Moi Ivan, toi Abraham (1993)

Making love in Yiddish

An extraordinarily rare film-- a movie shot in the 1990s with a gorgeous cast of young people speaking Yiddish. To see Yiddish as a living language, to see unfurled in the glory of modern cinematography a world that might have been and might still be is a truly magical experience. The film itself is good, and the cinematography is excellent. There is one of the most tasteful and beautiful love scenes of recent memory. It is a story of life in an Eastern European shtetl. The movie follows several plots, the central one a friendship between two young boys-- Ivan and Abraham, one Jewish, one non-Jewish. This story is encircled by a series of romances between two beautiful young people (both speaking Yiddish!), and a middle-aged married couple (also very sweet). The movie has elements of fairy-tale like lyricism tempered by brutal reality (who could make a story about the shtetl without a pogrom?) Only one facet of the film is an elegy. Mostly it sparkles a prayer of remembrance, a piece of art that gives testament to human kindness and endurance. July 27, 2001

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