Two Film Festivals

During the course of the 25th Annual Israel Film Festival, which ended last week, my wife and I saw ten films, sometimes more than one a day. I’m glad I left the selection of films up to her, because almost all the films she chose were excellent. Those films set in Jerusalem were particularly moving to me. The familiar streets and squares evoked a wistful nostalgia tinged with a sense of loss, as if I had never felt the inevitable frustrations and irritations of living in a strange culture and operating in an imperfectly learned language, as if I had never felt apprehension during the second intifada when I walked those streets and squares or boarded a bus.

Ten films within a two-week period are a lot of films – more than we normally see in a year outside of festivals – but we would see even more during the annual Jerusalem Film Festival, held every July. We would see fifteen or sixteen films during the festival’s ten days, sometimes as many as three or four in one day. Unlike the Israel Film Festival, the Jerusalem festival is international in scope, screening more than 200 films from all over the world. My wife and I would ponder the catalog of films, each entry enticingly described in thumb-nail sketches, before choosing what we would see. Our choices overlapped about one-third of the time, so more often we watched the films alone.

But we weren’t really alone, because we were bound to meet lots of people we knew. So attending the Jerusalem Film Festival reinforced our sense of community. Many of our friends and acquaintances knew one another and moved in the same or overlapping circles. But I felt a sense of community with all Israeli Jews, no matter what their background, whether or not they ever attended the festival, not only because they were Jews but also because they shared my fate as citizens of a troubled land. In contrast, my sense of community with my fellow Americans is more abstract, more cognitive than emotional.

Yossi Klein Halevi, in an interview last Sunday with Krista Tippett, on her radio program On Being, spoke of the intensity with which Jewish Israelis approach political issues, because there is a sense of community among them and because political decisions matter so much to the community as a whole. What is the nature of the state- is it the state of the Jews (a state for all its citizens, of whom the majority are Jewish) or a religious Jewish state? Can religion and state be separated in Israel without removing Judaism from Israel’s Jews? How is Israel to deal with another indigenous population with valid claims to the land? Can a settlement be reached with the Palestinians and if so how and on what terms? These and other existential questions are debated endlessly and with passion. Here in America, few people are passionate about political matters, perhaps because we feel that political decisions here rarely have life and death consequences, as they so often do in Israel.

Halevi also spoke about the sense of transcendence that drew him, an American citizen, to settle to Israel. Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem in 1977 provided one of his examples. The man who had started, with his allies, the 1973 Yom Kippur War against Israel and thus was hated by Jewish Israelis, became overnight, with his visit to Jerusalem, a hero. Thousands of Israelis, waving Egyptian flags, cheered his motorcade. Halevi cited another moment of transcendence, the 1983 airlift of Ethiopian Jews from Sudanese refugee camps to Israel. They arrived barefoot and wide-eyed, he recalled, never having seen a plane before let alone having flown in one.

During our time in Jerusalem, I felt the same sense of transcendence, not all the time, of course, but often, just by walking the streets and squares of the city, a city that provides such a deep sense of history and continuity. So just as I miss an overall sense of community, so I miss the transcendence which simply living in Jerusalem provided. Still, we knew we would be giving up much when we moved permanently to New York, but it hasn’t been a total loss, not at all. New York, with its extensive rapid transit system (and half fares for seniors) and its many free cultural events, is a good place for those my age. I'm now under a consistent medical regime, supervised by a physician whom I trust and admire. We've gained greater access to our children and grandchildren and made it easier for them to supervise our care if and when it becomes necessary. These are substantial advantages, but they didn't make us feel the loss of Jerusalem any less.