Osa Archivum Catalog

Cemetery Club

Summary: Poignant, intimate, at times hilarious, this documentary chronicles a social club of elderly, opinionated Polish-born Jerusalemites who meet every Sabbath to eat and discuss matters simple and sublime at the Mount Herzl National Cemetery, burial place of Israel’s leaders. Bossy 80-year-old Lena, a lawyer and judge, and her 85-year-old sister-in-law, mild-mannered Minia, a laborer, have known each other since their girlhood in Lodz. Both Holocaust survivors, they share a history and numerous family secrets, but hold different values. Bound together by fate, they have an intense, often quarrelsome relationship. They are also, respectively, the great-aunt and grandmother of filmmaker Tali Shemesh. More than 20 years ago, Lena was among the founders of “The Academy of Mount Herzl, ”a group whose goal is to “dissipate loneliness in the Golden Years, draw people together and offer mutual aid.” The group’s charter states that meetings will take place even if the number of members diminishes. Sadly, during the five years that Shemesh followed the group, a number of them did die, and eventually ill health forced those who remained to move the meetings to a protected housing project in Jerusalem.

Item Type	Current Location	Call Number	Status	Shelving Location	Public Note
DVD-ROM	OSA Film Library	FL Record 1216	Available	-	-
Digital film	OSA Film Library	FL Record 1216 (HU_OSA_00002879.mp4)	Available		Access Copy, MP4 format