Udi Lion: "Living in conflict is harmonious." (11/6/17)

Face to face(s) with one of Israel's leading filmmakers and iconoclasts.

portrait by Gabrielle Amar

A religious, cultural and political anomaly, Udi Lion captured my imagination within minutes of meeting him. But it was in his absence, after he finished lecturing to my program and went home and I had time to reflect, that my curiosity grew, that my existential agitation (much different than its 16-year-old strain of existential angst, don’t worry everybody) renewed itself. Late that night, I discovered a weird empathy inside of myself, a strange connection -- not one of same identity or shared experience -- but a relatability transcending, even disregarding, both these two things.

In Udi lie multitudes, great and stark. On the surface: he’s an Orthodox Jew rejected by most of the Orthodox world. He is a Talmudist and a devout student of Torah. He is also an artist, and works in the predominantly secular world of Israeli TV as one of Israel’s leading filmmakers. He is the creator of primetime-award winning drama “Avodah Aravit,” which is chock-full of honest and stirring commentary on Israeli-Arab relations in Israel. He attended a far-right yeshiva while growing up, but married an ardent communist. He’s rejected some of the leftist sympathies of his surroundings, and has adopted others. He entertains the idea of relinquishing Jewish autonomy for the creation of a single, peaceful state, but recognizes this idea, today, as “bullshit” and believes in strengthening tzahal in the context of Israel’s current political climate. He is a dreamer and a pragmatist, a thinker and a doer. He is a lover of liberty but a critic of democracy; a pursuer of progress but a skeptic when it comes to changing natural structures. Udi dons a beret daily, a reminder of his piety to God and simultaneous rejection of his denominationalism.

From these descriptors lie obvious tensions as equally striking as Udi’s identity: tensions between Orthodoxy and secularism, tradition/precedent and the embracement of change (in not just Jewish matters, but in how he views social structures, governments, the Arab-Israeli conflict), left and right political positions.

And more than just polarizing Udi’s identity, these tensions also play out in how he experiences the world. He experienced both extreme suffering and joy while raising his handicapped son. He recognizes the beautiful potential and also destructive role his family held throughout his childhood. He practices seeing multiple sides to an issue by studying Talmud. And he also experiences the universal tensions of day-to-day-life: the strain of balancing comfort and discomfort, of not wanting to get out bed, or to go to the gym, or do work, while simultaneously being aware of his responsibilities.

But when I sat down, and talked with Udi, [full link to interview below], the idea that he was a sum of his contradictions, tensions, odds incapable of reconciliation, seemed not only reductive, but wrong. Udi lives in his multitudes and the world’s multitudes at once; he doesn’t juggle or shift between them, choosing which identity or truth to follow and which to disregard for a given moment like a pair of pants.

Multitudes coexist somehow. “How can he live with himself? Why does he not find contradiction anxiety-provoking?” I kept asking myself. There’s some kind of connective tissue, something bridging things in diametric opposition, that Udi has uncovered: challenge. While contradiction may penetrate our existence, challenge, Udi argues, subsumes it. This led me to another question: can contradiction really, at the bottom of things, exist?

Udi believes Talmud and drama are similar. Drama is about challenge, it’s the process of “you wanting something and having problems achieving it;” struggle is essentially the plot of any story, fictional or real. Talmud is a kind of drama. It’s the struggle of debating (even self-doubting) to find a solution to a specific dilemma.

From talking to Udi, I learned that Judaism (with its own unique challenges) can act as a blueprint for interacting with the challenges posed by the greater world. Udi said it powerfully:

"The Jewish people, in my feeling, encompasses its own personality, its collective personality, all of the paradoxes of human existence.”

Udi identifies as a pluralist. “I’m a pluralist in the sense that each person knows something that I don’t.” In Jewish circles, that means he accepts different forms of Jewish practice. In the greater world, it means every person, movement, ideology hold at least a grain of truth.

I used to detest (and part of me still has reservations about) the philosophy of my pluralistic high school. I really believed embracing and trying to accommodate infinite approaches to Judaism would undermine Jewish unity, some underlying least common Jewish denominator that I deeply believed would connect us all somehow if every Jew shifted his lifestyle to revolve around it. I still don’t consider myself a pluralist, but I think my hope of establishing a universal code of practice and Jewish belief was not only illusory, but completely counter to Judaism’s very essence. Judaism wouldn’t be Judaism without without internal debate.

And this diversity isn’t a means of accommodating modernity or our increasingly-multicultural history. It’s part of our tradition. Udi taught me an old Talmudic passage that advises a community, when picking a new rabbi, to look for a leader who can debate and provide 40+ reasons for why a turtle can be considered kosher, even though it isn’t. We pick things apart and look for truth for wherever it can be found, regardless of its overriding power. We do this because we are a people of duality: we recognize that we each hold a yetzer harah (bad impulse) and yetzer hatov (good impulse); we recognize the necessity of chol (mundanity) to experience k’dusha (holiness); we praise Biblical figures, but are wary of our human imperfection; we praise God but are encouraged to wrestle with and challenge Him.

Udi teaches us that we should treat opposition as if it is part of ourselves -- because it really is.

