Zohan and Restless - films of a changing Israel and Zionism?

Written by Michael Vass

It’s not often that I can recall an Adam Sandler comedic movie being referred to as an important window on the state of Israel or Judaism. In fact I don’t recall ever having read that kind of comparison. Until now.

Adam Sandler’s latest film You Don’t Mess With The Zohan deals with an expert soldier who leaves Israel to come to New York City to be a hairdresser. It’s a film that leaves any real seriousness far behind. Yet it does criticize the Palestinian issue (without providing a resolution), looks at father-son relationships, and the exodus from Israel – or the yoredim as it is sometimes called.

Brian Britt looks at all these issues and the question of Israel as a post-Zionist and/or post-Judaism society. He also uses the dramatic and yet quite similar meaning of the film Restless to further draw on these issues. It’s quite the article.

“For a society of immigrants where the experience of military service is nearly universal and culturally central, the films’ focus on émigrés (sometimes pejoratively called yoredim, “those who go down”) suggests not all is well with Zionism. Post-Zionism, a term made familiar in the 1990s by Israeli intellectuals, was denounced by some after the attacks of September 11, 2001, but the term continues to describe a range of positions in Israeli culture and politics. Sociologist Uri Ram credits post-Zionism with raising the problem of whether Israel will be Jewish or democratic; historian Tom Segev regards post-Zionism as a new phase of Israeli history; Middle East scholar Meyrav Wurmser warns that post-Zionism threatens the security of Israel by challenging Israeli nationalism and Judaism itself.”

It’s an interesting progression of thought that ultimately acknowledges the failure of both films to address the root of the question he sees in them. But I believe that such a question may be far more interesting for my readers. Do you agree?

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