Israeli Society

Documentaries Explore Mysteries of Fate

Two documentaries, two mysteries: the life and death of a family of Holocaust survivors attempting to rebuild their lives in an Israel ravaged by war; the other reveals the life and death of a Greek musician attempting to build his career as a pop star in Israel, seeking normalcy through music. Together, these films showing at the Israel Film Festival highlight starkly contrasting realities in the development of the State of Israel. “The Green Dumpster Mystery,” which aired last year on Israel’s documentary channel, is a straightforward chronicle of director Tal Yoffe’s quest to figure out the story behind a stack of family portraits mysteriously trashed in a dumpster in south Tel Aviv. “The Mystery of Aris San,” which aired to high ratings this year on Israel’s major television network, is executed like an episode of VH1’s “Behind the Music,” telling the story of a Greek musician who rose to Israeli stardom. Whereas “Aris San” takes us to nightclubs, homes of celebrities and through the streets of New York, “Green Dumpster” visits gravesites, homes of Holocaust survivors and the streets of Tel Aviv. READ MORE IN THE JEWISH JOURNAL

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Debra Winger explores Jewish/Arab day schools

Students at the Hand in Hand Max Rayne Bilingual School in Jerusalem didn’t know they were meeting a celebrity. They weren’t born when the films “Officer and a Gentleman” and “Terms of Endearment” garnered Debra Winger her Oscar nominations. But Winger’s tour last month to the Hand in Hand Arab-Jewish day schools was not necessarily meant to move the students, but to enrich her own understanding of pathways for Arab and Jewish co-existence. “I’d like to think I’m helping, but in the end, it feels selfish — how much I got out of seeing this and what it did to my heart,” the 53-year-old actress told a group of reporters in the library of the school’s new Jerusalem campus. Raised in a secular Jewish household in Cleveland, Winger volunteered on a kibbutz in 1972 and has maintained her connection ever since. In fact, she was introduced to the bilingual schools following a talk at the Jewish Federation in Florida on the occasion of Israel’s 60th anniversary. Speaking to the federation audience, she recalled a “fight” she had with an Arab American friend that was triggered by the Second Lebanon War, which broke out while Winger served as a judge for the Jerusalem Film Festival. “We couldn’t even talk to each other,” Winger told The Jewish Journal, recounting the episode. “She would forward me e-mails with newspaper articles for me to read, and I would reply, saying could you please replace

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