Ultra-Orthodox female filmmaker’s unique take on boy meets girl

Filmmaker Rama Burshtein-Shai smiles gently and sweetly throughout our interview, as her tone changes from definitive and decisive to serene, almost mystical. Her hair carefully covered in a colourful scarf, she shares a laugh over Zoom, which is taking place in the middle of her Passover cleaning – a particularly stressful time for any ultra-Orthodox woman, which she is.

Yet she is candid and generous with her time and thoughts, even when she is answering questions about her life as an ultra-Orthodox filmmaker that she has probably already answered before in dozens of interviews.

Burshtein-Shai is speaking about her new project Fire Dance, an eight-part TV series streaming on ChaiFlicks, about a troubled Haredi teenager who falls in love with the married son of the leader of the community.

Burshtein-Shai, 57, was born in the United States and moved to Israel as a child. She grew up in Kfar Saba, in a secular home and had what she refers to as a “fairly standard Israeli secular childhood and education,” with little attention to Jewish religion or tradition.

Attracted to filmmaking as a career, she attended the prestigious Sam Spiegel Film School. Together with her graduating class, she travelled for three days to Munich for a film festival, intending to continue onto Los Angeles for graduate work. It was in Munich, she says, that her life began to transform.

“From the moment I set foot in Germany, I was uncomfortable. I felt different, I didn’t feel safe. I felt vulnerable and more Jewish than I had ever felt – and the fact that an openly neo-Nazi guy kept trying to hit on me didn’t help much, either.

“When I came back to Israel, I was depressed. A friend invited me to a Shabbat dinner. She had to give me a skirt to put on over my jeans. By the time Shabbat was over, I had become religious. Judaism had grabbed me in a way I could not refuse.”