Beyond the Text: On Midrashic and Talmudic Cinema

Western cinematic language, for all its greatness, is built on rules and narrative structures that have over time become self-evident. But what if there are other ways to tell a story? What if within the ancient Jewish tradition lies a whole toolbox for the contemporary avant-garde creator, a toolbox that can offer a quiet revolution in the way we experience images and time?

1. Midrashic Cinema: The Art of Image Pursuing Image

To free itself from the limitations of language, the Jewish Midrash uses several languages simultaneously, creating image upon image and building a multi-layered narrative structure. It activates different areas in the reader's consciousness, emotion, and imagination simultaneously. The multiplicity of viewpoints and the associative flow allow the author to convey to the reader meaning that is beyond the boundaries of the text.

In translation to cinematic language, "Midrashic Cinema" is one that is not afraid of radical montage. It can juxtapose a rough documentary image, poetic animation, and a classic narrative scene. This Midrashic chain of images can exist both in the plot and in the craft of directing itself. Such a film breaks free from the rules of conventional cinematic language, but does not lose the living narrative sequence that addresses the viewer and creates additional channels of meaning. The Midrash, ultimately, is an encounter with the word of God, and such cinema aspires to be an encounter with the hidden.

2. The Torah: From Frozen Text to Living Speech

It is commonly thought that the Jewish tradition is textual. But the truth is deeper: our tradition is first and foremost "spoken," mouth to mouth. Its foundation is not a frozen text but living speech – from the Creator to the prophet, from the prophet to the people, from a rabbi to his student. Speech is always freer, more flexible, and more ambiguous than the written word.

The Sages, who were aware of the danger of fixing speech into text, developed marvelous methods to preserve the vitality of speech within the "prison" of words. They wrote texts that want to stop being text and return to being speech. They preceded postmodernism by two thousand years. Their methods – the open dialogues, the disputes, the multiplicity of voices – are a precious treasure for the Israeli filmmaker.

A creator who draws from this tradition will not be afraid of an "unfinished" creation, an open ending, a film that is more a question than an answer. He will seek the living speech behind the script, the actor's improvisation, the accidental mistake in filming that suddenly becomes a great truth. He will struggle to turn his film from an inanimate object into a living, breathing creature.

3. Directing According to the Talmud: Blurring Between Center and Periphery

One of the most prominent features in the encounter with a Talmudic text is the way the discussion deviates from the main direction and turns unexpectedly to details that until now were perceived as "marginal" or "unimportant." A deliberate blurring is created between the "important" and the "unimportant," out of the understanding that even in the most negligible detail a great truth can be hidden.

detail a great truth can be hidden.

In translation to cinema, the meaning is a revolution in the way we construct a mise-en-scène. The Talmudic camera does not focus only on the protagonist. It can suddenly linger on a negligible object in the room, on the facial expression of a secondary character, on a shadow moving on the wall. Every detail in the frame can suddenly receive central importance.

A sudden emphasis on a detail is like a "Close Up"; breaking the sequence to show something else is an "Inter-Cut"; a change of focus within the frame (Rack Focus) reveals a new hierarchy of importance. This turns the viewing experience into an intensive dialogue with the viewer, challenging his certainty and inviting him to a new discovery – just like during a Talmudic discussion.

In conclusion, cinema that draws inspiration from the Midrash, from the orality of the Oral Torah, and from the Talmudic structure, is cinema that offers a different experience: alive, dynamic, multi-layered, and full of surprises. It is a cinema that is not afraid to contradict itself and deviate from the main road – because it knows that on the side roads, in the small details, the great secret is often hidden.