Those who are waiting impatiently for the third season of “Shtisel” can allay their impatience somewhat by watching a recent Israeli TV series titled “Od Nipagesh.” Premiering on YouTube in June, the series, whose title means “We Will Yet Meet Again,” has already gotten coverage in major American Jewish publications as it courageously engages a serious problem in the Orthodox-Jewish community. How do ba’alei teshuva interact with their secular families after they immerse themselves into a charedi lifestyle?
Directors Uri Groder and Ohad Gal-Oz are themselves longtime Breslov ba’alei teshuva. After entering this new world, they retained their previous professions as cameramen and directors and expanded into filming and producing documentary programs. Groder even founded a religious film institute. Their personal journeys from secular homes in Ramat Gan and Be’er Sheva to the Breslov enclave in Yerushalayim were fraught with many emotional twists and turns that lent them the sensitivity to and understanding of the characters in their recent documentary, both the secular relatives and the charedi ba’alei teshuva.
The premise of the film is fascinating. Five secular Israelis who very much want to reconcile with their charedi relatives are directed to five charedi “mentors” who will help them in this quest. The mentors themselves are ba’alei teshuva who have been living charedi lives for many years but still involve themselves with the dilemmas of ba’alei teshuva and thus have a good handle on all sides of the scenario.
Among those seeking to re-connect to their charedi relatives are a 57-year old grandmother, Shosh Or, who has never seen four of her five charedi grandchildren born to her son Omer, a musician, who became religious and subsequently rejected his single mother’s secular lifestyle. She is bitter and angry at the rabbis and the entire religious community whom she believes alienated her son from her. Her dream is to reconcile with him and bring him back into her life. Her mentor is a dynamic mother of 11, Yael Mizrachi. In addition to raising her huge family, Mizrachi manages a government office, is active in Ezer Mizion, and writes a column in a religious women’s magazine. Interestingly, when Mizrachi was expecting her quadruplets 21 years ago, she was assisted financially and emotionally by the organization Just One Life, which has close ties to our community of Teaneck, having been founded and supported these many years by the Forgash family of Teaneck as well as others.
The rules of the two-week undertaking are that for the first 36 hours, the secular seeker must shadow her/his mentor in silence, only using a tiny video to record his/her feelings along the way. These 36 hours are painful to the seekers as they are exposed to a way of life and thinking that is not only alien to them but flies in the face of their own way of thinking. These deeply emotional reactions will be used later in the healing and reconciliation process.
The other four pairs consist of a former soccer star, father of current soccer stars, mentored by a rabbi who himself was a former Krav Maga champion, seeking his religious brother from whom he has been alienated for 30 years. The next pair is a 30-year-old children’s theater actor, alienated for 18 years from his twin brother who is now a Breslov chasid living in Yavne’el. His mentor is a 48-year-old giant Breslover chasid who gives internet shiurim on the Torah of Rav Nachman and is a favorite chasid of the head of the Breslov community, Rav Shalom Arush. Bella Ravuy, 32, born in Russia, feels that her father, who has remarried and now heads a charedi family of six children, has rejected her because of her secular lifestyle. She craves her father’s love and acceptance into his new family. She is mentored by Dr. Nurit Sirkus-Bank, 55, an art researcher, born in Boston, who drew closer to Yiddishkeit through the Biala Rebbe and now lives a full chasidic lifestyle with her family.
The final pair is Gil Pinkus, a 57-year-old Intel engineer, whose brother Barak became religious 20 years ago and separated from the family. To fulfill his father’s dying wishes, Pinkus wants to reunite with his brother. He is mentored by Rabbi Rafael Kleinman, 59, a sought-after Jewish mechanech, educator, who grew up secular in Tel Aviv and was at the crux of a successful career in musical entertainment when he became charedi.
During the process toward reconciliation, the seeker and his/her mentor share many intense experiences including a trip to the Baba Sali community in Netivot, participation in a Motzei Shabbos farbrengen, and even a quick trip to Uman! As the mentors make contact with the charedi relatives, we live through the turbulent emotions of the seekers as they await the results of these initial contacts. The final episodes may require a box or two of Kleenex.
The series is conducted in Hebrew with Hebrew subtitles. But even for those in our community whose Hebrew may not be strong, the emotion and depth of feelings between the seekers and their mentors and finally between the seekers and their long-lost relatives will come through to the viewer. This is a series that should not be missed and that will engender many meaningful conversations and reactions.
