Living With Old Wounds

A municipal government plan to raze what remains of an ancient Arab village north and west of Jerusalem to make way for luxury housing has stirred both hope and unquenchable grief among men and women of, mostly, good will. “Uncommon Ground,” a nearly completed documentary by Oren Rudavsky and Daum Menachem, makes clear how the wounded, in seeking redress, can cripple it.      

Daum, a 68-year-old Orthodox Jew who lives in Brooklyn, NY, has joined a group of Israeli Arabs and Jews who want to see the site preserved, and in the opening scene Daum walks the rambling, dusty hillsides with Yacoub Odeh, a Palestinian whose family was routed from the town in 1948.

Daum, much of whose family in Poland was gassed and burned by the Nazis, aims “to heal the wounds left by the Holocaust.” He sees working with Muslim Arabs, wounded themselves by “the catastrophe,” the making of Israel, as a way to healing.

In the film, Odeh, a charming and expressive man, speaks of his childhood as the two walk through the rocks and dust and grasses of what remains of Lifta. He points out his childhood home, his school and the places where he played before his family was expelled, made refugees, rootless and without community. And when Daum brings up the Holocaust and his family’s fate, the camera watches Odeh shut down, closing off the notion that suffering in common can lead to trust and, perhaps, conciliation. “If you suffer, why do you allow others to suffer?” Odeh asks Daum.

In “Uncommon Ground,” Daum talks to numbers of interested people, men and women who see Lifta as an opportunity to make peace. But the past overwhelms so many of them. 

In a fascinating scene, Daum brings a Polish Holocaust survivor, a very prickly old lady, to meet Odeh. The three of them move together, the woman with arms linked between the two men. But it will take much, much more, the film is saying, to make peace. There’s a connection, but it is brief and so very fragile.

Oren Rudavsky, a part-time resident of Salisbury, will present “Uncommon Ground” at the Scoville Library in Salisbury, CT, May 9, at 5 p.m. For information, call 860-435-2838.