Kadosh

Rating:
Summary: Women's lives in narrow straits
Review: Set in an Ultra-Orthodox community in Jerusalem, this dark and fascinating film tells the story of two sisters. One is happily married but childless. The intense spiritual, emotional and physical link between the husband and wife is palpable- but the husband is being pressured to divorce her. He is required to fulfill the commandment to "be fruitful and multiply." The younger sister is about to be married off to a man she dislikes. The pace is a little slow, but the story is very sad and beautifully detailed.

Rating:
Summary: Actors try, but director's simpleminded attack on Orthodox
Review: The DVD interviews are extremely revealing. The actors (themselves secular Israelis) love the challenge of playing fundamentalist ultra-Orthodox Jews and manage to convey a true pathos for the characters and their lives. Their attempt to find beauty and integrity in the characters, and their sympathetic portrayals, are admirable but paradoxical, because the script is stacked against this attempt. The writer/director makes clear in his dvd interview: Orthodox Judaism and the Talmud are, according to him, clearly out to debase women. He chooses the most anti-woman quotations from the Talmud (certainly using a search engine) and composes a plot and shallow fundamentalists to mouthe the lines. In the interview, he claims all monotheistic religions are by nature anti-woman [unlike the Greeks, Romans, Assyrians, Egyptians,... ???] and that fundamentalists are people too shallow "to experience spirituality in the world without ritual" as he does. He admits making the film as an attack on the religious right in Israel.

In sum, the actors' sensitive portrayals make the first half of the film truly interesting, but the second half is all contrived preachiness, ruining what could have been a balanced critique and portrayal of women in this culture.

Rating:
Summary: Great Movie - Request for fact based inaccuracies
Review: The movie was great disregarding the controversy.

I have read a number of the critical reviews that claim that the film does not accurately portray the Ultra Orthodox in Israel and I have not seen any specific inaccuracies named.

Rating:
Summary: What is "sacred"?
Review: There are some thoughtful and well-written reviews both at Amazon and the IMDb and elsewhere in which it is claimed that the type of Jewish Orthodoxy presented here is not accurate. There are quibbles about the unnatural way that Meir puts on his garments. There is criticism of the selection of prayers recited, especially Meir giving thanks that he was not born a woman. Moreover, there is the assertion that orthodox Judaism does NOT require that a man repudiate his wife after ten years of marriage even though she may be barren. Furthermore, the character of Yossef is said not to be typical of orthodox Jewish men since he takes his wife sexually without love or tenderness, that he hits her when angry, and goes about the streets of Israel with a loudspeaker hawking his religious point of view.

First, it is a shame (if true) that the way Meir dressed and recited his morning prayers was inaccurate, because such details can easily be made accurate with some research. Certainly director Amos Gitai had access to many orthodox people who could have helped him. Putting that aside, the artistic point of the opening scene was to immerse the viewer into a world based on religious beliefs and practices that are strikingly different from the secular world of today. He also wanted to introduce his theme, which is that women in Orthodox Judaism, as in the other two great religions of the Middle East, in their fundamentalist interpretations--this bears repeating: in their fundamentalist interpretations--are not on an equal level with men. Certainly in a realistic sense, Meir, since he dearly loves his wife, would have chosen something else to recite. However, I think we can give Gitai some artistic license here. The fact that such a prayer exits in the Jewish canon is not to be denied.

Second, the film does NOT claim that Orthodox Judaism requires that a man repudiate his wife after ten years of childless marriage. Instead it makes the very strong point that, from the point of view of Orthodox Judaism, such a woman is not fulfilling her role in society, and that there will be people outside the marriage who will try to persuade him to abandon her. Gitai's screenplay contains several textual pronouncements to that effect. The fact that Meir is torn between his love for his wife and his love for his religion is really the point. How he resolves that dilemma is an individual choice, and that is what the film shows.

