, I realized why they say that Judaism is a lifetime of learning. It took me more than two months just to get out of the Garden of Eden.

Before I could finish my back gave out and I had an operation. Two weeks later I had a stroke.

Now I am not as cocky as I used to be. I no longer take speech for granted. When I had no trouble with it, it seemed so natural. You think a thought and then you express it vocally. You don't realize that there are thousands of nerve endings in your cheek, your tongue, your lips. You never think of the movement of your tongue against your teeth -- all coordinated with your vocal chords. It's a miracle.

Miracles come only from God. And they are all around us. I remember being suddenly awakened by an earthquake. I was almost thrown out of my bed. Such power -- where did it come from? Have you ever watched a hurricane and seen large trees uprooted like toothpicks. It is awesome.

Have you ever looked up at the sky on a dark night? There are a hundred billion stars in our galaxy alone and there are billions of other galaxies. Billions of light years away!

If God is a patient God, maybe He'll give me enough time to learn the things I need to know to understand what it is that makes us Jews the conscience of the world.

Excerpted from a speech made by Kirk Douglas at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, September 27, 1997

A: I heard that in Jewish wisdom a man gets to live 70 years and then he starts to live all over again. So when I hit 83, I was 13 again and I had a second Bar Mitzvah. I really did feel that I was given a second chance because I was in a helicopter crash some years back. When I woke up in the hospital, I was in awful pain, but I felt so guilty because two young people had died. And I said, "why am I alive?" After my helicopter crash and my stroke, I think I began to think of other people. And then I began to study the Bible.

You know, I wrote a book for children called "Young Heroes of the Bible" because I became very fascinated with the Bible. It is the greatest human drama. It has everything you can think of. And I wrote this book to try to get kids interested in reading the Bible. They'll see that there were kids like Abraham and Miriam and David who were heroes. Abraham as a young boy worked in his father idol shop and he broke all the idols. So far people have liked it, and I like writing.

A: I felt good, because I felt now I'm 13-years-old again! I can start all over. It was very touching. People said, "Kirk, now you've gotten religious." I don't think so. 'Religion' implies too much ritual. I prefer to say I have become more interested in the spiritual side.

A: I was intrigued that people, especially non-Jews, found it so fascinating. It was very, very exciting really. There were about two hundred people -- many more people than when I was first Bar Mitzvah'd.

Q: You referred to 'starting all over again,' yet you don't strike us as being a man who looks back with regrets.

A: I don't. You know, that's very discerning because I don't generally look back. But when I wrote my first book, "The Ragman's Son," I said, "wait a minute - I have to take inventory. Where did I come from? Where am I now? Where am I going?" And I think everybody must do that from time to time, take stock. But it's true, in general I like to look ahead. But I think at the same time, it's important to occasionally take inventory and look back a little bit.

Q: You're a beloved Hollywood figure, especially by your fellow actors. Do you feel loved by the general public when you go out?

A: I don't know. The one thing I don't want is pity [because I had a stroke]. I want to be judged based on what I am. I realize that I have always been attracted to people who overcome handicaps. A became friends with Jim McLaren who lost his leg in college. At the time I was writing a novel about a bullfighter who loses his leg. I wanted to know about it, so I met him. He was the world's champion triathlete among handicapped people. He had a prosthesis. He invited me to see him race once in Orange County, but I couldn't go. Well, the last part of the triathlon was the bicycle race, and a truck ran the police barrier and Jim hit a lamp post. I went to see him the next day in the hospital, and now he was a paraplegic. He is handsome fellow, six-foot-five, and had been functioning without one leg. Now he couldn't move anything. I admire him. I saw him three weeks ago, and he's taking some classes in Santa Barbara. He doesn't ask for pity. He's functioning and I admire that.

Q: What do you think about the buzz in Hollywood concerning a possible Oscar nomination for your performance in "Diamonds?"

[In his newest movie, "Diamonds," Mr. Douglas stars as a former boxing champion who, in his twilight years, is a widower recovering from a stroke. The movie's title is inspired by its plot, where his character teams up with his son and grandson to recover some diamonds they suspect were stolen from him. It also stars Dan Ackroyd and Lauren Bacall.]

A: Listen, I have been nominated three times -- for "Champion," "The Bad and the Beautiful," and "Lust for Life," but I never won. But that's not so bad. The bad thing is each time I had the most beautiful acceptance speech, and I couldn't get the chance to use it! Yes, there's been some talk that I might be nominated for "Diamonds," and of course I would love it, but I will not be annihilated if I don't get nominated, or if I do get nominated.

Q: In an interview with the "Los Angeles Times", you were asked how you would like to be remembered, and you responded, "I tried." Any additional thoughts?

A: I tell my kids, "All you can do in life is try." I tried my best. If you don't succeed, you can say to yourself, 'I tried.' That's the most important thing in life. I tried.

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