The quality that distinguishes human beings from angels and beasts is our free will — “the power to disobey.” So says a spiritual leader to his flock in the opening scene of “Disobedience.”
The complication? That speaker is Rabbi Krushka (Anton Lesser), a widower whose daughter’s willfulness has caused her to be exiled from the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in which she grew up.
The British rabbi’s words turn out to be his last; he collapses and soon dies. A trans-Atlantic call carries the news to his only child, Ronit (Rachel Weisz), who is now a New York-based photographer.