By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO – Wrestling Jerusalem is a rather incredible one-man show, now filmed, in which writer and actor Aaron Davidman, in some 22 vignettes over 93 minutes, portrays the complexities, hardened positions, anger, sadness, frustration, fervor, poignancy, and, eventually, hope that characterize Israelis and Palestinians in the seemingly never-ending dispute. Because of its intensity, the movie is almost as exhausting to watch as it must have been for Davidman to perform it.
Although he tries to present all sides, Davidman clearly leans leftward, placing most of the responsibility on Israel for bringing the conflict to a peaceful, even amicable, solution in which everyone recognizes that when we say, “God is One,” in our Shm’a, we are not simply saying that there is only one God, rather than many. We are saying that God encompasses the totality of the universe, including its creatures, and that therefore Jews and Arabs equally are part of God.
Few people will be able to view this movie and say, “I didn’t learn anything new” because Davidman tries to genuinely reflect the anguish felt on both sides, as well as the internal controversies that divide Jew against Jew, and Arab against Arab.
In this tour de force, we meet a left-wing, secular Jew; a Kabbalist; a Muslim proselytizer; an American Jewish tourist in the Palestinian Authority; a Palestinian woman who opposes violence, however tempting she feels violence may be; a Holocaust-haunted Jew, who doesn’t want to be guilty of committing similar atrocities; an idealistic American Jew on his first visit to Jerusalem; an IDF officer who has moral qualms about reprisals against Palestinian families, but feels war is war; and an American supporter of Israel, who is angered by world criticism of Israel.
The movie continues with a representative of B’Tselem, the organization that monitors the IDF, some say to propagandize against it. He is followed by an academic who expounds on the anti-colonialist philosophy of the left, and suggests that Zionism was just a silly idea until the Holocaust transformed it into a reality. A psychologist suggests that when a child is held in its mother’s arms, he or she can see the warmth and the love in her eyes; but when that mother and child live in a war zone, the baby sees fear, and concern, and grows up with the gnawing fear that “I am not safe,” a fear generations of Israelis and Palestinians have been weaned on.
On the movie goes, with Davidman as narrator taking a trip to a Palestinian village, where a mother of seven children has seen her husband slain by an Israeli sniper, and where a young boy has been maimed. Next, we attend a school for Arab women, where one complains that girls in Palestinian society are married off too young and without education, becoming easy intellectual prey for Hamas. Education is the key, she contends. In Hebron, a visiting Jew sees a crowd with loud voices, fists thrown up into the air, and he is afraid, but then he doesn’t understand what they are saying, because it is all in Arabic. In another vignette, Davidman, taking the pro-Israel side, argues with Davidman, portraying an anti-Israel American Jew. We meet a religious settler who says “Palestine” was a name given to the land by Romans intent on wiping out Jewish history, just as Arabs today are also trying to do. Those who sympathize with them, “have drunk the Kool-Aid of the Galut.” In another portrayal, Davidman is a Palestinian whose grandparents’ orchard was torn up to make way for the separation wall.
At the Dead Sea, we meet a young pot-smoking Israeli, who only lasted six months in the Army. He has PTSD, having been at the scene of a suicide bombing and watching two of his friends cut to pieces by the shrapnel. And we are with Davidman at the Kotel, reflecting on the meaning of wearing a kippah. It is not only to cover one’s head in respect; it also is to mark the physical boundary between ourselves and the vast universe created by God.
Davidman’s movie is now being screened around Israel. It will be interesting to see the reaction. Perhaps Israelis already know all these different viewpoints; perhaps they have encountered all these personalities in their daily lives.
As the movie ends, one reflects on its beginning, in which Davidman shouts and writhes as he repeats a polarizing list of places, people, and incidents that have kept the emotional content of the dispute on a high boil. So many opinions, so many interpretations, where is truth, WHERE IS TRUTH?
Screenings of the movie may be booked via this website: http://www.wrestlingjerusalem.com/book-a-screening.html
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com