Film Review |
Home for the Holidays: Ushpizinby M. Faust |
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At a time of diminishing tolerance for any religion other than that celebrated by the loudest group in our country (woe betide the merchant who wishes his customers “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”!), a film like Ushpizin serves as a welcome reminder that there are other faiths in the world, practiced by people who are not invalid for being reclusive. Whatever its value as entertainment, this is a groundbreaking movie for being the first to be made with the participation of Israel’s ultra-Orthodox community.
Shuli Rand was one of Israel’s leading actors when he left the secular world in the mid 1990s to become a Hasidim. A chance meeting a few years ago with an old friend, filmmaker Gidi Dar, persuaded both that they wanted to work together again. Rand come up with a story idea that was appropriate to his religious views, but agreed to make the film only on the condition that the production work within the limitations imposed upon an Orthodox Jew—a condition that became even more necessary when they decided to shoot the film within Jerusalem’s orthodox Breslover community.
Ushpizin is set during Sukkot, a week-long religious holiday that takes place shortly after Yom Kippur. To remind themselves of the conditions under which the Jews lived in the desert with Moses, the faithful spend the week in a sukkah, a temporary shack. To receive and feed guests in one’s sukkah is considered a great blessing.
In a part that somewhat reflects his own life, Rand plays Moshe Bellanga, a struggling rabbi with a shady past. He has been married for five years to Malli (played by Rand’s non-actress wife Michal Bat Sheva Rand—one of the conditions of filming), but their union has been childless. He is ashamed because they are unable to afford even a rudimentary holiday celebration.
That changes when a friend points them to an abandoned sukkah and an anonymous benefactor gives them $1,000. It looks to Moshe and Malli that God is preparing them at last to receive children, so they set about to celebrate Sukkot in high style. Moshe even spends a ridiculous amount of money on a ceremonial citron, a lemon-like fruit said to be a blessing for having male children.
So when unexpected guests arrive, Malli is thrilled to be able to receive them, certain that this is even more proof of God’s favor. What she doesn’t know is that the pair are prison escapees who were friends of Moshe back in his violent youth. As the week stretches on, and the two ill-mannered visitors show no signs of leaving, she begins to wonder if their presence is a sign or a test.
Ushpizin was made for a secular Israeli audience that is more familiar with the customs portrayed, and certain parts of the story aren’t entirely clear to non-Jewish viewers. But it plays like a modern version of one of the Sholem Aleichem stories that comprised Fiddler on the Roof. Director Dar is not orthodox, and is not interested in proselytizing, something of which no one would ever accuse this film. But he is open to details, and captures what appears to be a clear-eyed portrait of life in this insular community. Its portrait of a marriage among equals is also novel compared to movies that tend to depict wives under any orthodox faith as being abused and enslaved. Ethnographic value aside, Ushpizin plays as a religious fable in which faith is rewarded so long as it is valued for being its own reward, though it’s hardly the first movie that would have its moral cake and eat it too.
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