As for the unflattering character of Yossef, whom Rivka's sister Malka is persuaded to marry (not forced, mind you, but persuaded) he is a foil and a counterpoint for the loving and deeply religious Meir. The fact that he is not a poster boy for Orthodox Judaism is not a valid criticism of the film, since all religions have their black sheep.

I think a fairer criticism of the film can be made by addressing the question of, was it entertaining and/or a work of art?

Here I have mixed feelings. Certainly the acting was excellent, and the theme a worthy one. Gitai's desire to show the underlying similarities among the conservative expressions of all three Abrahamic religions, through their shared patriarchal attitudes toward women and their estrangement from the postmodern world, was very well taken and appropriate. Where I think Gitai failed as film maker is in his inability to be completely fair to the orthodox way of life--his failure to show the joys as well as the sorrows of its everyday life which would help outsiders to understand why people adhere to such a way of life.

I also think that the film could have been better edited. In the documentary about how the film was made we see scenes that were cut that I think should have been retained, especially the scene in which the omelette was made and the scene in which the mother critiques the life choices her three daughters have made. Instead we have some scenes that ran too long. It is a fine technique that Gitai sometimes employs of letting the silence speak for the characters, of holding the camera on the scene to allow the audience to reflect and then to reflect again. However, I think this can be overdone and was overdone, and that judicious cutting of some of the scenes would have strengthened the movie.

Bottom line: a slow polemic of a movie that nonetheless is worth seeing because of the importance and timeliness of its theme, the originality of some of the techniques, and the fine acting, especially by Yael Abecassis who played Rivka and Meital Barda who played Malka.

One more point: yellow subtitles, please!

Rating:
Summary: refutation
Review: There was a request for more factual refutation of the falsities of Kadosh--

The movie's premises are:

a. that Orthodox Judaism, which is based on the Talmud, is discriminatory to women, particularly married women
b. that the Talmud considers a barren woman useless and requires her to divorce her husband
c. that a woman may be compelled to marry against her will

I have been unable to find any substantiation whatsoever for either (b) or (c). Either way, neither of these practices exists in the Orthodox Jewish community today.

Regarding (a) - it is true that much of contemporary Orthodox Jewish practice is based on the Talmud; however, the Talmud is not as bloodthirsty as it is often portrayed. Although compiled in Babylonia c. 450 CE, the Talmud explains that if a Jewish court issued the death penalty once in seventy years, that court was considered unusually violent (compare e.g. modern Texas...) Although it neither adds to nor subtracts from the laws set forth in the Pentateuch, the Talmud defines the terms thereof so narrowly that some punishments are rendered quite impossible to give (e.g. the Talmud itself states that the death penalty for a 'gluttonous and rebellious son' mentioned in the Pentateuch, due to the narrow definition of such a character, has never and will never be administered.)

With regard to the role of women, the Talmud is careful to reiterate the obligation upon every man to "love your wife as yourself and honor her more than yourself", "love your wife truly and faithfully and do not compel her to hard work", and notes "it is woman alone through whom God's blessings are vouchsafed to a house"... there are many more quotes like this, all from a document dating back to 450 CE! Gitai's seemingly discriminatory quotes have all been removed from their context. The first example of this is that Meir's blessings in the movie's opening scene have been rearranged to emphasize '...who has not made me a woman', which is a particularly cheap shot. The accusation that this particular blessing is indicative of discrimination has been around for ages, and it has been convincingly refuted for just as long. In traditional Judaism, women are believed to be on a higher spiritual plane than men, and so men have more obligations in order to raise them to that high level. The '...who has not made me a woman' blessing is made by men out of gratitude for their greater number of obligations. Women say '...who has made me according to His will'. Jews acknowledge that 'male and female G-d created them', both man and woman are part of a whole, and neither is intrinsically subject to the other. (...)

If Orthodox Judaism truly discriminated against women, there would be no growth in number of the women interested in increasing their Jewish observance. However, many women ARE becoming more religious; some communities are comprised entirely of the newly Orthodox.

