CONVENTIONAL SINS
Israel, 2017, 70 minutes, Colour.
Directed by Shira Clara Winter, Anat Zuria.
This is a brief documentary in which a young man, Meilech, expelled from his Hasidic community, returns to the place of his upbringing and schooling, an ultra-Orthodox area of Jerusalem. The purpose of his revisiting is to explore what happened to him in his years of growing up, at home, in the yeshiva, in his contact with various men.
The film opens with Meilech interviewing actors who are going to represent him as a child, teenager, 21-year-old. Each of them puts on the Orthodox garb to appear in various re-created scenes.
Meilech’s voice-over, talks about himself personally but often in the third person. In his 30s, he wants to process what happened to him in terms of sexual abuse.
There is an irony in the title, an explanation that in Ultra-orthodox religious interpretation of law and sin, any sexual behaviour, non-consensual, between adults or between adults and children is considered equally in moral terms.
What happens is that Meilech talks the audience through his experience as a young boy, beginning with the brutality of the teachers at the yeshiva, the use of canings and beatings for discipline, attempts to throw away the canes of the teachers and the retribution which ensued.
However, Meilech works on a computer and printer (which is forbidden) and, as payment for the use, a young man sexually abuses him. However, the young man seemed to be a go-between between an older man, Avraham, and his target, the young Meilech.
The film helps the audience understand the process of grooming, the attitude of Avraham, his flattery of the boy, praising him for his music, inviting him home, taking him on outings, a delight for a pre-puberty young boy. However, the abuse continued when Meilech became an adolescent.
Meilech also auditions a man to enact the role of Avraham. It can be noted that the actors auditioned all experience sexual abuse themselves. The film visualises aspects of Avraham’s relationship with Meilech, a re-enactment of the scene in the baths and showers and Avraham’s eyeing the boy.
Eventually, Meilech is able to separate from Avraham who writes him letters, apologising, yet still expressing his love for Meilech.
Within 70 minutes, the film raises the issue of paedophilia for its audience, some understanding of the impact on the abused victim, some perceptions of the abuser, the secrecy in the community – and an opportunity to reflect that sexual abuse and paedophilia occur in all societies, even in Orthodox Jewish societies.
