Yippee: A Journey to Jewish Joy

“When you wake up in the morning, don’t kvetch! Say ‘Yippee’!” So suggests the wisdom of this happy collective of Hasidic Jews in this delightful, if somewhat workmanlike, documentary from Paul Mazursky. Mazursky, once a presence in Hollywood (he created the outstanding Enemies: A Love Story before flushing his career down the toilet with some of the worst straight-to-video fare a great director has ever made), leads us by the arm to Uman, a Ukrainian city that just so happens to be the burial place of nineteenth-century Rabbi Nachman. Each Rosh Hashanah, Hasidic Jews from around the globe flock to this town for a rollicking celebration of faith. Funny thing is the event looks more like a Grateful Dead concert than a pilgrimage. The rumpled Mazursky is a wonderful guide—arm in a sling, unshaven, telling the same damn jokes over and over and insisting to anyone who will listen that he is a “famous American director.” But he doesn’t hog the lens, choosing instead to provoke stories and humor from the people who are only too eager to lean into the camera, eyes glistening, and tell why they’ve come to this corner of the world to dance and sing and laugh. This screening is part of the fourteenth Annual Jewish Film Festival. Hopkins Cinema 6, 1118 Mainstreet W., Hopkins; 952-931-7992.