Meryl Streep credited as playing...
The Rabbi
- The Rabbi: [Rabbi's opening monologue in 'Angels of America' about the death of Sarah Ironson] This good and righteous woman... she was not a person, but a whole kind of a person - the ones that crossed the ocean that brought with us to America, the villages of Russia and Lithuania. And how we struggled! And how we fought! For the family... for the Jewish home! Descendants of this immigrant woman, you do not grow up in America - you and your children, and their children with their goyische names. You do not live in America - no such a place exists. Your clay is the clay of some litvak shtetl, and your air is the air of the steppes, because she carried that Old World on her back, across the ocean, in a boat! And she put it down on Grand Concourse Avenue... on Flatbush. You can never make that crossing that she made, for such great voyages in this world do not any more exist. But every day of your lives, the miles - that voyage from that place to this one - you cross. Every day! You understand me? In you, that journey... is.
- Louis Ironson: Rabbi, what does the Holy Writ say about someone who abandons someone he loves at a time of great need?
- The Rabbi: Why would a person do such a thing?
- Louis Ironson: Because he has to. Maybe this person can't jncorporate sickness into is sense of how things are supposed to go. Maybe vomiting and sores and disease really frighten him. Maybe he isn't so good with death.
- The Rabbi: The Holy Scripture has nothing to say about such a person.
- Louis Ironson: Rabbi, I'm afraid of the crimes I may commit.
- The Rabbi: Please, mister, I'm a sick old rabbi facing a long drive home to the Bronx. You want to confess, better you should find a priest.
- Louis Ironson: I'm not a Catholic, I'm a Jew.
- The Rabbi: Worse luck for you, bubeleh. Catholics believe in forgiveness. Jews believe in guilt.