The Ancestral Sin

Summary

In the first two decades after the re-establishment of Israel, the director’s family, originally from Morocco, were part of the wave of refugees from Greater Sephardi communities who came to the fledgling Jewish State. As other immigrants coming to this Promised but poor land, Deri’s family were taken to a “development town,” Yeruham in the Negev Desert, as part of a population disbursement policy that pushed Sephardim to the country’s periphery. This chilling documentary shares personal stories that reveal the price immigrant-families have paid and the price still being paid by Israeli society for the discriminatory policies of its Ashkenazi-dominated early years.