Jewish Ideas Daily
'Wherefore art thou Romeo?' Juliet calls out in pristine Yiddish from the heights of her fire escape. Melissa (Malky) Weisz, who plays Juliet in the recent film Romeo & Juliet in Yiddish, probably asked the same question in a more vernacular Yiddish—and with very different expectations—when, in her earlier life, she scoped possible mates from the heights of the women's section in the back of her Satmar synagogue.
Nearly all of the actors in this unpolished but charming film are dropouts from the Hasidic world. Few had heard of Shakespeare, none had read any of his plays, and such was the cultural gap that for the life of them, they couldn't understand why derailed romantic love would drive one to suicide. The personal lives of these actors are integrated into the film's narrative, and it's these back-stories that most intrigued critics and audiences. But looming behind the back-story is a still larger and important future-story. Read more »
