It didn’t make my column, but one thing that bugged me was the constant emphasis on money. The Israeli hit squad was told to keep their receipts. They kept a running tally of how expensive everything was, etc etc.

I got the sense that what Spielberg and Kushner were trying to communicate was that “vengeance” is expensive not just morally, but financially as well. We could be spending the money on better things, in other words. But one has to wonder whether in the rest of the world that message (as intellectually and morally bankrupt as it is) will rise above the more superficial message that Jews are always concerned with money.