22/05/2023 - Tal Becher and Yair Agmon’s documentary provides an insider’s look into the decline of one of the most elite high schools in Israel

Tal Becher and Yair Agmon’s dynamic, amusing, and at times perplexing documentary Once Upon a School [+see also:
trailer
film profile] paints an exhilarating portrait of the first Midrashia, the prototype of all high school yeshivas in Israel, where exclusively male tutees focus predominantly on religious texts. Initiated before the foundation of Israel with the aim of preparing students who would go on to occupy key public positions in the future, it turned the idea that religion does not comply with modern state structure upside down. However, its concept eventually grew so revolutionary that it inevitably devoured its children, as the famous saying claims. Or at least, the school institution itself. Through a collection of interviews with alumni and teachers, interwoven with media footage and amateur videos, mostly from the turbulent last years of the school, the film, which has just been presented in Docaviv’s Israeli competition, puts together a detailed chronicle of a milestone establishment in Israeli education. At a higher and more philosophical level, it also tackles the notion of self-expression and the difficult balance between limits and freedom.

With the “Torah and morality” slogan to the fore, the school board put all its efforts into pumping up the students with team spirit and high self-esteem by persuading them that they were the glory of the religious intellectual elite. Inside this seemingly conservative environment, all forms of expression were allowed, even monstrous ones; everything was accepted as long as it was real and from within. According to one of the former students interviewed, the educational content was sacrificed at the price of letting students be who they are in order to support independent thinkers and serious establishment dissidents. In practice, the school was run by the students, this being confirmed in a graffiti motto on the school building: “Vacation is over, freedom begins.”

After the death of the school’s key figure Rabbi Yoggel, times of crisis and strikes occurred, all this culminating in a case where teenagers drowned in the sea, one of the most horrendous incidents in the institution’s history. The anarchist urge was uncorked, and the step to the physical destruction of the school was but one. Despite the unconstructive outcome and the testimonial on sexual abuse included, legends about the free-spirited atmosphere and the eternal brotherhood that bloomed there linger long after the doors have slammed shut forever.

Watching Once Upon a School, with all its rough and fleshy found footage that preserves the quintessence of the Midrashia’s unique environment, must be an electrifying experience for those who lived the whole thing there on the spot and are now taking the chance to look back at their youth. To outsiders, the profound details and switching between events could look messy and confusing at times; however, the sense of empathizing with someone’s genuine experience is thrilling enough. Furthermore, hectic editing between frames with talking heads and blurry archival material of raging adolescents keeps the gaze alert at every moment just like in an action movie – what this film actually is in its dramatic essence.

Once Upon a School was produced by Israel’s Zeevi/Uzrad and Yalla Films.