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140  twenty-seven Nagu’a: Touched by the Divine Parashat Tazri’a (Leviticus 12:1–13:59) Ayala Sha’ashoua Miron If this film is touching on a social or politically oriented issue, let him be a soldier. Let him come from a development town, let him serve on a destroyer; let him be a war widow. Let him be a ba’al teshuvah .1 But if he must be homo[sexual]—then let him suffer. At least don’t let him enjoy it. The country is on fire, there’s no time for self searching, a war is going on, the audience will not consent. There are dead relatives, why would they identify with me? These are the opening words of an unusual monologue at the beginning of Amos Gutman’s Nagu’a,2 a daring film made in Israel in 1983. The actor playing the main character gazes at the spectator straight in the eye, not allowing him or her to look away. This is probably the first time the word homo (as a slang word for homosexual) is uttered in an Israeli film with full meaning and not just as a careless curse. This is the first feature film made in Israel whose main character, as well as its director, relates to his sexual orientation openly. Israel in the early 1980s was once more in a state of war, the Lebanon War. But for the first time since the country’s establishment, the war was seen as a choice and not as a forced or defensive war. As the penetration into Lebanon deepened, the voices questioning the necessity of the war became louder, and the protests in the main square of Tel Aviv became increasingly massive. These protests foreshadowed a new era both for Israeli society and Israeli cinema. They raised new challenges and doubts. They allowed a public discussion of questions concerning other choices that Israeli society had made through the years of constant existential struggle, such as the repression of the traditions and history of Sephardic Jews, identifying them as “Arab.” They created an atmosphere that made it eventually possible to deal openly with those who were pushed to the margins of society, people and groups that Israeli society chose to disregard. They cleared the stage for dealing with the infected, with the inflicted, with the forgotten, and with the oppressed. The 1980s in Israeli cinema were, according to a cultural study by NYU Middle Eastern studies scholar Ella Shohat , the time for “The Foregrounding of Marginality.”3 “Where am I in all of this?” asks Robby, the main character in the film, created in Amos Gutman’s image, in his opening monologue, which concludes with a series of Parashat Tazri’a 141 challenging, daunting questions: “What will make you pay? . . . What will make you cry? I live my homosexuality. The film is all that’s left. All that’s left is the call, the necessity, to make the film.” Nagu’a was Amos Gutman’s first feature film, following a short film by the same title (later known as “the short Nagu’a”). Nagu’a in Hebrew means “infected, afflicted, diseased,” but if taken literally, it could simply describe the state of being touched. The question the film raises very pointedly for us, looking at it today, from the perspective of more than twenty years, is: Can we identify the potential to turn what was considered two decades ago as a forbidden and afflicted contact, an irrational fear of infection from an inexplicable “disease,” into a purifying and redeeming touch? I believe this is also the question underlying the seemingly dry and technical descriptions of Parashat Tazri’a. Tazri’a is probably one of the most marginal, disregarded, and thus challenging Torah portions. Its usual coupling with Metzora (“leprous”) naturally did not help raise its appeal or popularity with synagogue goers, Torah readers, and commentators . The treatment this pair of parshiyot, Tazri’a-Metzora, unofficially suffers might be a reflection of the treatment we are challenged to reexamine toward people suffering from the skin diseases and bleeding detailed in these Torah portions: exclusion and alienation. When a woman at childbirth bears a male . . .4 (Lev. 12:2) When a person has on the skin of his body a swelling, a rash, or a discoloration . . . (Lev. 13:2) When a person has a scaly affliction . . . (Lev. 13:9) These are a few of the main titles or topic areas covered in Tazri’a, followed by...

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