Jewish Moments: A Celebration Of Life

Being the closet Talmudist that I am, I'll open this review with a deeply philosophical question: when not video? Certainly, one of the truest answers would have to be: not video when another medium (including print) could tell the tale or handle the task more elegantly and effectively. Using video as a means of mounting a photographic slide show is, to my mind, a prime example of NOT territory; and that is exactly the territory in which Jewish Moments resides. Photographer Marvin Schwartz has assembled 36 minutes of lovely black and white photographs taken in the orthodox Jewish community of Rue des Rosiers in Paris over a six year period. These visual documents are used as a backdrop against which an oddly flat-voiced woman narrator offers minimalist commentary on the tenets of (orthodox) Jewish life. The voice-over is accompanied by evocative piano and flute music, which, in the end, is somewhat more interesting than the telegraphic narrative it accompanies. Although the photographs displayed are beautiful, I found my eyes glazing over by the last ten minutes of the video--perhaps a function of the less-than-effective narration, stately pacing, and monochromatic nature of the photos. In any case, I longed to see many sequences (such as the discussion of the marriage ceremony) burst into moving images, color, song, and dance. If the narrative and photographs had expressly focused on the history and life of Rue des Rosiers, a community that has existed since the late eighteenth century, some of these failings could perhaps have been overcome. Still, Jewish Moments might be useful to some public, school, and religious libraries, and is therefore an optional purchase. Aud: J, H, C, P. (G. Handman)