The Belz of drama

Marlene Venig is part of the Belz hassidic community. What makes her unique, though, is that she just published her first book, ‘Orthodox Cinema.’

By BARRY DAVIS
marlene venig_521 (photo credit: Yossi Klein)
marlene venig_521
(photo credit: Yossi Klein)
Marlene Venig’s life story thus far sounds like the stuff of pure screenplay. Picture Steven Spielberg or Sir Peter Hall with a streimel or, better still, Mrs. Spielberg or Lady Hall in modest attire taking on directorial duties. If you can get that image in focus, you’ll have some idea of what Venig does for a living, in between a million and one domestic and professional activities. You may also start to get the idea that there may be more – a lot more – to the haredi community than most people believe.
For starters, the 31-year-old Jerusalemite has six children to tend to, with No. 7 due any minute. When we meet at the Center 1 mall, Venig does not offer any inkling that she has just finished packing off all her offspring to their respective schools. She is relaxed and energized, and has quite a story to tell.
Venig was born in Australia to Israeli parents and made aliya at the age of two. It was clear from an early stage that she was heading for a career in the media or some other creative line of work.
“When I was 10, I wrote for the Kulanu children’s weekly [which ran from 1985 to 2000] and I appeared in [Channel 1 TV children’s slots] Zap Larishon and Ping Pong,” she says. “When I was a kid I wrote for [youth magazine] Rosh Ehad.”
And she was in good company: “There were a few others around who were doing similar things, and became well known, like [new Channel 10 news presenter] Tamar Ish Shalom and [TV reporter] Sivan Rahav Meir.”
Venig attended the Experimental (Nisui) High School in Jerusalem and says she was allowed to develop her creative bent as she saw fit, both inside and outside the classroom.
“I studied art and theater and literature, and did five study units [the highest level] for my bagrut [matriculation] in each. I also did research work for TV shows on youth, and I often went out into the field with a camera. I did lots of things.”
Venig was a strong-willed teenager who had a good idea of where she was headed, even though her personal life path was to change irrevocably within a few years.
“I was always something of an outsider,” she confesses, adding that she mixed with an interesting crowd. “My friends were mostly a couple of years older than me, and there were lots of kids around me who later became artists, like [singer-songwriters] Tamar Eisenman and Alma Zohar. My teenage years were fun, joyous and full.”
A journalistic career path clearly beckoned to Venig, but she had other ideas.
“Actually I was always more interested in theater,” she recalls. And so it was to be.
WHEN VENIG was in 11th grade, things started to change around her, although there were no palpable signs of a personal transition in the offing.
“A few of my friends became religious, but back then, I had absolutely no interest in that at all. People at the school – don’t forget this was the ultra-secular Nisui School – thought they weren’t serious, and that it was some kind of theatrical stunt when the girls came to class with their shirts buttoned all the way up. Suddenly I found myself surrounded by friends who started going to religious seminaries for girls, and some even got married.”
Even so, Venig wasn’t quite ready to make the religious switch herself. “I always felt close to hakadosh baruch hu [God]. I never thought there was a need to do something specific to draw closer to Him. I thought that my friends were on some sort of high because they’d come across some amazing discovery, but all that had always been abundantly clear to me.”
Surprisingly, considering Venig’s current religious persuasion, she “held out” longer than anyone else in her social vicinity.
“I’m still friends with lots of the girls who became religious back then, and the fact that I remained secular at the time didn’t affect our friendship. Later they told me that they prayed for me to become religious, but they didn’t say anything to me then.”
Venig’s decision to move into the haredi world began to take shape a couple of years down the line, soon after she completed her army service, and her eventual professional pursuit also began to crystallize. She served on the staff of the IDF publication Bamahaneh, and in the meantime started developing her theatrical writing skills.
“I began writing plays, and I thought that, in order to get a better feel for theater, Shakespeare became an actor, so that was something I should try.” A friend, Bamahaneh’s graphic designer, told her about the renowned Nissan Nativ School of Acting. They both went for auditions, but only Venig was accepted.
WHEN SHE later started to consider adopting a religious way of life herself, one of the issues that immediately sprang to mind was whether she would be able to maintain her artistic interests as a haredi woman.
