Transcription of Maine Jewish Film Festival #131
Dr. Lisa: This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast show number 131, Maine Jewish Film Festival, airing for the first time on Sunday March 16th 2014. Today’s guest include Louise Rosen, Executive and Artistic Director with the Maine Jewish Film Festival. Richard Kane of Kane Lewis Productions and Filmmaker with the Maine Jewish Film Festival and Larry Rubinstein, retired rabbi and supporter of the Maine Jewish Film Festival. Now in its 17th year, the Maine Jewish Film Festival has presented over 300 domestic and foreign films. Sold over 32,000 tickets to both Jewish and non Jewish attendees. This year the Maine Jewish Film Festival will be held from March 22nd to 29th in venues around greater Portland as well as selected sites around the state.
Today we speak with film festival, Artistic and Executive Director Louise Rosen. Filmmaker Richard Kane and retired rabbi Larry Rubinstein an avid supporter of the Maine Jewish Film Festival. Thank you for joining us. I first heard of the Maine Jewish Film Festival several years ago, when one of our original sponsors for the radio show asked me if I wanted to go to a reception. I wasn’t able to make it to that reception but now I’m pretty intrigued. I’m wondering if I need to spend some time not only at the reception for the Maine Jewish Film Festival but also watching some of the films. Today we have two people who are quite involved in the Maine Jewish Film Festival here to speak with us.
We have Louise Rosen with the Executive and Artistic Director for the Maine Jewish Film Festival and Richard Kane of Kane Lewis Productions. Who has created a wonderful film on Jon Imber which will be shown at the Maine Jewish Film Festival coming up in not too long. Louise is the Executive and Artistic Director of the Maine Jewish Film Festival. She has over 25 years of experience in international television and film. In that time has worked on projects that have been Oscar, Emmy, Sundance, Pre-Italia and International Emmy winning films. I’m loving that Richard you are over there giving Louise a big hug for this because I know this is a lot of work and it’s quite something.
Richard is a filmmaker with 30 years experience working on documentaries for National Geographic, Discovery, CBS and the Natural Resources Council of Maine. To name a few, his most recent project is Maine Masters which is a New England Emmy nominated series about some Maine most distinguished artists. We are setting the bar pretty high today coming in to have this conversation. I really appreciate your both coming and having it with me.
Louise: Thank you, thank you for having us.
Richard: Thank you Lisa.
Dr. Lisa: It is great work that you are doing with the Maine Jewish Film Festival and I’ll start with you Louise. This is something that has been a passion of yours.
Louise: Well film has been my focus for really almost my entire professional life. In one way or another it’s been at the heart of all the work that I do. I’ve been working for the festival this will be my second festival I started in November of 2012. I’m early in my Maine Jewish Film Festival experience. Dick and I know one another from the filmmaking environment in Maine and he invited me to serve on the board of the Maine Film and Video Association. Which he is the chair of and that’s how we got to know one another and I got to know his work and he mine. It was natural at the point that he had a film in progress about a Maine artist who was also Jewish and influenced in his work by his Judaism that we would talk about it.
Dr. Lisa: None of you are originally from Maine but you call Maine home now.
Richard: Absolutely.
Dr. Lisa: Tel me a little bit about that transition for you Richard?
Richard: Well I say that I’m going to die here and maybe that’s in part what this story about Jon Imber is about each of our own mortality. When my friends came to visit me and my new Maine home they said, “You got to have in a little bit too soon.” I really feel that way it’s deeply my home now I wouldn’t consider living any place else.
Dr. Lisa: I’ve met Jon Imber and Jill Hoy and we have an article coming out in Maine Magazine about the two of them and their time as artists and also his journey through ALS. You are working on a film right now I’ve seen the beginnings of this film. It’s in process and that must be very interesting to be kind of going through this process with him.
