>indeed, it's definitely more Jewish than any film I can think
>of offhand, although I feel that a truly effective film can
>take you into the world of any culture & find something that's
>either universal in nature or at the least interesting to an
>outside observer even if not fully understood/appreciated.

Well, it's an interesting. Take a film like "Big Fat Greek Wedding": it was a big hit, partially because it focused on the broad, more easy-to-relate parts of the culture, and all of the characters were painted in broad strokes (loud and obnoxious relatives, over-protective parents, etc.). It might as well have been called "My Big Fat Ethnic Wedding." I think this film dealt more with the nuance and the details with Jewish culture, rather than painting everything in broad strokes (Except for the characters of other ethnicities, who were purposely turned into charicatures). The "Big Fat Greek Wedding" type of movie has already been made for the Jewish culture; I think the Coens were going for something a more esoteric.

>I mean I kind of grasped the things expressed by the junior
>rabbi, etc.......what I had the hardest time with was the way
>this guy reacted to the things that happened to him, it
>eliminated any sympathy I had for him or investment in his
>outcome.

I mean, yeah, the guy was a whiner. He thought because he didn't do anything necessarily bad in his life, that nothing bad should happen to him. But at the end of the day, he lived a pretty charmed life. They pretty much made him into a Job-like figure. Still I think they did an effective job of showing how circumtances can converge to make someone who's a serios man make the decision that he did at the end of the film.