An Ex-Hasid Plays the Founder of Hasidism in a Movie about the Ukrainian Robin Hood

Nov. 10 2023

Released in Ukraine this summer, the film Dovbush has as its title character a semi-legendary, Robin Hood-like figure who lived in 18th-century Ukraine. The film, apparently drawing on Jewish legends, portrays Dovbush encountering Israel ben Eliezer—the founder of Hasidism, known as the Ba’al Shem Tov (“good master of the Name”) or Besht—a contemporary of Dovbush who lived in the same area of Ukraine. The Ba’al Shem Tov is played by Luzer Twersky, an actor and former Hasid who often plays religious Jewish characters. Jon Kalish writes:

As the Besht, Twersky gets less than five minutes of screen time in the nearly two-hour film—he appears in three scenes. In the first, he encounters Dovbush who is in chains and assures the Besht, who had been submerging himself in a stream that served as a mikveh, that he’s not a thief. “Who could ever think that?” replies the Besht.

Dovbush asks the Besht if he is alone. “One is never alone,” the Besht replies. “But other than me, there is no one else here.”

Read more at Forward

More about: Film, Hasidism, Ukraine

Egypt Is Trapped by the Gaza Dilemma It Helped to Create

Feb. 14 2025

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.

Read more at The Editors

More about: Egypt, Gaza War 2023