The Bible in Motion

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Handbooks of the Bible

and Its Reception
Volume 2

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The Bible
in Motion
A Handbook of the Bible and Its Reception in Film
Part 1
Edited by
Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch

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ISBN 978-1-61451-561-6
e-ISBN (PDF) 978-1-61451-326-1
e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-1-5015-0016-9
ISSN 2330-6270
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The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie;
detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.
2016 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck
Printed on acid-free paper
Printed in Germany
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Anat Y. Zanger

50 A Ram Butts His Broad Horns Again and

Again against the Wall of the House:
The Binding Myth in Israeli Film
Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him
there as a burnt-offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you. (Genesis 22:2)

Aeyal Davidovitchs story Osmosis appeared in the recent Passover edition of the
Haaretz newspaper literary and cultural supplement having won first place in the
newspapers short story competition. The story tells of a father, mother, and their
sons everyday life. The son, perhaps alive, perhaps dead, is the narrator in a story
in which mourning, melancholy, guilt, ritual, and repetition compulsion are dominant elements contributing to an ongoing present (Freud 1963). One possible interpretation of the story is that the family has suffered an accident and is now constantly reliving the moment of catastrophe. Nevertheless, several questions remain. Was it
the sons twin who was killed, or was he an only child? And if the latter, is the speaker alive or is it his ghost which keeps coming back to haunt the family? What part did
the father play in the accident? As the title indicates, this was not an event that took
place in a specific time and place but is an ontological state of ongoing trauma mingling past and present in an attempt to create equilibrium between one persons pain
and anothers anxieties. The story also includes other significant elements: a recurrent binding and freeing of the son by his father, the son cleaning a rifle, the mothers tears, the ram butting the house with its broad horns, the rams organs being
sorted and prepared by the family, and the sons name mentioned only in the closing
sentence of the story: Isaac. The story thus sketches transitions between the characters and events and an osmotic absorption, not only into the nuclear family, but
also into the historic level of the biblical binding myth. Moreover, by connecting reality and hallucination, family history and myth, the story succeeds in describing the
location of the binding myth in Israeli society and culture as moving osmotically between domestic and national spheres.
The myth of the binding of Isaac (Gen. 22) has been transformed and transcribed
in Jewish culture for centuries, and modern Israeli culture has made especially frequent use of it. As observed by Gideon Ofrat (1987) and Hillel Weiss (1991), it is
rare to find Israeli literary texts or works of plastic art in which father-son relationships are not, directly or indirectly, related in some way to the biblical story.

