Director’s Time to Reconsider

Some films are inspired by current events, but in creating “Time of Favor,” director Joseph Cedar seemed to anticipate history. The Israeli movie, which opens today in Los Angeles, examines how a deadly fusion of religious fanaticism and nationalist fervor could lead to a nightmare scenario engulfing the incendiary Middle East, if not the world.

In Cedar’s script, the apocalyptic threat is embodied in a young Jewish religious student who plots to “cleanse” the Temple Mount in Jerusalem by blowing up the Dome of the Rock, one of Islam’s holiest shrines.

On Sept. 20, 2000, Cedar wrapped post-production on “Time of Favor.” Eight days later, Ariel Sharon, then leader of the opposition and now Israel’s prime minister, undertook a politically charged visit to the Temple Mount, under heavy Israeli police protection.

Although Sharon did not enter the Dome of the Rock or the adjacent Al-Aqsa Mosque, his presence on the Temple Mount infuriated Muslim authorities and, at least in Palestinian eyes, triggered the continuing cycle of violence dubbed by Arabs as the “Al-Aqsa intifada.”

On Sept. 28, 2001, one year after the Sharon visit, “Time of Favor,” having finally found an American distributor, was scheduled to open its commercial run in New York and Los Angeles. But after Sept. 11, the distributor thought it prudent to delay release of a film featuring a Jewish terrorist and dealing with the kind of motivations underlying the disastrous attack.

The Middle East and the world have changed drastically since Cedar conceived and filmed “Time of Favor,” and so has the 33-year-old director and screenwriter.

Graduate of Hebrew U. and NYU Film School

He was born in New York and when he was 5 his father, a noted geneticist, and his mother, a drama psychotherapist, emigrated to Israel. The Cedar family, parents and son, are modern, or centrist, Orthodox Jews. They observe Jewish law and rituals but also live in the secular world. The men are usually recognized by wearing a small, knitted yarmulke--which Cedar balances on top of his close-cut hair--as distinguished from the black hats and coats of the ultra- or fervently Orthodox Jews, known as haredim.

In contrast to most of the haredim, the modern Orthodox fulfill the country’s army duty. Cedar served three years in a paratroop unit, where he was one of three yarmulke-wearing soldiers among the mass of bareheaded comrades. The Cedar family settled in a section of Jerusalem inhabited by like-minded national religious Jews of the Gush Emunim movement, whose adherents largely populate the Israeli settlements on the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

So when Cedar, having graduated from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the New York University film school, started thinking about his debut movie, he visualized his protagonist as “a national religious hero, willing to sacrifice for a greater cause,” he says. “I thought the concept romantic and I was proud to glorify this kind of ethos.”

When he started writing the script, he moved to a West Bank settlement and his friends there and in the wider Orthodox community had high hopes for the project.

“They told me that since I was the first observant Jew to make an Israeli feature film, here was a chance to show how great we really are,” recalls Cedar.

But as the screenplay and the movie evolved, Cedar’s viewpoint changed, or, as he put it, “I matured.... I came to believe that the central question of the film was how much an individual must sacrifice for the good of a group or to advance a cause.” The film, its maker acknowledges, leaves him with more questions than answers, but if there is an overriding message, it is addressed to a potential Arab suicide bomber or to the kind of Jewish zealot who assassinated former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

“I want to tell each of them that while you may think what you’re doing is for the good of your people and pleases God, your life is more important than any of these causes,” says Cedar.

In the wake of Sept. 11, the exhortation takes on added force, Cedar believes, in showing “how fanatics who worship God can end up committing the most horrendous acts in his name.”

Disturbed by America’s Post-Sept. 11 Mood

There is another, heightened relevance between the film and reality, one that disturbs Cedar following a recent visit to his native New York. He understands the emotions underlying the “United We Stand” banners, but he worries that they exclude, by implication, those individuals and groups--including Palestinian Americans--who cannot join the majority consensus.

“When you are very strong and united, you become numb to groups and individuals with other opinions, and that’s bad,” says Cedar.

He is also concerned that Americans, like Israelis before them, are in a “heat-of-revenge” state, which, though understandable, can corrupt the soul.

“I’d like to say to Americans that the humanistic ethics that prevailed before Sept. 11 are now as valid as ever,” Cedar says.

In Israel’s counterpart to the Oscars, “Time of Favor” won six awards, including best picture, and best actor for Aki Avni, who portrays the devout company commander of a unit made up entirely of religious soldiers.

Avni portrays a man torn between loyalties: He’s a disciple of a charismatic rabbi and he’s a professional soldier.

Avni, currently visiting Los Angeles, comes from a non-Orthodox background. To prepare for his role, he spent a few weeks at a West Bank yeshiva, or religious school, of the type portrayed in the film whose graduates go on to military service.

He liked the experience and the people.

“I know there are many who say that the settlers are an obstacle to peace,” says Avni. “I don’t have to agree with everything they do, but I found that the people there are doing a brave job.

“They have a dream, and I find such people attractive.”