Recurring Themes of Jewish Cinema with National Overtones

Blair Kim

Professor Perez Tejada

English 1102 Section D2

20 April 2009

Recurring Themes of Jewish Cinema with National Overtones

Although Jews have been creating films for decades, it was not until the 1950’s that Jewish cinema really started to create a name for itself and blossom into the unique film class it has become now. This was because the state of Israel only came into existence in 1948, and the country has constantly been under political and social turmoil. Israeli cinema suffered along with the state, continuously fluctuating in not only its content but its reception as well. Only recently has Israeli cinema gained recognition and international respect. “…the past two decades have witnessed an impressive burgeoning of interest in cinematic constructions of the Jew” (Rosenberg 1).

Jewish cinema is made up of several recurrent themes that can be seen in most Israeli films. The first is that Israeli cinema is not equipped to represent the Jew but more of the Jewish community as a whole. “It is presently less a matter…of how authentic or inauthentic, how favorable or unfavorable, is the representation of the Jew…on screen. It has come to be more important to consider what the ethnic screen image says about the civil society from which the film emanates” (Rosenberg 1). However, the Jewish cinematic experience is designed not to isolate the Jewish community in a protective bubble but to reveal its interaction with the entire world. It is only through the context of Jewish cinema that we are given a glimpse into how Jews desire to be perceived rather than the manner in which they currently are seen. “The Jew on screen, moreover, does not function in a vacuum but is part of a larger fabric of experience that binds Jew and non-Jew inextricably. The notion of a ‘cinema of Jewish experience' is only a provisional – and, to some degree, wishful – designation. But it aims at comprehending the world portrayed in a film as a multidimensional while, larger than any one character, scene, or signifier – a complex construction that, though the product of artifice, visual artistry, and narrative strategies, grows from a given society and era and, at its best, engages the spectator in a philosophical conversation with that larger context” (Rosenberg 2). Nonetheless, the overwhelming subjects that appear time and time again in Jewish cinema are the two Jewish crises of the past century: the extermination of European Jewry and the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict that arose from the formation of the state of Israel. By studying these two premises, especially the “postwar world, of Nazi sympathies, anti-semitism, racism, and the genocidal impulse as they bear on the content and interpretation of film” (Rosenberg 3), Israeli cinema aroused interest initially in Israel and in turn became an overwhelming preoccupation with the controversial subjects of mass culture: race, religion, class, ethnicity, nationality, gender, and sexual orientation. This obsession with cultural arguments has led to Israel and the Jewish people beginning to question their national identity. “The important input of the new critical discourse of national cinema is that it is not simply a study of how filmmaking reflects a specific ideology or serves as an agent of that ideology. Rather, films gain special cultural meaning and added value through their engagement with the explicit concerns of their local audience and the deeper layers of collective fears and desires that inform the drama of national identity” (Avisar 126). The Zionist movement has arisen from the core of these questions and has become an answer to those questions of national identity. Young people in Israel especially have been seeking an answer in Jewish cinema to the question of what their national identity is. “The ideological insistence of Zionism that Jewish identity is primarily a national identity in the terms of shared collective experiences and “historical destiny” (Avisar 129). This essay will focus on the Israeli independent film Walk on Water (2002) that serves as a comingling of several Jewish recurrent cinematic themes. These themes are posed as dilemmas, internal and external, that the main character Eyal must wrestle with. Many of these dilemmas force Eyal to pick a side of an issue and support it.

Without even watching the movie, it can be gathered that the Jewish perspective plays a role in the film Walk on Water. This is evident from the title alone in that it refers not only to a certain scene in which two characters pretend to walk on water but also to the Jewish reference of the story of Jesus walking on water.

In Walk on Water the main character, Eyal makes his living by working for the ruthless Israeli intelligence agency, the Mossad. One particular assignment requires him to go undercover and befriend the grandchildren of a surviving Nazi war criminal. It can be inferred from the subject of the assignment alone, that the Jewish people, and in particular, the Mossad, still hold some sort of grudge against the Nazis over half a century later for the religious persecution and extermination of European Jews. The resentment the two characters representing the Mossad have for the Nazis is apparent in their personal histories and background as well as the purpose of their mission. The roles have been reversed; the Jews are exterminating the Nazis.

