Chana Meir is a religious woman. Ruti Duek is secular. Chana lives in Ir David, a Jewish settlement in the Arab village of Silwan, right outside Jerusalem's Old City. Ruti Duek is a political activist and ardent supporter of the Peace Now movement. Yet even as religious and political differences tear at the fabric of Israeli society, Chana and Ruti are friends. They first met when Ruti came to demonstrate against the settlement, where Chana lives. Then they were separated by a police barricade and mutual animosity for each other's beliefs. They met again at "Sod Siach", an encounter group that fosters dialogue between Israelis on both sides of the political and religious divide. There they were able to overcome their differences and become the best of friends.
This is a film about Israel's religious right and its secular left, the vast ideological gulf that separates them, and the bonds of friendship that hold them together. It is about the attempts to surmount the differences and about the problems that lie along the way.
Even something as simple as meeting a friend on the Tel Aviv beach can be a problem for Chana. After all, where can they sit down to eat, when there are no kosher restaurants in the vicinity? On the other hand, when Oved Zur, a kibbutznik and former head of a Labor Zionist youth movement, walks with Chana through the winding alleyways of Jerusalem's ultra-Orthodox Meah Shearim neighborhood, he feels like "a foreigner in his own country." And why does Ruti feel so uncomfortable when visiting Chana in her home? Despite their friendship, she insists on leaving. How does Chana react to a play, "Civil War", that condemns her very lifestyle? How do these friendships transcend the crisis that has haunted Israel since the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin?
As Israel totters on the brink of social disaster, people like Chana, Ruti, and Oved have some tough decisions to make. Can on-going dialogue really help Israelis erase the distrust they feel for each other and find the bonds that will hold them together? Some believe it can. As Oved Zur says: "It robbed me of the ‘joy of hating.' It drove away any pleasure I took in hating them." In a society where one person's dream is the other's worst nightmare, perhaps this is the first step.
