HOLY KID IN THE HOLY LAND - THE SCREENINGS

I’ve just returned from 17 days in Israel, screening Praying with Lior in four cities. Even though we’ve had hundreds of successful screenings here in the US, I was nervous. First of all, the phenomenon of “hippie Jews” – the kind of liberal, egalitarian, musical community Lior belongs to – isn’t well known in Israel. Second, for financial reasons, the movie wasn’t subtitled in Hebrew.

The great news is that Israelis do “get” Lior, and he plays as charmingly to an Israeli audience as to an American one. After each screening, countless audience members expressed gratitude for the experience of “getting to know” Lior. And while there were plenty of questions about the Reconstructionist community featured in the film, there was a sensitivity to disability, its challenges and its gifts, perhaps deeper than what I’ve experienced in the United States.

Beth Steinberg, an American woman who moved to Israel two years ago with her family, including her son Akiva who has Down syndrome, concurred with my sense that Israel has a greater level of tolerance, and more services, when it comes to children with disabilities. (Except in the summer. Beth and Miriam Avraham created Camp Shutaf, www.campshutaf.org to provide a summer camp experience for children with disabilities. Based on the Ramah model, the program expanded from 10 children its first summer to 40 this past summer, and 25% of the campers are neurotypical. Shutaf is open to children of all abilities, and all manner of religious observance. The Jerusalem screening was a fundraiser for Shutaf, with a largely American audience.)

The lack of Hebrew subtitles was an issue. At the Haifa International Film Festival, there was silence where I’m used to hearing laughs and gasps. The questions following the screening made it clear they understood the film, but the audience had to work hard to take in the English, and were probably afraid a laugh would obscure the next line.

In Ra’anana, we had a sold-out screening. The audience, largely South African, generously offered up every laugh. The screening was sponsored by Beit Issie Shapiro, (http://www.beitissie.org.il/eng) an extraordinary rehabilitation center/ therapeutic daycare/ professional research and training center for people with disabilities. I was profoundly impressed by the state-of-the-art technology, (you must, at least once in your life, see a Snoezelen Room), the dental clinic, recreation centers, and counseling programs – all housed at Beit Issie, serving several thousand people, and presided over by the indomitable Naomi Stuchiner.

A truly mixed audience, Israeli and American, screened the film at the Tel Aviv Cinemateque. An excellent Q &A session transcended questions about the film itself, and became a sort of Israeli-American dialogue about notions of community, prayer, and inclusion. This chemistry was due, in no small part, to the screening’s sponsor, Beit Tefila Israeli, a liberal egalitarian synagogue in Tel Aviv with ties to New York’s Bnai Jeshurun and Buenos Aires’ Beit El. Check out http://www.btfila.org/en/onepage.htm.

In Israel I met countless disability activists, parents of children with disabilities, and organization leaders who are trailblazing. More about them in the next installment.