"Jewish law includes a great number of lifestyle rules" "that must be strictly followed." "It is forbidden to eat pork, seafood or shellfish." "You mustn't mix meat an,d daly in the same meal" "on the same plate or in the same sink." "Shabbat runs from Friday evening through Saturday evening" "and is dedicated to God." "It is forbidden to work use electricity or cars" "cook, smoke, etc." "Ultra-Orthodox families have no contact" "with the outside world" "and read only religious texts." "The young people do not serve in the militay." "In Hebrew, entering the religion is literally said.." ""going toward the answer."" "Leaving the religion is literally said.." ""going toward the question."" "I'm 22 years old." "I still live with my parents." "I can't show my face because that might cause problems." "I studied in a yeshiva." "I was a pretty good student but I wasn't interested." "Evey time I heard a, stoy from the Bible it was horrible for me because while the other kids my age were learning" "things like English and mathematics, I was wasting my time." "My parents see this situation as being predestined." "They figure if I'm not re, ligious today, that's ok because I'll come back to it." "It's something God has written." "When I was 19, I really wanted to cut off my side curls." "I was scared to death to do it but a cheeky friend of mine said, "Let them go to hell."" "He talked me into it, saying, "You want to do it, so do it."" "We went into the bedroom and he cut them offfor me." "I considered saving them, but then threw them out the window." "I can still see myself standing on a chair..." "My mother or the maid is feeding me an egg with some bread." "I look out the barred window into the courrtyard and suddenly, the light outside, the bars and the interior take on a vey imporrtant signification." "I remember I was raising some animals which was not common among the Ultra-Orrthodox." "I had roosters and there were cats I wo!" "uld feed." "I had a secret dog." "He slept in the neighbors' courrtyard, but I felt he was mine." "It wasn't exactly forbidden, but it just wasn't done, because animals are dirrty and impure, they aren't parrt ofthe religious proposition." "When I was a little older I had a secular neighbor who always wore sporrts clothes." "I can still picture him tearing around the c,orner in rollerskates and me realizing I'm not a parrt ofthe world he lives in." "Not because you aren',t allowed to rollerskate but because it isn't, parrt of our culture it isn't appreciated, it isn't acceptable." "I become aware of a cerrtain sex-appeal, a sensuality, a contact with life, that I don't have and that I don't want to miss out on." "Even as a child, I wanted to leave the Ultra-Orrthodox world and become secular but I didn't know how to go about it." "I made a variety of attempts." "One day, after Shabbat lunch, I went to a secular neighborhood far from my house." "I wanted to knock on a random door and say, "Hello, I'm Menahem," ""please adopt me, I want to be secular."" "I was on a doorstep but shie,d away and went back home vey sad." "Later, when I was about 14 or 15 I wanted to buy "Yediot A'haronot" and "Ma'ariv"" "but in Bnei-Barak you couldn't find those new!" "spapers, not even in the trash cans." "I had to go to Ramat-Gan, but I couldn't go in my religious clothing, I was too embarrassed." "So I snuck out at 2 in the morning, went to the secular neighborhood and rummaged through the garbage cans." "I gathered up any newspapers that caught my eye and slipped them into my pants." "Back at the yeshiva, I went into the bathroom and leafed through the papers, clearing my throat to hide the rustling sound." "When I finished I tore them all into little'pieces and flushed them down the toilet." "Sometimes, ripping the newspaper took longer than reading it did." "That's me on the left my father on the right, and my brothers in the center." "This is me at my Bar-Mitzvah." "I was a Hazan for my Rabbi, and also at the Great Synagogue in Tel-Aviv." "I come from the most radical current ofthe Hassidic community, the Neturei'" "Karta "The Guardians ofthe!" "City."" "The Neturei-Karrta are extremists." "They don't recogniz,e the State of Israel they don't vote, and they don't mix with other Hassidic communities or Ultra-Orrthodox groups." "They are vey close-minded people." "I lived there until the age of 20." "I studied at a yeshiva." "Today I'm a secular actor." "I come from the Lithuanian Ultra-Orrthodox community." "They aren't the most radical, but they don't accept other ideas or other ways ofthinking." "They ty to stifle people who think differently." "I come from