arts & culture
‘Armageddon Time’ an Honest,
Overworked Tale of Two Americas
T he potency of James Gray’s
“Armageddon Time” relies on the
fi lm being watched in 2022.

A New York boy coming of age in 1980,
protagonist Paul Graff (Banks Repeta)
turns to a friend and tells him that his
favorite band is Th e Beatles.

“I hear they’re getting back together
soon,” he says with confi dent earnestness.

Th e sad joke is that, of course, the
band — unbeknownst to Paul — was
not getting back together. John Lennon
would be fatally shot on Dec. 8 of that
year, just a couple of months aft er Paul
starts his sixth-grade year at a Queens
public school.

On day one of the new school year,
Paul rekindles his friendship with Johnny
(Jaylin Webb), a Black boy held back a
year, and the two fi nd glee in making
mischief. Johnny almost always receives
22 the harsher punishment of the two, but
their friendship endures, despite Paul’s
family’s sour outlook on the presence of
a Black kid in Paul’s life.

Eventually, the Graff s transfer Paul
to the same private school as his older
brother, where Paul trades in well-worn
striped turtlenecks for a trim suit and
his Black classmate for pale, wealthy ones
who spit the n-word.

As Paul still struggles at his new school,
head in the clouds and hands busy doo-
dling, Johnny struggles, too. Tired of
the punitive nature of his public school,
Johnny drops out and asks increasingly
larger favors of Paul: He needs a place to
stay away from his senile grandmother
and money to run away to Florida, where
he can become a NASA astronaut.

In the middle of everything is Paul.

His father Irving (Jeremy Strong) is a
hot-and-cold repairman who has no
problem whipping Paul with his belt
NOVEMBER 17, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
Banks Repeta and Anthony Hopkins in “Armageddon Time”
upon learning from his wife Esther
(Anne Hathaway) that Paul had smoked
pot in school. And Paul can no longer
rely on the goodwill of Esther, who is the
president of the district’s parent-teacher
association. Education is the most important
thing to the Graff family, a tight-knit
Ashkenazi family.

Paul’s grandfather Aaron Rabinowitz,
played as gentle yet haunted by Anthony
Hopkins, encountered enough strife fl ee-
ing Ukraine in decades past. He wants
Paul to keep his head down and remember
the sacrifi ces his family made to immigrate
and assimilate to the United States to give
the young generation a fi ghting chance of
going to college. A private school funded
by the Trump family (yes, that Trump
family) is the family’s best bet.

Between Hopkins’ tra-la-la dialogue
with Paul and the palpable weight of
family trauma bearing on him, the patri-
arch builds the foundation of a family
just trying to make it, fi nding levity
in the ever-serious days building up to
Ronald Reagan’s election.

Among the next generation, Hathaway
and Strong’s depictions of Paul’s parents
show a tenacity to achieve this American
dream, even willing to step on the heads
of others. Paul, despite being warped
by his family’s and classmates’ racism,
still wants to be friends with Johnny. He
knows how to stand up for what’s right,
but with no backup and increasing famil-
ial pressures to stay out of trouble, it only
becomes harder for Paul to do so.

In a seamless dialogue between
childhood naivete and optimism and
grown-up jaded realism, “Armageddon
Time” has no problem raising the stakes
and letting the audience squirm and
sit with a struggling Jewish family’s
anti-Blackness and proclivity toward stiff
punishments. Gray doesn’t pull punches
in showing Johnny’s descent into trouble.

Johnny’s is a fate that has become all too
familiar to a liberal white audience, who,
since the 2020 Black Lives Matter pro-
tests, has perhaps spent the better part of
two years learning about the school-to-
prison pipeline and police brutality.

Gray relies on today’s zeitgeist to a fault.

When Fred Trump, father to the U.S.’s
45th president, introduces Maryanne
Trump to speak at Paul’s school, the
scene defl ates the bubble of period-era
verisimilitude Gray had so slowly and
steadily built. Clues of the private school’s
elite and conservative status abound, even
without the notorious family's presence.

A period piece of the 1980s,
“Armageddon Time” says more about the
politics of the 2020s, but perhaps not in
the clever, understated way Gray intended.