Please reconsider accepting this movie as an accurate depiction of objective reality.

Rating:
Summary: A rare glimpse into the world of Orthodox Jewry in Isreal
Review: This is an Israeli film that deals with the forbidden subject of ultra-orthodox Jewry. Filmed with excruciating attention to detail, the daily rituals and total immersion in the faith are deeply explored.

The word "Kadosh" means sacred and this film is basically the love stories of two sisters who are trapped in this very constricting world. Rifka, the older sister, is sweetly in love with her husband of ten years. There is deep and gentle feeling between them and they take joy in each other. Problem is, they have no children, and according to Orthodox law, the husband must take another wife. Malka, the younger sister, cannot marry the former soldier and guitar player who she loves because he has left the community. She becomes the victim of an arranged marriage to a brutal over-zealous fundamentalist who I can only characterize as a religious nut-job. The wedding night is horrendous and depicted with startling detail and I found myself crying. I saw this film in a theater, and when I glanced at the woman sitting next to me, she was crying too.

The writer and director, Amos Gitai, is a secular Israeli and is clearly depicting Orthodox Jews in a negative way. I wish the film would be more balanced. Surely, there are people who live that way without the sad unhappiness that permeates this film. Several years ago I read a novel called "The Romance Reader" by Pearl Abraham. It, too, was about the restrictions imposed in her small Hasidic community. However, not everyone saw the restrictions the same way, and there was a lot of love and caring in the community.

Most of this film was shot indoors, in apartments and synagogues with crumbling walls. I wondered if there was even plumbing in the buildings. Other scenes showed the crowded winding streets of Jerusalem packed with traffic. Some of the scenes were also a little too long for my taste. But the director certainly did capture the anguish of these two women as they struggled in their own ways to deal with their lives.

The atmosphere throughout is sad and morose but I do recommend this video. The public knows little, or nothing, about this particular world; this film provides rare glimpse of it.

Rating:
Summary: Do a little more research
Review: This is an unusual and eye-opening film. It prompted me to search for more information on Mea Sherim on a search engine and I found one excellent background article on a travel site. (The inquisitive traveller.) I am grateful to this film for spurring my research as I now understand more about the volatile secular-religious situation in Israel than I would ever have learned otherwise. The situation - like the film - is fascinating, depressing, and above all important.

Rating:
Summary: blatant, self-loathing piece of anti-orthodox Jewish bashing
Review: This is perhaps the most blatant, self-loathing piece of anti-orthodox Jewish bashing ever portrayed on film. I teach a college level course, Sexual Ethics in Judaism at a University in the Dallas area. I will use this film to show the skewed, factually wrong portrayal of the Jewish concept of sex. Only view this film if you are planning to debunk it's half-truths and outright lies.

Rating:
Summary: A great, beautiful film
Review: This movie is a secular polemic against Orthodox Judaism, and should be understood as a part of "the struggle for Israel's soul." It satires fundamentalists in Israel, especially lamenting the tragedy in the lives of some women. Despite all the politics, the movie really is beautiful. Developing slowly, with very patient cinematography, this movie achieves a remarkable and understated emotional depth. The lighting in this movie is especially incredible.

I hope that it helps us better understand life in Israel, but I also hope most people find more balanced views of Orthodoxy.

Rating:
Summary: A Little Bit Of Truth and A Whole Lotta Lies
Review: This movie shows the beauty of some things Jewish and at the same time shows those beautiful things as sad repulsive.

In the scene of the wedding the women seems to be taken away from her festivities. In reality the woman and the man each celebrate with their friends (so the men and women do not mix.) In the film, she looks as if she is done and on her way home. I have yet to be at an orthodox wedding that was like that.

Also, there are some truths in this movie. But the vast majority of the truth has been clouded by misuse of context. I add this movie to others like Price Above Rubies for showing the most blatent damaging look at orthodox people with the worst amount of personal prejudice thrown in for effect.