Richard: It really is very difficult process to be going through with John. First of all I have to say that I’m very grateful to the Maine Jewish Film Festival, to have the confidence that this film will be worthy of being in this festival and premiered there. Louise saw an 18 minute trailer about the film and that she was taken by it. This was the first time that I have ever been committed to a festival where the film is not yet completed. I think it was important to get the film out as soon as possible so that John would be there to see it. We are not certain at this point whether John and Jill could be there because of John’s condition.
His ALS has progressed rapidly and I was just there with him yesterday and witnessed him continuing to paint. He had a feeding tube put in a week ago and he’s had a set back as a result of that surgery. He got up and with the help of two wonderful young men who are also artists just they raised him up out of his wheelchair. His arms have no strength but they put a paintbrush in his left hand and with a hook attached to his right hand that holds the paintbrush. He’s still painting and I witnessed him laughing in spite of the fact that he’s deteriorating rapidly. It’s a very difficult film for me to witness because I feel so close to him, I feel like his brother. I don’t often kiss my subjects but I kissed John. He was born in the same town that I grew up in with the same age with the same cultural heritage.
He has an older sister, I have an older sister there is just so many. His parents went to Florida in the winters; mine went to Florida in the winters. His father taught him how to play golf; my father taught me how to play golf. We have all these similarities that I really feel that he’s a member of my family. It’s very, I can’t imagine actually being a member of his family. Being his sister and being his wife and son and actually seeing how ALS being such a cruel disease, just takes all of his … how he deteriorates so rapidly. It is difficult.
Dr. Lisa: This is something that I think that the Maine Jewish Film Festival is putting out there, are these stories and a very visual and compelling way.
Louise: Well I know Richard’s work and I had a very strong sense when I looked at that sample material and from having spoken to him about Imber. I knew that he was going to make a really fine film. His personal and emotional engagement in the subject putting that to one side, Dick is also a great filmmaker. I knew that what we would get would be selfishly an opportunity for the festival to have a world premier of a film about a really important artist. A man whose stylistic interest and influences cover both abstract impressionism and portraiture. That there is just this sheer force of will that comes across. For us now that this year we are also screening films at the Portland Museum of Art. My thought was what could be better than to use one of those precious plots that we’ve got for screening there than to premier this film.
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Dr. Lisa: It is interesting that the same time we are celebrating diversity you are also celebrating connections so that people will see films that are put out as Maine Jewish Film Festival films and yet there is a universality about them. I know Richard this is something that you are very aware of because you’ve done work not only on artists. You did work with one of your pieces was called In This Times and another was called Turning Clothing into Food. Those were two short documentaries on hunger which is something that impacts all of us in one way or another.
Richard: Right. I guess I’m very interested in community and issues that impact people. It’s hard to realize that when you are living in an affluent place there are people who are falling through the cracks. We were very interested and my partner Melody Louise Kane was very interested in the local food pantry and how can we help. We collaborated with them to create a film that is about hunger and about how food pantries can be of great help in helping those people who do fall through the cracks. People with two jobs working minimum wage can’t make it with a couple of children.
They need something like a food pantry to be of, to supplement their diet. Now the films have been showing in many of the places around many of the theatres around Maine. We had the great fortune of having Noel Paul Stookey contribute the music and the title In This Times to the film. He’s a great member of the community that I live in, in Blue Hill. That film as well as the film that we made for the Natural Resources Council of Maine I’m very interested in our environment. I think the NRCM does an amazing job to really protect the nature of Maine so I became involved in that project.
I’m also doing commercials and political as well as commercials on different products. I just like to be involved in a visual medium like film. Which is what perhaps attracted me to making films about art in Maine. That really has become my life’s work and for that I’m very grateful to have that opportunity and many of the artists happen to be Jewish. When I started this project on Jon Imber, it wasn’t about a Jewish artist and it’s knowing that the film is part of the Jewish Film Festival the Maine Jewish Film Festival. Has made me began to think about my own Judaism. John’s wife Jill Hoy, who’s a really accomplished artist herself.
