For Israeli Philosophy Professor Shalom Rosengerb, the world is divided into two kinds of people: those who had the privilege to meet Monsieur Chouchani and those who did not. 

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An enigmatic scholar, Chouchani taught many distinguished students in Europe, Israel, and South America after World War II. Besides Rosenberg, his disciples were French Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, and more. 

Although not much is known about Chouchani, including his real name, recent documents obtained by the National Library of Israel shed light on his genius.

Fifty notebooks handwritten by Chouchani were donated to the library by Rosenberg, who met the scholar in South America. The papers were studied, deciphered and organized by the National Library and are available to the public. 

According to archivists, the notebooks are full of ideas on Jewish thought, memory exercises, and mathematical formulas that were incredibly difficult to decipher. 

"Chouchani's notebooks are a gold mine," said Yoel Finkelman, curator at the National Libary. "His works are exceptionally challenging to decipher because he did not write orderly paragraphs. He put down parts of sentences, mathematical equations, and acronyms in which he encrypted his ideas.

"Moreover, he had his own kind of vocabulary, and only through tracking down a word as it appears throughout the rest of the text can one begin to understand its meaning."

According to Finkelman, the library worked on deciphering Choucani's works in order to "understand what he knew, how he thought and how he formulated his religious and educational views." He aso said the library considered it "of paramount importance to bring to the public's attention the story of one of the most mysterious and influential figures in twentieth-century Jewish thought."

David Lang, an archivist at the National Library, said another aspect that made the process of deciphering Chouchani's notebooks complex was how diverse his areas of expertise were. 

"The notebooks cover all subjects in Judaism – Torah, Talmud, Jewish law, Rabbinic literature, philosophy, Kabbalah, ethics, and Hassidism," he said. "He also spent a great deal of time on mathematics and physics, and Choucani's interest in the history of science is also evident."

According to Lang, Chouchani had an extraordinary photographic memory and was able to recall and cite the entire Bible, Talmud, and various Jewish texts from memory and even mastered several languages. 

Wiesel, who greatly admired his teacher, wrote that Chouchani "mastered some 30 ancient and modern languages, including Hindi and Hungarian. His French was pure, his English perfect, and his Yiddish harmonized with the accent of whatever person he was speaking with. The Vedas [Hindu religious texts] and the Zohar he could recite by heart. A wandering Jew, he felt at home in every culture."

For Rosenberg, who was born in Buenos Aires in 1935 and moved to Israel in 1963, meeting Chouchani was a dream. 

"Shalom spoke about Chouchani all the time, and so in 1967, I surprised him with a gift – a trip to Montevideo, Uruguay, to meet him," his wife, Rina said. Despite the limited amount of time they spent together, Chouchani left a tremendous impression on Rosenberg, as well as the rest of this students. 

Chouchani arrived in Uruguay after spending several years in Israel, Algeria, and France. While in Israel, he studied with renowned Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, who was the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of British Mandatory Palestine. 

Kook called Chouchani "one of the most excellent young people… sharp, knowledgeable, complete and multi-minded."

Chouchani's comprehensive knowledge even helped him escape the horrors of the Holocaust. When arrested by Nazi officers in Paris, he claimed he was a Muslim. Doubting whether that was true, officials summoned the chief mufti of France at the time, who, after a three-hour conversation with Chouchani, declared he was "a holy Muslim." 

The Jewish scholar eventually made his way to Uruguay, where he died unexpectedly in 1968. 

"He felt that Uruguay was so far away, the war would never spread there," Rina Rosenberg said. In 1968, she and her husband participated in a Jewish teachers' seminar in the South American country, which Chouchani also attended. 

"He used to always sit in his room and teach," she said. "He never came to the dining hall, but only ate in his room. He was charismatic and impressive. Shalom told me Chouchani told him he preferred to teach women because he said their heads have not been tainted by yeshivas."

Choucani passed away during that same seminar. 

"One Saturday night he suddenly fell ill," Rosenberg recalled. "Shalom and a few others took him to a local hospital, where he died. Shalom was devastated. He thought Chouchani could have been saved, but the hospital didn't even have oxygen to give him."