In one particular scene, the fight between Axel and the German skinheads in the subway station, we see a glimpse into the Jewish animosity with the German people. But the scene not only has an individually violent sensation to it but a national one as well. “This scene of neo-Nazi violence forms clear links between the National Socialist era and contemporary Germany. Eyal, for whom Germany continues to be overdetermined by the policies and actions of the Third Reich, associates the neo-Nazis’ attack on the drag queens with Nazi violence against Jews. The scene contains many indications of his feeling of discomfort in the space of Berlin” (Baer). The overtones of international uneasiness as well as individual discomfort in this scene bring together the character with the nation that they represent. Eyal must make decisions that he thinks are in his nation’s best interest while altogether forgetting his own welfare and beliefs. “In the context of the scene, Eyal’s act of successfully defending the drag queens against the neo-Nazis’ physical attack would seem to serve as a validation and reinscription of his Zionist masculine identity. However, the scene is filled with indications of a transformation in Eyal’s identity and of his increasing disinvestment from the Zionist project” (Baer).

In the fight in the subway station, there appear to be two parties, Eyal, Axel and Axel’s friends versus the German skinheads. However, this is not the case, there are three parties. The third party is the group of drag queens who, when defended by Eyal, serve as a manifestation of his transformation. This far along in the film, the audience is aware that Eyal would never reveal a glimpse into his true nature unless something very important to him was at stake. In this case, Axel’s (and Eyal’s as well) friends were in jeopardy, and Eyal stepped in to protect something that had meaning to him.

These situations and characters “provides a canvas for Fox’ exploration of lingering legacies of the Holocaust and the traces of the past still active in the present” (Lys 4).But there is not only animosity between Jewish Eyal and his German targets. There is the potential for friendship as well. In Eyal’s conversations with Axel, we can see that he genuinely treasures their friendship and it is a peek into “the possibility and terms of German-Jewish reconciliation” (Baer).

Israeli cinema also seeks the converse of censorship as well. This is to shock its audience and perhaps cause it to raise questions about taboo subjects. One example that comes to mind is when Eyal first realizes that Axel, the grandchild of the Nazi war criminal, is homosexual. Homosexuality is strictly forbidden in the Jewish religion, and its presence in an Israeli movie forces the film’s audience to raise new questions about the controversies of mass culture. Upon rudely finding out that Axel is gay, Eyal is shocked and taken aback. It is clear he had not considered this possibility, and his reaction is typical and expected. However, as the film continues, his growing comfort and rapport with the situation causes the audience and even Eyal himself to question his own sexuality. In addition, Eyal begins to finally revise his slowly transforming perspective and position on homosexuality as well. “Eyal shows a heretofore-unprecedented openness to the topic of gay sexual practices; he displays curiosity about the dynamics of anal sex, and he expresses particular interest in the degree to which gay men are “easygoing” in terms of crossing boundaries of nationality” (Baer).

In conclusion, Jewish cinema is chock full of undertones and recurrent themes. Specifically, the extermination of the Jews during the Holocaust and the postwar relationship between the German people and the Jewish people is the paramount theme while the controversial subjects of mass culture such as race, religion, class, ethnicity, nationality, gender, and sexual orientation seem to be secondary. Overtones of the Zionist movement are also prevalent throughout the film in the context of national identity, and the multi-faceted interaction between the Jewish people and the entire world rather than the Jew as an individual. Many of these themes are evident in the 2002 film Walk on Water and the majority of them pose as dilemma’s that the main character, Eyal, must wrestle with.

Works Cited

Avisar, Ilan. The National and the Popular in Israeli Cinema. Vol. 24, No. 1. Tel Aviv University, 2005. pgs. 125-143.

Baer, Nicolas. “Point of Entanglement: The Overdetermination of German Space and Identity in Lola + Blidikid and Walk on Water.” Transit: A Journal of Travel, Migration and Multiculturalism in the German-Speaking World. The University of California: Berkeley, Department of German, 2008. <http://german.berkeley.edu:8002/transit/2008/articles/baer.htm>

Lys, Lynley Shimat Visceral Holocaust:Film and the Haptic Representation of Jewish Trauma. LU Marks. <essaysandplays.weebly.com>

Rosenberg, Joel; Stephen J. Whitfield. “The Cinema of Jewish Experience: Introduction.” Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History. 22, No. 1-2 vols. New York: IU Press, Winter/Spring 2002.

Shohat, Ella. “Making the Silences Speak in Israeli Cinema.” Israeli Women’s Studies. Ed. Esther Fuchs. Rutgers University Press, 2005.