The Misogyny of Menashe

It’s painful for a Jewish film critic to write this. Given that Yiddish cinema was decimated by assimilation and by genocide, a contemporary Yiddish language film should be a cause for celebration. And I laud Weinstein’s impulse to represent on-screen Haredis who choose to remain in the community. Some of the positive press on this film is no doubt a desire to celebrate Yiddish and to diversify representations of ultra-Orthodox Jews. Yet I also suspect that the clichéd images of male Hasids happy only when they’re singing and drinking appeal because these Hasids are simultaneously other and yet recognizable as a contemporary boy’s club.

Helene Meyers is Professor of English and McManis University Chair at Southwestern University. She is the author of Identity Papers: Contemporary Narratives of American Jewishness, Femicidal Fears: Narratives of the Female Gothic Experience, and Reading Michael Chabon. Her current book project is on Jewish American cinema.