Israel, diaspora, Gaza: Swiss film festival exposes the fault lines of Jewish identity

Michel Rappaport, director of the Yesh! Jewish Film Festival in Zurich, talks to SWI swissinfo.ch about the challenges of putting together this year’s festival programme and the soul-searching within the Jewish diaspora in the aftermath of October 7 terrorist attacks. There are dozens of Jewish film festivals all over the world, from Hong Kong to Canada. In the United States, alone, there are at least 20 festivals. They range from small-scale community-based events to more professional ventures like Toronto, London and New York. The multiplicity of Jewish film festivals reflects the diversity of Jewish identities and views, often in conflict: secular and religious, Zionist and anti-Zionist, traditionalists and reformists, Israel versus the diaspora, and many shades in-between. “This multicultural aspect of Jewishness is really fascinating, but it also makes it much more complex,” says Michel Rappaport, director of the Yesh! Jewish Film Festival in Zurich. The word ‘yesh’ in Hebrew ...