SAN FRANCISCO JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL | SFJFF 2010

If you haven’t yet seen our online short film Jai (SFJFF 2005), by Ariel Zylbersztejn, you should check it out here  – and you don’t need to take our word for it. In the less than two months it’s been available to watch online at SFJFF.ORG, Jai (or “Life,” as the title translates) has been viewed more than 350,000 times, has garnered almost 200 comments and received nearly 400 five-star ratings. The film is not the first project for which Mexico-based director Ariel Zylbersztejn has received acclaim. Still under 30, Zylbersztejn has already graced the pages of The New York Times and the Economist, and he’s now transforming the way Mexico’s citizens encounter film.

After recognizing that in addition to lacking the most basic of life’s necessities, Mexico’s poorest citizens didn’t have money for ever-increasingly priced movie tickets, Zylbersztejn decided to bring cinema to the masses, completely for free. In 2004, he launched Cinepop -- an organization designed to bring family movies to the public via giant inflatable screens. The project is funded via sponsorships that Zylbersztejn sells to corporate backers and social welfare agencies who then plug not only products but public service messages to a captive audience of hundreds or thousands as they watch the movie.

In our November online short of the month, Jai by Ariel Zylbersztein, a curious young Mexican girl asks her grandmother about her tattoo (the six digit tattoo given to Jews in concentration camps by the Nazis) and the grandmother responds with an interesting, somewhat uplifting tale. These days, an increasing number of Jews are beginning to look more favorably upon body art. Until recently, many Jews took the scripture of Leviticus very much to heart: “Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor imprint any marks upon you: I am the LORD.” It was said that Jews who violated this law would not be buried in Jewish cemeteries. However, with an increasing number of Jews finding new ways to express their Jewish identity, it’s no secret that this taboo on body art is beginning to break down.

In a recent CNN piece on ‘the New Jews’ Jessica Ravitz quotes a Rabbi and Talmud scholar on his perception of tattoos in stating “he knows of ‘no Jewish legal source that would prohibit the burial of a Jew who violated that law.’” Unlike their parents or grandparents, Jews of Generation X and Y (whom Ravitz dubs “New Jews”) are much more removed from former pillars of Jewish Identity, such as the Holocaust and the establishment of the state of Israel. Instead, twenty-first century Jews have found faith and shaped their Jewish identities through music, theater, unconventional Torah study and body art. A 2008 New York Times article explored how some Jews are going the extra mile by inking themselves with overtly Jewish symbols, like the Star of David. But the verdict is still out on whether or not tattooing is kosher with contemporary Jews and there are obviously dissenting views amongst rabbis, scholars and everyday folk.