Has had a long history of being in Maine, she talked about how John’s Judaism was really deeply rooted and who he is. In the film when they are looking through old family photos, they come across a photograph of John nine years old at a family Passover. Where there is Uncle Isaac and Uncle Harman and his grandmother. Michael Abby and John is like a peacock in a way. He’s hamming it up, he’s stretching out his neck to be photographed and hamming it up is who John is in part. Jill describes John and his Judaism deeply rooted and who he is. Let me just quote what she says, John asks “How so” and she says, “Well your delivery, your being, your responsibility, your search, your quest for the integrity of what you do.
I think there is a very deep root there.” It made me think about well, who am I as a Jew or both of us John and myself we always thought about ourselves as being secular Jews. Maybe we were both Bar Mitzvahed but it was almost more of a social event than it was a religious event. It’s something that the film begins to deal with. John actually has very a long history of having a very significant ancestor by the name of Naphtali Herz Imber. Who was the author of the Israeli National Anthem. He wrote a poem Hatikvah which means hope. It became the words to the Israeli National Anthem.
Dr. Lisa: I do think this is something that I find very interesting and something I think you and I talked about on the phone Louise. It’s this idea of documenting of really making sure that things are not forgotten. This is a big piece of what you are doing as you are bringing some of these films like the Jon Imber film to Maine, for the Maine Jewish Film Festival. Tell me about some of your favorite films?
Louise: Well I think it’s important to bear in mind that all of these films come from what I would refer to as independent sources. In other words these are not being made by a studio system. They represent a kind of independent spirit and from a huge range of countries. We’ve got certain Israeli films, France, Germany these countries are represented. We are really curating a collection that reflects an international sensibility. In terms of favorites it’s a tough question I mean we’ve certainly got edgy films. A film called The Gate Keepers which was nominated for an Oscar last year which is a very, very tough look at Israeli approach to dealing with terrorism.
It features the heads of the Israeli Intelligence Agency called Shin Bet. They talk about their careers as the head of that agency and reflecting back on whether their approaches ultimately made sense in terms of peace and the world peace for Israel. It’s a tough film and very similar in style to Fog of War in as much as it uses interviews combined with archive material. In relation to what you were just saying, yes that’s a document. I mean we have cultural documents of very Indie and very fun film that touches on music called Awake Zion that makes the connection between reggae and Jewish music. Explores the new reggae movement that exists in Israel where there is a very vibrant reggae scene.
Also connects with Crown Heights and of course the period of time when the Caribbean in Crown Heights and the Orthodox community clashed. Then looking at the fact that there is now this inspired fertilization between the two communities musically speaking and great film. We’ve got a German film called An Apartment in Berlin it looks at the immigration of young Israelis to Germany. Which for a lot of the older generation is really a bit of a taboo idea. Yet Israelis are drawn this 20 somethings, 30 somethings are drawn to a place like Berlin for all the reasons anyone would be. It’s a cosmopolitan city, it’s got wonderful quality of life very lively active place. Dealing with Berlin as having been the center for the extermination programs during the Holocaust, there is a big push pull there.
It’s exciting to learn about what are these young people thinking and what are their experiences being there and how are their families responding to them. We’ve got a Latina-Jewish comedy written and directed by a young woman named Nicole Gomez Fischer who is also an actress and a writer and a director. Stars Gina Rodriguez who was one of the it girls of Sundance about a year and a half ago. It’s a comedy story about a young woman coming of age and dealing with pressure from her family about, so when are you going to get married again and where is your life going. Those universal themes that I think Jewish mothers exist in almost every culture. Here we see one that part of the time is muttering under her breath in Spanish about her daughter.
Dr. Lisa: In both of your cases the image I’m getting is of someone who is curating. Is someone who is creating some sort of story in your case Richard you are obviously creating a story you and I were talking about how the Imber film is going to begin and end. It’s still playing itself out I think in your mind. Louise you are talking about creating a story around the Maine Jewish Film Festival and it’s a very, must be an interesting process to try to determine what do you bring in, what do you leave out, how do you place things?
