Actress Natalie Portman was born in Jerusalem to an American mother and an Israeli father. When she was three years old, the family moved to the U.S., where she was educated in Jewish schools and where she learned about the Holocaust and the events leading up to the birth of Israel. The Academy Award winner stepped behind the camera for the first time to direct the Hebrew spoken film "A Tale of Love and Darkness," an adaptation of Amos Oz's memoir of the same name about the birth of Israel and the impact that it had on his family, Yahoo! News reported.
Portman believed that her education put too much emphasis on the Holocaust and started to question whether is was right to prioritize it above other tragedies in history. "I think a really big question the Jewish community needs to ask itself, is how much at the forefront we put Holocaust education. Which is, of course, an important question to remember and to respect, but not over other things," she told The Independent.
She arrived at this conclusion after she visited a museum about the Rwandan Genocide. She realized this was not something she had been taught about in school despite it taking place while she was a student. "I was shocked that that [genocide] was going on while I was in school. We were learning only about the Holocaust and it was never mentioned and it was happening while I was in school. That is exactly the type of problem with the way it's taught," the dual Israeli-American citizen said.
She claimed that the focus should now be on understanding that hatred exists against all kinds of people and wanted to use this knowledge as something that encouraged empathy, as opposed to paranoia. "We need to be reminded that hatred exists at all times and reminds us to be empathetic to other people that have experienced hatred also. Not used as a paranoid way of thinking that we are victims," Portman said.
In addition to directing the film, she also wrote the screenplay. "A Tale of Love and Darkness" premiered at Cannes in May, according to The Huffington Post.
