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How Israel built its most talented baseball roster ever for the 2023 World Baseball Classic
MIAMI (JTA) — As Team Israel celebrated its victory over Nicaragua Sunday afternoon in its opening game of the 2023 World Baseball Classic, there was proof up and down the lineup card of a months-long recruitment process that brought together a slew of major league talent.
There was manager Ian Kinsler, a 14-year MLB veteran and four-time All-Star. Big league pitchers Dean Kremer, who started the game, plus Richard Bleier and Zack Weiss. All-Star slugger Joc Pederson, and major league catcher Garrett Stubbs, who drove in the winning run.
For Kinsler, who played a central role in putting the roster together, the victory served as validation — even if he didn’t know what some of the players actually looked like until they arrived in Miami.
“Knowing the names, and then finally seeing all the faces and everybody coming together and playing a good game yesterday was very rewarding,” Kinsler said Monday. “It was a lot of fun.”
Pulling the team together took a combination of personal cajoling, a widely respected manager, Jewish geography and an effort to tap — and ignite — the sometimes embryonic Jewish identities of players who hadn’t given much thought to how their Jewish roots and baseball prowess might be combined.
“There’s quite a few guys who really want to help Israel and feel Jewish and buy into it,” Team Israel general manager Peter Kurz told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “We evolve towards those players more — a player who says that he’s been to Israel, or that he’s connected to Israel. We definitely like to keep more than a player who was not connected at all, even though we try to go for the best athletes.”
The journey to assemble Team Israel, a 30-man roster composed largely of American Jewish ballplayers, half of whom have MLB experience, actually began back in 2021.
While playing for Israel’s 2020 Olympic team, Kinsler had conversations with Kurz and Israel Association of Baseball president Jordy Alter about managing the team in 2023.
“Once I developed the relationship with those two in the Olympics, it was a pretty easy decision,” Kinsler told JTA prior to the WBC. Kinsler had never managed a team before, at any level.
After he took the helm last June, Kinsler took a lead role in the team’s recruitment, working off a preliminary list of 50 players who were eligible to play for the team — meaning they were Jewish themselves, or the child or the grandchild of a Jew or married to one, and thus eligible for Israeli citizenship.
Kurz said Kinsler’s reputation around baseball was a key factor in offering him the job.
“There’s no doubt that Ian is one of the most respectable Jewish players that’s ever played the game before,” he said. “People respect him and they look up to him. Having experienced being in Israel twice, and playing for us in the Olympics, it just gives him that much more legitimization to talk to these players and ask them to come play for Team Israel.”
Kinsler is not the WBC’s only inexperienced manager who was chosen in part as a draw for players. Former players Mark DeRosa (United States), Mike Piazza (Italy) and Yadier Molina (Puerto Rico) are all managing, and Nelson Cruz is both a player on the Dominican Republic team and its general manager.
Ian Kinsler played for Team Israel at the Olympics in Tokyo after 14 MLB seasons. (Courtesy of JNF-USA)
As Kinsler began his recruitment, his first call was to Joc Pederson.
“It’s been an awesome experience,” Pederson told JTA. “I really enjoyed my time last time I played [in the 2012 WBC qualifier], and I wanted to do that again. Great group of guys.”
From there, Kurz said, he and Kinsler went down the list of Jewish major leaguers, calling each one to gauge their interest in representing Israel in the World Cup-style tournament. Given the timing of the WBC — just weeks before Major League Baseball’s Opening Day — it was largely a conversation about logistics.
“I think it wasn’t really necessarily the conversation about ‘Are you Jewish?’ Or ‘Are you eligible to play for Team Israel,’” Kinsler explained. “I think it was more of a conversation of ‘do you want to participate?’”
Pederson, who texted fellow big league players like Houston Astros star Alex Bregman and Milwaukee Brewers first baseman Rowdy Tellez (who is playing for Mexico), said health concerns and having enough time to get ready for the season were factors. New York Yankees players Harrison Bader and Scott Effross dropped out because of injuries.
And why did Pederson want to help recruit? It’s simple: “Because I like winning, and I want to win,” he said.
Israel hoped that having big-name players like Kinsler and Pederson lead the outreach efforts would pay off. While some of the game’s top Jewish stars ultimately did not join the team — namely Bregman and Atlanta Braves ace Max Fried — their work was far from fruitless, as this roster boasts the most major league experience Israel has ever had.
“I tried to get Peter to hold off as long as he could, so I could be the first one to get in touch with people,” Kinsler said. “Because I do think it helps hearing from a player.”
