There has never been more attention on the Jewish people. Stereotype laced narratives have reached millions of screens. Antisemitic hate crimes in the US are at their highest recorded level. While popular stories, like “My Unorthodox Life” and “One of Us” focus on people who leave Judaism behind, “Who Wrestled with God” reveals a set of characters who are fighting to make space for themselves within centuries old traditions. 

 

 
 

“Who Wrestled With God” will take an inside look at the evolving subcultures within a community that is over 3000 years old. Three young Jews are striving to find their place within their religion and the world. In order to ensure that others can follow in their footsteps, each subject fights to keep their traditions alive.

This three part series reveals the lives of young Jews from different communities from around the world. Myriam Ackermann Sommer takes us inside French Jewish life, one of the oldest, and most closed Jewish societies in the world. She is training to become France’s first Orthodox female rabbi. She and her husband are both building a modern Orthodox community in Paris, but they are going up against the rabbis of the Consistoire, an organization set up Napoleon, the first European ruler to grant Jews citizenship, and have vowed that a woman will never be a rabbi with them.

In Part II Kokasi Keki, a young Ugandan member of the Abayudaya Community, is struggling to cope with the loss of his father, The great Community Leader Aaron Kintu Moses, founder of Hadassah Primary School. After his sudden passing in the summer of 2020, Kokasi took over the reigns for his father as principal of the first Jewish primary school in Uganda. He struggles to pass on the education his father passed on to him, and throughout his journey wrestles with the Abayudaya’s place not only in Uganda, but in the Jewish world at large.

In Part III, Director, Ari Beser talks to Jewish leaders from around the world in pursuit of an answer to a surprisingly difficult question, What is Judaism? As he grapples with this answer he questions aspect of his own identity to try and find a way to reconcile what his tradition says with who he wants to be.


 

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