This research was funded by the Israeli Science Foundation (grant no. /). I would like to
thank my research assistants: Nir Ferber, Yael Levy and Matan Nahaloni for their useful comments
and suggestions.
This quotation is drawn from the story Osmosis. See Davidovitch (, ).
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The binding of Isaac in Jewish history is the myth of the sacrifice of the son told
in conjunction with a theological account that elevates the son to the status of victim
through an act of substitution. The sacrifice is thus transformed from being merely an
arbitrary event into a religious trial, an intentional act of faith. Secular approaches,
on the other hand, as noted by literary scholar Ruth Kerton-Bloom, substitute God,
who commanded the trial by binding with another, less clearly defined essence,
whose beginning lies in what may be termed Jewish history, and whose end lies in
total emptiness, as if the binding was never a commandment at all, but rather a
wholly purposeless and meaningless existential act (Kerton-Bloom 1989, 10). Thus
Zionism, like God, promised the Land to the people, and has also demanded the sacrifice of its sons. But there is a salient dissymmetry between the biblical binding
myth and its analogues in modern Jewish history. From pre-state Israel and Eastern
European pogroms to the Holocaust and the Israeli-Arab wars, modern Isaacs are not
always substituted by innocent rams. The myth has evolved through twentieth-century Jewish history from being a collective, tragic myth during the 1920s and 1930s
to protests against binding as a metaphor for existence in the 1980s and 1990s (Zanger 2003).
As I will show, early twenty-first-century Israeli cinema following the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin (1995), the Second Lebanon War (2006), and
the recent war in Gaza (2014) constantly returns to the binding myth. Dialogue
with the myth is evident in both its religious and nationalist aspects, but during
the last decade especially the father has resonated as symbolic figure, evoking Jacques Lacans law of the father.
This old-new myth has functioned as the internal code of Israeli society throughout its relatively short history. Contemporary manifestations of the binding story continue to be repeated. As long as the myth is relevant, its surface structure might be
rearranged, but at the same time it is engaged in a constant dialogue with the deep
structure of the myth. At the turn of the millennium, Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai
wrote that Abraham in fact had three sons, not two: Isaac-El (God will laugh),
Ishma-El (God will hear) and Yivkeh-El (God will cry). Isaac is saved by an
angel and Ishmael by Hagar, but Yivkeh is not saved by anyone. Although in the
Bible we are told that Abraham sacrificed a ram, it was actually Yivkeh who was
brought as a burnt offering (Amichai 2006, 23).
In this chapter, I seek to examine briefly the presence of the binding myth of
these three sons in contemporary Israeli cinema. I discuss the binding of Isaac
and the religious connotations of the myth in relation to the feature film ufshat
qayits (dir. David Volach, 2007, a.k.a. My Father My Lord) and the television episode
Aqedat Yitsaq (The Binding of Isaac); the binding of Ishmael and Isaac and the
national-political aspects of the myth in relation to Bet-leem (dir. Yuval Adler, 2013,
Bethlehem); and the binding of Yivkeh and the mental trauma of the sacrificial victim
who survives in the drama series Hatufim (dir. Gideon Raff, 2009 12, a.k.a. Prisoners

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26 A Ram Butts his Broad Horns again and again against the Wall of the House

765

of War). As I will show, Israeli cinema and television have entered a new phase in
recent years involving rebellion against Abraham and, thereby, attempts to dislocate
the seemingly inevitable cycle of sacrifice.

Isaac and Abraham

An episode of the satirical television show, Ha-Yehudim baim (dir. Kobi Havia, 2014
15, a.k.a. The Jews Are Coming), was titled Aqedat Yitsaq (The Binding of
Isaac). Abraham (Moni Moshonov), complete with beard and caftan, is searching
for a rock on Mt. Moriah. Isaac (Yaniv Biton), an overgrown lad also dressed in a caftan, follows Abraham bound in ropes. Abraham stops by a rock and binds Isaac to it
by his hands and feet, while Isaac asks him in colloquial Hebrew Dad, what are you
doing? Abraham replies, You heard what God said? Isaac answers But Dad,
theres no one here, adding Its me, Isaac, the son you love, remember? In the
end, God intervenes, to Abrahams chagrin. On the way home, he asks his son
not to tell his mum anything about what went on up on Mt. Moriah.
This television parody proposes a double reading of the biblical text depending
on the viewers familiarity with it and playing on his or her expectations. At the
same time, the episode epitomizes visually the way Isaac is symbolically suspended
between heaven and earth, between benevolence and severity in an ambivalent state
charged with uncertainty and risk. Nicole Belmonts description of the ancient
Roman ritual of Levana is pertinent here: the vertical position of a newborn
child, followed by laying him at his fathers feet (Belmont 1973). The first symbolizes
his acceptance into society while the horizontal position, on the other hand, is associated with submission, rejection, and death.
Additional texts over the last ten years involve substantial conflict between fathers and sons, implying criticism of the fathers readiness to sacrifice his son. I
will discuss David Volachs 2006 film My Father My Lord as an exemplar of this
trend. The film portrays three days at the end of summer in Jerusalem and at the
For discussion of post-traumatic stress disorder in Israeli cinema see Gertz/Hermoni (), Kohen
Raz (), Yosef () and the forthcoming study by Tzachi. On war widows in Israeli film see
Friedman ().
Available online at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT_ZLoM (accessed April , ).
See Lacans (, ) citation of Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo ben Yitzhak), who comments that Abraham
was bitter about the angels intervention to prevent his sacrifice of Isaac.
The episode was broadcast during the first season of the satirical television program, Ha-Yehudim
baim (a.k.a. The Jews Are Coming), (Israel, Channel , November , ). The program combines
biblical episodes with satire on current affairs.
Recent films featuring critique of Abraham and his actions include two shorts: Aqedat Yitsaq
(produced and directed by high school students, Reali Haifa , The Binding of Isaac) and
Sempre diem (dir. Nachman Pichovsky, ). The directors of both shorts are young students either
before or after their army service. The former is available online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=GLtmzegE-Ww (accessed April , ).
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Fig. 99: The Binding of Isaac from

