"Marie. You want to shit about what you had - okay. But don't for what you have," new groom Dan tells his daughter-in-law Marie as she storms away from a family shiva brachot meal. He runs after her, she walks on a bridge with traffic flowing underneath, and the viewer hopes she doesn't jump. This scholarly recommendation – to see what you have and rejoice in it, and not to sabotage the present because of past traumas – is derived as relevant guidance for each of the characters, and there are many of them, in the film "Seven Blessings" based on incidents that happened.
Dan Ashkenazi (Eran Mor) and Moroccan Marie (Raymond Amsalem) met at a bank branch in Paris. He, a wealthy customer, heard her, the branch manager, speak Moroccan - and fell in love. Both are Jewish, and a bit Israeli: he comes from a family of immigrants who immigrated alone in his youth to enlist and over the years returned to France; She was born in Morocco, the fifth of six children, who immigrated with her family in her youth and later moved to France.
Making a projection for judgment. From the film "Seven Blessings", photo: Maria Brodkin
When she was two, Hannah, Marie's mother (Tiki Dayan), decided to lend her for adoption to her barren sister, Gracia (Rivka Bahar). Otherwise, Gracia's husband may divorce her, and she will become not only a second-class infertile woman, but also a second-class divorcee. When she reached the age of 14, Marie's biological parents decided to immigrate to Israel and collected the deposit back from her uncles. Marie immigrated with her original family, but after a short time the adoptive parents decided to equalize and immigrate - and the treasure was taken again.
Marie, who received a fine private education in an established environment, became a senior banker in Paris, while her biological brothers boast professions such as kindergarten assistant and senior secretary, covering up the lack of education with bitter humor ("I have a degree too!" says Doris insultingly when reduced next to Marie, "I'm the beauty queen!" – "of obesity," her sister corrects her, and the album shows a photo of a local competition at a community center).
Marie's lonely jealousy of her siblings, who grew up in a hard-working but loving family, collides with the jealousy of the siblings, who barely survive life's hardships and see the rich and recycled Marie as the reflection of their revolving doors. Or as the younger brother blurts out at the First Supper: "I too could have grown up with Gracia and become rich and successful." Well - no. Parents only lent daughters back then, a son is too precious and rare a commodity to share.
"Seven Blessings" - Official Trailer
An ironic society among the people
Two deep ironies emerge from the plot. One is blazing jealousy and the way we don't appreciate what we have. What we have thanks to genetics and the environment we grew up in, and what we have thanks to labor, an investment we sowed ourselves that bears fruit.
The second is the basket of humane motives that paved the way to hell. Hannah, the biological mother, spared her sister, spared her brother-in-law, spared the stain that might stick to the family if the barren woman became divorced, and under the cover of external mercy sacrifices her young daughter, and indeed herself and the family story, on the altar of commitment to this ethnic tradition, which continues to resonate even generations after it goes out of fashion.
In his book "Shas Lithuania - The Lithuanian takeover of Bnei Torah from Morocco" (HaKibutz HaMeuhad, 2004), Dr. Yaakov Lupu relates a phenomenon that took place in Europe after the Holocaust: brilliant boys from Morocco were lured to study in elite Lithuanian yeshivas, which were reestablished in France, England, the United States and even Israel, in order to fill the ranks emptied by the war. This process, which lasted until the 60s, is described in the book as one of the reasons for the emergence of the fighting Shas movement. The rabbis and teachers in the yeshivas looked down on the students, especially their origins, and many of the students were fed up with the lifestyle the yeshivas were aiming for. They received the best education, and even if they did not continue in the world of Torah, they developed modern careers and prospered.
The grave of Yemenite abducted Yemenite children was opened, photo: Shmuel Bukharis
The affair of the kidnapped Yemenite children also converges into the same slot, in which abuse over the other, who is your brother, leads to unreasonable and cruel acts. In the affair of the boys and yeshivas, as in Marie's, it is possible that in some aspects the victim will benefit – but the wound is incurable. Here the blame remains in the family. And despair doesn't get any more comfortable.
Well laid out table
12 Ophir Awards This week this brilliant and sensitive film picked up, winning in every category in which it was nominated. Judgment surrenders to "Seven Blessings" - a film that raises judicial issues and reflects judgmental ways of examining reality retrospectively, but which does so with compassion and wisdom, exposing the complexity that causes the viewer to go through a process that begins with a wedding, develops in each of the seven mitzvah meals, and reaches unraveling in the final scene, in which the heroine struggles to connect with the original identity and feels a part.
As the historical, social, and family context becomes clearer, the viewer is not sure who he is, and it seems that even among the judicial figures, he is crumbling, giving way to curiosity, pity, acceptance of responsibility, and finally, forgiveness, which makes it possible to assess his place in the world.
The big winners. 10 awards out of 12 categories, photo: Coco
The Israeli family is a mirror image of Israeli society, a collection of tribes and groups that preserve ancient conventions, sometimes with human blindness. At the Last Supper, the groom's psychologist mother brings a gift - a bottle of wine she has kept for 20 years for a special occasion. The bride's older brother barricades himself with the bottle in the kitchen because there is no kosher stamp, but the women of the family - apart from his wife, of course - provoke him until he retires, the wine is poured into glasses and truth and peace are loved.
What is needed is a deep-rooted creator who will dismantle the jealousy and hatred between camps and tribes, present its broad context, and bring the local backwardness to take a step back – from their sacred comfort zone, where every family is right, to where we are all family. Happy New Year.
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