Hidden Light: Judaism and Mystical Experience in Israeli Cinema

Over the past several decades, the prevailing attitude toward Judaism in Israeli society has undergone a meaningful shift; where the national ethos had once deemed Judaic traditions a vestige of an arcane past incompatible with the culture of a modern state, there is now greater acceptance of these traditions by a sizeable part of Israeli society. Author Dan Chyutin reveals this trend through a parallel shift toward acceptance and celebration of Judaic identity and lifestyle in modern Israeli cinema. Hidden Light explores the Judaic turn in contemporary Israeli filmmaking for what it can tell us about Israel's cultural landscape, as well as about the cinematic medium in general. Chyutin points to the ambivalence of films which incorporate Judaism into Israel's secular ethos; concurrently, he foregrounds the films' attempt to overcome this ambivalence through reference to and activation of experiences of transcendence and unity, made popular by New Age-inflected understandings of Jewish mystical thought. By virtue of this exploration, Judaic-themed Israeli cinema emerges as a crucial example of how film's particular form of "magic" may be exploited for the purpose of affecting mystical states in the audience.

ISBN-13: 9780814350676

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: Wayne State University Press

Publication Date: 09-12-2023

Pages: 294

Series: Contemporary Approaches to Film and Media

Dan Chyutin is a teaching fellow at Tel Aviv University's Steve Tisch School of Film and Television. He has authored essays on Israeli and American cinema in peer-reviewed publications including Cinema Journal, Shofar, Journal of Film and Video, Jewish Film & New Media, Short Film Studies, and Journal of Jewish Identities. He also coedited the anthology Casting a Giant Shadow: The Transnational Shaping of Israeli Cinema, which received The Janovics Center Award for Best Book in Transnational Film and Theatre Studies in 2021. In addition to being a scholar of cinema, he also works as a film curator, including in the capacity of Artistic Director for the EU-funded "Another Look: The Restored Film Project."