In A Serious Man, Rabbi Nachtner attempts to console Larry by telling him a story about a Jewish dentist they both know who finds a Hebrew inscription carved on the inside of the lower front teeth of a patient named Russell Krauss. The inscription, which the patient is unaware of, translates into English as "Help me, save me." (And also, via the Kabalah, into numbers that turn out to be the phone number of the Red Owl Food Store, supposedly in Bloomington, MN.)
After looking for inscriptions on other patients' teeth and plaster molds, after calling and visiting the Red Owl to no avail, and after losing sleep over how the inscription could have gotten there and what he should do about it, the dentist goes to see Nachtner, who tells him it's impossible to know anything in particular he's supposed to do, but doing good in general is one way to interpret the inscription. The dentist soon just forgets about it and goes back to his normal, golf-playing life.
Larry is just more confused and frustrated after hearing the story and wants answers to who could have put the inscription on Russell Krauss's teeth. But Nachtner offers no empathy or helpful advice beyond saying Hashem doesn't owe us answers. Later in the movie, Larry's divorce attorney, played by Adam Arkin, is much more consoling than the rabbi, and is also not too impressed with Nachtner's pastoral abilities. "What," the attorney asks regarding Larry's visit with Nachtner, "did he tell you about the goy's teeth?"
The dentist who finds the inscription calls his practice Great Bear Dental Clinic. It's actually an orthodontics practice, which is something the Coen bros may consider symbolic, since "ortho-" means "straight," as in orthodox, orthodontics, orthogonal. (Regarding the word "bear," see the Definition & Etymology section of the Wikipedia entry for Arctic.) The Coens give the orthodontist the name Sussman, meaning "sweet man," but we all know sweets rot your teeth!
The dentist who finds the inscription calls his practice Great Bear Dental Clinic. It's actually an orthodontics practice, which is something the Coen bros may consider symbolic, since "ortho-" means "straight," as in orthodox, orthodontics, orthogonal. (Regarding the word "bear," see the Definition & Etymology section of the Wikipedia entry for Arctic.) The Coens give the orthodontist the name Sussman, meaning "sweet man," but we all know sweets rot your teeth!
The reason for this updated blog post, originally posted in January 2014, is that I recently heard from the daughter of the owner of the former Big Bear Food Stores in Austin, Texas. See below for the email she sent me in response to my curiosity about whether the store owner was Jewish. First, here's an amended version of what I wrote about Big Bear in my original post:
The answer, direct from Austin:
While searching for images of my father’s grocery store, I ran across your image of a Big Bear Food Stores courtesy card. Thanks for posting this! To answer your question in your blog, neither my father (Bob Arnold) nor my grandfather (Harlan J. Arnold) were Jewish. I am pretty sure there have been no members of the Jewish faith in the history of the family. I never did hear how my grandfather came up with the name “Big Bear Food Stores” for the name of his stores.
Marilyn Arnold Burton
(Thanks, Marilyn, glad to hear from you!)
Was it owned by a Jew? If Harlan Julius Arnold was Jewish, it was. He was the owner of Big Bear Food Stores in Austin. The Big Bear application form below was stuck in one of the old books I got from my physics professor friend David Potter, who came to Austin in the 1960s. But actually it was Vincent Robert "Bob" Arnold, son of Harlan Julius Arnold, who was the owner of Big Bear in the 1960s. He was Baptist, not Jewish. But who knows about his ancestry?
The answer, direct from Austin:
While searching for images of my father’s grocery store, I ran across your image of a Big Bear Food Stores courtesy card. Thanks for posting this! To answer your question in your blog, neither my father (Bob Arnold) nor my grandfather (Harlan J. Arnold) were Jewish. I am pretty sure there have been no members of the Jewish faith in the history of the family. I never did hear how my grandfather came up with the name “Big Bear Food Stores” for the name of his stores.
Marilyn Arnold Burton
(Thanks, Marilyn, glad to hear from you!)
Anyway, there's apparently some symbolic connection between bears and Jews, but about all I found when I googled those search terms are references to "The Bear Jew" nickname from Inglorious Basterds, and a similar term that applies to some past or present American sports figure.
Looking further, I found this under the Wikipedia entry for Bear:
"In East European Jewish communities, the name Ber (בער)—Yiddish cognate of "Bear"—has been attested as a common male first name, at least since the 18th century, and was, among others, the name of several prominent rabbis. The Yiddish Ber is still in use among Orthodox Jewish communities in Israel, the US, and other countries. With the transition from Yiddish to Hebrew under the influence of zionism, the Hebrew word for "bear", dov (דב), was taken up in contemporary Israel and is at present among the commonly used male first names in that country."
In my hometown of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, there was a Jewish store owner named Abraham Barre (pronounced "bear") who lived in Pine Bluff for most of the 20th Century. His retail store on Main Street was called Barre's and the sign above the sidewalk had a drawing of a bear on it. One of the stories I've heard about him is that a friend took him deer hunting for the first time in his life and he got so excited at seeing a huge deer nearby he said he forgot to raise his gun and shoot. That may have also been the last time he went deer hunting!
(I didn't know until recently that Abe Barre was the grandfather of one of my Pine Bluff High School classmates and neighbors, Merry Lynne Glatstein (married name Lincove). See the recent obituary of her mother, Geraldine Barre Glatstein.
Photo taken July 8, 2020. The building is located on the east side of Main Street between 3rd and 4th Avenues. More Main Street photos.
