Read More @HJ Spiritual Articles: Hope for Tolerance Darrel Manson

“The course of true love never did run smooth.” (A Midsummer’s Night Dream)

That observation is the basis for uncountable films. Boy meets girl. They fall in love. And there are problems. It can be the basis of tragedy or of comedy. David and Layla is a comic version of the scenario. The main reason things are not running smooth is that David is Jewish, Layla is a Kurdish Muslim.

While the film is basically a love story, the conflict between faiths serves as the undercurrent that makes the story interesting. At the beginning of the film (before David and Layla meet) we see David’s father and Layla’s uncle pass each other in the park. They greet each other with “shalom” and “salaam,” then after they are past one another they mutter insults. This is the default we expect between Jews and Moslems. But this is a story that wants us to get past that default.

David and Layla are not as tied to their religions as their families. They are on the edge of their religious traditions. Layla drinks wine and dances, things that are frowned upon by many Muslims. David thinks of himself as an agnostic, but still goes to synagogue. So for them, the gap between their faiths is not as much of a problem as it is for their families. Still, they think one should convert to keep peace, and David converts to Islam. Well, sort of.

Filmmaker Jay Jonroy says, “All of us are born into some religious family, some religious society. Everyone obviously adopts the religion of their parents until they get older.” But even when people experience other religions, he goes on, “it never leaves you—the religion you grow up with.”

So we see David put his kippah on his head under the more Muslim headdress when he is talking to the imam about converting. At their wedding, done in Kurdish style, David goes off alone to break the glass. Even though he has converted outwardly, he is still a Jew inside. He has not given up his identity with his heritage; rather, he has taken a new identity as well.

While the film is a bit uneven, the middle section of the film in which we watch the two lovers come to understand each other and their traditions is the strongest part. They play a bit of one-upsmanship with their people’s histories. David mentions two great minds of the Twentieth Century, Freud and Einstein. Where, he wonders, would we be without them? Layla counters that the ones and zeroes that are the basis for all computers were the development of al-Kwarizmi, a Persian mathematician. Later, David and Layla’s uncle play a bit was well. The uncle points out that Jerusalem was made open to people of all faiths by Saladin. David points out Saladin’s physician was the great Jewish scholar Maimonides. And so we see that each culture has ample room for bragging.

We also see that each has suffered. The pain of the Holocaust is still part of the Jewish identity. But Kurds have also faced persecution, most recently by Saddam Hussein who killed tens of thousands of them (including some of Jonroy’s family). There is more that people have in common than make them different.

That is what, in their love, David and Layla are able to find. Neither loses what they were, but both gain a new life and people as well. Perhaps it is a lesson that others can learn.