The Jews are Coming (2014)

Dead Sea. Menachem (Ilan Griff), or Menachemke (the diminutive by which his parents called him), is the beloved only child of older parents. The family home is very
modest with walls lined by holy books. Its small rooms are crowded with ceremonial
prayers and religious prohibitions, leaving scarce space for the childs soul to
breathe. The childs father Avraham (Assi Dayan), a Rabbi of a local synagogue
and Yeshiva, is scrupulous in his observation of the Jewish commandments, large
and small, never missing an opportunity to teach his son Torah. Menachem enjoys
secular conversation only with his mother (Sharon Hacohen). In the school room
in which Menachem studies (cheder), the Rabbi is teaching the story of the binding
of Isaac, but Menachems thoughts wander to the birds and trees outside.
At the childs request, the family drives to the Dead Sea for a day out. Once
there, the family observes the religious rule of separate bathing, and Menachem
stays with his father. While his father joins evening prayers by the seashore, Menachem prefers casting small fish back into the sea and he gradually wades deeper and
deeper in, until another child notices he has disappeared and alerts the praying men.
After a long search, his drowned body is recovered by helicopter. At the end of the
film, when the seven days of shiva (mourning) are over, the father tries to go on as
before but cannot. The mother, for her part, expresses her bitterness by throwing
prayer books one by one from the ladies gallery of the synagogue to the mens prayer
hall below, where a service is underway.
The film makes repeated reference to the binding of Isaac. The fathers name is
Avraham; the older couple has had difficulty having children; Menachem, who is
their only child, studies the story of the akedah and fails to place the sacrificial
lamb correctly in the picture on the blackboard. The time sequence of the film, its
season, and place coincide with those of the binding story, which according to tradition took place during three days in the month of Ellul (late summer) on Mt. Moriah, somewhere in or near Jerusalem.
Volachs film also alludes to an early Israeli film relating to theological aspects of the myth: Sheloshah yamim wa-yeled (dir. Uri Zohar, , a.k.a. Three Days and a Child), an adaptation of a short
story by A. B. Yehoshua (). As noted by Mordechai Shalev (, ), the childs name in that
film, Yali, is also an allusion to the biblical story since Yali is a diminutive of Eyal (ram). The opening
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26 A Ram Butts his Broad Horns again and again against the Wall of the House

767

As Lacan (1987) emphasizes, binding involves ligature. Interestingly, in My Father My Lord, the son is bound twice. The first time, on the way to the Dead Sea,
his mother repeatedly takes hold of his head and neck to tie his skullcap in place
with a string. Secondly, when he is winched out of the sea by the rescue helicopter,
he is first bound with ropes and is then suspended between earth and sky in a manner reminiscent of the ancient Roman ritual described above.
In contrast with the biblical story, however, the substitution essential to the ongoing existence of the theological myth does not take place. The biblical binding
myth involves a familiar set of participants and their interrelationships, based on
the principle of substitution. Each participant in the drama enacted in the symbolic
setting of Mount Moriah may be substituted for the other. All are in fact interchangeable units having an identical function in the same system; each is bound in the central paradigm of binding. God, Abraham, Isaac, the ram, and Sarah are all equally
victims of this trial of faith (Spiegel 1964).
In David Volachs film, there is no substitution and the son is indeed sacrificed in
the name of his fathers law, and, in this sense, it takes a secular approach as well.
Nevertheless, since God issuing commands has been replaced by the State of Israels
recognition of binding as its ontology, Israels secular mythology tends to extract
three cardinal motifs from the archetype: (a) martyrdom and the love of God, (b)
the covenant between Abraham and his God in which God rewards Abrahams
faith with the promise that his seed will produce a great nation, and (c) divine trial.
Volachs film, on the other hand, by eliminating the substitution suggests a
unique alignment between martyrdom and the love of God. I was wrapped up in
my prayers, I was in the arms of God, explains the father after his sons death.
The Bible, together with all subsequent commentaries, emphasizes the binding
myth as the antithesis of human sacrifice to the idol Moloch. My Father My Lord,
by tampering with the substitution at the core of the myth, is situated in opposition
to the original, archetypal binding story. Even before the binding episode itself, the
film foreshadows or augments it with another episode in which both Menachems father and teacher drive a hatching mother pigeon away from the schoolroom window.
When Menachem asks what will happen to the chicks, no real answer is forthcoming.
Thus the film prefigures the event in which, in the name of Torah and observing the
commandments, the mother is removed from the scene and her child is abandoned
to his fate. During the search for Menachem in the Dead Sea, Avraham, Esther his
wife, and an accompanying crowd gaze heavenward, but receive no answer. Similarly, in the final sequence in the synagogue, Avraham raises his eyes to meet only a
cold, alienating, neon light.

