A Tisha b’Av Warning from the “Other” Israel Film Festival
Can movies save Israel?
The Other Israel Film Festival, a regular event since 2008 at the Marlene Meyerson JCC on New York’s Upper West Side, usually happens in November. Not even Covid stopped the festival (though it did go remote for a year) but it was clearly in poor taste to hold a film festival barely a month after the Oct. 7 Hamas slaughter and kidnapping of Israelis, followed by the war in Gaza that continues.
Now, the nation remains traumatized, Gaza is in ruins, and Israel gets pariah treatment at many film festivals. But Israeli filmmakers are still welcome at the JCC. This year’s Other Israel Film Festival (OIFF), was combined in June with the JCC’s 12th Annual Israel Film Center Film Festival. The two festivals, forces joined, welcomed Israeli directors and stars for Q&A’s after every film and screenings played to full houses.
Carole Zabar (a Zabar by marriage into the family whose Upper West Side landmark is the destination for smoked fish, bagels, and much more) originally envisioned and funded the OIFF as a way to create awareness that not all Israelis are fair skinned, Ashkenazi Jews and that inequality exists. Films depict the unequal treatment of Mizrahi Israelis, Ethiopian Israelis and Arab/Palestinian Israelis, and the poor treatment of foreign workers. Forget the early Zionist ideal of the nobility of Jewish labor in the Promised Land. Discrimination against women, a frequent subject of this festival, was problematic even in the early kibbutz days.
At a time when Jewish-Palestinian compassion and solidarity is in short supply, both Zabar and Isaac Zablocki, director of the Carole Zabar Center for Film, say their deep friendships with Israel’s Palestinian filmmakers and actors remain unshaken. And the work on view was memorable.
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The festival opener, “Legend of Destruction,” screams with relevance going back to the Destruction of the Second Temple. The Jews were destroyed not only by the Roman army but because of their baseless hatred for each other. See the trailer for the sound bite: Roman General Titus (future emperor) declaring: “We don’t need to conquer the Jews. They’ll kill each other.” And so they did.
Not exactly a female role model, the Jewish Queen Berenice (voiced by Evangeline Lilly) seduces Titus to save Jerusalem. It doesn’t work. The fat cat priests, aligned with the aristocracy, extort contributions from the impoverished common folk. The young zealots rise up against them. As the Roman war machine surrounds Jerusalem, famine grips all factions within its walls. Jews are slaughtering each other and food storehouses are set on fire. With violent images of senseless cruelty, it’s hard not to think of Gaza. But here it’s Jew against Jew.
Only Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai (voiced by Elliot Gould in the International version that debuted at the festival) escapes the destruction of Jerusalem to start rabbinic Judaism in Yavneh. But the filmmaker does not hold this out as a hopeful ending. Turn away from self-destructive hatred is the message director Gidi Dar is passionately trying to get across to Israelis and the rest of us. Pay heed to the sources: Josephus “The Jewish War” and Talmudic legends of destruction. The film, winner of four Ophir Awards (Israel’s Oscars) debuted in 2021. Religious, secular and political factions embraced the film’s warning… temporarily.
Not exactly animation, the film uses 1,500 paintings by David Polonsky and Michael Faust with intricate camera work and a great soundtrack to warn the Jews to cease corruption, greed, and hatred before Israel is destroyed for a third time.
Dar told the festival opening night crowd: “October 7 gave us a chance to save ourselves from ourselves.” As if a deadline were needed, Tisha b’Av, the 9th of Av, the Jewish cataclysm date when both the First and Second Temples were destroyed, returns this year at sundown August 12.
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“Seven Blessings” was another film that stood out, a woman-made, modern day warning against family hatred. Its director-editor, writers, and stars won most of last year’s top Ophir Awards. As Ophir Best Film winner, it became Israel’s Oscar entry. This is the story of Moroccan-born Israeli sisters who come together for the seven days of post-wedding celebrations for an estranged daughter. Marie escaped to France, went into banking, and has come back to be wed to her Ashkenazi fiancé.
The film almost feels as light as a sitcom until the darker underpinning emerges – the Moroccan tradition (ended with aliyah to Israel) of giving away a daughter to a barren family member. The Ashkenazi parents of the groom are clearly from another world — elegant, restrained, arriving from France bearing a bottle of pedigreed but unkosher wine. Outside the din of the family drama is the Moroccan husband of one of the sisters. He’s deaf and he’s wise, and perhaps his voice finally heard at the film’s love/hate/love conclusion.
This Israeli film’s warning is not against sectarian or religious hatred—but against patriarchal, ingrained family traditions. The women behind this story who won prizes include best director and editor — Ayelet Menahemi. Best script went to the film’s star Reymonde Amsellem with Eleanor Sela, reportedly describing her own family trauma, and appearing in the film.
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Women triumph – sort of – with the honor of a closing film by a woman filmmaker, Maya Kenig, and her quirky free spirit character, Tala, a 33-year-old single mother and modestly successful musician.“The Milky Way” imagines a milk factory of impoverished but wholesome Israeli women who pump out breast milk for privileged Israeli moms who don’t want their breasts or their lives compromised by motherhood. A broke and desperate single mom meets up with the affluent woman she’s pumping for (Shtisel’s Hadas Yaron). The myth of a joyful, unquestioned road to motherhood is mutually exploded.
Writer, filmmaker Kenig was at the North American debut along with her 18-year-old daughter. A personal triumph that was revealed in the post-screening Q&A: Kenig was determined to cast Hila Ruach, a real life Israeli singer short on acting experience, in the starring role. It took a long time, but she prevailed against a wall of opposition and the results are superb.
All power to determined women. Hopefully “The Milky Way” will see the light of day.
Look for these films at Jewish film festivals, but not necessarily at any of the mainstay indie screenings. Inviting an Israeli filmmaker to your non-Jewish film festival has become an unacceptable political act in many arts communities, even when the film is a withering critique of both its own society, and of baseless hatred in general.
“Legend of Destruction” will be screened Aug. 13, in the final hours of Tisha b’Av, at the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan.
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Jewish Queen Berenice, ruler of Roman-controlled Judea, looks out on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, shattered from within by warring factions in Gidi Dar’s “Legend of Destruction.”
