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