sequence of Zohars film is a voice-over, which makes explicit reference to the binding myth in the
last three days of the holiday, in the first days of autumn, in Jerusalem. Ultimately the father does
not carry through his plan to kill his ex-girlfriends son in any event he said, the time and
place were ripe.
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The film was produced twelve years after the assassination of Prime Minister
Yitzhak Rabin (1995), and following the second Lebanon war (2006) and reflects
its historical moment (Kaes 2009, 5 6) of despair and protest. Volachs film demonstrates the tragic consequence of blind obedience to dictates from above. One
could read this critique as referring to both the theological and the Zionist narratives.

Ishmael, Abu Ibrahim, and Abraham

There is a long tradition in Israeli cinema of lending national-political significance to
the binding of Isaac myth, from Givah 24 enah onah (dir. Thorold Dickinson 1954, a.
k.a. Hill 24 Doesnt Answer), via Hu halakh ba-adot (dir. Yosef Milo, 1967, a.k.a. He
Walked Through the Fields), Onat ha-duvdevanim (dir. Haim Buzaglo 1991, a.k.a.
Time of the Cherries) up to Beaufort (dir. Yosef Cedar, 2006) to name just a few.
Bet-leem (dir. Yuval Adler, 2013) is an exception in that it explores the binding
myth and its currency in Palestinian as well as in Israeli society, focusing on the interaction between them. The film involves several triangular relationships. First there
is the relationship between two sons and a father: the young Palestinian, Sanfur
(Shadi Mari), who is recruited by the Israelis as a collaborator (without his fathers
knowledge) and his father and brother. Sanfur (literally smurf) is fifteen years old
when he is recruited with the chance to save his sick father as leverage. His brother,
Ibrahim (Simnham), is an activist in a Palestinian resistance organization and is killed by the Israeli security forces following tip offs received by Sanfur. The second triangle is the relationship between Sanfur and the head of the two organizations: his
dead brothers deputy, Badaui (Hitham Omari), and his Shabac (Secret Police) handler, Razi (Tsahi Halevi). Razi tells his commanding officer that he loves Sanfur like a
son and sees more of him than of his own children. The third and most important
triangular relationship is between Sanfur and his two fathers: Abu Ibrahim (Tarik
Kopty), his Palestinian biological father, and Razi, his Israeli symbolic father.
As we have seen, the principle of substitution is central to the binding myth and
Bet-leem establishes a pattern of substitutions involving each member of the triangle: the father who sacrifices his son as a burnt offering, the son who sacrifices his
symbolic father, handlers and fathers, and the principle for the sake of which the
sacrifice is made. These positions are reversible: the extreme action of the Palestinian
organization is analogous to that by the Israeli military, the father sacrifices his son
(or the organization) but the son can also rise up against his father.
The binding itself is also written into the film on several occasions. First, Sanfurs brother Ibrahim, who is a member of a Palestinian resistance organization (actually a member of both a moderate and an extreme faction) is wanted by the Israeli
security forces. When in a house surrounded by Israeli forces, Ibrahim hides on the
Taufiq Abu Wails film Atash (Thirst) also involves a son, who kills the father that has
abused him and his family. See the discussion of this film in Oleinik ().
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Fig. 100: Patricide of the symbolic father in

