多生多养(2005)

How does it feel to have been pregnant or breastfeeding for most of your married life? This is one among many questions posed frankly in BE FRUITFUL AND MULTIPLY, which exposes the consequences of the biblical commandmentthe mother of all Mitzvotupon ultra-orthodox Jewish women, for whom life is a continuing cycle of pregnancy, childbirth, nursing and nurturing. The film profiles four ultra-orthodox women, in the U.S. and Israel, documenting their daily routines of cooking, shopping, housework and child care. In interviews, each of the women discuss their lives, focusing on their belief in the traditional and distinctive roles for women and men as dictated by Jewish religion as well as on the condition of perpetual motherhood as the "natural" and desirable state of being for women. Amongst this group of women who rarely express self-doubt, Yentl is the rare exception. Although admitting that she hasn't told her husband she is participating in the film, Yentl has essentially rejected the role of the obedient wife and has become an independent women who challenges religious conventions. Yentl's inside view of the overwhelming peer pressure to continually have children, as well as her questioning of how happy her peers actually are, reveals the extent of the struggle within the community to break out of the social and ideological structures that bind them. BE FRUITFUL AND MULTIPLY is thus a provocative account of the oppression of women in ultra-orthodox Jewish society, which ignores womens spirituality, emotional needs and inner world, and which attempts to enslave women socially and ideologically.