Hats of
Jerusalem
by Nati
Adler
First Run/Icarus Films, New York, 2005
Video-DVD, 52 mins., col.
Sales, Video-DVD: $298; Rental/video:
$125
Distributors
website: http://www.frif.com
Reviewed by Jonathan Zilberg
Independent Scholar
jonathanzilberg@gmail.com or jonathanzilberg@yahoo.com
Nati Adlers documentary film is
a quixotic and artistic combination of
image and sound that often reminds one
of Rembrandt and French Orientalist paintings
because of the quality of the light and
the otherworldly scenes. Following one
hat after another, he leads us through
ancient alleyways and up and down narrow
cobbled streets through Jewish, Christian,
and Muslim neighborhoods, utterly separate
social spaces. By simply asking what hats
mean, he reveals the diversity of the
Holy City as a microcosm of the Abrahamic
world.
In a beguiling and impish way, Adler deftly
captures the powerful emotional and symbolic
significance of hats as identity markers.
Stitched together from interviews with
both those who wear and make these hats,
with images and accounts from the art
historical and historical record, this
documentary is important on two counts.
First, it shows how religious identity
is embodied. Second, it sensitively explores
the veiling of Jewish and Christian women,
a vital issue considering the heated contemporary
debates over the hiljab.
From the Ashkenazi shtreimmel,
to the Moroccan fez or tarbush,
from the Armenian cone as a symbol of
Mount Ararat to the Palestinian kfir
as a symbol of resistance, this documentary
is a marvel in terms of how deeply significant
historical, political, and religious events
and markers can be so successfully approached
through such a simple tactic. Not infrequently,
when he asks his usual question as to
why wear one kind of hat and not another,
he is treated contemptuously as some kind
of idiot outsider. But his informants
would be surprised at the results of his
research as they would learn something
of their own histories and of others.
For example, in delving into the history
of the shtreimmel, we revisit Brueghels
paintings of 16th Century Holland
which evidence Pope Innocents 13th
Century decree that Jews, beggars and
lepers wear foxes tails upon their
jackets. Hence we learn that this symbol
of collective belonging, of Jewishness,
is the transformation of a marker of an
oppressed minority. From shame to pride,
from disguise to donation, the documentary
gets increasingly interesting scene by
scene. For instance, we see mounted Jewish
settlers disguised as Bedouin warriors,
learn how the Israeli Defense Forces
signature Castro-like hats were donated
by the American Hat Association and that
the Syrian priests white folded
hats recall Antonius, the first Christian
monk, and his struggle with Satan in the
3rd Century.
Though Adler is himself Jewish, he finds
it virtually impossible to penetrate his
own society in his search for meaning.
Ironically, the first time that he strikes
ethnographic gold is when two Greek Orthodox
priests invite him into their dormitory
where they entertain him with hard driving
Christian rock music and draw his attention
to the lyrics which for them memorializes
the Armenian genocide. Suddenly the barriers
between Adler as a profane secular outsider
are breached and the distinction between
self and other which marks the documentary
up to that point falls away as a veil
to the floor. From this point on the documentary
moves into even more remarkable territory
as he enters both sacred and private contexts
which would have appeared unimaginable
at the
start of the documentary.
For example, he meets a Russian Orthodox
nun who is willing to talk to him. But
her Bishop refuses to allow it. This critical
event completely re-sets the stage for
the last half of the film. Adler begins
this complementary part by providing us
a brief insight into the world in which
the opulent and colorful bishops hats
are made, extraordinary hats of silken
cloth, dazzling with jewels and brocade.
Though he is not allowed to interview
the cloistered sisters, he is allowed
to film them practicing their hymnals.
Inadvertently, he has struck an even richer
seam of ethnographic gold and enters into
a deeply numinous and beautiful space.
The cameras gaze focuses on an attractive
young Russian novitiate whose stray wisps
of blond hair escape her veil. Ever aesthetic,
Rembrandt-like at times, the intensely
sensitive combination of sound and image
shifts across starkly different contexts
of prayer and cultural space again and
again.
For the rest of the film, Adler explores
an issue of exceptional contemporary sensitivity
with an ingenious twist by looking into
the world of Orthodox Jewish women and
the pleasures and frustrations of being
veiled. From the austere black robes of
the nuns and their bishops, to shrouded
shapeless Muslim women in black, we make
the acquaintance of a formerly orthodox
Jewish woman liberated and dressed in
black leather, her radiantly red long
tresses free. She takes us inside the
world which Adler at first could not penetrate
and there he
strikes an even richer,
sexier vein a hair salon in which
Orthodox young Vogue like Jewesses
have their wigs cut, blow dried, and permed
platinum blond today, eager brunette
tomorrow. And then the most stunning image
of all, an exquisitely beautiful woman
posing movie star-like with her serpentine
coils of hair tightly bound in dark blue
cloth talking about the relationship between
her hair and her sense of identity and
sexuality. Then, evoking the fear religious
men have of the figure of the femme
fatale, of the peculiar concept of
women as the source of all evil, we learn
that Eve was not Adams first wife,
that first there was a redhead named Lilith
whom God had expelled from Eden for being
insufficiently submissive.
Adler does not disappoint us. He moves
to closure with a scene of hatless children
playing and shares with us his Dr Seuss-like
wish that a wind would blow
everyones hats
off so that no one would know who was
who or what was what. Yet he ends appropriately
with the image of two robed Orthodox Jewish
men walking into the sunset, their big
black hats bobbing and peyotim
swinging to wistful music evoking the
time of the ghetto.