Identity

Several weeks ago I attended a lecture entitled "Genesis and the Big Bang". The speaker was a religious physicist, which is a contradiction in terms according enlightened western thought, but here he's just another brilliant scientist. He made the case, in terms I could barely understand but illustrated by a power point so it must be true, that in fact the world could have been created in 6 days.

Time as a concept has been on my mind lately, as we count down the days till we leave. Does time really speed up as we get older? When people say where has the time gone, where does it go? I have a very early (I must have been 5 or 6) memory of telling my father I wanted to be a grown up. He told me I'd be a grown up before I could turn around. Of course I turned around and said see, I'm still little. Then one day I turned around and found an adult staring back at me in the mirror. I can't rewind the tape and stop at the exact frame when the transition took place, any more than I can point to the moment when I began to implode due to the fact that we are leaving here in less than two weeks. With winter weather finally making an appearance in Chicago,  I'm even less inclined to get on that plane.

We rarely go to movies, but last Saturday night we went to a screening of Moonlight, which won the Oscar for best picture. Maybe we're not sophisticated enough to appreciate the subtleties, but neither one of us could understand what made this movie worthy of the Oscar. The acting was very good but the story didn't hold up. We found it to be choppy, trite, unconvincing, and it left too many loose ends. If it was about identity it didn't accomplish it's mission. As I thought about it, I couldn't help but wonder if the film would have won the same accolades if it had been set in Appalachia. Israel, particularly Jerusalem, is a place where identity is very important. It impacts where you live, go to school, how you dress, who you marry, your political affiliation, your livelihood, even how you spend your leisure time. How would the filmmaker capture the complexities of identity if the story was set here? Would he adequately portray the nuances, or would his characters be one-dimensional cutouts? An authentic film about identity in Israel is no easy task, one that this filmmaker isn't up to. 

Purim was celebrated on Sunday night and Monday. It's a big holiday here, and not just for kids. In Jerusalem the mayor, who is very big on public entertainment and festivities, made sure the right atmosphere was created by having all kinds of music and entertainment venues throughout the downtown area. We went to Pardes to hear the megilla. It was a good choice because we knew two of the readers, and almost everyone wore a costume.

The Jerusalem Marathon took place this morning. 25,000 runners participated, and the route went almost by our door. It's a difficult race because of all the hills. We've seen a lot of runners training in the neighborhood, including an increasing number of religious women who wear skirts over their tights. It brings to mind the burkini and hijab controversies in France, where religious garb can't be worn in public. Hmmmm. I wonder what kind of identity film Barry Jenkins would make about that.

Shabbat shalom from Jerusalem,
Peggy and Sid