cover image The Believer: Confronting Jewish Self-Hatred

The Believer: Confronting Jewish Self-Hatred

Henry Bean. Basic Books, $14.95 (256pp) ISBN 978-1-56025-372-3

In 1965, a young man named Daniel Burros was arrested at a Ku Klux Klan demonstration in Brooklyn, N.Y. He was a skinhead, a KKK Grand Dragon, a high-ranking member of the Nazi Party and a Jew. When the New York Times exposed his Jewish identity in a front-page article, Burros put a bullet through his head. His story has recently been made into a film called The Believer, which won the Grand Jury Prize at last year's Sundance Film Festival and has garnered much critical acclaim (although distributors have been shy of the film's controversial content). In The Believer: Confronting Jewish Self-Hatred, screenwriter Henry Bean presents the entire shooting script of the film, along with additional essays about the movie and its potential impact. This volume will make a fine companion when the film appears on Showtime this month and has its long-awaited theatrical release in May. (Mar.)