Culture clash

Previously on our Coen Brothers Community Countdown:

No. 18: The Ladykillers
No. 17: The Man Who Wasn’t There
No. 16: Intolerable Cruelty
No. 15. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

14. A Serious Man (2009)

Final Score: 60 points
Total Votes: 12 (31.6% of submissions)
Total Views: 23 (60.5%)
Highest Placement: #3 (MeanOldPig)

I didn’t know I was Jewish until I was 13 years old. (The significance of that age is not lost on me, but it is, unbelievably, just a coincidence.) My mother’s parents were both from the East Coast and both grew up as Orthodox Jews, their respective parents both having emigrated here from Germany and Lithuania (I believe). They married and eventually found themselves in California, and through a combination of having become disenchanted with the Judaic faith and not wanting their children to grow up with the stigmas they had encountered (and also for the benefit of attempting to find jobs), they changed their last name from Burnstein to Burns, and when they had children, they never raised them with any connection to Judaism or Jewish culture or tradition.

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