An ultra-orthodox wedding, where the bride and groom hardly know each other, certainly not intimately, and are in a union room alone for the first time, is a charged and stressful situation anyway. Add to that a demon that entered the bride, and nothing good will come of it. The whiteness of the dress will be stained with blood, the black cloth, the symbol of innocence and purity, will be dyed the color of passion and love and in this case also death. All of this happens in the first few minutes of “Destroying Angel”, the new series by Noah Stollman, Abigail Ben-Dor Niv and Oded Davidoff, which aired yesterday on Khan 11, and from there it progresses together with the demon from woman to woman in the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Mea Shearim in Jerusalem, as the bodies pile up. Without a choice, a physics professor named Baer (Tom Avni), who grew up in the ultra-orthodox world and abandoned it, and Malki (Lioz Levy), who is hiding a secret, are drawn to investigate and solve this mystery.
“Destroying Angel”, attractive and frightening, suitable for a horror series, and has a mixture of Jewish and Christian, local and Hollywood images. “Everything is full of layers and symbolism, like the image of the murderous bride,” creator Noah Stollman says in an interview with him. “Abigail Ben-Dor Niv, my writing partner, who studied Talmud and is currently studying to be a Reform rabbi in Berlin, also brought the story about the sexual and violent power of someone named her friend, which the religious society could not contain.”
In “Destroying Angel” there are scenes from the Jewish mythological and cultural world such as that of Yadida and “The Possession” but also tributes to the most terrible horror movie of all “The Exorcist”. This movement between the local and the international is also what the international production company A&E, which produced the series together with Studio Anani, loved. “We took the characteristics of American culture and put them in the most Israeli place possible,” he says. They are now in contact with the streamer companies that will buy the series.
“Anxiety is the theme of ‘Destroying Angel’. I am not an anxious person, but in my art I feed on anxiety. It is the bread and butter of screenwriters. Because it makes us do things against the rationale,” he explains. “The same goes for collective anxiety, as you see in this period. I, for example, am not anxious about anxiety, I am anxious about demagoguery.”
Stollman (56) was born in the USA, immigrated to Israel with his family at the age of 3 and grew up in Jerusalem. Since then he has divided his life between the two countries. In 2006 he wrote the script for “Someone to Run With” based on David Grossman’s book, then created the series “Tamirat Eshan”, and was the screenwriter of the movie “Adam Ben Kaleb” based on the book by Yoram Kaniuk directed by Paul Schrader with Willem Dafoe and Jeff Goldblum. In 2010 he wrote the screenplay for “The Mission of the Human Resources Commissioner” on Based on a book by AB Yehoshua, for which he won an Ophir award, and between 2019 and 2022 he was the screenwriter of the third and fourth seasons of “Fauda”.
The current series was born from a project that Davidoff and Stolman have been working on and promoting for many years. “When we finished our studies at Sam Spiegel about 30 years ago, Oded was able to purchase an option for a short story by Yitzhak Bashavis Singer, called ‘The Two’, about a love story between two Yeshiva students. It’s a kind of Brokeback mountain in the shtetl with a twist.
“In ‘Destroying Angel’ there are many elements of the investigation we did in these traditions. I am interested in closed communities and religious communities.”
1 Viewing the gallery
Bar Misochnik in “Destroying Angel”. A series about strength that erupts in the face of oppression
(Photo: Courtesy of Kaan 11, Studio Anani)
Beer, the hero of the series who grew up ultra-Orthodox and left the religion, calls them a cult.
Stollman: “That’s right, I put in his mouth the antagonism that is found in many people, and in me too, I admit. The series is actually about how he was drawn involuntarily into this world that he left. He, as someone who knows the world from the inside, can point a finger and say ‘a bunch of idiots Mind. But I hope you see variety – like another character in the series, Baer’s friend, who is a positive character, full of humor, lives in this world, and deals with the same things we deal with. Baer is someone who escapes from himself, from some kind of trauma. When he lectures on the vacuum at the university , he talks about energy that exists in a void. Later, when Malchi confronts him with the fact that the supernatural exists, he tells her that it is dark, and she tells him, ‘You yourself said that there can be something in nothing.’ This is the dialogue between them. A dynamic between two poles.
