Celebrating the remarkable life and work of ronit elkabetz

Photograph by Yaron Sharf. Despite the fact that she never studied acting, Ronit Elkabetz became one of Israeli cinema's leading actors. Born to recent immigrants from Morocco, she grew up in Kiryat Yam, in the northern periphery. She is particularly remembered for the trilogy she directed with her brother Shlomi Elkabetz: To Take a Wife , The Seven Days , and Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem , all addressing the issue of the oppression of Mizrahi women in the name of the Jewish religion.

For two and a half decades, Ronit Elkabetz was the first lady of Israeli cinema. She seemed to burst into the industry out of nowhere—more precisely from Israel's peripheral northern city of Kiryat Yam. At the time, no one would have predicted she would become the most important Israeli actress and bring about a dramatic change to the always burning issue of ethnic representation in Israeli cinema.

Celebrating the remarkable life and work of ronit elkabetz: Elkabetz was born in Beersheba

Her family emigrated to Israel from the city of Essaouira, Morocco, in Ten years later, the family left the southern city and moved to Kiryat Yam, a suburb of Haifa. Her mother worked as a hairdresser and her father worked at the local post office, as reflected in her first feature To Take a Wife. She is the eldest of her parents' four children, with three younger brothers.