Soul Exodus (2016)

Soul Exodus: Directed by Csaba Bereczki. With Michael Alpert, Daniel Kahn, Psoy Korolenko, Jake Shulman-Ment. In search of their identities, five klezmer musicians trace their ethnic roots and follow their imaginations to Eastern Europe.

“An awful little film about a group of homely, lost souls with marginal musical talent who make their living, if indeed they do, by acting as klezmer clowns for audience that know even less about Jewishness than they do, or who view them as buffoons to laugh at rather than laugh with. Most embarrassing, however, is not their lack of talent and musicality, but rather their pathetic attempts at philosophizing about what it means to be Jewish today. Not only are they totally alienated — geographically and spiritually — from any real Jewish life, but their spectacular lack of knowledge and their clearly subpar intelligence make watching them cringeworthy. This is a quartet of yokels who have nothing to offer the Jewish world and nothing Jewish to offer the gentile world other than an object of derision. I give it four fehs.”