A Good Jewish Boy

UKJFF | ★★★★★

Algerian Jews Ruben Bellisha and his mother Giselle might be the last Jews in this poor Paris suburb now populated by Arab and African immigrants. There was a time when the streets were full of Jews but the kosher butcher is shutting down for good. So during this delightful film’s opening scene, set on a Friday, Ruben (Michael Zindel) decides to get his Shabbat chicken from the halal shop hoping his mother won’t notice.

Kosher Paris: Michael Zindel as Ruben Bellisha and Agnès Jaoui as Giselle ©Simon Birman, Moonshaker Films

She is increasingly housebound because of a kidney condition but also because of her fear of antisemitism from hostile neighbours. However, her ability to sense a non-kosher chicken is undiminished.

This first feature by director and co-writer Noé Debré could so easily have ended up as a kosher kitchen sink drama. But what emerges is a whimsical comedy in which Ruben attempts to protect his mother from her own anxieties with white lies about the vibrancy of the Jewish community.

Zindel is superb as the feckless yet oddly capable Ruben. In their living room he fakes his attendance to Krav Maga classes with ridiculous self-defence moves. His superpower is being liked even by the Muslim gang in his block who make it their business to avenge Ruben and his mother after they are burgled.

A scene from A Good Jewish Boy ©Simon Birman, Moonshaker Films

Set largely in and around the high-rise estates in which Ruben has lived all his life, his mother talks constantly of moving to a more Jew-friendly neighbourhood. Inertia wins.

Michael Zindel and Agnès Jaoui ©Moonshaker Films

A sense builds of a subtle elegiac hymn to a fading community, but one that is punctuated with the lightest of Jewish humour. To reassure her son that the power of prayer can keep her alive for a good while yet, Giselle tells him how she prayed for his dying father to live another year and against all the doctors’ predictions he did. “Shame you didn’t ask for longer,” says Ruben. A gem.

The 27^th UK Jewish Film Festival takes place 7-17 November 2024 in cinemas across London https://ukjewishfilm.org/