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Rosenberg, who is the former chair of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has spent many years deciphering Choucani's work. He asserts that Chouchani's real name was most likely Hillel Perlman and he was born in the Belarusian town of Brisk. 

A few years ago, he was joined by his student Hodaya Har-Shefi, who wrote a thesis on Chouchani and is now writing a doctorate. 

By studying Chouchani's work, she learned that "he gave a lot of attention to the teacher-student relationship. It is also interesting to see his attitude towards the sages, how he criticized their work, but at the same time, deeply respected them."

According to the National Library, Chouchani challenged his students with difficult questions and encouraged them to improve and progress, and especially to think in unexpected ways.

"Chouchani did not want his works to be published in his lifetime," Har-Shefi continued."He also did not like students taking notes and summarizing his lessons. He had tremendous respect and caution for the written word.

"He wanted people to teach and learn the right way, and he tried to pass on these tools to his students to make sure Jewish tradition continues."

Professor Hanoch Ben-Pazi, who walked Har-Shefi through her thesis work, says Chouchani's personal experience mirrored that of European Jewswho moved to the West in the first half of the 20th century. 

"Chouchani belongs to the same group of young people from Eastern Europe who came to the West and admired the Enlightenment and the vast knowledge that was now available to them," he said. "The same thing happened to Rabbi [Joseph] Soloveitchik, Abraham Joshua Heschel, and the Lubavitcher Rebbe [Menachem Mendel Schneerson.]"

Soloveitchik, Heschel, and Schneerson were all born in Eastern Europe, but immigrated to the United States in their youth and went on to become the greatest Jewish leaders of the 20th century. 

"They all tried to preserve the Torah world, but still wanted to be part of the enlightened world," Ben-Pazi continued. "This is a complicated task. In the end, each of them had their own journey." 

Ben-Pazi has also spent a great deal of time deciphering Chouchani's works. 

"It is clear that from a historical and biographical point of view that Chochani's is a classic Jewish story," he said. "On the other hand, seeing how his teachings affected his students and where it led them, we see that his influence on Western thought, albeit indirect, is much greater than one would assume."

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The first time Sheldon Teitelbaum came across a science fiction book was as a sixth grader at a Talmud Torah in Montreal, Canada. A book with red bindings about a subversive school on Mars jumped out at him from among the books on the library's shelves. He wasn't allowed to borrow the book, which was reserved for seventh graders and older, but that was the moment when the seeds of curiosity about sci-fi were planted in him. Today, some 50 years later, Teitelbaum has just published his second English-language anthology of Israeli sci-fi stories, which was launched at the recent ICon Festival, a science-fiction and fantasy fan convention.

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"I begged the librarian to let me borrow the book by Robert Heinlein, but she wouldn't let me," he recalls. "As we all know, if you want to get a kid really excited about something, all you have to do is tell them they can't have it. I didn't even know what science fiction was at the time, but I knew that I liked it. I knew so little about it that when I looked for books in the library, I got confused between Second World War literature about American soldiers and sci-fi because of the helmets they wore − I thought they were space helmets," he laughs.

The 1960s, when Teitelbaum discovered the sci-fi genre, were when science fiction was in its second wave: The books were deeper and more complex, touching on a broader range of subject matter, with authors such as Isaac Asimov and Philip K. Dick reaching new levels of writing. But at that time, the genre was still considered low-brow and underground, so much so that its enthusiasts had to smuggle magazines home and read them by torchlight under a blanket. After the Heinlein book had shone a light for him at the Talmud Torah, he found further works that aroused his curiosity at his grandfather's synagogue.

"I opened up a draw and found a whole stack of sci-fi magazines. I took the lot of them and every time I came to the synagogue I would go off to the library, open the bag and read the magazines. That was the time that a lot of the great sci-fi writers were making their breakthrough. I read them and thought I was being reborn − in a synagogue full of old people of all places. God smiled at me," he recalls with enormous pleasure.

