Rituals

In Yiddish, there is a proverb: “Vegn a bisl boyml makht men asa groyssn yontev?” — “Because of a little oil we make such a big holiday?" This tongue-in-cheek question touches on something essential about Jewish traditions: the knack for imbuing everyday actions and seemingly small events with a deeper meaning.

Rituals are far more than just religious prescripts. They give structure to life, foster community, and strengthen bonds — between generations, within families, and between people and their faith. They guide us through moments of joy as well as during times of loss. They signify new beginnings and provide guidance in a changing world.

This section features films that explore the diverse rituals shaping Jewish life worldwide. They highlight those exceptional moments when the everyday transforms into something meaningful: a brit mila, a bar mitzvah or bat mitzvah, family traditions, and the passing of a loved one, as remembered in the Kaddish. The films show how rituals foster a sense of belonging, shape identity, and keep the community alive across generations.

Uncommon Ground

There is an old adage that history is written by the victors. In Israel and Palestine, however, history is being continuously rewritten through memory. Each new generation looks back at the same events differently — each shaped by their own losses, hopes, and open wounds. The past never fully fades away; it remains a force that goes on shaping identities, borders, and everyday life right up to the present day.

The films in this section bring together real and fictional stories spanning nearly eight decades of war, conflict, occupation, and repeatedly dashed hopes for coexistence. They range from the end of the colonial era through the profound upheavals of 1948 to the 7th of October 2023, in all its painful results. Political history and personal experience intersect in feature films and documentaries, long and short films, where institutions meet communities, societal ideals meet individual experiences, and collective memory meets private fates.

The title Uncommon Ground points out how difficult it is to find common ground. And yet these films demonstrate that another form of commonality remains possible: not in the form of unity, not as a shared belief system, but in our shared experiences of vulnerability. These films do not encourage us to resolve history, but rather to endure its contradictions. For every political conflict is ultimately shaped by individual lives — and the same landscape can hold multiple, conflicting truths within it.