“I had no idea whether it would be possible to continue working in theater,” she reflects. “I’m not so sure I wasn’t ready to give up on doing something in theater, but I knew that if I did, I would have to find a different avenue of creative work. But I didn’t even know how to go about looking into that.”
Ultimately, Venig feels she has the best of all worlds, and with good reason. Today she is a full-fledged member of the Belz Hassidic community in Jerusalem, has a master’s degree from the Hebrew University in theater and is currently working toward a multidisciplinary PhD at the same institution, in theater, music, dance and cinema. Her MA studies spawned her first book, Orthodox Cinema, published by Resling. It specializes in material on the arts, culture and social issues, and was officially launched Thursday at the Israel Gur Theater Archives at the university’s Mount Scopus campus.
Besides her doctoral studies and maternal chores, Venig maintains a busy working schedule, teaching drama at various haredi girls’ schools, such as Haseminar Hayashan and the Jerusalem College in Bayit Vegan.
“Quite a few of my students are very active in haredi cinema and theater,” she says with undisguised satisfaction.
But where can one view the fruits of these students’ labors? One presumes that not too many of them are screened at Globus Golan cinemas, or even at cinematheques.
“The films are shown at different venues, like community centers,” explains Venig, adding that such entertainment expeditions don’t come cheap. “The tickets can cost NIS 100 each, so if a mother goes to see a movie with, say, four of her daughters, that’s quite an outlay.”
But such concerns were still a long way off when Venig began to grapple with the profession- religion conundrum. Things gradually moved into sharper, and more challenging, focus as she progressed in her work.
“I was directing a play at Tzavta in Tel Aviv. I’d pick up the actors – two women and one man – from [the Jerusalem neighborhood of] Nahlaot, and we’d drive off in my blue VW Beetle for rehearsals,” she recalls. “There were all sorts of conflicts – working with a man, dealing with subject matter that wasn’t entirely appropriate. On the one hand, you want everything to be as professional as possible, but you have to deal with things which you are not quite sure you should be doing. It’s a situation which anyone who becomes religious encounters. The play happened when I was just at that point of the transition.”
As Venig progressed toward a permanent stay in the haredi world, she found herself looking for a creative oasis in a professional desert.
“There was absolutely no theater in the haredi sector back then,” she says. “Today, haredi women can work in all sorts of theater facilities, and go to see plays. Back then there was nothing.”
Compromises would clearly have to be made, and Venig opted for the theoretical route.
“With theory, you don’t have to deal with problematic things like working with a man,” she observes. She decided to study the theoretical side of theater at the Hebrew University, although it transpired that even that was a move too far. “I was still in a spiritual no-man’s-land. I had started to leave the secular world, but hadn’t yet found my place in the haredi world. I was in a state of flux.”
Finding studies in a secular environment a bit much, she left university after the first semester. But, as seems to have been the case throughout her life, the way forward soon materialized.
“An old friend from high school, who had also become religious and was doing a BA at the Bayit Vegan college, told me about a literature department starting up there. She said there was playwriting and all sorts of studies that might suit me.” Venig completed a degree there, in literature and Jewish studies, and quickly moved up the professional ladder.
“I took up a teaching post at the college. It was quite rare for someone with only a first degree to do that.” She teaches there to this day.
Her professional advancement was aided by Dr. Esther Malhi, head of the school’s literature department, who recognized that the young student offered the institution some added value and some extra drive.
“I was very different,” notes Venig. “The other teachers had all studied at religious institutions, and I came from the outside. I came with my own agenda.”
Self-motivation has never been a problem for Venig. “I wasn’t afraid of going as far as I can on a professional level, and I don’t make or take any excuses. I don’t go with the idea of making compromises because, say, someone is religious or has a baby to take care of. When I had a small baby, I’d go to the library to study. There are always things you can do.”
Venig obtained her teaching qualifications at the college and set off to blaze her professional trail.
SHE WAS also learning a thing or two about the world in which she began to immerse herself. “I started discovering all the different approaches to life in the haredi community,” she recalls. “I met a lot of rabbis and a lot of people who inspired me.”
