A Recipe for Failure

The modern orthodox world in Israel has been unforgiving towards any young man who is grappling with being gay.  The rabbis at the yeshivot have pushed these students to marry anyway, because, according to them, the most important thing in life is to have a family and children.  But these marriages are a recipe for failure.  A new documentary film, Marry Me However, directed by Mordechai Vardi, explores this community’s attitude towards this issue.

Yarden Naor divorced his wife when he realized that he wasn’t going to change. Zvi Ben Meir admits that he knew he wasn’t attracted to his wife, but he married her anyway. Some of the yeshiva boys admit to having undergone conversion therapy, so that they could live a “normal” life. These marriages didn’t take the woman and her needs into the equation.  In fact, she was sacrificed on the altar of what the rabbis in this community thought would be the right thing to do! 

In interviews with some rabbis, we see that they are being pushed to stand up and say that homosexual young men should no longer be encouraged to get married to a woman.  Some well-known rabbis in the film, including Rabbi Ronen Lubitsch and Rabbi Yuval Sherlow, show great understanding in this area.  Rabbi Sherlow admits that today he would never push a gay young man or a lesbian woman towards a normative marriage, as he used to in the past. He realizes that being gay or lesbian is not a mental disorder, but rather part of a person’s identity and they are not about to change or deny that identity.  We must accept people for who they are, he says. 

The film includes varied religious points of view, and not all of them offer solutions within the religious context.  Although the film is a standard documentary with too many talking heads, the viewer is provided with a greater understanding of the issues as they were experienced by the young men and women in the film.

Marry Me However is a documentary film, produced for HOT channel 8.

Women and the Family

Students of film have created some remarkable and innovative dramatic films over the years. They are able to use the medium of film to explore forms of expression which far exceed what commercial filmmakers often permit themselves.Although the students at the religious film school in Jerusalem – the Ma'aleh School of Film and TV – are being trained to bring issues of the religious community to the screen, they are no different from other film school students in their flair for creativity and talent. A number of short dramas have been produced as graduate films by the students at Ma'aleh which have caught my attention.

I have put together here a group of 5 films on contemporary issues dealing with women and the family. All of these films are slice-of-life shorts, sensitive dramas about real people and real issues within the religious community. These short dramas can be rented or purchased from the Ma'aleh Film School.

Two films about the pressures of getting pregnant --
Expecting, directed by Meital Glazer,פרי בטן is about a young couple who can't get pregnant. The wife has a false pregnancy and they have to face the disappointment together.

New Year's Resolution, directed by Ayala Zamir,הרת עולם is about artificial insemination for a single woman in the haredi community. She is single, 38-years-old, and very badly wants to have a child. Her decision to try artificial insemination creates terrible tension with her mother who says that this is not the way to have a child.

Two Films about Divorce --
Separation, directed by Tsofnat David, הכל בסדר is about family disintegration from the point of view of a young girl. When her parents are fighting and threatening to separate, she makes up a story that her younger brother is missing, in order to bring the parents together.

Willingly, directed by Pazit Lichtman, הרי את is about a young couple who go to the rabbinate to obtain a divorce, even though they are not really sure of this decision.

Rape --
Cohen's Wife, directed by Nava Heifetz-Nussan, אשת כוהן is an artistic look at how Judaism deals with the rape of the wife of a "cohen"(descendant of the priestly class). With flexibility and compassion -- is the answer given in this film. The film tells the short story of an ultra-orthodox woman who has been raped by an intruder and no one can deal with her trauma.

Her husband, a "cohen", is not permitted by Jewish law to be married to a woman who has been taken by another man. Therefore, the woman's husband is unable to comfort his wife. Instead, he is occupied with his efforts in having the rabbinic court permit him to stay with her. Even though the rabbinic court finds a creative solution to the problem of this young couple thereby permitting them to remain together, it in fact stifles or even denies the woman's traumatic experience. As a result, the woman looks at her husband at the end with sadness, feeling that he should have stood up and declared that he wouldn’t turn her away, especially in her time of need. We understand that she has to forgive him for his wavering – instead of the old clichés of him having to forgive her for being impure or for being guilty of being raped. He begs for forgiveness for his silence.

New Hit Israeli TV Series -- S'rugim (Knitted Kipot)

I was invited to speak last Saturday evening at a public event sponsored by Rabbi Marc Rosenstein at the Galilee Center for Values Education at Shorashim in the Upper Galilee, near Karmiel. In honor of Chanukah, I spoke about cultural conflicts as seen in Israeli film and television. I used as an example a clip from Jerusalem Brew, an Israeli TV series, which showed religious conflicts within the context of one Sephardi family.

Eliezer (Laizy) Shapiro, the director of S'rugim, appeared with me on the panel. S'rugim is a TV series about 30-year-old singles within the modern Orthodox (dati leumi) Jerusalem community. The first season, broadcast on YES (cable TV), includes 15 chapters, and will be seen on Channel 2 during the coming months. A second season will go into production at the end of 2009.

Shapiro talked about the TV series, its success, especially within the modern Orthodox community, and the feedback that he has received.

The series takes place mostly in Jerusalem where the Shabbat experience seems to be a highlight of the week for religious singles getting together – they invite each other for Friday night dinners and meet at certain synagogues which apparently are real pick-up scenes!

Using humor to attract secular viewers (who might not otherwise be interested in the series), Shapiro deliberately shows that the characters are human beings, instead of ideological and/or religious stereotypes. They have personal and religious conflicts; they are much more pluralistic and diverse than one might have thought; and they are not perfect! As an example of the latter, Shapiro talked about how these young people cut corners in their orthodoxy – in one scene, a young woman has already lit Shabbat candles when her cell phone rings, so she asks a roommate to answer for her! This is meant to show that these people are not so rigid in their relationship to observance, as you might have thought.

Shapiro talked about the actors who appear in the TV series. All of them are non-Orthodox and they had to learn the expressions and the observances, especially of Shabbat. Before shooting began, the entire cast came to Jerusalem to experience a religious Shabbat. One young woman plays the role of the feminist and she had to learn to chant haftarah and Friday evening Kiddush!

This TV series succeeds in casting aside the one-dimensional stereotype of Orthodox Jews that had previously been seen on Israeli TV screens. Instead, it portrays a vibrant, young and exciting community, dealing with issues and conflicts as they try to find their way in contemporary Israeli society.

Thousands have downloaded S'rugim (Knitted Kipot) from the web (just for personal viewing). It can be rented from Hedva Goldshmidt at www.Go2Films.comemail: go2films@bezeqint.net