A Touch Away (TV Series)

The series centers on Zorik Mintz, a secular Russian immigrant, and Ruchele Berman, a Haredi teenager whose family lives opposite his in Bnei Brak.[1] Their romance connects two neighboring families but ultimately brings them into conflict over the relationship.[1] The series aired on Channel 2 and combines its central love story with the encounter between Russian immigrant and Haredi family life.[5]

Director Roni Ninio approached the drama through two communities he regarded as outside the Israeli mainstream: Russian immigrants and Haredim.[5] His stated aim was to enable viewers to identify with individuals within communities that might otherwise seem unfamiliar to them.[5] Writer Shuki Ben-Na’im similarly emphasized that, although the drama depicts both social worlds, it was “first and foremost a love story” about people facing personal conflicts.[6]

Reshet backed the production, which received financial assistance from the Tzav Pius organization.[7] Producer Zafrir Kohonofsky was a creator alongside Ronit Weiss-Berkowitz and Roni Ninio, while Kohonofsky and Miri Ezra served as producers.[7] Henry David and Gaia Traub, cast in the central roles, were not yet stars when they joined the series.[7]

Ben-Na’im joined the writing team after Weiss-Berkowitz, his former teacher at the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School, invited him to participate.[6] Research included consultations with Haredi advisers and meetings in which Haredi women spoke with Weiss-Berkowitz about their lives.[6] The writers sought to create authentic characters rather than simplified figures and to avoid misrepresenting a varied community.[6]

The production also used advisers on Russian life.[5] Kohonofsky wanted the secular performers playing Haredi characters to look and speak convincingly, and sought Haredi extras in response to earlier screen portrayals he considered ridiculous.[7] Ninio described music and performance as a universal language through which he approached the direction.[5]

One writing difficulty concerned a scene in which Marina, played by Yevgenia Dodina, was unfaithful to her partner.[6] Ben-Na’im recalled that his personal commitment to monogamy made it difficult to imagine the relationship convincingly, leading him to discuss with Weiss-Berkowitz whether he was the right writer for the material.[6]

Zorik immigrates from Russia as a lone soldier and, after completing his army service, brings his family to Israel.[1] He rents an apartment in Bnei Brak opposite the home of Ruchele’s family, placing his secular immigrant household alongside a Haredi household.[1] He finds a bargain apartment for his parents directly opposite Ruchele’s family and falls in love with their daughter.[5]

Ruchele is a 17-year-old whom Ninio characterized as curious, passionate, and rebellious.[5] The two families initially establish a connection, but the discovery of the young couple’s relationship causes a severe rupture.[5] Ninio intended the story to focus on particular people rather than to claim that its characters represented all Haredi women or every member of either community.[5] He understood the separation between the families as being driven by cultural codes and customs rather than by an absence of genuine feeling.[5]

Gaia Traub plays Ruchele Berman, and Henry David plays Zorik Mintz.[1] The Berman family cast includes Tzahi Grad as Shmuel and Yarden Bar-Kochva as Leah.[1] Other cast members include Vyacheslav Biebergal as Sasha Mintz, Lucy Dubinchik as Natalia Mintz, Yevgenia Dodina as Marina, and Yehezkel Lazarov as the uncle.[1]

The eight-episode series concluded its season on March 20, 2007.[3] Its premiere averaged a 27.1% rating among Jewish households, and its third episode reached 29.8%.[3] The finale averaged 35.9%, peaked at 39%, and attracted approximately 850,000 individual viewers; the season average was 28.9%.[3]

At the 2007 Israeli Television Academy awards, the series won five awards: drama series; actor for Henry David; direction for Roni Ninio; screenplay for Ronit Weiss-Berkowitz, Amit Lior, and Shuki Ben-Na’im; and soundtrack for Shmulik Neufeld.[4] The series also received the best-drama prize at the Haifa Festival.[3]

By June 2007, Reshet wanted another season, but the creators were still considering whether continuing the story was necessary.[8] Weiss-Berkowitz expressed concern that an extension could undermine the story’s credibility or fail to match the first season’s depth.[8] The series remained an eight-episode work, and it was included in the Association for Jewish Studies’ 2008 conference film-festival program in Hebrew and Russian with English subtitles.[2]

In January 2008, Kohonofsky, Reshet, HBO, and production company Brillstein Grey had been negotiating an Americanized version for roughly six months.[9] Kohonofsky described the talks as advanced and said HBO executives liked the original series.[9] He expected an adaptation to retain much of its spirit while making some changes.[9]

Actress Noa Tishby helped initiate contact with American networks.[9] Kohonofsky said the creators chose HBO because they wanted to preserve the show’s essence rather than pursue a more commercial treatment.[9] HBO acquired the rights, but the proposed American version did not reach production; by 2020, the series was listed among Israeli formats acquired abroad but never produced.[10][11]

The series formed part of a change in Israeli television’s depiction of Haredi Jews, with its production placing particular emphasis on convincing speech, appearance, and characterization.[7] Its creators used both Haredi and Russian advisers while building the drama around the experiences of individual characters rather than treating either community as uniform.[5]

The central romance also places an immigrant man at the center of the narrative, a storyline identified as rare in discussions of Russian characters in Israeli film and television.[12] The relationship between a secular immigrant and an ultra-Orthodox young woman belongs to a pattern of “forbidden” romances across community boundaries that generally fail.[12] More broadly, the series belongs to a pattern in which Russian immigrants are portrayed from an Israeli perspective as outsiders.[12]

Haredi viewers quoted in a 2007 report differed over the portrayal’s authenticity: one welcomed the focus on Haredi life and praised its accuracy, while another questioned the depiction of yeshiva supervision, a character’s behavior, and the plausibility of the central romance.[13] Some viewers from Haredi backgrounds watched through neighbors, internet downloads, or shared discs.[13] These responses reflected differing assessments rather than a single community-wide judgment of the series.[13]