Religious Studies: Judaism

Examines the similarities and differences in religious beliefs and practices of the Jews, Christians and Muslims

Few filmmakers have probed issues of Israeli nationalism and Israeli-Palestinian relations more completely or intimately than Tel Aviv-born Yulie Cohen. In My Israel, Cohen revisits her acclaimed trilogy My terrorist (2002), My land Zion (2004), and My brother (2007) with new footage, fresh perspective, and her trademark fearlessness. For Cohen, Israel is the land of her ancestors, the land her parents fought for during the 1948 war and the land she herself served as an Air Force officer during the Entebbe crisis. In 1978, working as an El Al stewardess, she survived a terrorist attack in London that killed a colleague and left her with shrapnel in her arm. Embarking on a difficult and emotional journey, she attempts to free the surviving terrorist who attacked her, to question the myths of the state that she grew up in, and to reconcile with her ultra-orthodox brother after 25 years of estrangement. My Israel is an account of remarkable courage and understanding set against the last turbulent decade of Israeli history

Three Jewish women, Myriam Klotz, Rus Burdman, and Marcia Jarmel, discuss their relationship to Judaism. What does tradition have to offer modern women? This film illuminates the conflicts between assimilation and tradition, community and individualism through braided lives of: Rus, a musician and social worker who discovers fulfillment in a traditional religious community; Myriam, a spiritually-oriented lesbian, struggling to find her own spiritual home; and the filmmaker, challenged to confront her own lack of ethnic identity, as she tours the private world of traditional Judaism