Our teens have managed to corner the babysitting market at our local synagogue. So when the WhatsApp message first arrived a week and a half ago from one of the other dads, it seemed pretty routine.
“Can one of your kids babysit Saturday night? We’re going to see an Oscar nominated documentary that’s only in town for a week.”
I’ve known this couple for many years, having interacted with them in both Jewish professional settings and lay leadership roles. I also know them well enough to recognize that neither of them are cinephiles and certainly not the type to spend a Saturday night chasing down a limited-run indie film.
“No Other Land?” I messaged back. And then, I received a single emoji response: 🤫.
I too saw the film last week, which chronicles Israeli demolitions in the Palestinian West Bank village of Masafer Yatta, and had prepared myself mentally to walk out in the middle after seeing Hasbaraniks decry it as a calumny.
Instead I found myself enraptured by it. It is a deeply emotional and thought-provoking documentary that is heavy and heartbreaking, doubly so for those of us who love Israel. You see images of IDF bulldozers destroying a school, an Israeli cement truck filling a well with concrete cutting off water to the village, soldiers protecting settlers throwing rocks, an IDF soldier shooting a man at point-blank range because he was trying to protect his family’s generator.
But the novelty of the film isn’t its depiction of the occupation or of shining a light on a hitherto unknown subject. The tensions between settlers and Palestinians in the Hebron Hills depicted in the film have been featured here on JTA since Jewish settlement began there in 1945. Instead the film is at its best in capturing the resiliency of its protagonists. It doesn’t just focus on victimhood, it captures a glimmer of hope through the solidarity and defiance of those who refuse to be silenced.
And that makes the silence around this film in the Jewish community all the more perplexing to me. To be sure, there are countless articles about the “controversy” the film has generated, but shockingly little discussion around its content. I’ve found myself dying to talk about the film with others. About the hopelessness it left me with, the embarrassment of seeing home demolitions perpetuated in my name, and the struggle of balancing the Jewish values of kol yisrael aravim zeh bazeh, the idea of Jewish mutual responsibility, with Torah’s ideals of equality, justice, and human dignity.
But it seems no one really wants to talk about it.
The silence is so familiar. It’s the same silence we’ve seen after Oct. 7, a silence that’s lingered in our community ever since that terrible day. We’re still holding our breath, still processing, but also avoiding the conversation. We say we’re grieving, and we are, but we haven’t found the words to truly confront the loss, to truly address the trauma, to talk about what it means and how we move forward from that day. We are also scared— scared of speaking out and facing pushback, bullying and retribution from within our Jewish community as our institutions have largely clung to a single Israel narrative. We’ve gotten good at protecting ourselves, good at keeping things quiet. But in doing so, we’re also preventing ourselves from healing. That silence is its own form of trauma, one that binds us in ways we don’t even realize.
As someone whose grandmother made aliyah in 1949, who’s visited Israel more times than I can count, who was a pro-Israel activist on campus back during the second intifada, and who has served on the Israel and Overseas Committee at my local Jewish federation, I’ve had the privilege of seeing Israel through a number of different lenses. I’ve seen the beauty of the land and its people, and I’ve also seen the painful complexities that come with living in such a contested space. It’s from this vantage point that I see the silences within our community that so often prevent meaningful dialogue.
My friend’s emoji — that single finger to the lips — spoke volumes. It wasn’t just a personal signal between two friends but a reflection of something larger that I’ve been feeling in our community for a while. The silence. The unwillingness to speak openly about the things that make us uncomfortable. The tension between what we know, what we feel and what we dare to voice. That emoji wasn’t just about keeping a secret, it was about the unspoken agreement to avoid those subjects that our community finds difficult, that are painful, that are messy.
And that silence isn’t helping us.
I don’t have all the answers, and I’m still processing what I saw. But I do know this: the silence around this film and the silence that has surrounded Oct. 7 are deeply connected. It’s the same silence that keeps us from truly grappling with the questions that matter. If we want to heal, if we want to move beyond the hurt, we need to start talking. Even when it’s uncomfortable. Even when it challenges everything we thought we knew. Because that’s the only way we’ll ever get anywhere. And for me, that’s where I want to begin.
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