Listen to my interview with Udi here:

https://soundcloud.com/kayla-harris-cohen/udi-lion-edited-interview

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Quoted wisdoms from our interview:

On identity:

“I would say yes, I’m religious, and yes, I’m secular. I am both.”

“That’s the Talmudic thing [in answering whether he ever feels angst or confusion about his identity[.] I was born into it, but it’s a way of life. Living in tension is life.. [It’s] like electricity. Plus and minus. If the heartbeat if flat, you’re dead.”

“I don’t jump [between identities]. I live in both camps at the same time...Look. People do this all the time with noncritical issues. [You] might be tired now but have this obligation...You struggle to wake up in the morning but you know you have to. It’s not a big thing, but we live through struggle.

“To be alive -- also this is why I’m a dramatist: [drama is] about you wanting something and having problems achieving it -- that’s the basic rule of drama - how you get what you want. Struggle for me, conflict, is a place of growth..”

“Comfort zone? What is this? I don’t have a comfort zone...I don’t suffer from it. People who became religious or secular had to suffer for it and I admire it but I don’t have it when I move from one place to another.”

“I’m pluralistic in [the] sense that each person knows something that I don’t.”

On voids:

“You have to accept void, trauma -- in God, in self, in world -- accept in sense of not surrendering but acknowledging and how [to] deal with [problem.]"

“When my [handicapped] son was born, my world collapsed and I had to deal -- my son was born after 5 pregnancies, [there was] a lot of struggle along way - until he was born. And then this thing you dream about -- suddenly, this fictional or imagined child dies and you have to deal with another child. Terrible situation. It’s darkness, frightening… It’s a void. You feel G-d is against you. And now have to deal with it. But the question is what do you do with it?"

On religion:

"There is one Judaism -- in a sense that there are many Judaisms and you have to find your path within it. Now that's ultrapuralistic. Each Charadi should have his own way, and each Reform person."

“I am suspicious of spirituality. Sometimes it’s avoiding life. Its paganism. Some spirituality is close to religion but especially today [it’s used] to avoid where you’re living. It’s like escapism.”

“Some atheists are the greatest believers. Let me give you an example: this is Rabbi Kook. He said that some people are called believers, [but the] atheists are actually believers. If someone actually believes that the Torah comes from heaven, because for some [the Torah is] illustrated in such a materialistic [aesthetic] way, they’re not really believers. [That’s] paganism. Atheists reject this.”

“God is this want, longing. There’s this gap, this longing that makes us move… The law of Newton [says that there’s] no energy without movement. Where does energy come from? Because of this gap between us and God. Even [for] people who don’t believe in God in a theological sense, that’s what moves them. Not everyone believes in God but everyone searches for potential, force. If I feel that world can change -- if I was deterministic then [what] should I do?"

On challenge underlying tension:

- Secular vs. religious:

“The need to be critical comes from secularism. Your atheist side of you purifies your religiosity… Iconoclasm was Avraham Aveniu. He was an iconoclast. He was a believer and an iconoclast at the same time… I see myself as religious because to me [challenging is my] way of being religious. Religious by challenging religion.”

- Good vs bad:

“And on other side: take my son, I’ve had my worst times with my son and my best times with my son. The day my son learned words - I can’t compare [them] to when daughter learned words. G-d’s appearance and light shown on me when [he was] able to sign [his] first words -- every [parent whose] child speaks words is happy- but [it] does not compare. [This is the] same son that gave me my worst and darkest times. So is God good or bad? Can’t say this without this, or that without that.”

- Revolution vs structure of nature:

"You can’t avoid evil. Chazal tried to erase sexual wanting to try and [help the world] become pure. The next day chickens didn’t lay eggs, trees didn’t give food. This erotic energy is needed to give life. Can’t separate [the good and bad].

“One in 5 children are being damaged. Do we abolish family? But family is the warmest place a child can have, so what’s the answer? Try to make better families. Fight about making better families.”

“Our deepest complexity is our being human versus being godly. [It’s the] central conflict that moves everything. If human with flesh and bones accepts that he can reach the sky and find something of God in him - to have godly thing within him- this gap is the biggest and central gap in the world. Who I am and what I want to be or can be.”

“It’s a beautiful thought: you create yourself. It’s the idea of total responsibility for who I am. Problem is: it doesn't take into consideration sense of belonging -- you’re not human if you’re crying and focussed on someone else who has a better reason for crying.”

Truth vs action: “Need to separate truth with action. With action you need to make decisions. It‘s not ultimate truth but the concrete decision. Talmud is all sides. But we have to make a decision."

“Context is life.”

On Israel:

“I’m against the Balfour declaration.”

“Zionism is the bringing back of Jewish people in real political contextual life and we’re far from it.”

[On the right of return]: “His [Palestinian] grandpa was here [two generations ago] and wants to return. [We want to return] from two thousand years ago. What are we demanding? It’s the same right of return.”

“Can you live with both truths? Yes. Is there an easy solution? No. But if I accept both then I can try and make a solution and solutions. And I will try this way and that way and I will fail.”

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he paradoxes of human existence.”