“They’re a kind of Mulder and Scully,” Stallman quips for “Cases in the Dark,” “They embody a clash of beliefs and values: Beer hates the religious world and slowly he reconnects with it, and Malchi has a secret that if it’s discovered, she’ll be kicked out of this society, and she still chooses every A day to live in a world of faith.”
Stollman says that during the investigation he met people, and entered a Hasidic court where they were “the most generous, the most open, the most curious to know why we are messing with them.”
Why really? Can you explain to me the fascination of secular artists from the ultra-orthodox world?
“It’s amazing to meet people who are like us, moral, wise and curious, in a certain sense liberals, who by choice consciously put themselves under the yoke of laws and asceticism and the burden of mitzvot. The people we talked to, who are Hassidic, see ‘Stisel’, even told me they saw ‘Fauda.’ They do it secretly, but it’s an open secret, there is something regulated in their society. I’m not going to talk about repression and policing, because I haven’t seen it, but our series is critical and says what it says.
“Maybe sometimes it seems to be a trend, but we don’t work according to trends. The clash of our values and theirs is dramatic, it leads to extremes – which of course is good material for television. Besides, as society becomes more carnal and commercial, we are fascinated by spiritual values. I identify With dealing with the sublime, with things that are beyond the physicality of everyday life. Artists are supposed to deal with this: how do you live, make a living, breathe, eat, when there is a sublime and mysterious world. It is the most fulfilling and the most interesting. In the society of iPhones, there must not be anything that we do not know, but as an artist The thing that fascinates us the most is the unknown. I try to create a reality in which there are things that are unclear, not closed or ambiguous.”
In the days when the opponents of the coup d’état go to Bnei Brak, it is a sensitive time to put on a series about an ultra-orthodox society, which is perceived as strange and crazy.
“I really think it’s brave on the part of the corporation to put on the series. But I don’t think the series shows the Hasidic world as crazy, but as a place where something crazy happens. A violent event takes place there. Obviously, from our point of view, there is something distorted in a world where someone comes to her rabbi, Before the wedding, and she tells him that she hears voices and he doesn’t send her to a secular doctor – because that’s going outside the boundaries of the community.”
What connection do you find between anxiety and the ultra-Orthodox?
“Being ultra-Orthodox, being God-fearing, is an existential condition. It’s something that we may lack in life and they have, and I’m a little jealous of them. It’s true that they cover the entire kitchen with foil on Passover, and say some prayer when they tie shoelaces, and that’s one perspective on life theirs – but I think there is added value and that is the whole metaphysics of existence, and these are things that we lost along the way. We did not come from a worldview that excludes the ultra-orthodox world, certainly not after meeting people who live like this, and they are amazing people.”
Stallman’s words give the impression of being fascinated by this world, and then he balances: “On the other hand, the series talks about a world that has norms of silence and fear that we cannot agree with. When people live in fear, people hide and people are hurt – and that is what the series criticizes.
“The corrupting angel is the force that erupts in the face of oppression. When there is a force that silences you – there is a backlash. Perhaps there is no more appropriate moment to talk about a force that erupts than now. We see it on the street. We are the ones who oppressed them, and we will not tolerate it anymore.
“I am part of this force and it excites me. The demonstrations strengthen me. When I walk with these hundreds of thousands in the street, I imagine that Bibi would like to be part of this group. I imagine him like in the fairy tales about the king, who comes down in costume and walks among his people. He must have been thrilled by the people At the demonstrations. After all, the marchers are people who care, so not Rolexes and Mercedes; our anger is authentic, but we don’t hate and we don’t incite and we don’t get paid for it.
“How can you call these people anarchists? It’s demagoguery that is infuriating, but also scary because it’s effective. It goes back to the motif of anxiety – how it activates people, how it can be used to divide and alienate. In our series, it’s not manipulation from the outside, it’s something that everyone Throwing his feelings at him. We now see that anxiety is an effective tool to make one group hate another, but also to make people protest against injustices.”