Bet-leem (2013)

roof, lying supine like Isaac bound on the altar. He is killed during an Israeli military
operation in Bethlehem. When informed of his sons death, his father, Abu Ibrahim,
says that he wishes he had been taken instead of his son and declares him to be a
Shahid or holy martyr. Both the military wing of Hamas and the Al Aksa brigade want
to claim the victim as their own and to bask in the glory of their achievement. Sanfur
murders his Shabac handler, Razi. Earlier, Razi put his professional standing and his
colleagues at risk when he persuaded Sanfur to get away and not join his brother as
usual. Razi thus disobeyed a direct order from his commander in order to prevent
Sanfurs death, putting at risk the success of the operation and making it much
more dangerous, so that the Israeli forces suffer casualties including Razi himself.
Later on, when Badaui finds out that Sanfur had collaborated with the Israeli secret
service, he presents him with an ultimatum (with his fathers knowledge): either he
kills his Israeli handler or he will be executed in Bethlehem. The next time Sanfur
makes contact with him, Razi hurries out alone to meet him in an isolated place,
against the advice of his team. Sanfur asks Razi to give him asylum in Israel without
telling him why. When Razi tries to put him off, Sanfur shoots him and lays him down
bleeding on the ground. He embraces Razi and asks will you send me to Badaui
and Badaui will send me back to you and then youll send me back to Badaui
again?
As Jacques Lacan remarks, the commandment take your son, your only one is
typical of the impenetrable absoluteness of every law and also of the inability of humans to undertake this absolute demand, hence the existence of another god, the
father, who understands and extricates the son via the covenant (Lacan 1987, 92).
Sanfur searches among his fathers and mentors for the good father who will prevent
his binding, but realizes that he is trapped between them. He smashes Razis head
with a stone and kills him, then sits by his corpse and stares into space. Sanfurs sacrifice of his symbolic father is not the product of faith but of Badauis ultimatum. A
moment before he was prepared to transfer his loyalties, so the sacrifice is not premeditated but is carried out because of impotence and despair. In effect, it is the two

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fathers, representatives of two peoples in conflict, the descendants of Isaac and Ishmael, who situate Sanfur as bound.

Yivkeh-El and Abraham

The Israeli drama series Prisoners of War (dir. Gideon Raff, 2009 12, a.k.a. Hatufim), like Bet-leem, features an amalgam of father-son relationships, sacrificial victims, binders and bound, betrayal and loyalty, and the suffering of the mentally damaged. Prisoners of War (henceforth POW) follows the story of three military kidnap
victims, their families, and their relations with the state, the army, the security services, and the Mossad. The first season deals with the difficult acclimatization of two
of the kidnap victims Nimrod (Yoram Toledano) and Uri (Ishai Golan) on their
return, following seventeen years in captivity. They have to face changes in their families, the lack of a profession, and ignorance regarding new technologies. They have
difficulties sleeping and suffer from anxiety and rage attacks. During the first season,
they are preoccupied with contacting the Israeli-Arab family of Gemal (Salim Dau),
one of their captors in Lebanon, in quest of clues regarding the mystery of what happened to the third captive Amiel (Assi Cohen). The second season focuses on Amiel,
who is living on the other side of the border. Towards the end of the series, however,
we learn that both Amiel and his handler Gemal were in fact double agents working
for the Israelis.
The series resonates with the binding myth in its substitutions of the sacrificial
victim. While in captivity, Nimrod is forced to choose between Amiel and Uri. In
choosing to save Uri, he must sacrifice Amiel. Later on, Amiel lives in Syria under
an assumed identity in order to serve Israels security interests while his supposed
coffin is brought to Israel for burial. The father of Ynon, the soldier sent to bring
Amiel back, is killed in a terror attack while saving his sons life.
POW deals with the ongoing trauma suffered by the returnees and their families.
The inherent forgetting of the traumatic event is pertinent as a perspective that
evades consciousness and perpetuates the nightmare. This is the structural trauma
which Dominick LaCapra defines (LaCapra 2014, 80). The process begins from the
time of the traumatic event itself, and the subsequent undermining of narrative structure by the trauma, such as the unravelling of linear time, is expressed as flashbacks
recurring throughout the episodes.

