How Gene Hackman made my dad a better rabbi
The actor, who died at 95, played characters that taught life lessons and sought second chances
Gene Hackman played a high school basketball coach in ‘Hoosiers.’ Courtesy of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
By Benyamin Cohen February 27, 2025
Some people are raised on scripture. I was raised on Hoosiers.
Not that the two were mutually exclusive. My father, an Orthodox rabbi and Jewish day school principal, never sees a contradiction between a life devoted to Torah and a Sunday spent at the movies. He treats films less as an escape from reality than as a syllabus — a rotating course on morality, resilience and the fine art of a well-timed pep talk.
My dad doesn’t just watch movies — he studies them. To him, they aren’t mere entertainment; they are scripture, parables flickering on a screen instead of inscribed on parchment. Which is why, instead of avoiding them, he embraced them, taking me and my siblings to see films like Raiders of the Lost Ark, Awakenings, and Zelig. But there was one condition: the post-movie Talmudic debate.
The moment we got back in the car, my dad would turn to us like a yeshiva teacher springing a surprise oral exam. “On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate the movie?” That was followed by more pressing questions: “Why did you give it that rating?” And most importantly: “What life lessons did you learn from it?”
I was raised with the understanding that a movie wasn’t just a movie. It was a sermon in disguise. A text meant to be analyzed, deconstructed, and — above all — applied to real life.
This is why, in a childhood that should have been filled with Fiddler on the Roof and Yentl (neither of which, I regret to inform you, I’ve seen), I got The Karate Kid. I somehow managed to eke out a d’var Torah about the importance of hard work. (Wax on, wax off.)
And always, Gene Hackman.
Hackman, who was found dead Wednesday at 95, was my father’s favorite actor. “He was one of the greats,” my dad said when I called him this morning at his home in Israel, as if we were discussing the passing of a great sage. And at the top of the Hackman pyramid was Hoosiers, a film so sacred in our house that we could quote it at the Shabbat table.
For the uninitiated, Hoosiers is the story of a 1950s high school basketball team in small-town Indiana, led by Hackman’s gruff, hard-nosed coach. The setting — a tiny school, an underdog team — hit home for my father, who spent years in Jewish education, where every budget was tight and every student was somehow both the star player and the backup center.
It is, at its heart, the story of a man trying to rebuild something: a basketball team, a reputation, himself. It is a story about discipline and redemption, about believing in the things that no one else does. It is, in many ways, the story of my father.
Because when my dad watched Hoosiers, he doesn’t just see a sports movie. He sees himself.
Late in the film, Hackman’s coach sends in a benchwarmer — a short kid who had spent the season being treated as an afterthought — to take a game-winning shot. Against all expectations, the kid nails it.
For my dad, this wasn’t just a great sports moment. It was personal.
“It reminded me of my own teenage basketball career in Mt. Vernon, New York,” he told me. “I played at the JCC every Sunday. My team was the Spartans, but we did not play like warriors.” He sighed. “I had my own chances at redemption. I remember times when I had an easy layup or a free throw that could’ve won the game. And I usually missed.”
The way my dad describes it, you’d think he was one good jump shot away from being in the NBA.
And so my father watches Gene Hackman, again and again, willing himself into the role of the coach. The man who looks at a kid on the bench and sees something no one else does. The man who believes.
“The movie is about creating opportunities for people who don’t have them,” he said. “That’s what a good educator does. A good leader sees potential in people, even when they don’t see it in themselves.”
While Hoosiers was our family’s definitive Gene Hackman film, others crept into the Cohen canon as well. Mississippi Burning sparked discussions about the civil rights movement. The Conversation, in which Hackman plays a devout Catholic grappling with a moral dilemma, led to deep conversations about guilt and responsibility. Even Unforgiven, where Hackman plays a menacing villain, was a lesson in the complexity of human nature.
And this wasn’t just entertainment. Movies in our home were education. Now retired, my dad has turned his love of film into something larger. With a Ph.D. in British literature, he spends his time writing books — nine of them, so far — in a series called Kosher Movies, in which he extracts Torah lessons from Hollywood.
Ant-Man? A lesson in rising to the occasion. The Bourne Legacy? Be mindful of motives. Close Encounters of the Third Kind? Treat strangers kindly. (And also: Maybe don’t get in a spaceship with them.)
Had I teleported to my father’s yeshiva back in the 1960s and told him one day he’d be delivering sermons about The Fast and the Furious, he wouldn’t have believed me. Not to mention, he’d be confused by meeting his future son. Kind of like the plot of Back to the Future, another movie on constant repeat in our home.
Before we hung up, my dad paused for a moment. “Maybe I should rewatch Hoosiers tonight,” he said.
It wasn’t just nostalgia. It was ritual. The same way he returns to Torah passages year after year, finding new wisdom in old words, he goes back to Hoosiers, certain there’s still more to learn.
Not just about basketball. Or teaching. Or belief. But about himself.
Gene Hackman may be gone. But my dad will press play anyway.
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism so that we can be prepared for whatever news 2025 brings.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
