The Ashkenazim
Israel 2005
52 minutes
"The Ashkenazim" is a funny-sad film about young Israelis searching for a new identity - Ashkenazi - instead of the Israeli identity that was formed in the country through the process of forgetting the past and scorn for the diaspora. The film follows a group of young people on their journey to their Ashkenazi roots. Asaf Galay establishes the movement for Ashkenazi identity, dreaming of connecting young people with a culture that was created in Europe over a thousand years ago, physically erased by the Holocaust and spiritually marginalized in Israel. Tamy Ben-Tor creates a sexy electro-Yiddish cabaret, Yirmi Pinkus fills his comics with elderly Ashkenazi women, and Itamar Handelman Ben-Canaan, who has always been ashamed of his Ashkenazi roots, falls in love with Olga, a Russian immigrant, and returns to the customs of his grandparents. What makes the children of the Israeli melting pot look longingly towards Europe. Why do they want to lose their Israeli identity and why do they feel guilty and marginalized? Who are they angry at - Zionism, Mizrahim, Arabs, their parents? What is missing for them in their homeland? What makes them want to turn back the wheel and bring the lost Ashkenazi culture to the Middle East?