Richard: I want to emphasis about the Imber film that it’s not simply a tragedy, a depressing story about a great artist with this terminal disease. I look at it as a black comedy, John’s humor as Jill calls it veiled humor. It’s darkly funny he’s painting a scene plain air in Stonington. He asked and Jill is helping him and he asked Jill for a little, a cloth with turpentine. She says “Oh that turp is deadly.” John says, “I don’t mind deadly I’ll do it.” All throughout the film is sprinkled with all this black humor that is just it’s totally touching. It talks a lot about John’s humanity and compassion and I think that’s what the film is more about than simply his ALS.
Louise: This whole idea that you suggest of curating experiences, I think that’s very much what a good film festival is about. When the public, when your audience develops that confidence that I’m going to go along for this ride, these aren’t films that have had big marketing budgets behind them. They may not necessarily have, not all of them can be promoted as having been Oscar nominees. When they develop that sense that the journey that you are going to take them on is going to be one that’s worthwhile wherever it goes and they trust you. They go along with you and I love that experience of sharing my enthusiasm for something with the public with the audience.
Helping them to, bringing them to what I saw in that film or in that opportunity of observation to share that with them. Then see what happens afterwards because we are lucky that we have got Dick right here in Maine. We are doing everything to bring as many filmmakers to the festival as possible so that they can participate in Q and As after the films are run. Because this is let’s face it you can sit at home and watch films on Netflix or on Cable or whatever. Coming to a theater and sharing that experience of sitting in the dark and having both a great visual and emotional and auditory experience, this is why we go to cinemas.
Then to have the filmmaker afterwards or someone connected with the film or the subject of the film in some ways afterwards, to be able to share what your reaction is, this is what people really savor. We are offering as many of those experiences as we can. We’ve got filmmakers coming from Sweden from Germany, New York, Miami.
Richard: Miami.
Louise: From Miami. It goes to the story that I told you on the phone when I relate to a friend of mine in LA that I had joined the Maine Jewish Film Festival. He took a long pause and he said, “There are Jews in Maine, in March? I said, “Yeah not everybody is a snow bird you know.” Yes we’ve got a filmmaker coming from Miami.
Richard: I just want to add that there is another reason to come to the Maine Jewish Film Festival other than the films and the talks afterwards. It’s got the greatest food any festival I’ve ever been to. It was unbelievable last year the spread that they put out I don’t know where they get that from.
Louise: Well the Jews and food you got to have good food it goes with the whole profile.
Richard: The little theme and the film about Jon Imber he’s got a bagel and lox and he just devours that thing in his hamming it up kind of way. I’d like to point out where that term hamming it up comes from.
Louise: Since ham is definitely not kosher.
Richard: Not kosher but John devours this bagel and lox with such relish. Food is a very important thing and now it’s become very sad that John can’t eat anymore because he’s on a feeding tube so he related that to me. It’s a tragic comedy and as the festival I’m sure it’s got all the emotions.
Dr. Lisa: That is something that strikes me Louise as you are talking about bringing together people who have watched the film and who have been emotionally impacted we hope by a specific film. Then people who have created the film like Richard so that you can actually have a back and forth about that. I do believe this is one of the interesting things about Netflix just today. That we are so insular in our viewing of very emotionally challenging things at times. Wouldn’t it be great to actually have the chance to have a conversation with somebody right after this has sort of opened our hearts in a way?
Louise: Well when you mentioned documenting experience earlier, the festival is also working with the Holocaust and Human Rights Center at Maine, Augusta the Michael Klahr Center. Which is a beautiful facility if people haven’t been to it, it’s a gorgeous contemporary designed building and a wonderful exhibit space and activity space. We are working with the folks at the HHRC to set up a conference on archive. Because Richard is using archive in his film it’s the personal archive the family photo album the scrap book. Many films use archive material we rely on archive in ways that we are it can be so subtle that we are not even aware of it.
We have a Swedish film coming to the festival that uses some very unique archive. It got me thinking and knowing these filmmakers in knowing these filmmakers and the work that they are doing in Malmo in the south of Sweden. I thought to myself there is something about archive and our sense of identity and where that comes from. There are some links to be made here so with the filmmakers work as part of it, we are bringing the co-founder of Northeast Historic Film Maine has here. An actual world class archive facility Northeast Historic Film in Boxford.