When making his calls, Kinsler said he shared his experience playing in the 2017 WBC with the U.S. team, plus “what kind of environment we’re trying to create for Israeli baseball.”
While navigating spring training schedules and injuries is certainly part of it, Kurz said there were many players who were excited for the opportunity to wear Israel across their jersey.
One of those players is Baltimore Orioles pitcher Dean Kremer, who was the first Israeli to be drafted into the MLB. Kremer, whose parents are Israeli, was born and raised in California, but has spent time living in Israel.
Dean Kremer pitches against Nicaragua in Israel’s first game of the 2023 World Baseball Classic, March 12, 2023, in Miami. (Courtesy Team Israel)
“Playing for Team Israel, anytime I get to put on that uniform is special for me,” Kremer said after pitching in Israel’s victory over Nicaragua. “It’s like another home. So every time I get to represent it’s one of the better feelings.”
Pederson added that the whole team “feels extremely proud.”
Ryan Lavarnway, a veteran catcher who has also played for Israel since 2017 and is seen as one of its leaders, has been vocal about how much it means to him to suit up for Israel.
“Playing for this team is super meaningful to me,” Lavarnway said after Israel’s exhibition game against the Miami Marlins. “It’s been really life changing. And I hope that this next generation of players that are new to this team takes the baton, and it means as much to them as it’s meant to us.”
One of those younger players is Toronto Blue Jays prospect Spencer Horwitz.
“Coming into this, I didn’t know what to really expect, this being my first time playing for Team Israel,” Horwitz said. “It’s living up to everything that people are saying. That environment we were just in was definitely electric.”
With reports of antisemitism on the rise in the United States, Kurz said players are more inclined to publicly identify as Jewish.
“I think a lot of these players feel, even more so, that they have to identify as being Jewish. Nobody’s trying to hide that at all,” he said.
Kurz added that Israel had an easier time recruiting top talent for the 2023 roster than in previous years, for a few reasons.
First, he said, both Team Israel and the WBC itself have gained in prominence over the past decade. For Israel, a surprising run in the 2017 WBC helped put Israeli baseball on the map, garnering excitement among both fans and potential players. And the WBC itself has grown more popular in the United States and around the world, with superstar players such as Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout suiting up for their ancestral countries, and MLB devoting more resources to marketing the tournament.
Geography also played a role. With most of the games being played in Miami, that allowed MLB players to more easily participate, as half the league has spring training in Florida.
When trying to discover Jewish players, there’s a certain element of word-of-mouth Jewish geography that comes into play, too. No player encapsulates that better than Ty Kelly.
“It’s easy to get the Cohens and the Levys. It’s more difficult to get the Ty Kellys,” Kurz said.
Ty Kelly bats during Israel’s exhibition game against the Miami Marlins, March 8, 2023 in Jupiter, Florida. (Emma Sharon/MLB)
Kurz recalled that about seven years ago, he heard from someone on Long Island who had taken his kids to a minor league game. Kelly was signing autographs and spotted the kids’ kippahs and told them he was Jewish. They told their father, who in turn told Kurz.
“And the rest was history,” Kurz said. Kelly, who has played for Israel since the 2017 WBC, has become another one of the team’s leaders. After this WBC, he will begin his coaching career in the Seattle Mariners organization.
The WBC’s eligibility rules also allowed Israel some flexibility in recruiting. Outfielder Alex Dickerson, for example, is not Jewish, but his wife is.
“This is about creating the best team possible within the rules,” Kinsler said.
Creating the best team also meant creating a strong coaching staff.
Kinsler recruited former Israel manager Brad Ausmus, who was Kinsler’s manager in the big leagues, and former All-Star and fan favorite Kevin Youkilis, the former Boston Red Sox first baseman.
“It was easy,” Youkilis said of his decision to join the team. “Being part of this is part of my heritage, part of growing up Jewish and being bar mitzvahed and all that. It was an easy yes.”
Youkilis, who retired in 2014, said coaching full-time isn’t in the cards for him, but he’s enjoying the experience right now.
“It’s remarkable how good a talent we have, a collective Jewish group of ballplayers that when I was growing up probably wasn’t that strong,” he said. “It’s good to see the next generation of ballplayers, and to be a coach, and to witness it and be around and help guys.”
While this team, and its coaches, is largely a group of American Jews, the uniform says Israel. Even with the fraught political climate in Israel, which is experiencing an uptick in violence and widespread protests over the country’s far-right government and its controversial judicial proposals, both Kurz and Kinlser said politics were not a factor for any player.
