Saturday, April 21st - 11:00 am - Bell Auditorium Monday, April 23rd - 5:00 pm - St. Anthony Main   Director: Ruth Beckerman   An entertaining and informative documentary, Zorro’s Bar Mitzvah accompanies four 12-year-olds—Sharon, Tom, Moishy, and Sophie—as they prepare for their bar, or bat mitzvah, the traditional coming-of-age ceremony for Jewish children.

Sharon, the son of Georgian parents with Sephardic roots, has chosen “Zorro” as the theme of his bar mitzvah party. In an untraditional fashion, his parents hire a Jewish video specialist to create a mini-movie in which their son dons the costume of the pop-culture hero, complete with mask, cape and sword, rides and jumps off a horse, and engages in a fencing duel. Tom, the son of an Israeli mother and an Austrian father, embarks upon a journey to Jerusalem, where he lays and fastens the tefilin for the first time at the Wailing Wall. Moishy is ushered into adulthood according to the strict laws of Orthodox Judaism, while Sophie has an elaborate celebration with friends and family.

The film explores Jewish tradition and its many interpretations, questions the significance of initiation rites, reveals the differences in the status of the sexes within Orthodox Judaism, shows the diffuse separation between religious and secular worlds, and wonders whether religion can serve as a contemporary medium for these social ceremonies.

Cast: Tom Sattler, Moishy Ortner, Sharon Mamistvalov, Sophie Landesmann, Andre Wanne

In German with English subtitles; Austria/Israel, 90 minutes, 2006, BetaSP.

Presented by: University of Minnesota Institute for Global Studies

Film Print provided by First Run/Icarus Films.