Word: jewish
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Disengagement Observer Force posted between Syrian and Israeli troops on the Heights is due to expire. Unfortunately, one Golan settlement was not secure enough. One night last week Arab gunmen infiltrated a kibbutz called Ramat Magshimim (Hill of the Achievers), which had a population of 200 Orthodox Jewish settlers. The Arabs killed three students and wounded two others before escaping across the Syrian frontier...
...discovered, although the reasons for remaining vary from kibbutz to kibbutz. Some settlements have been established by religious Jews with visions of recovering all the land encompassed by the Israel of biblical times. Says Gideon Bachau, 24, a former paratrooper who lives at Kibbutz Keshet: "This area is more Jewish than some other parts of Israel. Tel Aviv, for instance, was always Philistine country." Other settlers cling to the Heights for more down-to-earth reasons. Explains Zipporah Harel, whose husband was one of the first six farmers to occupy the area: "We are not here because of a love...
Admittedly, the subject of this film--Jewish identity in the New World--is pretty well worn; everybody from Ernest Hemingway to Phillip Roth has used it with varying degrees of success. The distinctive feature of the topic in this film is that, unlike Robert Cohn or Alexander Portnoy, the principal character never undergoes a genuine identity crisis. Jake never really denies his Jewishness; upon learning of his father's death, he dons the ceremonial Jewish mourning shawl, and even his girlfriend, Mamie Fein, is Jewish. Jake's Jewishness never comes into question because he never departs from the Jewish community...
Fortunately, the Yiddish in this film does not degenerate in a Fiddler on the Roof-like parody of Jewish mannerisms. Silver has wisely avoided this pitfall by having her characters converse in Yiddish where appropriate, and translating the conversation with subtitles. And while such classic Yiddishisms as "You vont that I should... "remain, they sound thoroughly plausible within the greater framework of this film. Mrs. Kavarsky is the film's greatest source of acerbic Yiddish wit, with such comments as "You can't pee up my back and make me think it's rain." She is the archetypal yente, always...
Purists might complain that Hester Street presents an inaccurate picture of New York Jewish ghettoes at the turn of the century. This is true, but immaterial. According to this film, no one lived in squalor, and the worst aspect of the sweatshops was an occasional snide comment from the boss. The photographer Jacob Riis, who depicted the terrible conditions of living in New York's Jewish ghetto at the turn of the century, would have been horrified by the distortion in this film. But rather than a scathing social portrait of the era, Silver has set out to create...