Who have done amazing work conserving and restoring archive footage from all around Northern New England. We have the National Center for National Jewish Film at Brandeis University in Waltham which is again a world class institution that is dedicated to preserving Jewish film. We’ve got a representative the woman who is the co-founder and the executive director Sharon Rivo is coming from National Center for Jewish Film we have the filmmakers. Then I think it looks pretty likely that we will also have a representative from the US Holocaust Museum and Memorial in Washington.
Whose focus is on she’s considered the chief of the research section for the International Tracing Service. Which is essentially an enormous database of German archive. Our theme running through this conference will be the role of archive in restoring and conserving identity. That can be on the small very personal individual basis having the photo of your Uncle Ira and being able to share that with your children and grandchildren and tell the story around it. Or it can be for an entire culture for the state of Maine and the archives that we have about Maine’s history.
Dr. Lisa: I know that we could keep talking about this for quite a long time there are so many different strands that I’d like to tag on a little bit and find out a little bit more about since we are limited by time. Richard how can people find out more about Kane Lewis Productions and the work that you’ve done on Maine Masters and with the National Resource Council of Maine.
Richard: Well the Maine Masters series is sponsored by the Union of Maine Visual Artists. The website for Maine Masters is mainemasters.com. You can see on the front homepage there is a story about Jon Imber and there are clips from every one of the films there are 15 films now. John’s film will be the 15th in the series and there are five or six more that are in various stages of production and fundraising and distribution. Then Kane Lewis Productions is my company that distributes the Maine Masters documentaries. Under that company name we’ve produced other films, some about the arts and some about the environment and commercials. That website is kaneLouise.com.
Dr. Lisa: Louise when is the Maine Jewish Film Festival, when does it start and how can people find out more?
Louise: Opening night is March 22nd our opening night film is the Jewish Cardinal, talk about crossover potential between the Catholic and the Jewish communities and the French speaking communities of Maine. I think we’ve got some special guests coming two Monsignors from the Catholic Church who will come to speak with Larry Rubenstein who I know you’ve spoken with after the film. Our schedule goes live on our website on Friday on Valentines Day and the website is mjff.org. Tickets are on sale through Brown Paper Tickets but also for the screenings that are taking place in Waterville at Railroad Square in Brunswick at the Frontier in the Rockland at the Strand and up in Bangor at the Bangor Opera House. Each of those organizations websites will have their tickets available.
Richard: May I say that the film on Jon Imber will be on March 23rd Sunday at 3 PM at the Portland Museum of Art.
Dr. LIsa: I suspect I will see you at the Maine Jewish Film Festival each of you I hope people are listening. We’ll also take the time to watch some of the films and interact with the two of you, the Maine Jewish Film Festival. We’ve been speaking with Louise Rosen who is the Executive and Artistic Director at the Maine Jewish Film Festival. Richard Kane from Kane Lewis Productions and a filmmaker and producer of a film at the Maine Jewish Film Festival. I appreciate all the work that you are doing to bring this media to Maine it’s wonderful.
Louise: Thanks very much.
Richard: Thank you Lisa, appreciate it.
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Dr. Lisa: Each year Maine is privileged to have a number of people show up and sponsor the Maine Jewish Film Festival and also not just sponsor the Maine Jewish Film Festival but really take part and put it out there as a cultural event that delivers recognition. Today with us we have Rabbi Larry Rubenstein. He is actually a retired rabbi but very much a supporter of the Maine Jewish Film Festival. Actually someone who knows one of the characters in the film that’s going to be featured at the Maine Jewish Film Festival so that’s for coming in.
Larry: You are welcome, nice to be here.
Dr. Lisa: I shouldn’t exactly say character because the person we are talking about is the Jewish cardinal is a real person that really existed and somebody that you knew?
Larry: Yes.
Dr. Lisa: Tell me about that?
