They Were Promised the Sea: Arab Jews between Homeland and Promised Land
They Were Promised the Sea

A lyrical, musical, polemical road movie, this film is an intimate journey shot in Morocco, Israel-Palestine, and New York. Kathy Wazana’s research into her family origins in Morocco unleashed a complex web of questions about dual identity, political opportunism, and the challenges faced by those torn between Homeland and Promised Land.

Wazana gives us unique access to a cast of characters that includes a Jewish advisor to the King of Morocco; the director of the only Jewish museum in the Arab world; a Muslim-Moroccan musician/jeweler, who longs for the return of his Jewish friends from Israel; and a Moroccan-Israeli living in exile in New York, whose poetry is dedicated to Palestinian national poet Mahmoud Darwish.

Year: 2013

Time: 74 minutes

Watch the film’s trailer: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/theywerepromisedthesea

Watch and purchase the film on demand here: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/theywerepromisedthesea

Latest Posts

A Burglary Motivated by Racism

A Burglary Motivated by Racism

Haaaretz journalists Gideon Levy and Alex Levac reported on a West Bank burglary case in 2020 in which a small Palestinian business was repeatedly burglarized by Jewish settlers. Was this burglary motivated by racism? Mohammed Mahmadi, 29, left his restaurant job in...

read more
Curt’s Hebron

Curt’s Hebron

Curtis Bell, President of Unitarian Universalists for Justice in the Middle East, spoke to the First Unitarian Church’s Department of Social Justice about his two months in Hebron and what he learned about the Palestinian experience under Israeli occupation. Video...

read more
Virginia Tech GPSS

Virginia Tech GPSS

The Graduate and Professional Student Senate (GPSS) at Virginia Tech passed a resolution in October 2021 demanding that the University’s administration enact an academic boycott of Israel and institutions “complicit in maintaining the Israeli occupation.” The...

read more
Jerusalem