The Chai-Light Zone: Rod Serling’s prophetic TV is still alive

On January 24th 1963, Rod Serling’s “He’s Alive” aired on The Twilight Zone. More than most, this episode prophetically speaks to today. Indeed, Serling’s Twilight Zone episodes might be identified as secular prophetic TV midrashim.

Until a student, David DeAngelo, took “Introduction to Religion” with me in the Fall of 2019 I had never thought seriously about The Twilight Zone nor had I watched “He’s Alive.” The episode remains jaw-droppingly prescient.

Throughout that class, David always analogized his papers to Twilight Zone episodes. While leaving class together, we often talked Twilight Zone. I asked what else he thinks about. “Physics,” he said. I walked him over to Steve Gimbel’s office. The three of us started talking regularly. Steve loves the philosophy of physics. I don’t and often left our discussions. A highlight of our friendship was taking David out for his twenty-first birthday. We not only discussed The Twilight Zone, we decided to write a book with David as first author about Rod Serling as a secular-American Jew. The profundity revealed by David needed advertising.

Serling was born in Binghamton, NY, growing up in a secular Jewish Household. Fast-forward to after he fought in World War ll with a prophetic impulse to continue the fight against pockets of authoritarianism, pockets incubating possibilities of authoritarian resurgence. Serling became a television writer and producer.

He wanted to show racism and other social ills in The Twilight Zone. “No way,” said the TV authority. It rankled Serling, but he knew he had to work with it. If discrimination, white supremacy, the red scare, legislating economic suffering and much more were prohibited on television, Serling would use aliens to indicate where authoritarianism lives in our communal ways.

An overarching theme of the show is exposing authoritarians’ pursuit of power as a human sentiment, an urge we must resist. As a part of us, Serling shows that we are often at risk of being held hostage to our own authoritarianism, not only wielding it, but falling for the authoritarian as well as the passivity of going along to get along with them.

Our book, “The Chai-light Zone: Rod Serling Secular Jew was published last fall when David began his second year of graduate studies in physics. David introduced us to a new world. We had a ball attending the Serlingfest in Binghamton last September celebrating Serling’s centenary. Click the below link to see the statue that was unveiled in his hometown to honor this defender of collective morality that weekend.

https://rodserling.com/rod-serling-statue-progress-report/

As part of Holocaust Remembrance Day last January 27th, Steve and I were invited to give two Sunday school lectures at a small town (6,000 people) Presbyterian church. We showed two Twilight Zone episodes on the Holocaust and lectured around them. Serling devoted one episode to the Holocaust in each of the first four seasons of the program.

We first expounded on “Deaths-Head Revisited,” which aired in season three, November 10th, 1961. Twilight Zone (Radio) Deaths Head Revisited.

A Nazi Captain returns to Dachau concentration camp, where the ghost of a Jewish man he murdered holds him accountable through a trial for his crimes against humanity. Though the ghost had supernatural powers and could seek terrible revenge on their evil tormentor, instead the punishment is reciprocal for the offenses, his suffering the same tortures he exacted on the prisoners of the camp.

Much of the Sunday school class skews older, educated and smart. Communal norms bind this politically diverse group into a tight knit community. Many grew up watching The Twilight Zone. They remembered this episode. We discussed accountability, how truth is spooky when emerging from the dead and more. How do we hold one another accountable with the truth?

Reaching into the homes of mid-century Americans, Serling used television to educate, teaching prizing resisting authoritarianism. Perhaps no episode directs resistance as much as “He’s Alive.” Twilight Zone (Radio) He’s Alive It startled the class. There was no distance from it. Steve and I didn’t connect this to the present. Instead, we spoke only about prophecy and the issues of the day informing Serling, such as the McCarthy/Cohn red scare, Jim Crow, the civil rights movement, the Holocaust, nuclear fears, the threat to due process as well as frights of assumed aliens in outer space, and more. We never crossed into 1965, stopping in 1964.

Unanticipated moral panic was on many faces. “He’s Alive” spoke directly to understandings of now, almost word for word. The speeches given in the show are little different from expressions we hear today. Here, Serling suggests Hitler is still alive, not literally, but as authoritarian sentiments in us and our communities. Likewise, he shows our passive sentiments play against us. Our need to go along to get along plays for the authoritarian, undermining communal norms as the authoritarian capitalizes on our fear of acting against them while claiming to act on our behalf.

The words voiced in the episode compared with words today will give you pause, perhaps even shivers, as we witnessed in the congregants at Sunday school. 62 years after “He’s Alive” first aired, Rod Serling provoked an important, difficult discussion in a 2025 Sunday school class. That’s prophetic. Like the prophets of old, Serling doesn’t set the future, he shows we are creating it and living in the consequences of our creations.

What are we constructing? Our world. Does it bless the future in the ways Abraham and Sarah were turned when they were told  they would parent many nations? They were directed to remember that they’re not only building today, but tomorrow, a tomorrow for those coming after them. Like them, with an eye to the future, Serling built a never-ending trigger for discussion. We are taught no one gets to own conversation. This is why Serling’s Twilight Zone prophesied that “discussion shall never cease in this life or the next,” a sentiment paralleled in the work of the 20th century French/Lithuanian philosopher, Emmanuel Levinas.