AICE ISRAELI FILM FESTIVAL: Yigal Revach, who heads an Israeli advertising agency, sounds like a typical marketing man, fretting about ad placements and clients’ budgets, except for one crucial difference: Most people in his target audience eschew personal computers and many don’t have TV sets.
Rabbi Micha Rothschild is Revach’s chief adversary, waging what he terms as a holy war against the PC. Ron Ofer and Yohai Hakak’s enlightening documentary Religion.com profiles the two men on opposite sides of the battle of the internet among Israel’s ultra-Orthodox (or Haredi) community.
Revach’s agency handles numerous blue chip advertisers including a bank, lotto, an internet service provider and makers of digital cameras and detergents. His challenge: How to use the internet as a marketing tool to a deeply conservative community, many of whom view the web as sinful.
According to the narrator, Rothschild was appointed by the 'great Torah sages to preserve the Haredi ghetto from the modern world’s foreign influences." To spread his message, he delivers speeches about the dangers of the PC and internet and distributes cartoons showing a boy sitting in front of a computer as he loses his hair and turns into a dragon. He argues that children who have PCs should not be allowed to attend ultra-Orthodox schools.
Revach may be a hard-headed marketing guy but he isn’t entirely mercenary, extolling the internet’s value as a source of education, information and communication.
Their very different outlooks extend to their personal lives. Ironically, given his espousal of freedom of expression, Revach won’t allow the camera into his house and he doesn’t have a PC at home, observing, 'My family doesn’t want one." But he invites the filmmakers to accompany him on one of his regular pilgrimages to the Ukraine, where he weeps at a rabbis’ graveyard.
Rothschild welcomes the crew to his home but his wife declines to be filmed. 'My wife doesn’t know what a camera is," he explains. 'I am happy she is that way. She doesn’t want to know the world." He admits one of his sons – they have nine kids – asked to have the internet.
The two men eventually meet, each sticking to his position but showing respect for the other’s views. Ultimately, Revach is the victor as the rabbinical council approves the first internet service directed at the Haredi community. 'It’s a revolution that’s happened with a kosher stamp," he declares.
Rothschild isn’t asked for his reaction but somehow you doubt he’ll ever give up his struggle.
