Ido Bahat

The excommunication of Baruch Spinoza, the Dutch Jewish philosopher who revolutionized modern thought, is a formative, mysterious event in the understanding of his work. Director David Ofek takes us on an intercontinental journey tracing six reasons for Spinoza's excommunication. Between Amsterdam, the Hague, New York, Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv, he makes some surprising discoveries, and traces the figure of a man who continues to intrigue our culture with his ideas, which remain revolutionary, spiritual, and radical to this day. This is the 17th film in The Hebrews project.

Young parents Efrat and Ofir abandoned their newborn son Malachi due to a medical syndrome. Bat Sheva, a devoted midwife, chose to become his foster mother, giving him a new life. Interviews with Malachi’s biological parents, foster parents, and medical staff, combined with powerful animation, reveal the trauma of abandonment and its impact is revealed: the parents wrestling with guilt while longing for forgiveness, Bat Sheva’s boundless love, and Malachi’s journey to understand himself and his past. The film explores human complexity, responsibility, and the possibility of redemption amidst pain.

No Jewish divorce is complete without the man literally giving the woman her freedom back. With Israel having neither civil marriage nor divorce, women can get trapped. The film follows several such "chained" women together with Batya, a religious lawyer, who embarks on a struggle against the rabbinical courts.

Chicken Soup With Knives is a personal documentary that chronicles filmmaker Leora Eisenstein’s journey (with her sister and other companions) to Lviv, her family’s hometown before World War II. There, she embarks on a search for her roots as well as a sense of justice. The journey from Israel to Ukraine encompasses meetings with current residents of Lviv, family reunions, and personal reflections. All of these elements converge as the film maps the effects of the past—and all of its painful memories—on the present.

A documentary that follows Mordechai Vilozny, who travels back to Auschwitz from which he was liberated nearly 50 years ago. He travels back to Poland with his Israeli-born son, who is a stand-up comedian. Father and son have an alienated relationship. Will the trip help to repair this relationship?

Osher, Michelle and Eitan were evicted from their homes as children and transferred to foster care. These are supportive and stable families, but with a specified expiration date - when the boy / girl turns 18. The biological families are in a state of dysfunction and are absent. The film accompanies the three towards the end of the last year as part of the foster care and the first year of independence. The personal relationship that develops between them provides them with a supportive, stable and shaky framework at the same time, similar to that between the drowning person and the straw. Without the protective patronage of the foster care framework that has loosened or expired completely, they are exposed and swayed to the wind when past traumas burned into their minds may erupt and crush at once what has been built, or seemed to have been built, with much toil and torment.

For more than twenty years, the Israeli Kneller family's "Town Lyne" motel in the US hosted various, guests. Over time, the family's lives came to resemble the chaotic, colorful world that existed in its rooms.