With its strong cast of actors, atten-
tion to detail and gut-punching plot,
“Armageddon Time” could have
cemented itself as an evergreen mod-
ern classic of interracial friendship and
the turmoil of generational trauma. But
sometimes a little too on the nose, the
fi lm makes itself vulnerable to feeling
dated in a time of a rapidly changing
political and social landscape. JE
srogelberg@midatlanticmedia.com Courtesy of Focus Features via IMDb
SASHA ROGELBERG | STAFF WRITER



synagogue spotlight
What’s happening at ... Germantown Jewish Centre
Germantown Jewish Centre
Celebrates 20 Years With
Rabbi Adam Zeff
JARR AD SAFFREN | STAFF WRITER
Courtesy of the Germantown Jewish Centre
I n 1999, Adam Zeff and his wife
Cheryl moved to Mount Airy with
their children. Shortly thereaft er, the
family joined the Germantown Jewish
Centre, and Zeff got a job working in
academic administration at the nearby
Reconstructionist Rabbinical College.

It was his fi rst job outside the home,
as Zeff had taken care of his children
while his wife worked as a medical res-
ident. But it would also lead him to the
rest of his career.

While helping rabbinical students,
Zeff fi gured out that he wanted to
become one of them. So in 2002, he
enrolled at the RRC and became the
student rabbi at his home synagogue.

And he hasn’t left . Two decades later,
the 56-year-old is now Rabbi Adam
Zeff , and he has been the Germantown
Jewish Centre’s spiritual leader
since 2010.

On Nov. 4 and 5, the synagogue
celebrated the rabbi’s 20th anniversary
at the GJC with a musical Shabbat ser-
vice, an oneg and a luncheon, among
other activities. Zeff ’s mentor and pre-
decessor, Rabbi Leonard Gordon, who
served the temple from 1994 to 2010,
came back from Boston to join in on
the celebration.

“Adam is incredibly diligent and
hard-working,” Gordon said. “A large
part of the rabbinate has to do with
showing up and being present.”
In the late 1990s, Zeff was not sure
if he wanted to show up and be pres-
ent for a job outside his home. He was
enjoying and fi nding meaning in doing
both of those things for his kids. He
kept asking himself, “What could be
important enough to take me away
from my children?” (Th e Zeff s have
three sons, Zeke, Avi and Mati.)
Th e future rabbi was a Ph.D. student
in anthropology at the University of
Pennsylvania. But academia was not
the answer to his question, he said.

As a cultural anthropologist, though,
he was interested in what was in
people’s minds.

“How do they make meaning in their
lives?” the rabbi asked.

But instead of just studying people’s
answers to that question, he wanted
to explore it with them. What’s the
meaning of life? What kind of moral
and ethical guidelines should we fol-
low? Th ose were the questions that Zeff
really wanted to ask, he said.

He started thinking about all of that
before he took the job at the RRC.

And once he started working at the
college and talking to future rabbis, his
thoughts became clear.

“I was thinking about what’s most
important to me in my life,” he said.

As a congregant at the Germantown
Jewish Centre, Zeff became known as an
active volunteer, according to Gordon.

Th en when he became the student rabbi
in 2002 and the assistant rabbi upon his
graduation from the RRC in 2007, he
showed his ability to lead a service.

“He’s a singer; he’s a composer; he
writes stories,” Gordon said. “He’s
added a musical dimension to things
that revitalized our prayer services in
very important ways.”
Gordon never expected to leave
Mount Airy in 2010. But when his wife
got a job in Boston, he followed her
there. All of a sudden, the Germantown
Jewish Centre needed a new spiritual
leader. Synagogue offi cials spent a year
asking congregants what they wanted
in a new rabbi. Th eir answers kept
alluding to the man who was already
in the building.

Zeff was still a volunteer at heart. His
musical talents made services lively.

And he understood that, in a syna-
gogue with 515 households, many of
which included rabbis who worked in
other institutions, the spiritual leader
must know when to lead and when to
let the people lead.

Rabbi Adam Zeff
Rabbi Adam Zeff started working at the Germantown Jewish Centre in 2002 and
never stopped.

“We have to make room in the world
for other people. We can’t take up all
the air in the room. We have to leave
room for others,” the rabbi said.

Zeff has never worked at another
synagogue. And he does not see that
changing anytime soon. Under his
leadership, the GJC managed to add
10-15 families per year during the
pandemic. GJC congregant Mathieu Shapiro
said there’s a moment every year when
Zeff reminds him of why he belongs to
the Mount Airy synagogue. It’s when
the rabbi sings the fi nal Sim Shalom
near the end of Yom Kippur services.

“He sings this particular tune with
energy and vigor that seem impossible
at the end of the long day of fasting, but
simultaneously seem typical for him,”
Shapiro said. “He sings it with the
spirituality he constantly brings both
to our services and to our everyday
interactions with him.” JE
jsaff ren@midatlanticmedia.com
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