Movies with a Jewish Topic on Netflix: Kulüp

 

For a long time I haven´t watched a movie with a Jewish topic on Netflix, but this was only a metter of time. As I am getting more and more interested in discovering the Ladino culture and its representations, I was recommended by several respectable sources to not miss Kulüp - The Club - set in the 1950s multicultural area of Pera in Istanbul. And what a journey it was - a binge watching one, for sure.

The series were released between 2021 and 2023, is spoken in Turkish with many Ladino expressions and beautiful songs. It is built around the story of a night club, who is undergoing various challenging, both at the personal, socio-political and economic level.

The film starts when Matilda Aseo, the heir of a once rich Jewish-Turkish family, is returning after an amenisty following the murder of her once lover, a Turkish entrepreneur who apparently ruined her family. After 17 years spent in prison, she is supposed to get in touch with her daughter, Rașel, who was sent meanwhile in an orphanage. The relationship is tensed and while trying to save her rebelious daughter from prison, she makes a deal that may mark her life from now on.

First and foremost, the screenplay is very well written, with way too many changes of situation, which correspond in fact to the outside environment, such as the riots against the Greek minority, the taking over of Jewish properties during the war, the military putch, the raise of real estate tycoons and the subsequent gangster-like crimes.

The representation of the Jewish identity is set in the context of interaction with the majority, the restrictions and the challenges. Matilda, although twice in love with Muslim men, she is lighting the Shabbes candles and keeps a mezuza at her door. It´s a feeling of being fully aware of who you are, in a nonstrident yet careful way. It is a sense of measure forgotten sometimes.

I am not familiar with a nuanced local representations of Jews within the Turkish society, but would definitely interested to explore more, but as for now, the feedback I´ve read about this film, coming from Jewish sources, was positive.

Personally, I´ve found the play of the actors very good, especially Rașel, particularly towards the end of the movie, as she is fighting against depression, set following her traumatic birth and first almost two decades of life.

With an interesting story and a lot of Ladino references, Kulüp can be a good introduction to a less known Jewish episode. Recommended for a good binge watching, but be ready for a lot of drama.

Diary of a Crisis

 

One of the most dramatic consequences of applying the absurd BDS directions in academia, aiming at excluding Israeli academics from world universitities, is to deprive the world to fathom the diversity of the Israeli society. Israeli academics, and many prestigious intellectuals, do share very leftist positions, based of an old socialist and communist mindset, often shared by the founders of the state. Many of them do have a moderate position towards Palestinian statehood aims and are very critical towards the mixture of messianism and politics struggling to become mainstream. Many of them are also very critical of Netanyahu´s policies.

Prestigious historian Saul Friedländer observed with fine knowledge and detail, the tumultous last year, noticing the political events and mass street movements stirred by the judicial reform initiated by Netanyahu for self-survival reasons. While noticing the actors and stages of the crisis, he is smoothly sharing personal memories - including of a meeting with Golda Meir - as well as personal observations about the many rifts of the relationship between Askenazim and Mizrahim - some of the analysis of Shas as an identity political movement are very pertinent. +

It´s obvious that Friedländer, who is a resident of the USA, do have a clear bias and takes many of his information from left-wing publications such as Haaretz. On the other hand, he belongs to an intellectual tradition that do have his own mentality limitations, but whose clarity and secularist tendecies are very important for the democratic functioning of Israel. An Israel in turmoil who is still struggling to get out of a crisis that seems without an end in sight - the diary ends shortly before October.

Rating: 3.5 stars

Kantika by Elizabeth Graver

Although at a different level compared to Yiddish, which is very much alive and very much kicking, Ladino is making a timid yet steady comeback, at a personal and scientific level. There are classes - online and in person - books and scientific articles, audio and video recordings of linguistic variations. Few days ago I´ve met someone whose grandparents are still active Ladino speakers, which is a surprise because we´ve been mostly told that Ladino is actually dying. Hopefully not.

Part of this revival is the emergence of a cultural wave of literary, visual - films and photography - as well as music renditions of Ladino identity. I am slowly going throuogh it myself - learning bits of language, reading studies and listening to experts - but literature is always for me the easiest door to a culture. Hence, my curiosity to read Kantika by Elizabeth Graver, a book I´ve heard about for a long time. Another pleasant revelation was The Wold and All That It Holds, also warmy recommended. 