a family of eight children." "We lived in an Ultra-Orrthodox village near Haifa." "When I was 14 or 15 I asked myself," ""Why am I following all these rules?" ""Why do I live and behave like an Orrthodox Jew?"" "Once, at the small yeshiva, I was questioning my faith." "I went to see the Mashgi'ach , who is the spiritual guide, and expressed my doubts." "He told me, "Go study the Talmud seriously for two weeks," ""and ifyou still have qu,estions, come see me." "He expected me to go into a trance and the questions would just disappear." "But 2 weeks later I ca,me back and he said" ""Go back and study even harder," ""and ifyou still have qu,estions, come see me." "A thousand young people sitting in an immense room, they're studying, there is a terrible din." "It's a huge yeshiva." "Eveyone is engrossed in their work." "It's the beginning ofthe school year, and a new boy arrives..." "What happened in that room was incredible." "This young man was of a rare and stunning beauty." "He was silkky smooth, his expression was charismatic," "he was blond..." "A real work of arrt." "As he crossed the room you could feel an awed silence take hold." "It was a moment of suspended animation." "For a long time, it was hard to approach him." "The other boys avoided studying with him, afraid they'd be suspected ofwanting something from him." "The question of desire is a real one, and it is legitimate, for if religion forbids sin, the idea of sin is omnipresent." "I was born in a religious kibbutz, the most religious kibbutz in Israel." "From a pretty young age, I sensed I was not in harmony with the education I was receiving." "But it took me several years before I understood that the solution was to leave." "I believe my father, my mother also, but especially my father, knew long before I did" "that I was going to become secular." "We had conflicts sometimes violent argu!" "ments," "during my adolescence, but also before that." "I think he sensed I was distancing myselffrom the world he wanted me to live in." "But I didn't understand why he was so angy, because I didn't realize I was heading toward the exterior." "On the contray, I thought my belief would become stronger through my doubts and questions." "When I was about 16 years old, I became the kibbutz projectionist." "In each kibbutz, one person is assigned to program films." "I would select them from a catalog and show them evey other week." "I had anotherjob, which was to censure the films." "It was forbidden to show things like nudity, sex, swear words, etc." "Before projecting the films, I would watch them in the kibbutz bomb shelter and make notes on bits of paper which I'd slip into the reel at the places I needed to censure during the projection." "Each time a scrap of paper came up, I knew it was time to act and I'd blur the image" "or cover the lens or turn offthe sound." "That's how I became interested in cinema." "But it was a vey strange situation." "In a cerrtain way, it reflected the fact that they were giving up on me." "The people in the kibbutz would say," ""He's almost out the door anyway," ""so it's ok for him to see all these vile, horrid things," ""just as long as he protects us from them."" "When I was little on the eve of Shabbat or on holidays," "when the whole family was reunited, there were always questions like, "What have you been studying?"" "Eveybody had to talk about what they'd been learning." "I have a lot of siblings, so it would take a long time." "Then my father would read the week's Parshah various excerpts from the T' orah." "It bored me senseless so I'd go into the kitchen and help my mother prepare the meal." "It would get me..." "Helping my mother earned me points." "But most of all the kitchen was the place where l could escape." "To my mind, taste is..." "Taste and cuisine are in the realm ofthe senses." "I always knew my mother's cooking was bad." "It bothered me." "I would ty to make it better." "Even when I was really little, I remember that when she would make soup and set it on the burner ifthe electric burn, er was turned off the soup would be cold." "So I'd turn it on, on Shabbat." "It didn't even occur to,me that this was a sin or that I'd be punished." "That was the last of my worries." "What I was interested in was making the food... making the food better." "I left home at the age of 14 and a half." "For several years, I had been tying to imagine what my life would be like later on, as an Ultra-Orrthodox Jew." "And I didn't really like what I imagined." "At the time, my big sister had just gotten married at the age of 16." "As I was the second-born I could see my turn