“I don’t think in general athletes are too scared of those types of things,” Kinsler said.
Kurz added that leading up to the WBC, numerous players reached out to ask questions and gain a better understanding of the current situation in Israel. But nobody expressed hesitation about identifying with the country. (There have not been protests or anti-Israel demonstrations, as there have been at times in the past when Team Israel plays in the United States and abroad.)
“They’re definitely interested, they want to know what’s going on,” Kurz said. “They want to know who they’re playing for.”
Kelly, who was part of those types of discussions in the clubhouse with the Olympic team, said the players are keeping an eye on the news, but they haven’t had many conversations about it yet.
“I think it’s sort of the nature of the team, having a lot of new guys and people not really knowing what their roles are supposed to be, as far as talking about that stuff, or what their opinions are supposed to be,” Kelly said. “I think that happens as guys get to know each other more.”
Building camaraderie was also a priority for the team. Prior to the tournament, Israel held a private screening of the new documentary “Israel Swings for Gold,” which followed the team’s Olympic experience in Tokyo.
Kinsler said that while the event was not mandatory, he encouraged players to attend.
“I think that’ll be a great bonding experience for us, and something that other teams don’t really have the luxury of using as motivation or bringing togetherness,” Kinsler said beforehand. “That could be an advantage for us.”
And with a tough draw in Pool D, which pits Israel against top teams including the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and Puerto Rico, Israel will need any advantage it can get.
But Israel is no stranger to being the underdog. In fact, the team relishes it.
“We’re certainly the David against the Goliath of the baseball world. But you know, we love it,” Kurz said.
—
The post How Israel built its most talented baseball roster ever for the 2023 World Baseball Classic appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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The Iranian People Are Demanding Their Freedom; Where Is the Media?
Protesters demonstrate against poor economic conditions in Tehran, Iran, with some shopkeepers closing their stores on Dec. 29, 2025, in response to ongoing hardships and fluctuations in the national currency. Photo: ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
“What were the media doing when the regime led by Ali Khamenei finally fell?”
That is the question that will be asked if, as many Iranians now dare to hope, we are witnessing the final days of the Islamic Republic after more than four decades in power. It is also a question the Western press may struggle to answer.
How It Started
The current wave of unrest began in late December, when shopkeepers in Tehran went on strike amid growing fury over Iran’s collapsing economy. The rial hit record lows, while prices continued to soar under crippling inflation. Traders, wholesalers, and merchants took to the streets in protest, initially over economic mismanagement — but anger quickly turned toward the regime itself.
Within 48 hours, demonstrations had spread beyond the capital to major cities including Isfahan, Shiraz, Mashhad, Hamadan, Qeshm, and beyond. Videos posted by Iranians showed crowds chanting explicitly political slogans: “Death to the dictator,” “Mullahs must go,” and “This homeland will not be free until the mullah is gone.”
Iranian state-affiliated media have acknowledged several deaths. Independent estimates suggest the toll may be significantly higher. What is not in dispute is that the unrest has rapidly evolved from economic protest into a broad-based challenge to clerical rule.
The Story the Media Barely Told
And yet, on Friday, The New York Times ran not a single front-page story on the protests.
Not one.
This was unrest that — if it succeeds — could reshape Iran, the Middle East, and global security dynamics for decades. A regime that backs Hamas and Hezbollah, arms terrorist proxies across the region, threatens Israel’s destruction, and destabilizes international energy markets was facing its most sustained nationwide dissent in years. Still, the story barely registered.
The New York Times’ near silence was not an outlier. It was emblematic.
When the lack of coverage was challenged on social media, John Simpson, World Affairs Editor at the BBC, offered an almost comical defense: social media videos, he said, must be carefully verified before “reputable outlets” can use them.
That principle, in isolation, is uncontroversial. But its selective application is not.
This is the same BBC that has repeatedly broadcast unverified — or lightly verified — footage and photographs from Gaza. In Iran, however, verification suddenly became an insurmountable obstacle, even as dozens of videos from multiple cities showed consistent scenes, slogans, and patterns of unrest.
When Framing Does the Regime’s Work
Reports by the BBC and analyses from BBC Verify have repeatedly emphasized “cost-of-living protests,” despite verified footage of crowds chanting for the end of clerical rule and attacking regime symbols.
