They call her “Speedy Beatie,” but speed isn’t all that’s remarkable about Beatie Deutsch, a competitive marathon runner who has been one of Israel’s top marathoners for almost a decade. She’s also an ultra-Orthodox woman and a wife and mother of five who has struggled with physical, psychological, and logistical challenges to pursue her sport, shattering stereotypes about women and observant Jews in the process.
Now her remarkable life story has been made into a documentary, Marathon Mom, which is showing on January 1 in the framework of the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival (JJFF), at the Jerusalem Cinematheque. The film will also be shown in January at the Miami Jewish Film Festival and later in 2025 at several other US film festivals, as well as at a women’s film festival at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque in March.
The movie, co-directed by Rebecca Shore and Oren Rosenfeld and co-produced by Azrieli Foundation Board director and Sports for Social Impact founder Danny Hakim is a fully rounded portrait of a unique woman.
“It’s been a long journey,” said Hakim, explaining that the filmmakers followed Deutsch for four years. He came across Deutsch in his work with the Azrieli Foundation and began sponsoring her as part of a project to empower women in sports. But he also realized that she could be the subject of a film. “When I met Beatie, I immediately thought: ‘This is a story.’”
The film starts out by documenting her accomplishments as a competitive runner. Early on in Marathon Mom, we see her win the Tiberias Marathon in 2019 with a time of just over two hours and 42 minutes, the fifth best finish of all time for an Israeli woman, which qualified her for the then-upcoming 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
TO SAY she has had an unusual career trajectory is an understatement. The petite athlete, who runs with a head covering, skirt, and leggings, was active in other sports such as taekwondo before she started running, which she took up in 2016 in her mid-20s. In the Tel Aviv Marathon, her first, she finished sixth.
The following year, she ran the Tel Aviv race while seven months pregnant, a time when most expectant mothers can barely waddle between the living room and the bathroom, with a time of four hours and eight minutes. A few months after giving birth, she ran another marathon and finished with a time of a little over three hours.
Deutsch was set to represent Israel at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, but there were obstacles in her way, some of which all athletes faced, others which were unique to her. She learned that the marathon in Tokyo would be on a Saturday, so she would not be able to compete because she does not run on the Sabbath. She petitioned for a change, but the request became moot when the games themselves were postponed for a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, meaning that Deutsch had to re-qualify. Her complicated struggle to stay on top is the focus of the film.
“I always say, God is the ultimate director,” said Shore in an interview just before the film’s premiere at the JJFF. “A good film is always about the obstacles.”
Challenges of COVID
In Deutsch’s case, COVID was obviously a huge hurdle, and in an attempt to re-qualify, she ended up running a marathon in Berlin unaware that she had been infected with the virus. The footage of her collapsing after crossing the finish line is among the most dramatic scenes in the film.
She also faced the pressure of raising a large family and maintaining her Orthodox observance while training and competing.
While her husband is extremely supportive, Deutsch’s travel schedule is tough on her children, who care more about having their mother at home than about whether she wins medals. In a poignant scene, she arranges gifts to be given to her children at different times when she is competing abroad, but the surprise aspect is ruined when one of her children wanders in, a scene many working mothers will certainly relate to.
Her difficulties re-qualifying for the Olympics are partly due, the film suggests, to the fact that she has trouble balancing all her roles. One example of this conflict is that a mother of five can rarely get the full night’s sleep marathoners in training require.
Shore, who also combines Orthodox observance with being a working mother, said, “We had a really good rapport from literally the first moment I met her... I understand the conflict between wanting to excel at something and wanting to be the best mother possible.”
The movie also details her campaign to honor the memory of her cousin, Daniella Pardes, who died at 14 by suicide after struggling with an eating disorder. Deutsch, who also has had issues with an eating disorder, helps support Beit Daniella, a day program for Israeli teens dealing with mental health issues, including eating disorders, that was created in Pardes’s honor.
Shore noted, “Anorexia is a need for control, a coping mechanism for dealing with suffering and anxiety. Beatie is so open, so vulnerable, it’s a filmmaker’s dream to have someone who is able to open up the way she did.”
Said Rosenfeld, “The eating disorder issue came out during the filmmaking process and I think that the film will be educational about this issue, it will impact people.”
At the heart of the movie is Deutsch’s struggle, not only to balance her work with motherhood but also to continue to “find the joy in her running that she loses at a certain point, as she becomes more focused on the goal, the prize” as she tries to re-qualify for the Olympics.
Scenes of Deutsch running outside show the joy that the petite athlete takes in the sport and will likely inspire others to give it a try – certainly, some of the Orthodox women who can be seen running these days in Jerusalem, Beit Shemesh, Bnei Brak, and other parts of the country, who may have already gotten the idea from Deutsch that wearing a skirt and a head-covering is no barrier to taking up a sport.
“At heart, she’s just a really competitive, talented athlete and she just wants to be the best in her athletics she can possibly be and at everything she does in her life,” said Shore. “She loves to run... Running is her anchor, it’s like an arrival and an escape at the same time.”
Shore said that she thinks that the film is especially important for Israelis to watch in these contentious times: “She breaks through a lot of divisions in society here. There are such big barriers between Orthodox and non-Orthodox, and Beatie really stands in both worlds and she’s a bridge for unity.”