Mizrachi Witches in Israeli Cinema

Mizrachi Witches in Israeli Cinema

A Conversation with Rachel S. Harris

Rachel S. Harris gives a lunch seminar on “Mizrachi Witches in Israeli Cinema.” A rise in Israeli filmmaking during the 1990s led to a new fascination with women’s representation and depictions of Mizrachi ethnicity. These two spheres coalesced into recreations of an imaginative cinematic landscape set in a fictional Israel of the 1950s and 1960s. In these peripheral locations on the edge of the desert Mizrachi women were represented as ancient matriarchs holding secrets over life, death, love, sex and health. Reclaiming their identity, Mizrachi women filmmakers explored the complexities of being both ethnic and female – upending conventions of their representation as exotic, lustful projections of male fantasies. Instead they embraced female power, developing the image of the Mizrachi matriarch as a witch and a funeral wailer as a way to comment on the mistreatment of marginalized communities within Israel.

Free and open to the public. Light lunch provided. Sponsored by the Center for Jewish Studies.