"I hope the Jews and Arabs kill each other until there is nobody left" is the opening line in The Holy Land, a Faustian coming-of-age story set amid the backdrop of militant Israelis and Palestinians, all of whom have accepted a Faustian view of their lives. The film centers on Menachem "Mendy" Weinbaum (played by Oren Rehany), a nerdy yeshiva student in his late teens or early twenties whose need for intimate companionship and sex interferes with his responsibility to concentrate on his studies. When his rabbi catches him reading Hermann Hesse's Siddharta, he provides extraordinary advice: Go to another city, find a harlot, and return ready for more spiritual enlightenment. But Mendy, who is studying to be a rabbi within a family that has little interest in the real world, cannot return after just one experience. He goes to Tel Aviv and locates a strip club called The Love Boat, where he meets nineteen-year-old Sasha (played by Tchelet Semel), a prostitute who earlier muttered the beginning quote while watching carnage on newsreel footage. Although Mendy asks Sasha friendly questions to get better acquainted, she prefers a more direct approach to sex, so she takes him to a private room, where he ejaculates soon after she removes his pants. The following evening, he returns to the same club to talk with Sasha, but Mike (played by Saul Stein) arrives, takes Sasha away from him for a while, then returns to get acquainted. Mike, who operates a bar in Jerusalem named Mike's Place, invites Mendy to visit on the next evening so that he can get better acquainted with Sasha, who on her free night frequents the bar, which turns out to be reminiscent of the bar in Star Wars (1977), where Israelis and Palestinians socialize amicably together, including an American Jew nicknamed "The Exterminator" (played by Arie Moskuna) and a Palestinian Razi (played by Albert Illuz). Clearly, Mendy wants to fall in love with Sasha. A Russian (but not a Jew) whose passport was seized by the owner of the strip club, she is a sex slave with no apparent ambition to lead a normal life, but she accepts Mendy's friendship and goes on occasional excursions with him in the daytime. Mike also befriends Mendy, hiring him as a bartender and allowing him to crash at his apartment. Thanks to Mike and his friends, Mendy walks into Palestinian neighborhoods, meets Israeli exponents of Greater Israel, and learns to drink booze and smoke pot. Eventually Sasha does fall in love with Mendy, and the two fantasize about moving to the United States together. Sasha admits that she has a relative in Florida but needs an American passport. Meanwhile, the yeshiva rabbi visits Mendy at Mike's Place, telling him that if he does not return to his studies in a week, he will notify his parents of his misconduct. When Sasha returns from Tel Aviv with a passport one afternoon, Mendy notices that her real name is not Sasha; inexplicably, he gets upset that she has been dishonest, and accuses her of sleeping with a lot of men to get the passport. Tired from her most recent activities, a taped porn video session and sex with "The Exterminator," she responds by telling Mendy to return to his family. After Mendy leaves, she sobs, but in the final scene one of the tragic Faustian visions prevails, reminding filmviewers that one cannot count on living a normal life in the Holy Land today. Indeed, director Eitan Gorlin draws on his own personal experiences in making the film. As a postscript, the bar called Mike's Place in the film was the scene of a terrorist attack shortly before the film premiered. MH