approach'ing." "A year or two later I'd be getting engaged and married too, and there would be no way out for me." "So I decided... I realized that if I wanted to get out, I'd have to" "go somewhere, learn, get a general education." "I went to see my parents and I told them I wanted to leave the yeshiva where l was studying and go to another school." "This caused arguments and tears, and they told me, "Not while you're under our roof."" "That was it." "I left home that vey night." "On Shabbat I would usually eat at m!" "y parents." "I would show up with the hat and suit go to synagogue, and eat with eveyone." "After the meal I'd go home in my car, which was parked a few blocks away." "I lived pretty far away from my parents' house, and on Friday afternoons, if I wasn't going to come, I'd call and wish them Shabbat Shalom." "But one time I forgot, and apparently my parents already had their doubts about my religious devotion." "I was at my place with two religious friends who had come over to watch television." "That night, when I didn't show up at my parents' house, they got suspicious." "They walked for miles and spied on me through the blinds." "I was smoking and watching TV." "They went into mourning." "They returned home and couldn't sleep." "The next day, totally unaware ofthe situation, I'm in my room and someone knocks." "I'm smoking a cigarette, convinced it's one of my friends..." "The shock of a lifetime." "I open the door and it's my mother, with my father behind her." "They know." "I didn't know what to say." "All I could manage was," ""Had I known it was you," ""l'd have done anything to keep you from finding out."" "I was really sincere." "I couldn't say "l'm sory"." "All I could say was," ""lt's too bad you had to see it."" "My relationship with them is filled with pain." "It was such a shock that we kept right on talking, closing our eyes to reality, as though the future would be cleansed ofthis past and it would never happen again." "It was like a mutual lie that brought us closer together, but deep down we knew we could never go back." "I knew nothing ofthe secular world." "Not even the language, Hebrew." "At home we spoke Yiddish." "I starrted working as a delivey boy for a green grocer." "I worked there for a month." "The job was located within the Ultra-Orrthodox zone." "It wasn't the neighborhood I had grown up in, but it was neverrtheless an Ultra-Orrthodox neighborhood." "At the time I still wore the religio!" "us garb, with the side curls and everything." "After about a month I starrted to run into too many people who knew me and receive messages from my family and the community" "advising me not to hang around in that neighborhood." "I looked for, and found a job in construction." "I worked on a building site." "The foreman was an Arab." "I began working for him." "It was a good job, I was paid by the day." "I worked there for a while." "A month later I had gained self-confidence, I had enough money." "I went to the barbershop, got my side curls cut off, and bought myself some new clothes." "Nearly two years ago now, one of my sisters called me." "It was vey surprising because I hadn't had any contact with my brothers and sisters for almost 8 years." "She starrted telling me she had gotten engaged, but then had decided... she didn't want this guy." "The engagement was called off." "Soon after another engagement w!" "as arranged." "At that point she realized she could no longer say no, so she decided to leave home." "I immediately told her she was welcome to stay with me." "She was almost 18 years old and had decided to join the army." "A year later, another sister, a younger one, who was vey close to her..." "Like her big sister, she contacted me and left home." "Now both ofthem live with me." "My name is Michal, I'm 23 years old." "When I left the religion, my parents took it vey hard." "But gradually it has becom, e a real bond between us a tentative one, but they accept me." "When I go to their house, I wear a skirrt and proper clothing." "When I joined the army, they asked us to share something special about ourselves." "Some girls told oftheir experiences abroad." "I decided to tell them I'd left the religion." "I figured it's parrt of my identity, I should share my stoy." "The reactions were different than I had imagined." "People asked me questions, parrticularly about my personal life." "They distanced themselves, looked at me funny." "I even sensed a cerrtain animosity." "The first time I go to the movies, I slip inside." "Eveyrything is dark." "I spy a row of empty chairs and choose one happy to be in the fron!" "t row, convinced I've got