Stuck in a never-ending present

More Zion's Fiction: Wondrous Tales from the Israeli ImagiNation is the second volume of an anthology of Israeli science fiction stories in English edited by Teitelbaum and his partner in the project, Emmanuel Lottem. The title contains a play on words with "Zion's fiction," which sounds like "science fiction." The idea for the first anthology, published in 2018, came after seeing a wave of similar anthologies published in English with science fiction stories from various countries: Russia, China, Spain, Portugal, and even seven different anthologies from the Philippines. That was the spark for publishing the anthology and the play on words in the title that came to him in a flash of imagination got his juices flowing. As an enthusiast of the genre, Teitelbaum found that the connection between Israel and science fiction was much deeper than we might first think: "The State of Israel is the only country established under the influence of two wonderful and imaginative works of science fiction − the bible, and a science fiction novel written by Theodor Herzl, Altneuland. Herzl's book was heavily influenced by Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward which was written in the 19th century as a proto-socialist utopian science fiction novel. Herzl's novel had such a great impact on Jewish society that it led to the establishment of a political movement and the founding of a state. That was Herzl's goal, and he used science fiction to make it come true."

To make his dream come true, Teitelbaum turned to Emmanuel Lottem, one of the founders of the Israeli Society for Science Fiction and Fantasy and a well-known translator in the field. The two met some 30 years ago when they were both part of the editorial staff of the journal Fantasy 2000. The two hadn't been in touch since then, but Teitelbaum knew that Lottem was the right partner for the project. The first anthology was published in 2018 and included translations into English of stories from prominent Israeli writers such as Gail Hareven, Savyon Liebrecht, Shimon Adaf, Nava Semel, Keren Landsman and others. The cover image is of the Herzl, the seer of the state, looking out over planet earth from a spaceship, in the same pose as the iconic image of him looking out over the balcony of the Hotel de Trois Rois, in Basel, Switzerland during the Fifth Zionist Congress in 1901. The anthology was well received around the world and was even translated into Japanese, gaining enthusiastic reviews that labeled the anthology a masterpiece.

Q: What's unique about Israeli science fiction?

"Surprisingly, there is very little "hard science fiction." There aren't many stories about galactic empires or space journeys into the distant future, which are known as "space operas". The Israeli imagination doesn't sail far beyond land. There is no game of dimensions and time as one sees in the United States or Britain, two countries that influence writers across the world. Something about the tensions in the Israeli situation narrows the imagination. Elana Gomel calls this situation "limbotopia," a feeling of being stuck in a never-ending present.  Classic science fiction deals with the exceptional, be it utopia or dystopia, and it creates an alternative reality.

"The Israeli situation has created a paralysis of historical imagination so that one can no longer think of an alternative. Israeli science fiction is a lot darker, deals more with death, and in comparison with other places, it deals a lot more with suicidal tendencies and suicides."

No time for dreaming

In their breathtaking forwards to the two anthologies, the editors expand on Israeli history and the development of science fiction in the country. They don't skip a single major event in Israel's history, and they tie the history of local science fiction to points in time such as the Holocaust, the 1967 Six-Day War and the Lebanon wars.

They begin their examination of the science fiction phenomenon in biblical times.  The cover image of the second volume is of the prophet Elijah, who instead of ascending to the heavens in a whirlwind is observing a spaceship touching down on earth. Why is Israeli science fiction so rooted to earth? That is a question that deeply troubles the editors. The answer they offer is to be found in the difference between dream and reality: Imagination plays a major role at the stage of vision when a science fiction book is written to establish a state. But from the moment it has been established, it has to be maintained on a daily basis. There is a need for ongoing hard labor to keep the dream alive, and thus there is no time for dreaming, only for the realization of dreams. It is only in Israel's later and more established years that the sci-fi genre has taken off in the young country.

Teitelbaum notes that the Israeli-Palestinian issue is something else that is absent from the genre in Hebrew. "The Israeli authors don't write about the 'elephant in the room' − the Palestinians and other Arabs. Most of them write very personal, quotidian, non-political writing. Some of the authors write about issues such as personal identity, lifestyles and social recognition. Readers who are not familiar with the genre often believe that it is a male genre, but this is not true, not in the world at large, and certainly not in Israel where half of the writers are women."

