Identity can be a complicated construct. One part – the main part perhaps – of its complexity lies in the tension between the personal and the communal. How we define ourself is a private, intimate act; but having done so, we all too often seek affirmation for this from the wider world. Our identity is our opportunity to say who we think we are, but all too often this understanding is tempered, mediated, clouded – whatever, it might very well be all three – by what other people think we are. It’s a funny old world.
17 years is a long time to live away from home, as Tom Tamar Pauer discovers when she returns to Israel, the nest she flew so many years ago. Much has changed: what will she make of the place that she once thought of as home? More important still, what will “home” make of her and the two children – 15 year old Daniel and six year old Shira – that she brings in tow?
My German Children, written and directed by Pauer, is a multi-generational consideration of the makings of identity. Pauer’s personal history lends itself to the task readily. Her parents are both German immigrants to Israel: her father is Jewish, her mother not. The shadow of the Shoah lingers unpleasantly over the family: her mother volunteered on Kibbutz Yotvata as a modest form of penance, a way of showing that “not all Germans are bad people.” The thing is, Israel is a country explicitly, contentiously, inchoately defined by its relationship to Judaism. A mother serving penance for the sins of others doesn’t stop her classmates calling the daughter the Nazi. A Jewish father doesn’t necessarily make her a Jew in the eyes of others.
In fact though, My German Children is not so much about Tom – who is clear in her mind about who she is and where she wants to be – as about her children, especially 15 year Daniel. Engaging, intelligent, increasingly unhappy, Daniel, one quickly senses, is not in thrall to the idea of rediscovering himself in Israel. “Israel is the most dangerous place in the world for Jews,” he observes deadpan. Educational standards are poor, the spectre of unwanted army serves looms in the not too distant future. And if these weren’t bad enough, a year long interlude is threatening to turn into an open-ended adventure. Daniel wants out, but how is this going to be negotiated?
My German Children is at times untidy, elliptical. There’s no mention, for instance, about the role of the father – the fathers? – of Tom’s children in their lives, their perspective on the relocation. One can’t help but wonder how much this lacuna connects to Tom’s decision to relocate, despite the evident practical and philosophical challenges that the task will present.
The children, as one might expect, struggle with the move more overtly. The practical issues of day-to-day integration sit more heavily upon their shoulders; their perspective gives useful heft to the abstractness that threads its way into the film. “When people say they are proud to be Israel, they are…saying they are proud to be Jewish,” Daniel observes. “Since I am not Jewish…so what’s left for me? Nothing.” Still, his mother insists that she is Israeli. Each, in their own way, must negotiate the meaning of their identity for themselves.
My German Children (Germany, 80 min, Hebrew/German, English/Hebrew subtitles)
Written and directed by Tom Tamar Pauer
My German Children will be screened at the 2012 Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival on December 11, 2012 at 21:15 at the Jerusalem Cinematheque.
