For two days the main actors of SHTISEL -- Michael Aloni / Akiva Shtisel, Dov Glickman / Shulem Shtisel, Neta Riskin / Giti Weiss and Ayelet Zurer / Elisheva Rotstein -- and its creator Ori Elom were in Los Angeles speaking with Hollywood executives, as Larry Tanz VP International Original Series from Netflix and the local Jewish community.
The event was organized by J.J. Sussman of GESHER (a foundation that support formal and informal educational programs building bridges within the Israeli community) and by the JEWISH JOURNAL.
The photos published here were taken Wednesday night. Rabbi David Wolpe received the artists in his synagogue Sinai Temple on Wilshire Boulevard. They presented clips with scenes from the series, and the rabbi questioned how the creative process was.
Neta Riskin, Gitti, told that she began building up her character with the help of a coach that teached her the correct way a Haredi woman behaves:
"The coach told me to walk on the street," Neta said, "Go from here to there. I did it and the coach reacted: "We're going to have to work a lot." I wanted to know why, and she said, "You walk as if you were somebody!" I was shocked. What do you mean? She then explained to me that I walked as if I were a tourist; looking around, watching the people, enjoying the place. She explained that a Haredi woman only leave her home if it’s extremely necessary. And when she does that, she doesn’t like to be noticed. They walk down the street like they have blinders over their eyes. They don't look at either side, they keep focused where they want to go. "
Neta had to train the right walk several times, along with Shira Haas, the actress who plays her daughter Ruchama in the series, until the two perfected the correct way of walking on the street.
Ayelet Zurer, the series Elisheva, told that her inspiration for her character came from a painting by Marc Chagal, "the Bride." According to the actress ”Elisheva has one foot in the world of the living and another in the world of the dead. She suffered too much, faced too many losses”.
Shortly before accepting the part, Ayelet told us that she had lost someone very close and dear to her. She almost cried when she remembered: "If I had been invited before that, I might have not accepted the part. But when I read the script, I saw that I understood those emotions very well and I agreed to do it. "
Michael Aloni, Akiva Shtisel, commented that the first season was shot with a minimum budget, nothing compared to what NETFLIX normally invests in its productions.
Neta said that this international success caught everyone from the cast by surprise. During the filming of the first season, when they shot the scene in which she is robbed at home, they had little time to do it and she was not satisfied with the result, to which the continuity girl reacted saying: "Relax, no one will ever watch what we are doing here!"
Michael added: "That’s what we thought at the time. Who would watch a series about a community of Orthodox Jews, living in this little neighborhood of Jerusalem, without gunfire, racing cars, violence and, especially, without sex! The most erotic scene in the series is that one when Elisheva takes off her wig and shows Kive her graying hair. "
Rabbi Wolpe then asked Ori Elom the creator and screenwriter of the series along with Yehonatan Indursky, both of Jewish Orthodox formation, if he knew the secret to its success.
Ori could not explain it, but he asked permission to tell a joke that his grandfather told him in childhood and that perhaps could elucidate the positive result of the project:
"A circus arrives in town and a man sought out the circus owner and asks him to become part of the troupe. The owner asks him what was his talent? The man says: ' I can imitate a bird '. Unimpressed the owner says he’s not interested. On hearing this the man turns around and flies out the window. "
Ori explained that for him the cast of SHTISEL did not imitate their characters, they lived them intensely and that truth was what captivated audiences around the world.
SHTISEL won more than 17 awards in Israel and succeeded somehow to put a breach in the Orthodoxy barrier. Michael told that within the Haredi neighborhoods of Jerusalem no one has television at home, nor internet. That's forbidden between them. But many have watched the series, some episodes even before it was released, in pirate copies, using their phones.
And more recently, when Michael was working in Brazil, he could feel firsthand the international success of the series: “I was walking down the street in Sao Paulo, and someone touched my shoulder. I turned and this Brazilian boy called me Kive. He had seen the series on NETFLIX and asked me to take a picture with me. I found it incredible, that on the other side of the world, someone who was not Jewish, created in a completely different culture, would recognize me through SHITSEL and liked it! "
Dov Glickman, who plays Shulem, his father, interrupts him and told us that he was in Paris with his wife, for an Israeli film festival, and while taking coffee on a Parisian boulevard they were approached by 3 Muslim ladies from Lebanon. They had watched the series and said that the problems that the Haredim face day-by-day in their lives were exactly the same as those of their Muslim community in Lebanon. They even said that, who knows, the show could help both people, Arabs and Jews, to find a way to peace...
After the event I was able to approach Ori and talk to him. I asked why it took so long for them to approve the new season. Ori, who is very shy and of few words, as the character of Kive in SHTISEL, gave me to understand that the problem, as always, was money.
The fact is that SHTISEL will have his new season on NETFLIX and we will be able to follow again the lives of this Orthodox Jewish family, living in that little neighborhood of Jerusalem.
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