Teitelbaum is no stranger to life in Israel. Instead of donating money to the state, as most Canadian Jews do, he preferred to contribute and to serve. When he was 18, he decided to make aliyah by himself and joined the IDF.  "In Montreal, we were a community of religious and secular Jews. I was sent to my grandfather's schul to pray, but after my bar mitzvah I rebelled and left everything. That life was really dull for me. It was a synagogue full of old people with no kids. I didn't really understand and I didn't like the fact that my family lived a secular life and sent me off to be their religious Jew. Every year representatives from the Jewish federations of Canada would come to the synagogue and ask for donations for Israel. People would donate thousands of dollars and even tens of thousands of dollars to Israel. It was all a big show off; I didn't like it. I swore I would never allow myself to be in a situation where I was being asked for donations for Israel, so I decided to contribute my time. I made aliyah and joined the army. I planned to serve for a year-and-a-half ... but in the end, I spent five years in the Nahal Brigade, ending up as an education officer."

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Teitelbaum fought in the Lebanon War in 1982 and went on to study political science. He worked as a reporter for The Jerusalem Post for four years and then left for California as he saw no future as a journalist in Israel. "The irony is that I was sent from California to be a military correspondent in Lebanon," he says, laughing bitterly. "I'm married to an Israel; all my children speak fluent Hebrew. Every year we go to summer camp in Israel − Tel Aviv is their backyard. Israel TV is switched on in our house 24 hours a day."

A decade after the closure of Fantasy 2000, which was published for only six years, from 1978 to 1984, Lottem co-founded the Israeli Society for Science Fiction and Fantasy, serving as its chairman. His main occupation over the past 40 years has been translation and he has translated hundreds of books in that time. Lottem explains how the society came to be established: "We knew that there were science fiction fans in Israel. Since the 1970s quite a few science fiction titles had been translated; I translated a few of them. The people were there, we just had to get them together and form an association. In the end though the society was formed thanks to a lady from the British Council, which promotes British culture around the world. By chance, she was also a science fiction fan. On a trip home one time she met Brian Aldiss, a well-known science fiction author. She asked why he had never been to Israel and he replied: 'Because I was never invited.' She invited him to Israel and so we had to set up an association so that we would have something to do with Aldiss. Indeed, he was the one to inaugurate the society's activities."

The society remains active to this day and runs two major conventions: The ICon Festival and the Olamot Convention, which takes place at Passover. The events take place during school holidays so that children can also participate, and are a highlight for fans of the genre, with lectures, role play games and more. The society also publishes a journal of speculative fiction called Once Upon a Future.

Sci-fi heroes

The association between government institutions and science fiction turns out to be a recurring motif in Emmanuel Lottem's life. In 1976, before turning to a career in translation, Lottem worked for the Foreign Ministry, at the Research and Planning Center. Surprisingly, his work there turned out to be critical for his translation of the American science fiction author Frank Herbert's cult novel, Dune. "The Center was established following the findings of the Agranat Committee in the wake of the Yom Kippur War. One of its findings was that there was a need for a civilian body parallel to Military Intelligence that would have access to intelligence materials and provide a non-military perspective," says Lottem who joined the foreign ministry after completing a doctorate at the London School of Economics.

"The foreign ministry has a reputation as being very suited, but it was more like a miniature university campus - excited young people, full of ideas. We would sit in the cafeteria during our morning break and somehow the topic of science fiction would come up. It turned out that a lot of the employees liked the genre and that made me really happy. At the time I also started to translate books to make some extra money. I worked for Am Oved [publishers], which had just started publishing a series of science fiction books. I said to them that I wanted to translate sci-fi, but they just said 'Forget about it. Sci-fi is for kids. A serious guy like you shouldn't be doing stuff like that.' That was the attitude toward science fiction back then and it still is."

One day when he was at the foreign ministry Lottem received a call from Am Oved proposing that he translate Dune. "I agreed straight off. I had read the book three times in English so obviously I was happy. I went down to the cafeteria and told the guys. Everybody was really excited about it. They all helped me out, everyone took on a translation mission. For example, there is a character in Dune who quotes figures from the Bible, so you have to identify the verses and find the original using a concordance in English and Hebrew.

"Somebody who would go on to become an ambassador in the far east and was an expert in classical Arabic took upon himself to handle the Arabic side of the book. After every chapter that I translated they would go over it and make comments, and even the secretaries helped out by printing it for us. It was great."