Partly inspired by her own family experience - but unable to fully document it and turn into a memoir, hence the fictional choice - Kantika is a multi-generational account that starts in Constantinoble - soon to be Istanbul - in 1907. Through the jouorney of Rebecca Cohen - character inspired by the author´s grandmother - from modern Turkey to America, via Barcelona, there is a long episode of Jewish history revealed, although it gives place to relate to individual stories to unfold. 

Each chapter is illustrated with family photos and do contain a generous amount of expressions and words in Ladino - an useful tool for anyone trying to learn the language as well. What is remarkably from the point of view of the narrative construction, is the multiplicity of voices heard within the story, allowing almost all characters to have a say, to tell their own version of the story.

Kantika will make you curious to find out more about Ladino culture and individuals, to hear more stories. It adds more depth into an important episode of world Jewish history that needs a lot of more emphasis nowadays.

Rating: 5 stars

I.M: A Memoir by Isaac Mizrahi

´The Syrian community have never seen anything like me before´.

One of the most successful Jewish designers in the US, Isaac Mizrahi is a bubbling personality that wrote fashion history. Born in a Syrian-Jewish family and a student of Yeshiva of Flatbush, he broke up with the religious community, came out as gay and fulfilled his artistic dreams. In addition to being a fashion designer, he also performed on the stage and movies, wrote a graphic novel and created costumes for opera or theater.

I.M is his memoir relating his life story. I  had access to the book in audio format, read by the author and it was a very pleasant experience - although Mizrahi mentioned that he does not like to hear his own voice. 

The book unfolds as a chronological suite of the events that marked his early childhood, his relationship with his parents - especially with his mother who was and is a model for him - with the Syrian Jewish community and his steps into the world of fashion, as well as his sleep problems and lifelong struggle with insomnia - an aspect I largely relate to as well. There are many details and observations interesting also for the fashion business history in general.

At times I felt that there are way so many details and a larger focus on events, without a specific structuring of the memoir based on milestones or various categories, but it belongs to the genre of memoir to follow the timeline and style that it is considered appropriate by the author and no one else. It is a subjective choice that the reader shall accept in its entirety.

A special not to the cover which is elegant, simple and straight forward. It suits very well Mizrahi´s fashion style.

Rating: 3 stars

One Year among Haredim

Curious to dislodge the absurdity and helped by an enormous sense of humour - and appetite too, and some may even say that people who love food laugh the best - Tuvia Tenenbom - whose previous adventures in Israel I had the chance to review earlier - spent one year between Mea Shearim and Bnei Brak, experiencing life as a Haredi in Israel. 

Gott spricht Jiddisch - translated from American English by Michael Adrian was published originally under the title Carefull, Beauties Ahead. I am not sure which title did the best and instead of wondering I better keep writing my review, at least until he is not publishing another book already (right now, it seems he is spending time with settlers and I can´t wait to see the results).

The stories - some of them a bit repetitive, but people in those places love to show their belonging to a group and do not fancy individualism as we do in other part of the world and even of Israel - are sometimes grotesque, sometimes written with full sarcasm, but nevertheless unique. And if you find normal to pray at a grave when looking for your soulmate, maybe you spent too much time or your entire life among Haredim. 

He is curious especially about people and groups at the fringe of the Haredi society - like Toldot Aharonot and Neturei Karta - but there are also interactions with larger and brand names such as Belz or Ger - and he is getting a lot of insights following the split within the sect. Although, there is a lot of fluffy text - but delicious food - there are snipets of information that may help someone to make an idea about what does it mean to be Haredi in Israel nowadays, including in the author´s cartoonish version.

I do have another book by Tenenbom that may keep me company until his next one is ready, so will keep my humour - and sarcasm - levels high. 

Rating: 3 stars

Shanda by Letty Cottin Pogrebin

´(...) how sacrosant privacy once was´.

