23.06.2011 21.Siwan, 5771
Film:
A new documentary tells the fascinating story of Jakub Weksler, a Polish-Catholic priest who has moved to Israel and wants to make aliya.
Can a priest be Jewish? That’s one of the many questions raised by the new documentary, Torn, which will be screened tonight at the Jerusalem Cinematheque at 7:30.
The film, which was directed by Ronit Kertsner, tells the compelling and moving story of Jakub Weksler, a Polish-Catholic priest who has moved to Israel and wants to make aliya. Born Jewish in 1943, his parents managed to convince a Polish family to take him in and adopt him. His biological parents were murdered in the Holocaust and no relative came back for him after the war, so he grew up thinking he was Romauld Waskinel. You may have heard stories like this before, but this one is different, because Weksler, who was a devout Catholic, became a priest. But in his thirties, when he learned of his Jewish identity, he struggled to figure out his place in the world, eventually coming to the conclusion that he could never repudiate his Jewish identity. Appalled by the anti-Semitism of the Catholic Church in Poland, he decided, in his mid-sixties, that he must come to Israel….