TV Review : ‘Writing on the Wall’ Teaches Compassion

Can you teach empathy and compassion? A new season of the “CBS Schoolbreak Specials” opens today with an edu-drama that makes a valiant try. “The Writing on the Wall” is about three youths who earn an unexpected sentence for spray-painting anti-Semitic slurs and symbols on a synagogue and on the homes of a rabbi and his neighbor.

Instead of jail time, the teen-agers are ordered to perform community service under the guidance of Rabbi Markovitz (Hal Linden), who tries to make the boys understand why their “just-for-fun” prank, coinciding with the anniversary of Krystallnacht , created so much outrage and pain.

Knowing that humanization of the subject will spark an emotional identification, the rabbi has the teens research three Holocaust victims, boys their age. He shows them photographs, books and filmed documentation, takes them to see “Schindler’s List” and to visit the Museum of Tolerance.

It’s a foregone conclusion that the three--Jason Allen, Peter Billingsley and Aeryk Egan--will quickly feel the lessons resonate and that the rabbi will be infinitely patient and wise. Afternoon message dramas aren’t subtle.

But Carol Starr Schneider’s script, directed by David J. Eagle, is not a one-note polemic. Religious beliefs in general are treated with dignity as the rabbi joins forces with a Catholic bishop (William Schallert) to show the common ground between Judaism and other faiths; it is stressed, too, how many millions of non-Jews were Holocaust victims.

While the message of understanding is clear, however, a question remains: Why are afternoon specials such as this always broadcast at a time when most of the target audience is not home to see them?

* “The Writing on the Wall” airs at 3 p.m. today on CBS (Channels 2 and 8).