Rain in Her Eyes review — Jewish Film Review

Description: Dvora’s father left her and her mother when she was one year old. Then, when she was 11, Dvora’s mother killed herself. That, at least, was what Dvora believed for many years. These feelings of terrible loss and betrayal may account for the sensibility that pervades many of the 98 books she wrote for children and young adults. In her words, she was a woman with ‘rain in [her] eyes’. In her writings, death was a topic she tackled with honestly and empathy as in the tale of a girl whose pet cat is run over. Her biographical sketches of personages from Zionist history were written in ways that children could relate to. Eliezer Ben Yehuda’s biography, for example, focused on his son’s imagined experience of the father. She married a theatre actor, Shmuel Omer, who went on to become the director of the national theatre, Ha’Bima. Together they had three children.

Years later a police investigator discovered that her mother was accidentally killed in a Haganah training incident by one of her Kibbutz colleagues. The claim of suicide was intended to mollify the British Mandate police. In 2006 she received the Israel prize for her contribution to Jewish culture. In later years, battling dementia, she attempted suicide. She passed away in 2013 at home with her family.

Readers interviewed in this film describe how much Omer’s writings moved them as children and read passages from cherished books. Stills, family movies and television clips are accompanied by poignant recollections by Omer’s children and husband.

Merits: Ron Omer’s moving eulogy to his mother is a testament to the adage that exceptional writing is often borne of suffering and that great documentaries are the labours of love.

Rating: References to suicide.

Programming considerations: Particular appeal to Israeli expats.

Rain in her Eyes

Four Mothers

Schocken on the Verge of Consensus