As she settled into her new lifestyle, she felt more confident about dealing with the potential land mines of the secular world and returned to the Hebrew University to complete her BA in theater, followed by a master’s degree in the same field.
Her work on Orthodox cinema sheds light on a hitherto closed shop for nonharedi Israelis. It is a surprisingly rich world with plenty of dedicated and driven professionals. Many of them were set on their way by Venig.
“I was approached by a rabbanit [rabbi’s wife] who had heard about me. She said she ran an educational institute and that there was a lot of demand for drama studies, and that she wanted to set up a small drama and theater school there.”
Venig was enthused and immediately got down to brass tacks. “It was hard work. We worked for two years just on opening the school. I screened a lot of candidates for the teaching positions, but I wanted to have genuinely religious people. I didn’t mind having newly religious staff, but I didn’t want any ‘lite’ religious teachers or women pretending to be religious.”
Then there was the matter of getting the rationale together, and the not-insignificant job of selecting the students. It quickly became clear that the rabbanit was on the ball: “We got 100 responses to our ads for students, and we only had 25 places.”
There were also some non-professional considerations to deal with.
“We had to get all the approvals” – Venig calls them “kashrut licenses” – “from the rabbis. There were all sorts of things they hadn’t encountered before. I had to get an OK for every step of the way.”
However, two years after the small school opened, it closed down.
“It was a bit much for the rabbis to handle,” explains Venig. “Of course it was all new to them, and there were some deeprooted issues that emerged that were very challenging.”
But she does not regret the short-lived venture for a minute, and says it has had an enduring effect: “The cinema and theater industry in the haredi community is entirely made up of those students. Some of them are very famous and very busy now, and making big bucks.”
It wasn’t all hard going, though, and Venig got some initial encouragement from the Admor of Belz, the community’s senior rabbinical authority.
“I didn’t know what I could do, if anything, in theater in the haredi community, so I went to a rabbi to ask him. I wanted to know if I could help to advance women in the community. It was quite funny. I didn’t know how I should dress to meet him, and I put this silly scarf on my head.” The head covering was evidently perfectly acceptable. “When I told him what I wanted to do, the rabbi just said, ‘Adaraba’ [go for it].”
WITH HER first book out and in great demand, and a PhD and a seventh child on the way, Venig isn’t stopping to take a break.
“I still teach in the literature department and learning resources department in Bayit Vegan. I give a very wide variety of courses,” she says.
She also, it seems, tends to be in the right place at the right time: “Dr. Esther Malhi opened the literature department in Bayit Vegan just when I left the Hebrew University. I was in the first group of students, and now I teach there. The timing was perfect, as if the department opened just for me. And to have an emissary like Dr. Malhi was a great blessing.”
Once fully immersed in the haredi way of life, Venig felt she could resume her academic career at her alma mater. “When I went back to the Hebrew University, I felt far more prepared to deal with the challenges of the secular world, and more able not to be sucked into things that weren’t suitable for me.”
It was also a two-way street: “One of my best friends is a secular woman who studied with me at the university. Through me she got to know something about the haredi community and changed her whole view of haredim.”
Word of Venig’s growing professional endeavors began to spread through the community, partly through her journalistic efforts. “I wrote for quite a few religious publications, like Mishpaha, B’sheva and Makor Rishon, about theater, but also about lots of other things. That, in addition to teaching, helped me make a living.”
These efforts also included giving a course on creative writing at the Hebrew University.
Venig says she comes across her fair share of discrimination, and has been viewed by some as a second-class haredi woman, having not been born into it.
“You don’t get that with the Belz community. They accept everyone, regardless of whether you were originally haredi or what ethnic community you come from. That is the way of the Ba’al Shem Tov [the founder of hassidism]. He wanted to bring every Jew closer to Judaism, even Jews who converted to Christianity. Every Jew was dear to him.”
Venig says she feels truly blessed. “I could have ended up in a community which treated theater like idol worship, or like some sort of cult. Most of the women who work in cinema and theater in the haredi world come from the Belz community. I think it was important that these women came from the community, and that made their work more acceptable.”
Clearly, Venig’s work is also perfectly acceptable.