the best seat in the theater." "The room starrts to fill up but nobody sits next to me, and I'm wondering why." "Then the film begins and the screen is gigantic." "The image is so huge l can't see anyything." "When I met my first girlfr,iend in the secular world" " her name was Veronika she was 18 and a half - l found myself in a trickky situation." "Even though we were vey m, uch in love with each other when the time came to go to bed together" " l was sleeping over at her house - l was scared to death." "Even if I had been married the problem was I didn't know if sex with secular people was the same as sex with religious people." "The whole day long, I was thinking," ""She's gonna want to have sex." And I was terrified." "When night fell, I asked her for a kiss and she said, "Shall we continue?" And I... I couldn't give her a typical secular response, like," ""Let's take it slow this is serious..."" "I didn't know that vocabulay." "I used the psychologist's premarital advice," ""Say you're tired, you need to study..."" "Sometimes I would study all night because ofthat bullshit." "But it was vey difficult." "It took me five months to sleep with her." "First meetings with secular people aren't vey easy." "They don't identify with you." "They don't understand the process you're engaged in or the world you've come from." "Their attitude is not without pre-conceived notions." "It's easy for secular people to pretend..." "You sense that in their eyes, you're nothing but a "Dos"." ""Dos" is not just a word that serrves to criticize or define it is a term of contempt." "They'll ask you, "So, you make love through a sheet?"" "All sorrts ofweird questions like that." "You end up tying to see just how religious the people you're dealing with are." "You ask them ifthey e, at bread on Passover and they say, "Are you crazy?"" "Of course they fast on Yom Kippur!" "Mary a gentile?" "Not on your life!" "So you say, "ln fact, you're a Dos."" ""Why don't you wear a kippa?" or, "You racist!"" ""Why wouldn't you mary a non-Jew?"" "These things make them doubt their secular identity." "They realize it isn't as solid as they thought." "There is another dimension to this." "By provoking these doubts about their secular identity, you recover the lost honor ofyour religious past." "Purim is a joyful holiday for Jews." "The boys dress up as girls..." "Eveyone freely expresses their thoughts without having to justify anyything." "Last Purim I returned to the place where l grew up, with a camera, and I saw my father." "I hadn't seen him in 3 years." "He didn't recognize me for l was wearing a disguise." "But I filmed him." "We both felt something." "He kept looking at the camera and then looking down." "My name is Noam. I'm 43 years old." "Twenty years ago, I went to Brooklyn seeking to change my life." "I wanted something exciting to happen." "I wanted adventure." "After living in Broo, klyn for 6 months" "I was preparing to return to Israel, more lost and confused than ever before." "I wasn't happy there either." "But then I was invited to a Habad center in Brooklyn for a conference with Rabbi Lubavitch." "So I went." "I walked into this vast room teeming with devout followers," "and the Rabbi was there presiding over eveyrything'." "He had an incredible presence." "The energy in that room was powerful." "It fascinated me." "I felt drawn to it." "Next I was invited to a Habad seminar and then to the yeshiva for those entering the religion, and I stayed." "I became a Habadni'k a student ofthe yeshiva." "I changed my manner of dress, grew a beard and decided I wanted to join them." "I wanted to be a parrt ofthis clan and find happiness." "Which is what happened." "Smile, eveyrything is positive." "One day, my family and I were in our car on a glorious winter's day." "A rainbow appeared." "I said to the children "Look at the beautiful rain!" "bow!"" "Shneior, my eldest son, who was 12 at the time said to me "lt's forbidden to look a!" "t rainbows!"" ""Why, Shneior, who told you that?"" ""My teacher told us it's forbidden."" "So I thought about it... and I remembered that this stoy indeed exists in the Talmud." "The rainbow is a sign from God that there will be no more deluge, according to Genesis." "It's a bad omen for the gen,eration that sees a rainbow because it means that they deserrve the deluge." "That's why they say that looking at a rainbow is dangerous." "It can impair your eyesight." "So I said to my son Shneior," ""Rainbows are a natural phenomenon," ""there is nothing dangerous or scay about them," ""you mustn't be afraid to look at them."" "And my wife says to me, "What you're doing