By Donald H. Harrison

A yeshiva student in B'nei B'rak can't concentrate on his Torah studies; he thinks too much about girls, imagining. The rosh yeshiva tells him there is a Talmud portion that suggests if a man becomes so obsessed with sexual thoughts that he can't focus on Torah, he ought to go to a strange city, find a harlot and relieve the pressure. If she¹s not Jewish, so much the better!

So Mendi (Oren Rehany) heads for Tel Aviv, finds a strip bar, and promptly becomes obsessed with a Russian prostitute who calls herself Sasha (Tchelet Semel).

He meets Mike (Saul Stein), an American expatriate, who tells him that Sasha comes to his bar in Jerusalem regularly. Mendi follows him there, where he makes friends with an unlikely group of people, including a mysterious Arab (Albert Iluz) and an extremist Jewish settler (Arie Moskuna). At Mike's Place, you just might run into anyone.

Thus begins the Israeli movie, The Holy Land, which opens at the Ken Theatre in Hillcrest today (Friday, Aug. 15). The film is fairly likely to offend many people, and not only for the somewhat cynical juxtaposition of lasciviousness and religiosity.

More offensively, the movie leads us along stereotypical paths. The prostitute, deep down, has a big heart. The yeshiva student hopes for her redemption— and his. The Arab arranges to sell land to settlers, and his guilt feelings apparently make him hate Jews all the more— but what reallydrives him? The film provides no answers; apparently we are to believe it's enough to know he's an Arab.

The rifle-toting American-born Jewish settler, who calls himself :The Exterminator," is yet another stereotype.

In real life, writer-director Eitan Gorlin worked at a bar known as Mike's Place, which was the target of a suicide bombing. Gorlin's movie mixes cynicism, autobiography and some fine photography. Just don¹t expect much insight.