TV REVIEWS : ‘The Quarrel’ Frames the Debate on Holocaust

Edmund Wilson once told F. Scott Fitzgerald that the mark of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two diametrically opposed ideas in your mind at the same time.

It’s hard to imagine a more deeply affecting dramatization of such a mental tug of war than the pair of Jews--one a rabbi and the other a secular, skeptical writer--arguing over the nature of God in “The Quarrel” on PBS’ “American Playhouse” tonight (9 p.m. on KCET-TV Channel 28 and KPBS-TV Channel 15).

It’s not God this story is about, however, but the healing of long-festering scars between two boyhood friends who survived the Holocaust and are unexpectedly reunited in Montreal after the war.

The time is crucial--1948, when European Jews were picking up the tatters of their shattered lives. Almost as important is the setting--a serene, forested city park where the two men stroll and argue under the sun and the rain against a background of young boys playing soccer on a distant field, much like these two men must have done before the Nazis rolled into Poland and smashed up their lives.

This intimate Jewish film from Canada, based on a potent work of modern Yiddish literature (“My Quarrel With Hersh Rasseyner” by Chaim Grade) is, despite its intellectual fireworks, an immensely emotional work. Touchingly and even viscerally acted by Saul Rubinek and R.H. Thomson, the production is exceptionally shaded and orchestrated by Israeli director Eli Cohen.

Never do we feel as if we’re watching two talking heads, despite the searing arguments about the big questions of life that ripple, crest and wash over the action. But the talk, in a well-crafted script by co-producer David Brandes, is riveting: Without faith in God, argues the rabbi, there’s no moral guidance. “Without a master of the universe, who’s to say Hitler did anything wrong?”

The disbeliever counters that faith in man, not God, is what matters, and he demands to know how a benevolent God could permit the slaughter of 6 million of his chosen people.

At the end, these two contradictory truths merge under the wellspring of the men’s humanity and mutual love. The betrayal and hurt they long ago felt was so great that they had to fight. But it doesn’t matter who is right. Out of their confrontation comes their epiphany in the twilight of this Eden-like setting.

This is television so mature and so devoid of false sentiment, the achievement is dumbfounding.