isn't good." ""Contradicting what he's learning in school and confusing him."" "At that moment, I realized the full measure ofthe problem within my own family." "I have to keep my mouth shut, I can't be spontaneous." "I can't say what I think." "I also remember another incident." "One Shabbat we entered the syna!" "gogue and I asked Shneior" ""What do you want to be when you grow up?"" "And he said "A Habad Emiss'ay"." "That's someone who sets up a Habad center and brings Jews to Judaism." "It's the highest aspiration they can imparrt to children." "So I asked him" ""Imagine yourself in 10 years, you've become an emissay," ""you're running a Habad center and bringing Jews to Judaism." ""What will you tell them?" "That Rabbi Lubavitch" ""announced the arrival ofthe Messiah, implying himself?" ""He's been dead for 15 years now!" "Who'll believe you?"" "The poor kid was on the verge oftears." "He said," ""That's impossible, and I don't want you to mention it again."" "It was a vey difficult m, oment for both of us because I could see I had him up against the wall." "I was the one who had raised him to follow this path, and suddenly I was confronting him with something that could destroy it all." "Today he's studying in a yeshiva." "He no longer has any contact with me." "Neither do my three daughters." "All four of my adult children no longer want to see me." "They don't want to speak to me or have any contact with me." "I only see my two little boys." "I have become a threat to their spirituality, someone they need to keep away from." "I was meant to cary on the family tradition." "They invested a great deal in me." "When I left home l never imagined that it would all end that I wouldn't see my mother and father anymore." "Little by little... time passed, and during that time..." "Right from the beginning, I said to myself..." "Vey quickly, I understood that I had made an extremely selfish choice." "I did what was right for me, leaving eveyrything behind, knowing it would deeply hurrt my parents and my siblings." "I went through different phase, s." "I missed them a lot at first then I became angy at them." "But in the end, I understood that this was precisely what I had run from." "They have no right to exist outside the community." "This is the minimum debt they owe their community, this break with me." "They are clearly now considered to be people who were incapable of properly educating their son." "Our families are afraid that our siblings will ,either follow our lead or be given poor marriage options." "When one child leaves the religion, his or her brother or sister is vey unlikely to be offered a good marriage." "The community proposes a "second choice"." "The sibling of someone who has gone secular also becomes a second choice." "That places a heavy w,eight on our shoulders and obliges us to keep it a secret," "so we pretend to be religious all week long, and live as we please only on the weekends." "We met six years ago." "The meeting was arranged, in keeping with the rules." "On the fifth meeting we got engaged, and two months later we were married." "After 3 and a halfyears of marriage we discovered that we shared the same thoughts and feelings." "Then one day our secular cousin invited us for Shabbat and we accepted." "We thought, "We'll take our pots and disposable plates."" "We didn't bother to notice that Shabbat had begun, I forgot to light the candles..." "Eveyrything just happened naturally." "We used the remote control and turned on the lights without a second thought." "On Saturday afternoon they said, "Who's coming to the beach?"" "We didn't know Tel-Aviv yet and we figured we'd be going to the beach on foot." "We didn't know they'd be taking the car." "The whole way, we were afraid we'd have an accident and have to explain to our parents why we were in a car on Saturday." "We arrived at the seaside and walked along the beach." "There was a magnificent wind, and I felt it" "blowing through my hair." "I starrted to cy." "It was the first time in 3 and a halfyears that I had felt the wind in my hair." "Up until then, I had worn the wig." "It was such a powerful sensation that I knew I wanted to be secular." "There is no turning back for me." "When we went to the amusement park for his birrthday, we took this ride that looked like a giant snake." "It slowly inches skywards, then comes to a stop at the summit." "At that instant I realize we're about to careen downwards and as we slide over the edge, I'm screaming," ""Ok, I'll come back to the religion, I'll come back to the religion!"" "Translation.." "Sionann O'Neill" "Subtitling Titra Film Paris"