Jewish Life Digital Edition November 2014 | Page 20
CHANUKAH 5775
Modern-day
JL DIGITAL
EDITION
MACCABEES
YOU WOULD BE FORGIVEN FOR EXPECTING A FEAture-length documentary about the Israeli Defence Force to be at least somewhat
political, but the real beauty of ‘Beneath
the Helmet’, the latest documentary from
director/writer/editor Wayne Kopping
and the folks at Jerusalem U, is that it
isn’t anything of the sort. Rather, it entirely lives up to its title, as it offers up
nothing more – and most assuredly nothing less – than a look into the minds and
lives of a group of IDF soldiers, as we follow them from the day they finish high
school, through their military training, to
their ‘graduation’ as members of a fully
functioning paramilitary unit.
Filmed over more than a year and the
result of a close collaboration between
16 JEWISH LIFE
ISSUE 79
Kopping, here in South Africa, and a unit
of filmmakers in Israel (“they would film a