Where BBC Verify has undertaken the “verification” John Simpson said was so difficult, it has drawn criticism for focusing on debunking isolated instances of AI-generated imagery — rather than acknowledging the overwhelming volume of genuine footage documenting brutality against protesters.
Genuinely shocked to see BBC Verify have chosen now to be out there giving an impression we should not believe what we are seeing in #Iran based on one image (of a real event).
Amplification of this intensely organic revolution by Israeli social media accounts is making many…
— Omid Djalili (@omid9) January 2, 2026
Sky News, Reuters, FRANCE24, and others followed a similar pattern — leading with rising prices and economic stagnation while giving little attention to the unmistakably political slogans echoing through Iranian streets.
This framing matters. Protests about inflation suggest reform. Protests calling for the removal of the Supreme Leader suggest regime collapse.
In some cases, Western coverage has gone further, adopting the regime’s preferred framing outright.
When President Donald Trump warned that the United States would respond if Iranian protesters were massacred, Iranian officials condemned the remarks as “reckless.” Several outlets, including the BBC, led with that condemnation, centering Tehran’s outrage and implicitly casting the United States, rather than the Islamic Republic, as the destabilizing force.
Last week, The Guardian even published an opinion piece by Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, under the headline: “You’ll never defeat us in Iran, President Trump: but with real talks, we can both win.”
Put simply, this was The Guardian lending its pages to the propaganda of a senior official from the very regime Iranians are risking their lives to oppose — the same Islamic Republic that beat Mahsa Amini to death for allegedly wearing her hijab incorrectly, executed protesters, imprisoned dissidents, and ruled through fear for 45 years.
1/
Western media coverage of Iran’s escalating nationwide protests has been strikingly limited and cautious – despite widespread anti-regime demands across dozens of cities.Why the reluctance, when evidence is abundant?
pic.twitter.com/PWF9hgsdI3
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) January 3, 2026
So Why Is the Media Reporting This Way?
Western journalists do not lack information about Iran. The evidence is abundant and often supplied at immense personal risk by Iranians themselves.
What appears lacking is not access, but editorial willingness.
Acknowledging an evolving anti-regime uprising would force uncomfortable conclusions: that long-standing assumptions about “stability,” “reform,” and diplomatic engagement with Tehran were misplaced; that the Islamic Republic is not merely flawed but fundamentally illegitimate; and that Western governments and institutions have spent decades accommodating a brutal regime now being openly rejected by its own people.
It is easier — safer — to frame unrest as economic grievance, to hide behind verification rhetoric, or to platform regime voices as “context.”
But if this uprising succeeds, history will not be kind to that caution. And the question will remain: When Iranians were demanding freedom, why did so much of the Western media look away?
The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
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Palestinian Authority Police Commit Another Terrorist Attack
Illustrative: Israeli forces gather at the scene of a shooting attack near a Jewish outpost, near Nablus, in the West Bank, December 16, 2021. REUTERS/Ammar Awad
When Palestinian Authority (PA) police officer and Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades terror-wing member Younes Walid Shtayyeh shot at Israeli special forces and wounded an Israeli soldier near Nablus, it was not cause for self-scrutiny on behalf of the PA police.
On the contrary, two days later, PA Police Commissioner Allam Al-Saqqa elaborated on the “professional police establishment, which acts as a law enforcement body.” He stressed that the PA police force “maintains security, public order, and morality,” a message the official PA TV reporter summarized by claiming the PA police are “loyal … to the law:”
PA Police Commissioner Allam Al-Saqqa: “[Our progress] emphasizes the integrative relationship between the State Prosecutor’s Office and the [PA] Police, through participation in enforcing justice in the criminal field, which is being protected by a skilled State Prosecutor’s Office that is striving to strengthen the rule of law, alongside a professional police establishment, which acts as a law enforcement body, operates in coordination with the State Prosecutor’s Office and under its supervision, maintains security, public order and morality, and fulfills its role within the framework of the law” … [emphasis added]
[Official PA TV News, Nov. 22, 2025]
According to PA ideology, there really is no contradiction between trying to murder Israelis and maintaining the law. Fatah and Hamas alike glorified the “operation” of police terrorist Shtayyeh, and after he was killed by Israeli forces, social media overflowed with praise for him.
Palestinian Media Watch has documented the double role of the PA police and Security Forces as cops by day — and terrorists by night — many times, recently in the report, Terrorists in Uniform.
Fatah’s terror wing announced with “pride and glory” that Shtayyeh’s funeral was a “wedding” and stressed that the PA police officer died while “fulfilling the duty of struggle and engaging in armed confrontation with enemy.”
