RISING - Memory, Democracy and Moral Responsibility

Esther Takac is the writer-director-producer of RISING – Voices of Protest and Hope, an award-winning filmmaker and author, child and adult psychologist and program founder. 

Memory, democracy and moral responsibility in Israel 

and the Jewish world today

I recently travelled to Israel for the birth of my first granddaughter in Tel Aviv. Becoming a grandmother, or Saftush as I’m now called in Hebrew, has been pure naches.

Yet alongside that joy was deep concern for the country my granddaughter will inherit.

During the eleven weeks I was in Israel, I witnessed up close, the growing challenge to the founding values expressed in Israel's Declaration of Independence. Unchecked settler violence in the West Bank, escalating Haredi violence in the streets, a Knesset proposal prohibiting egalitarian prayer at the Western Wall, government attempts to weaken the authority of the Attorney-General and limit the independence of the media – all point to the erosion of democratic safeguards and a deepening sense that the character of the country itself is being contested.

Almost every Saturday night, I joined thousands of Israelis gathering in Habimah Square. I heard hostage families, former senior IDF commanders, legal experts, educators and ordinary citizens speak about grief, responsibility, democracy and the country they love and fear losing.

But the night that remains strongest in my heart is when bereaved parents stood before the crowd and pleaded for an independent Commission of Inquiry into the catastrophe of October 7 and its aftermath. Their grief was almost unbearable. But so too was their determination. Again and again they asked for truth, accountability and responsibility.

And when the crowd answered ‘Atem lo levad - anachnu itchem,’ ‘You are not alone - we are with you’ I couldn’t stop the tears. 

Those moments reminded me that democracy is not sustained only by institutions or governments. It depends on citizens who are willing to stand up for the values they believe define their society. In Israel that includes the Jewish principle of kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh.

This is the story at the heart of RISING: Voices of Protest and Hope, my recently completed documentary. Through the experiences of five remarkable individuals navigating grief, trauma and conscience, the film follows Israel's unprecedented grassroots protest movement as it confronts democratic backsliding, war and profound ethical dilemmas. By revealing an Israel rarely seen internationally - ordinary people striving to uphold moral responsibility, compassion, equality and shared humanity - the film hopes to help counter rising antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment.

When my team and I recently screened a near-final cut of the film at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and the Jerusalem and Haifa cinematheuqes, the response was deeply moving. Critics described the screenings as ‘collective emotional experiences’ – with discussions continuing long after the credits rolled. One review described the film as ‘a living, breathing, kicking and bleeding mirror of the complex emotional reality Israelis have been navigating over the past several years’ another as ‘a cinematic and moral wake- up call for each and every one of us.’  

The screenings also reminded me that documentary films sometimes do more than record events. They preserve lived experience at a time when the meaning of these events is even now being fiercely contested. 

Becoming Saftush has only strengthened my sense of what’s at stake. The question is not simply what kind of Israel exists today, but what kind of Israel my granddaughter and her generation will inherit. 

Each Saturday night in Habimah Square I saw thousands of Israelis who continue to show up. They are exhausted, wounded and traumatised - but they refuse to surrender either their democracy or their humanity. Like the participants in RISING, they understand that silence and disengagement have consequences. Watching them, I found myself asking what responsibility we, as Jews who live beyond Israel's borders, carry. 

Perhaps our role, wherever we are, begins by sharing their simple chant:  Atem lo levad. Anachnu itchem.