point of contact

DOSSIER 2006
The official online publication of the
Syracuse International Film Festival, Vol.3
A Point of Contact Production

Keep Not Silent: Ortho-Dykes, Israel
Ilil Alexander, Director
(Documentary- 52 minutes)

Film Review by Tom Friedmann

The scholar and critic Kenneth A. Bruffee has argued persuasively that a group of novels he calls “elegiac romances” are more about the narrators who tell the stories than about the title characters who seem to be the subjects of the narration. Bruffee argues that in the process of telling another’s story, the narrator comes to terms with the loss, enabling him to go on with life. While there is no death of a loved one in Keep Not Silent, it is about loss—the loss of Israeli lesbians who are cut loose or banned by Orthodoxy, essentially the state religion. Ostensibly a film about a number of anonymous (and two identified) lesbians, the documentary (as more and more of the documentaries), is ultimately about the attitude, choices, and judgments of Ilil Alexander, the filmmaker, rather than about the subjects of her film, very much in the mode of Bruffee’s select group of novels.
Although the filmmaker subjects herself to the same visual strategy she employs with most of her subjects—shadowy shots, back views, gauze, fog, night, obscured faces, and altered voices—she is a palpable and known presence, both on screen and in the credits. When her powerful presence is coupled with her vigorous point of view, a view often contradicted by the information on screen, it is no wonder that the audience is more focused by that perception rather than by the documentary’s voices. That this is so is as much a function of Israeli politics (not gender politics) as it is of the filmmaker’s approach. While early stories and films by American Jewish gay men and women—Lev Raphael and Sarah Schulman come to mind—do address the issue of their acceptance by the Orthodox community, most leave the Jewish issue behind. When one does not, such as Dubowski in Trembling Before G-d, he is (not unreasonably) admonished by Andrew Grossman in the film journal bright lights for wasting time and energy on seeking entrance to a club that is better off disbanded than joined. After all, in all countries outside Israel, but especially in the United States, gays and lesbians can participate fully and even revel in their Judaism within most Conservative and all Reform congregations.

But Israel is another question, argues Ilil Alexander, her approach and title suggesting not just the personal urge but the cultural need to penetrate formal Orthodoxy, which, in Israel, is a political as well as religious endeavor. But as heartfelt as the voice of the lesbians is in this film, one wonders at its imperative, because there is no resistance here. The State is represented by a mild mannered rabbi, who stubbornly but without anger much less hate, argues that Orthodoxy simply forbids the entrance of those that do not accept its rules. The woman debating him asks how she can deny her nature. The rabbi says she needs to if she is to join, but no more so than a thief must withstand his urge to steal. While an infelicitous comparison, the point is that a heterosexual who would be Orthodox must similarly conquer the inclination to eat if he wishes to lead prayers on a fast day, to marry the love of his life if she is a divorcee if he is to pronounce the priestly benediction, and in general deny a variety of wants and desires if he wishes to belong to this particular club. And, in any case, who is Cerberus at the gate here? Even the Chassidic man, married to a lesbian, accedes to his wife’s needs as she periodically moves out to spend weekends with her girlfriend while the parents of another Orthodox lesbian appear ready to participate in her wedding to another woman.

The film is thus a visually interesting and inadvertently thought-provoking exercise not about the plight of Orthodox lesbians facing organized religion but about them facing themselves in the mirror. The real question is why these women wish to join formal Orthodoxy since nothing prevents them from being Orthodox. This is foreshadowed in the opening disclaimer where Alexander announces that the shots of women on the street are random and do not correspond to the voices. This protective notice—by implication a measure of opposition and perhaps danger--is followed by the statement that none of the scenes in the film was filmed on either the Sabbath or the Holidays. As Ilit Alexander sets out to storm the citadel, she reassures the defenders that she has not destroyed any of their trees to fashion her arrows! No wonder Andrew Grossman shakes his head (and hand) at the irony of gays and lesbians wanting to belong to a group which if it accepts them, makes them part of a philosophy that denies them. Yet the women yearn for admission and acceptance even as the Orthodox parents and husbands depicted in the film grant them both, with little demur.