Sanfurs code name in the Israeli Shabac is Esau, thus hinting at Jacobs usurpation of Esaus
birthright (Gen. : ).
This Israeli series was adapted to create the award winning American series Homeland (prod. Gideon Raff ).
During the s, Israeli soldiers were abducted while on duty by organizations hostile to Israel.
During the broadcast of the series first season, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwassers bodies were returned, while intensive negotiations for Gilad Shalits release were ongoing.
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I would like to focus on the encounters between the prisoners of war and the
therapeutic authorities in order to illustrate the ways mental injury is inscribed
into the series. Nimrods wife, Talia (Yal Abecassis), seeks professional help and
suggests her husband join a support group. However, Nimrod keeps insisting that everything is fine, despite the frequent flashbacks of torture in captivity from which he
suffers. When Nimrod sees the large number of people participating in the support
group, he refuses to enter the room. No one has been through what I went through,
he shouts. How long were they held prisoner? Two weeks? The exposure is difficult
for him; he is not prepared to lay himself open like that. Talia re-joins the group
while Nimrod escapes back home. One of the participants, who divorced her husband
after he returned from captivity, tells Talia: I have three children, I dont need another, adding the prisoners see their nuclear family as a kind of imprisonment,
so they do everything they can to break it up. Like the Chorus in a Greek tragedy,
she provides Talia with commentary on the action and predictions about what is likely to happen.
The names of all three Israeli kidnap victims (Uri, Nimrod, and Amiel) are linked
to the binding myth on several levels. On a linguistic level, Amiel literally means
God is with me. On an intertextual level, both Uri and Nimrod have been included
in canonical works referencing the mythology of the binding of Isaac. Uri is the name
of the male protagonist in the 1947 Moshe Shamir novel Hu halach bsadot (a.k.a. He
Walked through the Fields) and its film adaptation (dir. Yosef Millo, 1967), and Nimrod
is the title of the acclaimed sculpture by Yithak Danziger (1939) symbolising the affinity between the Land of Israel and the Jewish people. Each of the prisoners, like
the biblical Isaac, finds himself in a twilight zone between life and death both in
captivity and following their release, as they continue to suffer nightmares, mental
scars, and terminal illness.

Conclusion
Ren Girard identifies the sacrificial victim with a time of crisis: The scapegoat
emerges when the uniqueness and viability of the community is called into question
(Girard 2005, 298 99). Girard points to mimetic desire (179 80) as being at the
root of every societys attitude to its members as well as to prohibitions, taboos,
and crises. He suggests that rival desires may be resolved, at least temporarily, by
finding a potential surrogate victim (98). Such victims are chosen from among the
underprivileged (children, women, hostages, prisoners), but at the same time must
have a degree of symbolic power in order to shoulder the crisis adequately. His or
her blood has, literally and metaphorically, a restorative and reconciliatory effect
on the community (113).

