interesting Jewish touch

I, too, found this touching. In the recent past, a documentary came out about the plight of Jewish families from Germany who were stranded in Shanghai during the Japanese occupation. Things were precarious for these brave souls for a good long period of time. I am glad this status was honored in this remarkable movie The White Countess.

For those interested, the book by Marica Reynders Ristaino, entiled "Port of Last Resort" - The Diaspora Communities of Shanghai - expertly chronicles both the post-Bolshevik Russian refugee situation, the Jewish refugees, who fled and survived the Nazi Holocaust. Shanghai was an amazingly free city in the 1930s, and these groups of refugees were certainly all the better for it.

"The White Countess" evokes with palpable deftness and a well-defined creative urgency the magnificent ambiance of the Shanghai of the 1930s. The use of the erhu (two-stringed bowed instrument) in Richard Robbins' haunting score renders the film all the more poignant, because even though the setting is Shanghai, the Chinese for the most part, remain in the background. However in the score, the erhu is quite prominent, something the Chinese never were in the Shanghai of the 1930s.

I have to disagree. The Jewish character indeed did not advance the plot and actually it even cheapened it. Although that was a charming character, I think that his preching in exactly the scene you refer to seemed out of place, as did the whole scene. It seems to me that the film had it in there just because such admirable Jewish characters sell well in Holywood. And that character was so perfect - in the times of the biggest panic he left his own kids alone to look for Sofia's child... It was just too much - this whole emphasis on his Jewishness and his prefectness. They kept repeating that he was a Jew - why not just a human, just a good neighbor, a fellow person in exile.
I do like Jews a lot but that scene and that Jewish element seemed to me as a part of the movie meant to suck up to the Academy.
Otherwise, on the movie, I agree with other postings that acting was very good but the movie wasn't. It stretched too long, was very unrealistic (Ralph Feinnes' character was doing too well for a blind man, especially when he reached the docks in that havoc), the ending was, of course, typically Holywood, and despite the good acting the few scenes where the main characters interacted did not manage to portray well the growing passion between them as was the intention. Also characters were way too one-dimensional - the Russian family - so mean and unfair, she - such an angel, the Jewish guy also tremendously noble...