Ushpizin directed by Gidi Dar, written by Shuli Rand; 2004, color, Hebrew with English subtitles, 90 minutes.

By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO, Calif.—Over the Memorial Day Weekend, I watched an enjoyable fable from Israel about a childless couple who, like Abraham and Sarah on the plains of Mamre, welcomed some guests, not in a tent but in a succah. 

Moshe Bellanga (Shuli Rand) and his wife Malka (Michal Bat-Sheva Rand),  impoverished Breslau Chasidim, were too poor to purchase the building materials for a succah, in which devout Jews live for one week in observance of the Sukkot holiday during which Jews remember the 40-year trek from Egypt to Canaan and reflect upon the impermanence of the material world. But one day, from an overseas charitable organization, $1,000 in an envelope was slipped under the door of their small apartment in Jerusalem, with a note wishing them a happy holiday.

Malka found the money first because Moshe was in another neighborhood where his friend Ben Baruch (Avraham Abutboul)  had told him of an abandoned succah that together they could drag back to the Breslau Chassidic neighborhood.  What incredible blessings;  money and a succah providentially provided all on one day.

With the money, Moshe purchased some earrings for Malka, and spent 1,000 shekels—depending on the exchange rate at the time, nearly a quarter of the cash—to purchase the perfect etrog, or citron, which is one of the four species of plants Jews wave in blessing toward the four directions during the Sukkot observance.  Because of its protruding stem, the etrog is also prized as a blessing for having a male child.

Two visitors bearing the biblical names of Eliyahu and Youssef came to visit Moshe and Malka in their succah, but they seemed nothing like the prophet who single-handedly defeated the priests of Baal nor the youngest son of Jacob who rose to prominence in Egypt after helping Pharaoh to understand the meaning of his dreams.  

Unknown to Moshe and Malka was the fact that the two guests were convicts on the lam from an Israeli prison where they were supposed to have returned after their furloughs.  Why, of all places, did they choose to come to the neighborhood of these devout Breslau Chasidim?  One reason was that Moshe hardly could claim to be like his biblical namesake either. Before he became a ba'al tshuvah—a person who gives up secular ways for a religious life—he was a petty criminal feared in Eilat for his great physical strength and his quick, often violent, temper.  Eliyahu had been one of his associates.

For Eliyahu and Youssef, living in the succah  was pragmatic choice.  What better place could there be for two secular Israelis to hide from police than a succah in a fervently devout Breslau Chasidic neighborhood?  But in Moshe's and Malka's eyes, the visits of these two men appeared to be yet another blessing.  Here was an opportunity for them to extend hospitality to visitors, even as Abraham and Sarah once did, and, at the same time, perhaps, to show by example the merits of the religious life.  

How meritorious that life can be is illustrated when Ben Baruch learns that the man who owned the "abandoned" succah in fact had other plans for it.  Ben Baruch is overcome with grief that in trying to do a good deed for one Jew, Moshe, he has wronged another Jew, and he is so clearly distraught that the offended party not only forgives him but acquiesces to his request for a hug.  Then Moshe learns what happened, and he too troops to the man's home to make amends. From the street to the man's balcony, Moshe shouts his apologies and doesn't leave until the man says three times that he forgives him. You cannot help but be inspired by the sweetness of the scene. Genuine atonement, genuine forgiveness.

Approaching his succah, Moshe hears Eliyahu and Youssef inside deriding the Chassidim as "penguins." He realizes also from their conversation that they are wanted by the police.  He decides to get rid of them by telling them that he and Malka will be leaving the next day to visit her parents in Hadera—a lie. The convicts go away, and Malka and Moshe immediately regret his lie.  Perhaps God had sent them the two as a test of their faith.  When the two return to the succah, to check out Eliyahu's suspicion that Moshe had made up the story to get rid of them, they are bewildered by the ecstatic pleasure with which Malka and Moshe greet them.  Yet another blessing!

Before Sukkot is over, the coarse behavior of Eliyahu and Youssef will test Moshe severely, and put unbearable strains on his marriage to Malka.  However, Moshe's faith is strong. 

You'll want to rent or buy this DVD to find out the ending.