That was how the foreign ministry made its considerable contribution to the development of science fiction in Israel.

Teitelbaum and Lottem are now working on a third volume. "My dream is to give a push to the whole crew of science fiction writers," says Teitelbaum. "They are working in a bubble. I think they deserve a lot broader attention and not the condescending attitude they have received from Hebrew literary critics, who traditionally have ridiculed science fiction."

For Israeli writers, the support they have received from the two editors and their efforts to promote the genre around the world have been no less than a redemption.

"I didn't understand just how important what we have done is for the authors, until one of them told me that we are heroes for them. I just stood there in shock," says Teitelbaum. "I'm not a hero, I just really love science fiction."

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No one has ever suspected Resling publishing house of putting out pulp fiction, but even though it is a publisher specializing in critical theory, its imprint on Israeli thought is undeniable. Resling's founders Idan Zivoni and Itzhak Benyamini are currently celebrating 20 years of work with over a thousand non-fiction books published in that time.

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The two met at the cafeteria in the humanities department at Tel Aviv University back in the 1990s when they were both studying for master's degrees in literature and psychology. Neither of them had yet thought of a subject for their doctoral thesis, but the desire to publish critical theory led them to found Resling Magazine in 1995. Six years and eight issues later, they moved up to the next stage ﹘ founding a publishing house focusing on the translation of French philosophical works that had sparked their intellectual curiosity but were not available in Hebrew: Jacques Derrida, Michelle Foucault, Roland Barthes ﹘ names that Hebrew readers now know.

The first book they published was Slavoj Zizek's On Superego And Other Ghosts. They had intended to publish it in Resling Magazine, but when the transcript of the Slovenian philosopher's lecture at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque was left without a publisher, they decided to pick up the gauntlet. Resling Publishing house was born.

"From that moment, we understood that we were on to something important, that we were sitting on a corpus of continental philosophy that interests us," recalls Idan Zivoni. "What motivated us was the desire to unlock the secrets of the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan; that's what Zizek spoke about in his book and that has been our motivation ever since."

Resling's focus on post-structural French theory was something that was innovative at the time, even though the school of thought developed 30-40 years prior to being translated into Hebrew. "The university publishers did only sporadic translations of these theories. Even in 50 years, they wouldn't have managed to achieve the intensity of translations that we did.

"From their perspective, philosophy ended 200 years ago with [Immanuel] Kant and [Georg] Hagel, and after that a little [Soren] Kierkegaard and [Jean-Paul] Sartre, and that's it," states Zivoni. "In that sense, our project has been revolutionary, but the clock ticks on every revolution. Today, we are in the post-revolutionary stage."

Zivoni admits that "when we published Derida's text 20 years ago it had a very different effect than today. These things are absorbed by culture; the conversation moves forward all the time. They were classics on a global scale. We didn't invent them, but we did enable them to be perceived in Israel as classic translations. We brought forward their fashionably late translation."

Zivoni and Benyamini treated the canonical and – at the time – subversive texts as if they were sacred. "When we first translated Lacan, we read the text aloud by candlelight from A to Z. We felt as if we were hearing the living word of God."

Q: Just how influential is Resling and where were you most surprised to see that influence?

"Let me tell you a funny story," Zivoni said. "A few days ago, the translator who did Walter Benjamin's Passages told me that she was sitting at her hairdresser's one day when the stylist said to her: 'I heard that Passages is sold out, when is there going to be another print run.' So either she was a very special stylist, or there are hairdressers who sit up at night reading Walter Benjamin. It was very moving."

In recent years Resling's influence has trickled down to another main stage – the social analysis of journalist Avishai Ben Haim, who has been influenced over the years by many of the thinkers translated over the years by the publisher.

Resling's editor and co-founder Itzhak Benyamini admits that he doesn't like the interpretations Ben Haim concocted. Benyamini wrote a series of angry posts against Ben Haim, and as a protest sent him 10 books published by Resling that expressed his own political direction. Later on, he did the same with journalist Amit Segal and columnist Gadi Taub, both of whom, like Ben Haim, are associated with a right-wing viewpoint.