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades also used the opportunity to pledge to continue “the path of struggle” until “the removal” of the State of Israel:
Posted text: “A military statement by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades
…
Martyr fighter Younes Walid Shtayyeh — one of the fighters of the Al-Aqsa [Martyrs’] Brigades — Nablus
Who ascended to Heaven as a Martyr on Friday, Nov. 21, 2025 … while he was fulfilling the duty of struggle and engaging in armed confrontation with enemy …
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, while accompanying the Martyr commander to the wedding, pledge before Allah that their fighters will continue … on the path of struggle and resistance, until the removal of the occupation from our land and our occupied holy sites.This is a revolution until victory!
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades – Palestine
The military wing of the Fatah Movement
Saturday… Nov. 22, 2025″ [emphasis added][Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, Telegram channel, Nov. 22, 2025]
Fatah political officials paid condolence visits to the family, while Fatah’s terror wing described the police terrorist as a “heroic Martyr”:
Posted text: “Fatah Movement Nablus District Secretary Muhammad Hamdan ‘Abu Al-Mutaz’ and members of the district committee in a visit of blessing and condolences on the ascent to Heaven of heroic Martyr Younes Walid Shtayyeh.” [emphasis added]
The terrorist’s father praised his death as a “Martyr,” saying it was “anticipated” and that Allah “chose him”:
Father of terrorist Younes Walid Shtayyeh: “Younes… there is no one who doesn’t love him… May Allah have mercy on him [and] be pleased with him … He asked for [Martyrdom] and achieved it.
We anticipated this … We consider him a Martyr with Allah. .. The [Israeli] army’s special forces besieged the area … He took his weapon and went out, he fought them outside and fell as a Martyr … All this is the decree of Almighty Allah. Our Lord chose him [to be a Martyr].” [emphasis added]
[“Nablus News,” Telegram channel, Nov. 22, 2025]
A Hamas-affiliated network honored the terrorist, sharing a video of him posing with and firing an assault rifle, while a song played in the background:
Song lyrics: “Do not mourn, for eternal life awaits us
Shed no tears, for Paradise is the appointed meeting place
I sacrifice myself to meet Allah, for the sake of life [in Paradise] and [Allah’s] satisfaction”Posted text: “Images of [PA] police officer Martyr Younes Shtayyeh, the one who carried out the shooting operation on the occupation soldiers while they were making arrests in Nablus a few days ago. [An operation] in which he ascended to Heaven while confronting an Israeli Yamam force.” [emphasis added]
[Quds News Network (Hamas), Telegram channel, Nov. 22, 2025]
The “Al-Quds Brigades – Grandchildren of Glory,” Islamic Jihad’s terror wing, posted pictures of the terrorist, pointing out he was a police officer:
Posted text: “[PA] police officer Martyr Younes Walid Shtayyeh, whom the occupation (i.e., Israel) accuses of shooting at its forces during the raid on Nablus yesterday”
[“Al-Quds Brigades – Grandchildren of Glory,” Telegram channel, Nov. 21, 2025]
Other groups applauded terrorist Shtayyeh as a “Jihad fighter” and stressed that he was “a son of the Fatah Movement. A son of the Palestinian Security Forces”:
The author is a contributor to Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this story first appeared.
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An idyllic Jewish village, full of life and hope, just hours before its utter annihilation
A remarkable scene in Ady Walter’s film Shttl takes place in a Jewish Ukrainian village outside of Kiev on June 21, 1941, one day before the Nazi invasion, known as Operation Barbarossa.
The Rebbe, played by the always excellent Saul Rubinek is the voice of reason; he is a thoughtful, complex, contradictory and conflicted character. He does not raise his voice, he takes time to consider what to say as he himself struggles to respond to whatever factionalism arises within the community. His sad eyes are expressive. He repeatedly rubs his thumb across his fingers. This is a master class in consummate acting.
The mostly black-and-white Yiddish language film, currently playing in New York at New Plaza Cinemas, spans 24 hours in the shtetl, whose residents remain clueless of the impending doom despite the presence of the Russian Army that has already infiltrated the village. Nonetheless the cracks are surfacing within the community. Intense arguments abound on such issues as workers rights and whether to abandon religion or commit to a devoted life. One female character espousing the need for women’s rights, anticipates the future struggle of feminism in the face of patriarchy.
