“Standing Silent”
This is a profoundly disturbing film. It’s not just the subject matter, although pedophilia isn’t exactly popcorn flick material, it’s the way it’s shot, the color scheme, everything about it. You know how in the “Twilight Zone,” a man could wake up in a world where everyone had four stomachs and goat horns except for him? That’s how this movie feels, except without the camp. It’s more a feeling of terror.
“Standing Silent” is a documentary, shot with a slightly shaky handheld camera. The first thing you notice is the colors — everything’s the gray interior of an office building, or the black of a Chareidi’s hat and overcoat. For years of footage, there’s almost no change of season in director Scott Rosenfelt’s Baltimore — sometimes it snows in gray, sometimes it rains in gray. And sometimes in the corner of the screen, a physically imposing rabbi’s son sneaks away.
The film’s protagonist, Phil Jacobs, is a journalist at the Baltimore Jewish Times. A baal teshuva, he grew up secular in a part of Baltimore not more than a few blocks from where he lives now. His work has made him somewhat of a pariah in his community. After he printed the name of Ephraim Shapiro (a beloved rabbi, who posthumously was accused by many, many, of his alleged former victims of molestation) in an article, people who used to talk to him now ignored him. In one scene, he tells his therapist about a rabbi who first ignored his “Good shabbos”, then mumbled a “good shabbos” to the ground after he pointedly said “I said ‘good shabbos’, did you not hear me, rabbi?” “Is this Judaism?” he asks, full of righteous indignation.
Jacobs works with several victims of molestation—Yeshiva boys who went Off the Derech after they were molested by a rabbi’s son, a frum woman who unearthed suppressed memories of being assaulted by her father when she was around 5 (she was put in a mental hospital for making accusations). For his work, the Orthodox community shuns him. They accuse him of Lashon Hara, and of making slanderous accusations. They accuse him of ruining lives. “Nobody seems to care about the victims”, he observes.
This is a very bleak film. In the slightly-telegraphed plot twist, Jacobs is revealed to be a rape survivor himself, assaulted as a youth by a chair of the local B’nai B’rith. He sees calling out other sexual predators as a kind of therapy. So when Israel Shapiro, a man who had assaulted numerous yeshiva student, is forced to stand trial, Jacobs is ecstatic. When Shapiro takes the guilty plea, but refuses to admit guilt, Jacobs is crushed. He can’t see justice done. A rabbi in a talking-head segment says that the Orthodox community doesn’t want this issue discussed in the media, because they see the media as “anti-Orthodox, just looking for a scandal.” But this is from within the Orthodox community, and what it shows is appalling. Not just the crimes but the denial. Powerful movie.
“Standing Silent” screened o Nov. 8 at the Coolidge Corner Theater as part of the Boston Jewish Film Festival.
“Yolande: An Unsung Heroine”
“Yolande: An Unsung Heroine,” is a lot less depressing. A mostly lighthearted documentary about Yolande Gabai Harmer, an early Zionist spy, “Yolande” is mostly a series of talking heads talking about the woman they remember. Harmer was a beautiful French-speaking Turkish Jew, born in Egypt, who provided invaluable spy work for the Haganah immediately prior to the founding of the State of Israel. She was somewhat of a James Bond figure, in that she was a famous spy. Her son recalls how strange it was, that she would get arrested, leave the country, and come back to Egypt again and again. The Muslim Brotherhood would protest that government officials were meeting with a well-known spy. She got the minutes of Arab League meetings almost after they happened, prior to the 1948 war.
Unfortunately, there’s no footage of Harmer in this documentary, just photos. And the pacing of the movie can drag. For those fascinated by this era of Israeli history, this is a great watch. For others, it may be too dry.
“Yolande: An Unsung Heroine” screened November 3 at the Coolidge Corner Theatre as part of the Boston Jewish Film Festival.
