As a child growing up in suburban Connecticut, I was never a fan of any particular holiday. A notoriously picky eater, I was horrified by Thanksgiving, with its table full of mushy delicacies comprised of indistinguishable ingredients. Halloween always incited an existential struggle—I remember one year I wanted to be a geisha, but when I saw my fat face slathered in garish white paint, I realized with an unnerving clarity that I could never escape myself.

Easter and 4th of July were benign days spent at the country club nibbling on cold salmon or watching fireworks, respectively, and while it was always great to approach one’s bounty on Christmas morning, the rest of the day felt sad and empty after the presents were unwrapped. One year in particular, my brothers and I voraciously tore through our gifts like rabid baby animals, only to find that we had managed to complete Christmas in 20 minutes. The aftermath was the child’s version of a hangover: exhaustion, confusion, and shame at the human lust you revealed.

But there was always one holy day I lived for, one glorious evening in February when the most special people in the universe came out to shine their light on the rest of us: Oscar Night. Even before I was old enough to see the movies nominated for Best Picture, I anxiously settled in front of the television and watched with glee as the stars sauntered down the red carpet outside the Kodak Theater.

I envied them their long, flowing gowns, public acclaim, and the easy camaraderie with which they interacted with other chosen folk. I began taking theater classes at eight years old, and started spending Oscar night commercial breaks practicing my Best Actress acceptance speech while staring at myself in the bathroom mirror. (I’d deal with the distaste for costumes later.) When Anna Paquin, just a year my elder, won Best Supporting Actress in 1994, I was filled with hot envy as she panted nervously through her acceptance speech.

Though I’ve long abandoned the dream of ever receiving an Oscar nod, I’ve maintained my yearly ritual of watching the ceremony. Every year, I hole up at a girlfriend’s house, and we drink red wine and eat pizza and declare outfits horrible or amazing, rarely in between. We place bets on who will win what, and decry the Academy’s gross oversights when our favorites don’t nab the gold statue. To miss even a moment—including less exciting categories like “sound mixing” or “visual effects”—would be unthinkable.

So imagine my chagrin when I realized that this year, the Oscars will air on the 24th of February, also known the 14th day of the month of Adar, when Jews celebrate Purim. As the holiday approached, I received invitations to three events: the first a Megillah reading on Saturday night, the second a full-scale circus on Sunday afternoon (plus Megillah, round two), and the final one, a concert-cum-schmooze-fest starting at 8:30 p.m. on Sunday evening, which cuts seriously into Oscar-viewing time.

You might wonder, based on my references to the Christian celebrations of my youth, why that would be an issue at all, or why I wouldn’t just say “no” to one event and be satisfied with a single Megillah reading and a hamantaschen or two. Couldn’t I easily fit in at least the red carpet? But fact is that I have been steeped in Jewish learning for more than a year now, and I find myself feeling like this is a larger choice than it seems on the surface—one not of scheduling but of spiritual allegiance. Which is more important to me: old traditions or new?

My process started quietly—first it was a fascination with the Hasidim who walk the city streets alongside me, then an interest in the rich and varied literature, and finally a desire to kiss the mezuzah and say the Shema. I began writing about Jewish issues and events in New York City basically as an excuse to insert myself into Jewish environments, and every bit of learning I did, from Hebrew classes to memorizing prayers, I passed off as educational endeavors that would help advance my career.

It was a while before I could admit to myself, let alone anyone else, that all this study was about something deep in my heart, not a general exercise in cultural anthropology, and that what I wanted wasn’t just to observe and comment on Jewish life, but to live it. I wanted to convert to Judaism. Even today, I fear the reaction when I admit this pursuit of mine. Will people make assumptions about me, and why I’m choosing to make this change? Will they scoff in disbelief that I can do the difficult work that conversion entails?

But we know that on Purim, we commemorate that Esther—whose name is derived from the Hebrew satar, which means hidden—revealed her Jewish identity to her husband, the king, and saved the Jewish people from certain slaughter. If she can be brave in the face of death, then certainly I can be too in far less dire circumstances.

This Sunday, I emerge from the want-to-convert closet and declare proudly that my priorities are Jewish ones and my soul a neshama. It’s a small exchange I’m making—a secular costume party for a religious one, a feast of glamour for a feast of tradition, but for me, it feels defining. Instead of critiquing diamond accessories and filling out ballots, I will throw my lot in with the people I love.

Now if I could only decide what to wear…

(Image via Featureflash / Shutterstock.com)

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The post Trading in My Academy Awards Tradition For a New One: Purim appeared first on Jewcy.