At its core, the film explores Jewish identity, unity and survival. The Rebbe understands factionalism yet remains implacable as he urges the townspeople to be Talmudic in their judgments, tolerant and compassionate. He describes true Jewishness as the color gray, allowing for and even respecting differences of opinion, purpose and worldview.
For, the Rebbe, Jews must always remain unified on some profound level. “Unity is the only thing that matters in the battle against evil,” he asserts. His second tenet is faith in God. Doubt can never enter the picture.
The central character, Mendele (Moshe Lobel in a nicely understated performance) is an aspiring filmmaker, who has long since left the shtetl to join the Red Army in Kyiv. But he returns home along with his best friend, a non-Jewish Ukrainian named Demyan (Petro Ninovskyi), so he can elope with his true love, Yuna (Anisia Stasevich), the child of The Rebbe.
But Yuna is already engaged through an arranged marriage to Folie (Antoine Millet), a cruel, autocratic Hasid who, despite his alleged religiosity, is petty, sly, cunning and ultimately violent.
Mendele remains torn between his ambitions embodied by the cosmopolitan outside world and the restrictive, confined shtetl where he is still deeply rooted. And he can’t help but feel connected to his estranged father, whom he holds responsible for the suicide of his late mother who, like Mendele, was also an outlier.
The film was shot in Ukraine in 2021 at the height of COVID-19 restrictions and at the very moment the Russian invasion was looming. The set, including a synagogue, was supposed to be converted into a museum honoring Ukraine’s Jewish past. But in the end, the Russian forces destroyed the whole shtetl set and the land was mined. Now that the president of Ukraine is a Jew at the very same time antisemitism is surging across the globe and Ukrainians and Jews are both under assault, the parallels and irony are almost implausible.
Walter, a documentary film director making his feature debut, has said his mission was to bring the shtetl universe that was totally wiped out during the Holocaust back to life. The title Shttl with its missing “e” references the 1969 novel, La Disparition by Georges Perec, whose mother died in Auschwitz. In Perec’s fictional work the letter “e” never appears in Shttl, its absence mirroring the emptiness, the void, the loss.
In this film, unlike such Holocaust classics like Schindler’s List, The Pianist, Son of Saul, death, despair, and hopelessness are not yet part of the collective experience. This is life prior to the Holocaust in an ethnically diverse community overflowing with purpose and hope for the future. Many Jews and gentiles enjoy camaraderie, and Yiddish and Ukrainian are both spoken.
Shtll’s cinematic technique is evocative, specifically the way scenes of recollection seamlessly morph into color — Mendele recalls his life as a yeshiva boy and the time his gentle mother gave him a baby rabbit as a pet. The colorful flashbacks suggest the past is so much more vivid than the black-and-white present.
Nevertheless, I found the film problematic. Though it has been praised for its one-shot cinematic approach, which purports to make the movie more immediate, real and immersive for the viewer, the set and the inconsistent performances made it feel more like a filmed stage play to me. And, more importantly, the characters don’t seem like actual human beings as they do spokespersons for various political, philosophical,and religious viewpoints. The quirky folkloric figures don’t help. There are two holy fools of various stripes — a beatific deceased mom who appears as a spectral figure, and my favorite, the butcher who has become a vegetarian.
Admittedly, my image of shtetl life is informed by a Fiddler on the Roof ethos and, by extension, the stories of Sholem Aleichem which presents a largely impoverished, insular and marginalized world, even if its residents don’t see themselves as disenfranchised. But in Shtll, the youthful characters are self-confident in their speech, gestures, and especially their wide-stride, swaggering gaits. They seemed jarringly secular and contemporary to me.
In one scene, our three protagonists, including Yuna, are happily passing back and forth a bottle of booze, each guzzling from the communal cap. The provincial virginal daughter of The Rebbe in a 1941 shtetl? Really?
In the end, though, the film makes a 180-degree turn that nearly eradicates its flaws. Mendele, Demyan, and Yuna have spent the night in the forest and have fallen asleep content in their certainty that at sunrise they will be embarking on their great adventure to freedom.
As dawn breaks and the sun begins to emerge over the trees. Mendele hears gunfire and spies the battalions of Nazis entering the shtetl en masse. The obliteration that will follow is clear. The respective politics, philosophies, not to mention petty jealousies, indeed, all the internecine fighting on the one hand and the moments of jubilation on the other have become totally meaningless. The realization is devastating.
The post An idyllic Jewish village, full of life and hope, just hours before its utter annihilation appeared first on The Forward.