By Chuck Graham, TucsonStage.com
Traditions that last are the ones that can accommodate change without creating exceptional instability.
Watching “Fill the Void,” now playing at the Loft Cinema, 3233 E. Speedway Blvd., is just such an exploration of tradition challenged by change in the ultra-Orthodox Jews of modern Israel.
Although the film by writer/director Rama Burshtein isn’t a documentary, it is a keenly observed portrait of families and the marriages that will carry on their beloved beliefs.
Burshtein was born in the United States but grew up in a non-Orthodox home in Israel. She studied film, then chose to take up the practice of traditionally observant Judaism. As such, she seeks to honor both the liberal and conservative notions of religious practice in this film.
Her actors and her direction have created in “Fill the Void” a story that could be taken straight from the Old Testament.
Shira (Hadas Yaron) is the central figure, a young woman from a respectable family, now of marriageable age. Even better, she happily approves of the man their parents have decided should be her husband.
But then, Shira’s married sister dies in childbirth. The husband Yochay (Yiftach Klein) has few options. There is a woman in Belgium he could marry, but that would mean leaving Israel and taking the baby.
Or…he could marry Shira , keeping both families together in Israel.
As Shira works through her feelings, we are also taken into the Orthodox celebration of Purim. It is during this special time that Shira’s mother begins the delicate negotiations with Shira’s father and Shira herself, pointing out to the disappointed bride the many layers of family, community and religious responsibilities that are involved in Shira’s choice.
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