"I sent them the books as a prank," says Benyamini. "It was kind of antagonistic, but with a smile.

"It's not that I think Ben Haim is wrong," Benyamini explained. "Some of the materials that he employs are factually correct. My problem is when Ben Haim says that we, as Mizrahi Jews, stand accused the same way as  [Benjamin] Netanyahu; that made me explode. I felt personally offended as a Mizrahi Jew that he placed me on the defendant's bench against my will. But at the same time, it's a good example of how influential the publishing house is. Avishai is absolutely a product of Resling; without us, it's obvious he would never have reached those places."

Alongside the many non-fiction books published by Resling, it also has a prose department that published the Vashti series of translated literature, edited by Adi Sorek, which includes books by Sylvia Plath, Thomas Pynchon and Emily Dickinson.

In recent years, Resling has also published the Laboratory series of original Israeli literature, edited by Naama Tsal, who passed away prematurely about a year ago, at the age of 39. The series focuses on experimental literature and Tsal invited authors to work in laboratory conditions on challenging experimental projects. Work on some of the books in the series was cut short with Tsal's death.

"There is no one to replace Naama; she was irreplaceable," says Zivoni. "Naama was very attentive and very precise; she had a strong ability to sniff out good texts."

Post-modernist argot is one of Resling's trademarks and it has trickled deep down into Israeli academic discourse. Even well-educated people with an academic background often find themselves lost in the complex texts published by Resling – both translated works and original Hebrew titles. A humorous Facebook page titled "Daily Resling Book" parodies the publisher's titles.

Resling's founders are proud of their preeminence in the field. "One couldn't imagine academia today without Resling," says Zivoni. "We have become a staple of the social sciences and humanities. The polemic about the post-structuralist discourse has been around since the school of thought emerged in France in the 1960s and is not something that is unique to us. The same thing happened in the United States - the elites found it difficult to accept this discourse but very soon adopted it. It's been the same for us; we have been criticized for our style from the very first book we published. But we feel that we have democratized the discourse - we have opened it up to audiences that would never have gained access to it."

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But the focus on critical theory has a price. "Resling has created an intellectual exile of Israeli critical theorists who have left the country," says Zivoni. "On the one hand a textual community has been constructed, but on the other hand, this community has been deconstructed because the criticism of Israeli violence and militarism weakens Israeliness due to a brain drain from the country. There is a dualism here – the discourse not only constructs a community but also splits it apart and dismantles it. I say that from a very personal point of view. People who were part of Resling, who published books with us, are today academics overseas and speak out against Israel. You can no longer teach in academia overseas without supporting BDS."

This tension – one that it is not all clear whether it may be resolved – stands at the heart of the speech Zivoni plans to give at an event to mark the anniversary of the founding of Resling.

"These are questions that bother me: how is it possible to continue living here and to hold a critical position, can we go on reciting these theories, what is the significance of internal exile, and what are the responsibilities of intellectuals. We will continue to promote political activity in Hebrew - to insist on translating, that is the most Zionist act there is."

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From the movie screen, scholar and poet Marilyn Venig watched the changes taking place in Israel's ultra-Orthodox society. Venig, who embraced religion and joined the closed Belz Hassidic sect at age 20, Venig has followed Haredi film from its inception in the 1990s. Her first book, "Haredim Film" (Hebrew title), published about a decade ago, was groundbreaking in its field and redefined the unique Haredi film activity. Her latest book, title "Film of their Own" in Hebrew, is a continuation of that same research and focuses on a particular and intriguing side of the subject – the new wave of women in Haredi film. 

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"You need to be a juggler to produce research like this, you need to be very creative. Because I'm on the border between these two societies, I can take the position of a researcher and examine this world," Venig says. 

"You need to understand – Haredi film is flourishing. There are creators who have already come out with 12 titles, mothers of many children who have made 10 films and more. A regular film scholar has very methodic academic tools, but he doesn't know how to translate the Haredi language into 'secular.' There were a lot of factors that positioned me at the right timing. But it wasn't easy, because a lot of people are dismissive when a researcher is a Haredi woman, a mother of seven, married to a Torah scholar, who has an avant garde, creative approach and infects everyone with her enthusiasm. It strikes at something they hold dear." 

