There has been a healthy response to the video so far. Many of the comments on YouTube and Twitter are positive. But quite a few also agonize over the role women play in the video. "SabaCorps" says it best in a YouTube comment:
"Powerful message of inclusion. It's especially powerful in the way that it leaves women on the sidelines. Being inclusive should not be exclusive to men."
I accept this criticism, and can't say I'm surprised by it. In fact, broadly speaking, I agree. The challenge I faced with this video is a challenge faced by any attempt at Jewish unity: how do we unite Jews whose ideologies are deeply contradictory?
First, some background on the project: Several months ago, songwriter Katia Bolotin approached Mendy Pellin Media for a music video.
Our assignment: To create a fun, compelling music video that captures her song's message of Jewish unity, and to find a way to do it so the message can reach as deeply as possible into the Orthodox community that is Mendy's primary audience, while remaining as inclusive and broadly representative of Judaism as a whole. Not easy.
On top of that, we were specifically tasked with including women in the video, but had to find a way to include them without alienating the video's primary audience. In other words, the challenge was to produce a video that would be so inclusive that even those at the divisive extremes could enjoy it.
This was shaping up to be a classic case of ideology clashing with audience. Our audience, predominantly deep in the heart of Orthodoxy, demanded something that, ideologically, I have a hard time accepting. What's wrong with dancing women? Why can't we feature "secular" women (in tank tops, let's say, to differentiate them from the "religious" women in more modest apparel)? If we're painting a picture of Judaism's diversity, why can't we show it?
But I had to tackle these questions very quickly. Mendy, after all, was supposed to direct the video, but due to some last-minute family emergencies, the directing fell to me. With only three days to prepare for production, the last thing I could do was spend time philosophizing about the message.
I directed as best I could, focusing not on the exclusions, but on the positive message we're trying to express. When the dust settled, I had some time to think through what we did, and to try to come to terms with my participation in it.
First of all, the unity message is extremely important. It's something I'm passionate about, that has been a part of my life since I was a kid. I grew up in a "mixed" home - one Orthodox parent, the other anti-religious (they're still married!) I attended a pluralistic Jewish high school, enjoy friendships across the religious spectrum, and pursue a life outside of the cultural boundaries defined by sect or movement.
But what about the women issue? Was I "selling out" by limiting the involvement of women in the story I was telling? Or was I simply adapting a story for the particular preferences of a specific audience?
I don't have a clear or satisfying answer to that question. At the end of the day, the importance of the unity message trumps other ideologies in this video. I couldn't reach the far-left without alienating the far-right, and I couldn't reach the far-right without alienating the far left. To reach the most people, I had to find a spot in that awkward middle ground where I could reach as far left and as far right as possible without splitting apart completely.
That said, even the way the video is presented, there are Jewish groups that won't condone it (they're the same groups that would blur out the faces of female heads of state in their news publications, or the groups that insist that anything short of absolute gender equality is deeply offensive). Jewish unity needs to include them, too, but I couldn't figure out how to do it without losing the women entirely (which seemed like a worse step to take) or losing much of the Orthodox audience (also too big a loss).
All this is to say that Jewish unity isn't as simple as all of us dancing together (much as I wish it were!) It's incredibly complicated, almost to the point of impossibility.
But the video had to be made, the message (incomplete as it is) has to be put out there. The difficulty of this challenge doesn't excuse us from the obligation to tackle it.
לא עליך המלאכה לגמור ואין אתה בן חורין להיבטל ממנה
-Arnon
Very well written and good job on what you achieved under such pressure. I think that as an artist you had to make the unity tangible by making it "dance together" but in reality the unity has no boundaries. it has nothing to do with woman or not, nothing to do with dancing or not, it has to do with respect - and that's a concept that is hard to make tangible, but is very real and achievable. Hey, I think that if we look around, we are not doing as bad as we think when it comes to unity!
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