The year’s most accomplished, and most important, films about war, terrorism, and geopolitics aren’t Argo and Zero Dark Thirty. They’re two modestly budgeted films from Israel and the Palestinian Territories. And, unlike their American counterparts, they’re not drawing on true stories for blockbuster entertainment. No, they are the thing itself: blistering documentaries about life and death, violence and oppression, and the struggle to remain human in unbearable conditions. 5 Broken Cameras and The Gatekeepers are morality tales, as much of a warning for gung-ho Americans of the potential costs of their military adventures as they are stark indictments of the Israeli occupation and its effects on Palestinian life.

Now, both 5 Broken Cameras and The Gatekeepers are nominees for the Academy Award for Best Documentary, to be awarded this Sunday in Los Angeles. That two of the five films nominated in this category are highly critical of Israeli security policies—and the politicians who oversee them—reflects a stark change in Hollywood’s treatment of Israeli cinema. From 1964 through 2006, only six Israeli films were nominated for Best Foreign Language Film, and none won (a film must be first submitted; being a nominee in this category is the equivalent of being a finalist). During this time, Israel had a single documentary nominated for an Academy Award—The 81st Blow, a 1974 film about the oppression of Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe.

That began to change in 2007, with the Foreign Language Film nomination of Beaufort, a tale of brotherhood and valor in the last days of Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon. Beaufort was followed by Waltz with Bashir, a dark look at the trauma of IDF veterans who served in Lebanon and their complicity in the Sabra and Shatila massacre. (Due to the Academy’s picayune rules, Waltz with Bashir, while ostensibly an animated documentary, was submitted under the category of Best Foreign Language Film.) In 2009, Ajami, a grim story about forbidden love and clan violence in Jaffa, was also a nominee. Co-directed by a Christian Palestinian and a Jewish Israeli, the film represented a further victory for Israel’s progressive film industry.

But labeling these films as Israeli has proved problematic. In 2010, Scandar Copti, one of the directors of Ajami, strongly rejected the notion that he represented Israel: “The film technically represents Israel, but I don’t represent Israel. I cannot represent a country that does not represent me.” And more recently, Emad Burnat, the co-director of 5 Broken Cameras, objected to his film being called Israeli.

Burnat has a point. 5 Broken Cameras is almost entirely his production. He spent years filming the nonviolent protests in his village of Bil’in, where residents struggle with the encroachment of the separation barrier and the calving off of land for Israeli settlements. Burnat had some assistance from Israeli director Guy Davidi, but Burnat did the bulk of the cinematography, contributed the narration, and is the documentary’s star. It’s his story. And while the film received some government financing, Burnat isn’t an Israeli citizen; he’s a Palestinian living under Israeli military occupation. (Ajami also received some support from the Israeli government.)

The Academy doesn’t distinguish between nationalities for the documentary category, which is why two “Israeli” films can be nominated at once. But they are an important pairing—not the whole story of the occupation, but two essential pieces of it. With patience and steely determination, 5 Broken Cameras leads us through the daily humiliations of attacks from the army and settlers, night raids, the arrests of children, and the difficulty of staying nonviolent amidst an excruciating situation. We see the birth of Burnat’s son, Gibreel, and hear some of his first words: the Arabic terms for shells and soldiers.

The Gatekeepers, in turn, offers unprecedented admissions from six retired heads of Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, all of whom issue startling critiques of Israeli policy towards the Palestinians. “We are making the lives of millions unbearable,” says Carmi Gillon, who also relates his pain at failing to protect Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin from a right-wing Jewish assassin. “Suddenly it becomes a kind of conveyor belt,” says Ami Ayalon, about the practice of targeted assassinations. At the end of the movie, he laments, “We win every battle, but we lose the war”—words that highlight the ultimate futility of what one former Shin Bet chief calls “tactics without strategy.” All of these men, including the iron-fisted Avraham Shalom, advocate negotiating with enemies, from Hamas to Ahmadinejad.

These films, too, represent a kind of negotiation, one that would have us move beyond antique binaries of victimhood and victory. By nominating 5 Broken Cameras and The Gatekeepers, the Academy is spurring a dialogue that started only after decades of laureled films about European Jewish survival and Israeli might. These are much different movies than Exodus, Schindler’s List, or Munich. They’re about guilt, justice, dignity, and the limits of violence; they’re about the long hangover of war and the mature demands of statehood. Kathryn Bigelow, who calls herself a “lifelong pacifist” while in the same breath praising the bravery of those prosecuting the war on terror, would do well to watch.

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Beyond Nepotism

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