Shanda. A Memoir of Shame and Secrecy by American Jewish journalist and author Letty Cottin Pogrebin is not only a historical testimony of Jewish life after the war, but also offers to the reader an unique example of memoir writing and researching.

Secrets are part of the Jewish life, particularly for the post-war generation, but Pogrebin set the culture of shame and secrecy into a larger realm of cultural context and sociological understanding. Secrets are more than a pathological temptation of lying, but they are the result of (sometimes too high) social expectations and communal curiosity. Some facts are better left untold and the culture of sharing - the naked social self built under the pressure of social media exposure, among other things - is not necessarily meaning a better family connection. It is just a different relationship no more or less authentic.

There are different ways in which Pogrebin is able to trace those secrets and deleted traces of assumed social shame: her own memories, random pictures found in family throves or forgotten enveloppes, discussions with different family members, her own genealogical researches. Although I loved to follow up the Jewish story, this part was in many respects more fascinating, as it shows the many diverse ways in which a good memoir and a family research in general can be done. 

Shanda is a testimony of diversity of Jewish life in America and a model for anyone - Jewish or not - is interesting in the art of memoir.

Rating: 5 stars

On the Mikvah Strike

Since few days, the religious Jewish Internet is boiling hard on the mikvah strike. The details of the initiative started by Adina Sash aka Flatbush Girl, are getting more and more spicy - religious women do go to mikvah at the end of their period, this act permitting them to their husbands for sexual relationships - obliterating - with or without intention, Gd knows which is true - where did it start for.

Divorce is not only a goyishe recognition of the failure of a marriage. As long as there are halachic prescriptions about the circumstances of giving a get - a divorce  according to the Jewish law - it involves that from immemorial times, divorce was a possibility of ending a marriage. There are many reasons to do it, some of them also halachically requested. The stigma associated with children of divorce - with lower chances to get married, as introduced by various shadchanim - and the refuse to accept abusive behaviors of men, some of them respected religious figures - may make people - women particularly - reluctant towards such a dramatic step. Also, the situation of agunot - women chained to their ex-husbands who are not willing to give them a get; according to the Jewish law, a man can marry another woman while still not officially divorced by his first wife, while the woman she cannot re-marry without a get, as her children with the new man may be further considered mamzerim, bastards - may discourage women to ask for divorce. Thus, the man can keep the control over the woman´s body, preventing her from starting a new life, re-marrying , being free...

Adina Sash, aka Flatbush Girl, is a smart and creative Jewish Orthodox woman, educated and mother of two. I follow her account for a very long time and I appreciate her unique personality. She shows that a Jewish Orthodox woman can wear proudly many hats in an open Orthodox Zionist way. She is part of a larger movement within the Orthodox Judaism of knowledgeable women who are decided to not allow extremist religious men randomly decide their fate, like Chochmat Nashim, pioneering among others against the erasure of women from the public space, without any halachic basis in this respect. 

What Flatbush Girl and other organisations and individuals - mostly women, but not only - are fighting for - literally, as their vigils in the front of synagogues may esclate sometimes - is the injustice done to women. I can count on more than two hands the cases that I´ve heard about of women manipulated into staying with abusive men, or refused the get for the sake of ´honor´ and/or money rewards. Women threatened to be taken away the children from men - and their families. (Here is a beautiful visual essay by Frieda Vizel about her experience getting the get while leaving the Hasidic community.)

Malky Gold is waiting her get. Four years have passed and her ex-husband whose family is manipulating his mental weakness  refuses to grant it to her. For Malky, and many other women like her - many waiting for more than ten years, or dying without being granted the get. This is a crisis that affects deeply the soul of the Jewish women and families.

In Israel, strict rules against get deniers are aimed to prevent such situations and reluctant men can even go to prison. But when they escape to galut, or men who are living in galut, cannot be forced as the local - non Jewish laws - do not have any previsions in this respect. The strike is extreme - the good point is that the discussion about marital relationships are becoming more talked about lately which is a very normal adult thing to do - but the situation requires such intervention. Men, women, people of good faith should get together to end this crisis. Until no more women are about to suffer an absurd manipulation of not-wise men, any mean should be used to challenge this situation. We can do more, men, women, people who could not accept this abuse against our mothers and sisters any more.