My Father My Lord

In My Father My Lord (written and directed by David Volach), Menachem (Ilan Griff) is a small boy growing up in an ultra-Orthodox community in Israel. His rabbi father, Abraham (Assi Dayan), is basically well-meaning, but entirely preoccupied with religious thought, which he attempts to impart to the boy; his mother Esther (Sharon Hacohen Bar) merely dotes on him.

In spite of being raised in a completely closed-off environment, Menachem is keenly aware of and interested in everything around him. He also possesses a natural affection for animals that goes hand in hand with his general sense of wonder about the world (in contrast to other narratives in which cruelty is presumed to be a child’s first and “purest” impulse, à la Lord of the Flies). Teaching him to place the Word and the law of the father above his instinctive compassion will require much persistent training and cultivation.

On his way home from school, Menachem observes someone, dead or injured, being carried out of their house on a stretcher; a distraught and evidently devoted dog follows the paramedics right into the ambulance and won’t be budged from his person’s side until the neighbors finally lead him away. When talking with his parents about this incident over dinner, the boy can’t understand why animals don’t go to heaven (“even the good ones?”). His father can barely muster the patience to seriously consider such an absurd proposition.

To further clarify the concept of human exclusivity, Rabbi Edelman talks about “personal providence” versus “general providence” while addressing his students at the yeshiva, in the boy’s presence. Explicitly excluded from divine oversight are all non-human animals, who have no value whatsoever as individuals, only as species to serve righteous man. (Furthermore, only those who heed the Torah are actually included under the umbrella of personal providence—effectively leaving out most of humankind as well.)

Menachem wants to go to the Dead Sea on holiday, and his parents are happy to grant him this wish. When they arrive, Esther is off to the separate women’s beach; Menachem accompanies his father to the men’s section. While playing on the muddy shore, he comes across a shallow fresh-water stream full of small fish that are being swept out to sea. His father explains soberly: these fish will die in the salt water, which can’t sustain them. Menachem sets about rescuing at least one of the fish, scooping him up in a clear plastic bag. Meanwhile, it’s time for afternoon prayers, and Abraham urges his son to join him and the rest of the men already congregated further up on the beach. But Menachem is preoccupied with his fish, which he has inadvertently spilled from its plastic sanctuary. He wades off into the ocean after it and disappears; eventually his body is found, drowned.

Unlike his biblical namesake, Abraham’s paternal sacrifice is unintentional, but we are meant to understand that his neglect is what prompts the drowning (he is leading the other men in prayer instead of watching his son). On another level, the drowning is of course also prompted by the death of the fish: in a familiar narrative gesture, its fate and the boy’s are symbolically linked—an especially explicit connection in this case, given Menachem’s animal-oriented leanings.

Another symbolic animal scene—more unusual and therefore perhaps more interesting—occurs earlier in the film and results from Menachem’s discovery of a dove’s nest outside his classroom window at school. Together with another boy, he delights in watching the mother dove take care of her young.

When picking Menachem up from school en route to the Dead Sea, Abraham is taken aside by the boys’ teacher, who tells him about the nest. Abraham proceeds to climb up to the classroom and goes to great lengths to shoo away the adult bird—even breaking the stuck window to get at her—as per a cryptic commandment in the Torah that says to “let the mother go” and only then take the young (though the nestlings themselves remain undisturbed). Menachem, waiting in the rented van outside, hears the shattering of glass and looks up to see the dove fly off. Later, on the road, Abraham attempts to explain the biblical passage dictating his action (even he struggles to make sense of the bizarre commandment); when Menachem expresses concern over the fate of the baby birds, his father assures him they will be fine, since the mother will undoubtedly return (“What could be more compassionate that the Torah?”).

The chasing away of the dove is perhaps the film’s most pivotal scene, illustrating the absurdity of blindly following even the most obscure and nonsensical dicta for the sake of scriptural literalism. Yet the scene itself feels strangely muted; we sense it’s an important moment, and perhaps for this exact reason are expecting more brutality: Isn’t he going to wring the mother bird’s neck or at least toss the nestlings to the ground? This is such a reversal of convention it’s almost confusing; it feels like we’ve missed something, so primed are we for violent animal death scenes employed to presage human doom. (Later, this expectation is fulfilled to some extent in the fish scene.) But in the end the scene’s relative mildness meshes with Abraham’s behavior toward his son throughout the film. He is a strict, rigid father, but not an ogre—just a man who takes his beliefs too far, with tragic consequences.