In her book, Venig exposes the unique intimacy and excitement that Haredi film in general and female Haredi film in particular create. In event venues, community centers, women of all ages – grandmothers, mothers, and children – gather to spend two hours watching thrillers and dramas produced by Haredi women. They learned the craft by practicing it, out of passion for pictures on screen, for breathtaking stories. That is a female space. If in Haredi literature, women writers need to take a male pseudonym in order to publish their books, in Haredi film men use women's names to present their films to women. Adherence to Jewish law is the law of Haredi art, but the very ability to tell a story, portray the fringes of the society and touch the people's heart in the most direct way possible opens the door to a new Haredi experience. 

"In Haredi films that present a male character, the protagonist is usually a widow, to avoid minefields of modesty," Venig explains. "Women's film completes the picture – it represents the woman's side of the Haredi story." 

In a closed society that keeps away from technological innovations and carefully chooses the content that will fill its few leisure hours, Haredi film offers a new approach toward the Haredi leadership. 

"One of the most amazing things about Haredi women's film is that no rabbi has ruled that filmmaking is allowed and should be done," Venig says. "There are even rabbis who have absolutely forbidden it. And still, it's become such a dominant phenomenon." 

She attributes the change to the vacuum left after a few major rabbinical figures, like Rabbi Shach or Rabbi Eliyashiv, left when they died. No spiritual leaders of their magnitude rose to take their places, and cultural phenomena make their way in from the street. Venig sees major social changes in the films themselves. 

"I see an immediate link between the changes that started in the second decade of Haredi film to the fact that women in the 21st century are seeking more college education. Some might say that there's no way of proving that, but we can clearly see that in the second decade of films there are more characters of female doctors, lawyers, politicians, and actually these are the fields that most women are studying now," she says. 

In the past decade, Venig has not stopped creating and working – as a poet, a film critic, a screenwriter, and a reader at film foundations are only some of her activities. Her husband, Erez, spends his days studying Torah at a kollel. 

"It seems to me to be supreme happiness to swim in a sea of books and words. Even now I'm envious of all the Torah scholars, whether it's my husband or my son. I'd be happy to be a Torah scholar myself," she laughs. 

"There's something inspiring about it, to delve into Torah, to write new things, without the burden and the existential and material struggles that shrink your soul. In general, books for us are like food. Even if we need to tighten our belts – we'll always buy books. There were periods when we were our children's friends' library. We always had all the new books – comics, Haredi books, literature." 

'I saw evil up close' 

She was born in Australia, made aliyah with her parents at age three, and attended the experimental school in Jerusalem, where she studied theater and art. 

"I was raised in a liberal home, a very clear secular reality, with a very clear route. But there was something in me that looked at the sky, stared at the stars. The first time I heard the word 'God' I didn't understand what it was. I asked them to explain it to me. It was so marvelous to me. I'd talk to him for hours through the window." 

From a young age, she wrote in newspapers for children and teens. "My father taught me to read at age three. I was a bookworm from a very young age," she says. She did her military service at the IDF's Bamachane newspaper, while also studying drama at the Nissan Nativ Acting Studio. At age 20 she embraced religion with her boyfriend, and they became Belz Hassids. While raising her family, Venig continued to create and initiate new projects. 

She established Haredi artistic frameworks such as an acting studio, as well as a drama track at a well-known girls' seminary, as well as founding an association of Haredi artists. Her first book, published in 2011, introduced Venig to the general public. She then published two books of poetry and became known as a critic. 

Currently, she is coming out with a new musical project titled "Subtext" with singer-songwriter Asi Meskin, and has been working on a few film scripts. 

Venig doesn't leave things in the idea stage. After her first book on Haredi film, she took up political work to promote her cultural vision. She was aiming for the film portfolio in the Jerusalem Municipality, so she joined forces with city councilman Ofer Berkowitz and ran on his list in the municipal elections. 

She was not aware that this decision would rock her world. The decision to run on a secular list stuck in the craw of Haredi society. 

