A Movie “Hava Nagira” 3/18/13

March 18, 2013

It is about recent 150 years of history in Jewish culture and community around the famous song “Hava Nagira”. It is documentary and very funny! Most everyone has heard this song in some occasions even non-Jewish people like me. The movie tells us the journey of Jewish people across the generations all over the world, especially settlers to US land. One interesting fact in this movie for me was to discover Japanese education system adopted the Jewish folk dance with their music into elementary to middle school system in Japan. I clearly remember we had to dance with boys with Jewish folk music, and we very much often commented that it was not pleasure (!) to touch their hands and bodies while we were dancing. Japanese culture is so different from Jewish. Until I saw this movie I did not know that dance and music was from Jewish culture. When I started to hear the familiar melody in this movie I instantly remembered the memory from those dancing experience in Japan when I was young. Japan did not import Jewish heritage or back ground, we only adopted the dance and the music. How interesting and almost funny….

Anyway it is a very good movie, educational, yet entertaining. I had a great time! I laughed a lot!