Kadosh (1999) is an Israeli film by a prolific Israeli director, Amos Gitai. The film is controversial in Israel and among Jews in the same way that recent films like Fahrenheit 9/11 and Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ have been controversial in America. The film depicts aspects of the lifestyle of Chassidic Jews in a most unflattering light while making a strong statement against repression of women in the name of adherence to religious doctrine. Obviously this film impresses those devoted to advancing women’s rights far more than the Chassidic Jews.

Historical Background: Amos Gitai, born Amos Weinraub in 1950, was a teenager when his father changed the family surname to a more traditionally Hebrew form. After mandatory service in the Israeli military, Gitai studied architecture in Haifa and later at the University of California at Berkeley. Returning home to fight in the Yom Kippur War of 1973, he was engaged in a search-and-rescue mission when his helicopter was shot down, killing many of his comrades and nearly taking his own life as well. Gitai’s interest in filmmaking began with the gift of a Super8 camera from his mother, which he first used to document some of his war experiences. Starting in 1979, Gitai produced more than forty films including documentaries, historical pieces, and works of fiction. Many of his films have been censored in Israel. Gitai moved to Paris for a while to gain more freedom to make films of his choosing. His documentary topics ranged from agriculture, to rock musicians, to the resurgence of fascism in Europe. One of his favorite fictional topics has been the Jewish legend of the Golem, which has served as subject matter for three of his films. He returned to Israeli in the mid-1990’s after the election of Yitzhak Rabin, where he continued to make films at a furious pace. He has enjoyed retrospectives of his work in London, Frankfurt, Madrid, Paris, Tokyo, New Delhi, Bombay, and a touring retrospective in North America. Kadosh (1999), his most famous film, was acclaimed at the Cannes Film Festival and had box office success throughout Europe.

The Story: Kadosh, which means “Sacred,” is the story of two sisters who live in Jerusalem in a tightly-knit ultra-orthodox community of Chassidic Jews in the district of Mea Shearim. The older sister, Rivka (Yaël Abecassis), is married to Meir (Yoram Hattab), who is son of the rabbi, Rav Shimon (Yussef Abu Warda). Rivka and Meir are devoutly religious and very much in love with one another. Their life together is one of happy contentment except for one major problem. After ten years of marriage, they have not produced any children. In this orthodox community, producing children is a sacred duty, since these orthodox Jews count themselves as the only true Jews. They want to increase their numbers so as to vanquish the increasing secularization of the Jewish State of Israel. The rabbi orders his son to divorce Rivka, since she has failed to bear him children, and to take a new and younger wife. Though Meir cites examples of scripture that seem to argue for loyalty and faithfulness to one’s spouse, the rabbi is insistent that “the only task of a daughter of Israel is bringing children into the world.” Although Rivka is examined by a gynecologist and judged to be fertile, Rivka cannot share that information with her husband since such tests are prohibited by their religion. Rivka receives an anonymous letter than declares that “A woman without a child is no better than dead.” Meir informs her that it is a quote from the Talmud.

The younger sister, Malka (Meital Barda) also chafes under the constraints of her community and religion. She has been in love for some time with a young man named Yaakov (Sami Hori) who formerly belonged to this same community of Chassidic Jews but who had left to join the Israeli Army. Military service is also strictly prohibited by this sect and Yaakov is no longer welcomed home. He currently works in an Israeli nightclub as a singer of folksongs. Rivka and Malka share a close sisterly bond, confide in one another, and offer mutual support. Malka, for example, who is anxious about losing her virginity, asks Rivka to describe her experience on her wedding night. Malka is somewhat more rebellious than her sister and questions the misogynistic tenets of their community, saying, “Women don’t study the Talmud. Father said the Talmud contains everything and its opposite. No women dares say it, but men don’t want us to know. That way they can do as they like with us.”

Malka’s mother and the rabbi have together settled on a husband for Malka – an oafish zealot named Yossef (Uri Ran Klauzner), who drives through Jerusalem in a vehicle rigged with a loudspeaker system proselytizing for his orthodox sect. We witness the wedding ceremony and a subsequent distressingly unappealing deflowering of the bride. Between the two events, Malka is required to cut her beautiful long, black flowing hair short. This is a beautifully filmed sequence where she is looking into the mirror while trimming her hair, half laughing and half crying.

Rivka is exiled from her former home and relegated to a room in a community center, where she sinks progressively into a deep depression. Rivka’s mother, Elisheva (Lea Koenig), is cruelly required by the rabbi to provide the bathing ritual for Lexa (Shireen Kadivar), who is the young bride selected to take Rivka’s place in Meir’s bed.

Malka pays a surreptitious visit to her real love, Yaakov, a handsome young man. They share a tender scene of genuine love-making together. Malka makes no real effort to hide her tryst from her husband, since she is intent on bringing him to the point of renouncing her. When Yossef begins to beat her with his belt, she races out and seeks shelter in her sister’s room. The fates of the two sisters now run headlong toward two quite different resolutions that I will leave for readers to discover for themselves.

Themes: There can be little doubt about the principal theme of this film, since Gitai hammers away at it from one end of the film to the other with little effort at subtlety: patriarchies subjugate women and all the more so when the patriarchy claims its basis in religious canons. The film has a leisurely pace to it, providing viewers ample time to feel the wrenching agony of the two lovely sisters mistreated by the chauvinism of their community. The casting aside of Rivka will be abhorrent to any viewer having sensitivity and humanity, even without the irony of Meir being the likely cause of their failure to produce offspring rather than she. Then as well, the forced marriage of Malka to Yossef and his callous disregard for her comfort and pleasure provide additional evidence of the blatant mistreatment of these women.