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"I didn't look at it as a political move, rather as a way of helping filmmaking. That turned out to be a tragic mistake, because the move was seen as political. It caused a storm that shook up our world. A lot. So I dropped it very quickly. I'm not willing to mix outside matters with matters at home. The moment the decision shook up the lives of my entire family, I realized that it was a warning light. I saw evil from up close, it was a terrible experience," she says. 

Staying human 

Venig got to know another kind of political arena on committees and in foundations that support films. After the success of her book, then-Culture Minister Limor Livnat suggested she serve on the Israel Film Fund. Venig did so for four years, exerting an important influence on what was happening in Israeli film. 

Q: Some people complain about politicization in the organizations that provide support for films. Did you experience that? 

"At the time I was sort of an opposition. I wanted to change things and I acted out of ideology and integrity and a desire to listen. When I sit on a committee, I try to stick to the matters at hand. I got a lot of phone calls that tried to sway me in different directions, but I know that when it comes to these things, there are no games – either the film is good, or it isn't. You can't give money to something that is less than good, and that was my position. If there's a situation in which two films are equal in quality and I need to decide which gets support, I would prioritize a woman over a man, a minority over someone from the hegemony. But again, only if the two films are really high-quality." 

Q: Do you feel that you are paying a price for breaking down barriers in two societies – Haredi and secular? 

"I'm not part of any academic clique that will defend me. I'm not looking to be embraced by the Haredim or the secular, or for justification. I can say that despite publishing four books, and much proven activity on the ground, I'm not a candidate for prizes or important jobs, and I'm still fighting for my place in the establishment. And in general, it's easy to criticize when there's no competing literature in the field, when you're creating something from nothing, when there's no body of work to stand on. So if I'm honest, I sometimes lose confidence in myself and fall down. People are always talking about social variety and the status of women and pluralism – that's nonsense. Often, you're judged severely … see Diaspora Affairs Minister Omer Yakelevich or all the Haredi women who tried to achieve things. These are women who are judged disproportionately. We need to pave the way, with a lot of difficulty, a lot of struggle. It's a war of survival. They trample you and you need to scream."

Q: When you look at Haredi society and see the growing integration of media, can you see a change? Will media 'bring down' Haredi society? 

"Media won't defeat the Haredim, but boundaries are definitely changing. Back in my first book, I pointed out that through media, the wall of isolationism is becoming transparent. Haredi society has become more colorful in the past decade, and it is dealing with new challenges it didn't have in the past, primarily media challenges. The trends of people embracing religion and leaving the religious lifestyle which influence sectoral dynamics, as well as its film, have also changed unrecognizably, and all this demands re-thinking." 

Venig adds that "In the book, I also pointed out the fact that a lot of great leaders had died in the second decade of the 21st century, meaning that the character of the leadership is also in constant flux, and if the fence moves a few centimeters, it has an effect – particularly on the day-to-day reality, from disputes to division on the ordinary field where the haredi lifestyle meets Israeli-ism." 

Q: How did you experience the Mount Meron tragedy? 

"Unfortunately, what happened at Meron exposed a lot of hatred that exists toward Haredi people and their faith. There were people who found it difficult to separate valuing a human life and valuing the lifestyle, and removed themselves from a national tragedy in an inhumane manner. There is no heart that wasn't moved to introspection, except the ones made of stone. It's all right to ask why it happened at such a holy place and time, but where does all this evil come from? An evil person is certain he's right, that he is deserving, and he takes satisfaction in hurting others. Evil is normalized in many places. For some people, it's even part of their personality. So much so that you can encounter evil in cultured placed. What's absurd is that some people don't even notice their own evil, which has become socially normal.

"The children who have their hair cut [at Meron] are the precise symbol of the tragedy in my eyes. A symbol of the innocence of a person of faith, who wants to remain a child forever, clean and innocent. In that moment of ending, when the soul blossoms, with the Rashbi's bonfire and the Toldot Aharon dancing in the background, I want to believe that all the victims were like the children having their hair cut, innocent. And for us, maybe, that terrible death symbolizes the innocence that has been lost to the world and the human wisdom that is so lacking. 

"Time is God's whip and I notice that it passes quickly. Given the events, we can never know when we're at the end. I still believe that being human is the biggest success a person can ask out of life." 

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