Series

A director, a cameraman and a researcher are preparing a documentary TV series of ten episodes, each one devoted to a personality who represents a particular aspect of 20th century Jewish history. The novel focuses on the question, which of the personalities should open the series. The cameraman is the oldest and most experienced of the three. He is a 50-year-old American whose irregular lifestyle has prevented him from having a family. He prefers to start the series with a sensational character, an American half-Jew who was a pilot in the American air force during the Vietnam War. This pilot has become a born-again Orthodox Jew who lives in a militant Jewish settlement in the West Bank. To the cameraman, the fighter in the skullcap is the quintessential figure of modern Jewish history. The researcher, an unmarried woman in her twenties, prefers to open the series with an elderly woman doctor living in the north of Israel. The researcher believes that the doctor’s tale is the representative story of the times, and it has a contemporary sting in the tail: young Arabs recently injured her by hurling stones at her car. The doctor travels to the village in her free time to help sick Arab women. The director was a well-known member of the opposition in Communist Poland and a respected filmmaker. The future of his career now rests on the series.