Among the sources that I encountered on the internet in relation to this film were three that were highly negative about the validity of the film’s message as it relates to the Chassidic Jews in particular. It is difficult to assess the claims of these writers since, on the one hand, they clearly understand the precepts and practices of Chassidic Jews more thoroughly than general reviewers of this film or myself but, on the other hand, they are also clearly invested in defending the religious community to which all three belong. By contrast, other reviewers of this film are mostly ignorant about the actual practices of Chassidic Jews, have no independent basis by which to judge the truthfulness of the film, and are therefore easily led or misled into accepting the film’s highly unambiguous message. The critics of the film rest their cases mainly on three arguments.

(1) Some of the rituals and practices of Chassidic Jews depicted in the film are inaccurate in multiple details. Gitai was clearly striving for authenticity in his presentation of the various rituals but, as a secular Jew and outsider to the Chassidic community, he was apparently not able to achieve full accuracy. For example, apparently Meir doesn’t put his t’filin on in the proper way and the ritual bath scene was portrayed inaccurately. No one but a Chassidic Jew or one expert in their practices will recognize such technical errors and none of the instances cited reflect on the central issue of misogynistic practices.

(2) Gitai was highly selective in what he presents of Chassidic life, focusing only on disagreeable practices to an extent that amounts to bias. There’s no question that Gitai’s specific agenda was to illuminate the effect of the views of this orthodox sect on the women of the community. Naturally he concentrated on portraying events and practices relevant to that issue, just as a lawyer presenting a case to a court would concentrate on evidence supporting his case. It doesn’t matter whether Gitai’s “evidence” is selective; what matters is whether it is valid.

(3) As we have seen recently with controversial American films, many times if a reviewer dislikes the message of a film, they also become intent on finding fault with the quality of the film as cinema, so as to attack the film in every way possible. The same reviewers who object to the message claim that the acting is awful, the plot simplistic and melodramatic, and the message overly blunt. Well, quite honestly, I agree with two out of those three complaints. The plot is excessively melodramatic (such as when the mean old rabbi forces Rivka’s mother to bathe her daughter’s “replacement”) and the message is literally beaten to death. On the other hand, I felt that the acting was quite good. One reviewer claims that the performances are all flat and excessively depressive. Well, that’s not inaccurate except that it’s probably what the director demanded. If one objects to that element, it’s really another piece of the issue of the message being pounded home relentlessly rather than a problem in the performances. In any case, none of these cinematic weaknesses in the film alters the validity of the film’s basic message.

Frankly, I’m more interested in the larger issue of subjugation of women in the name of religion than in its narrow application to one particular sect – the Chassidic Jews. Whether or not Gitai exaggerated the subjugation of women in that sect, we all need to realize that very few if any religions promote full equality of treatment for women. The more fundamental branches of Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and Hinduism tend to be the most subjugating but there are somewhat less egregious examples of misogyny in even the most mainstream and progressive branches of these same religions. There’s the exclusion of women from the Catholic priesthood or as elders in the Church of the Latter Day Saints, for example. There’s the abortion and divorce restrictions that sometimes leave women trapped in untenable situations. In the film Pather Panchali, one can see a division of male and female roles in India somewhat like what is depicted here in Kadosh for the Chassidic Jews. The men study their religions and the women do all of the chores. We’ve all also learned quite a bit in the last couple of years about the practices of the Taliban in Afghanistan in relation to women. Nevertheless, I don’t mean to paint all religions and all denominations with the same brush. Clearly some religious denominations subjugate women far more than others. Regardless of whether Gitai overstated the problem as it exists with the Chassidic Jews, there can be no question that women have typically gotten the short end of the stick from the world’s religions. This film gives voice to that terrible injustice by inviting viewers to witness the suffocation of two high quality women by inhumane religious practices.

Production Values: Kadosh is a dramatic work, but employing a pseudo-documentary approach that aims at neorealistic authenticity. Whether it achieves documentary-like accuracy is an open question. The cinematography by Renato Berta was simple and austere. I thought the color scheme was spot on, with somber grays and blues given emphasis. I was less enamored with the excessive darkness in many scenes. I would have liked to be able to see a bit more of the detail instead of so many shadows. Possibly the highlight of the film was the hauntingly beautiful soundtrack provided by Philippe Eidel, invoking deep sorrow and longing.

There are four scenes involving sex in the film, which one reviewer describes as explicit but the scenes seemed anything but explicit to me. These scenes were filmed with almost excessive delicacy by American and European standards. The last of the four romantic scenes is prettily filmed but two of the others are rather boring and the other unrealistic and repulsive. None of the actors were familiar to me, nor do any have credits in other major films available in America.

Bottom-Line: I strongly endorse the message of this film relating to the terrible repression of women by most religions, some more than others. That message in its general form is no more or less valid whether the particular manifestation among Chassidic Jews is a bit overstated by the film or not. I am less enthusiastic about Gitai’s skill as a director. His characters are too one dimensional and his message overly relentless and heavy-handed. The transfer for the Kino DVD is of high quality. For extras, they offer the theatrical trailer and a 24-minute documentary about the making of the film. There is also an interview with the director included in the booklet in the inside cover. Kadosh is in Hebrew with English subtitles and has a running time of 117 minutes.


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You might want to check out these other excellent films from India:

Aparajito
Charulata
Earth
Jalsaghar
Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India
Mother India
Pather Panchali
Salaam Bombay!
The Terrorist
The World of Apu

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for Groups
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age