See also Ilana Szobel () on Rene Girard in her paper on women poets and the binding myth.
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The sacrificial binding myth recurs at times of crisis in Israeli society. It involves
a divine dictate for human sacrifice, which God ultimately rescinds. The fathers
willingness to sacrifice his son has left its mark, however. Following Lacans discussion in his essay Introduction to The Names of the Father (1987), Ruth Ronen delineates the paradox embodied in the demand to make such a sacrifice: There is no
way to obey fully Gods command to sacrifice the son, since obedience is also an infringement of the covenant between God and Abraham and his descendants (Ronen
2010, 19, my translation).
I identify in this chapter three types of victim involved in the ritual of sacrifice in
Israeli society. As expressed in contemporary Israeli cinema and television, they are
all victims of the law of the father, whether that father is Abraham, the State of
Israel, the army, or the Secret Police. Volachs film, My Father My Lord, presents
Isaac as a victim of his fathers religious faith. Yuval Adlers film, Bet-leem, presents
Ishmael as caught between two fathers: the biological Palestinian one and the symbolic Israeli one. POW presents Amichais Yivkeh, in the post-traumatic stress disorder suffered by the living-dead returning captives who have survived their binding
and continue to be exploited by Israels military and security institutions.
November 4, 1995, marks a watershed in Israeli society. On this day, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated following a peace rally held in a central square
in Tel Aviv. Rabins assassination may be identified as a sacrifice in the context of the
binding myth, with the aim of destroying any possibility of reaching a peaceful settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and, thus, perpetuating the sacrificial myth
in Israeli society. The assassin, Yigal Amir, is a religious, right wing activist who will
end his days in prison. The initial shock displaced an increasing rift between the religious establishment and the right, between the settlers and those who fight for
peace. In that same Tel Aviv square, now called Rabin Square, Michal KastenKedar, whose husband Dolev was killed in the 2014 war in Gaza, addressed another
left wing rally in March 2015:
How many more lost women like me will lose their hearts, their lives? How many children like
mine will lose their fathers? How many miserable parents will lose their sons until our State understands that there is no choice: we must achieve a peace settlement? We have already lost our
Dolev. Nothing will bring him back. But we must prevent the next casualties.

Like the films and television series discussed in this paper, Kedar questions the need
to continue sacrificing the sons of Israel. These texts Ha-Yehudim baim, My Father
My Lord, Bet-leem, and Prisoners of War draw our attention to the figure of the
symbolic father, and Lacans Law of the Father (1987), thereby urging an end to
the cycle of sacrifice embodied in the binding myth.

The binding of Ishmael is also marked in Islam by its most important festival, Id el Adha.
Major General Dolev Kedars widow, Michal, spoke at a rally calling for a change of administration before the last Israeli general election in March .
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Works Cited
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Films Cited
Aqedat Yitsaq [The Binding of Isaac] (dir. Students, 2014, The Hebrew Reali School in Haifa, IL).
Atash [Thirst] (dir. Tawfik Abu Wael, 2004, Ness Communication & Productions Ltd., IL/PS).
Beaufort (dir. Joseph Cedar, 2006, United King, IL).
Bet-leem [Bethlehem] (dir. Yuval Adler, 2013, Entre Chien et Loup, IL/DE/BE).
Givah 24 enah onah [Hill 24 Doesnt Answer] (dir. Thorold Dickinson, 1955, Israel Motion
Picture Studios, IL).
Hatufim [a.k.a. Prisoners of War] (dir. Gideon Raff, 2009 12, Keshet Media Group, IL).
Ha-Yehudim baim [a.k.a. The Jews Are Coming, TV series] (dir. Kobi Havia, 2014 15, Yoav Gross
Productions, IL).
Ha-Yehudim baim [Aqedat Yitsaq or The Binding of Isaac, Season 1, Episode 1] (dir. Kobi
Havia, 2014, Yoav Gross Productions, IL).
ufshat qayits [a.k.a. My Father My Lord] (dir. David Volach, 2007, Cinema Project, IL).
Hu halakh ba-adot [a.k.a. He Walked Through the Fields] (dir. Yosef Millo, 1967, Meroz Films, IL).
Homeland (prod. Gideon Raff, 2011-, Showtime, US).
or ba-levanah [Hole in the Moon] (dir. Uri Zohar, 1964, Geva Films Ltd., IL).
Onat ha-duvdevanim [a.k.a. Time of the Cherries] (dir. Haim Bouzaglo, 1991, Contact Productions,
IL).
Semper idem (dir. Nachman Picovsky, 2014, Sam Spiegel, IL).
Sheloshah yamim wa-yeled [Three Days and a Child] (dir. Uri Zohar, 1968, A. Deshe, IL).

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Authenticated
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