Larry: Well there is a little bit of a history. I stopped being a congregational rabbi a pastor in 1978 and went to work for an organization called the United Jewish Appeal. United Jewish Appeal is the umbrella organization for the fundraising for all of the major Jewish communities in the United States. Now the local Jewish community here in Maine was part of that umbrella. At that time I was living in Philadelphia and I went to work in New York I commuted from Philadelphia and I went to work in New York for a part of that group called the young leadership cabinet. Which was the 300 men under the age of 40 in those days men and women didn’t mix together.
I developed a reputation for being a really good programmer. I was there for four years and in the four years you stop being young so I had to go do something else. I ended up going back to Philadelphia and becoming the director of the Jewish Federation of Philadelphia. Which was the third largest federation in the United States. Because of my programming skills, the United Jewish Appeal consulted with me on things every year. One of the ways in which the United Jewish Appeal raised money was it used to take missions which is groups of people that had the cognate interest. To various locations that had Jewish themes to them and then onto Israel. I will always be the one that would come up with the ideas about what to do.
One of the things that I got an idea about was the role of the French Jewish community or French community during the Second World War to save Jews from the Nazis. Although French gets a very bad reputation of being allies with the Nazis once they fell, the Vichy government. There were large pockets of people who didn’t go along with that and one of the areas where that was true was in the Bordeaux region one of the great French wine growing districts. Wine is a major interest of mine I taught wine courses and everything. There was a period of time when the people of the Bordeaux region during the Second World War did everything they could to hide Jews and to protect them from the Nazis because they also didn’t like the Nazis very much.
The Nazis understood that if they could somehow take the wine industry away from France they would break the back, the soul of the French. The French knew that if they had the wine industry taken from them their soul would also be broken. They did everything they could to keep the wine industry out of the hands of the Germans and they also as a result wanted to protect the Jews who lived in the Bordeaux region. Who were very active in the wine industry including a very famous family the Rothschild Family. That owned Mouton Rothschild which was one of the great vineyards in all of France.
Edmund de Rothschild who at that time was the senior person worked with the local community and probably they say 5 to 10,000 Jews by hiding them in their chateaus cellars, making believe they were working in the vineyards even though they weren’t. This kind of thing and making be they weren’t Jewish so the Germans wouldn’t be able to finger them. What I wanted to do is I wanted to take one of these missions these UJ missions to the Bordeaux region of France to study what happened there. To work with the Rothschild family who all of them had survived. That time Philippe de Rothschild was the latest in the senior people of the Rothschild family.
We got in touch with him and we told him what he wanted to do and he said, “That’s a great idea.” He said “We’ll go to Israel afterwards together.” By the way this mission was called the President’s Mission and the President’s Mission were the highest givers to the United Jewish Appeal. These were people who would give on the average of 100,000 or more a year on an annual basis. It was a pretty high level mission and it was my job to program for this mission I was from Philadelphia but I was doing and we always had a few people from Philadelphia who participated as well. Rothschild Philippe de Rothschild said, “I have an idea, why don’t we go up to Paris afterwards and meet with Aaron Lustiger.”
I said, “Who’s Aaron Lustiger this is a cardinal and so we know he’s Jean Marie Lustiger.” He said “No I knew him when he was a kid he’s Aaron Lustiger. Why don’t we meet with him because he was born a Jew and he still got royalties to the Jewish community and but he’s a cardinal. We’ll go up there and we’ll have a meeting with him and maybe we’ll invite him to go with us to Israel. That’s what we do and Lustiger said yes. Now all of this took place probably six months to a year before the incidents in the film were recorded. We took Lustiger to Israel and he was a survivor of the Holocaust he was a young man I think he was 13 years old when the Nazis came to France.
He never lost his loyalty to the Jewish people he felt that he was born a Jew he had a revelation about Catholicism when he was a young man. His father witnessed his conversion to Catholicism never was happy with it. Still there was family loyalty that took place and we talked to Lustiger about going to Israel. He said, “Absolutely.” That was the first time he went. When we were there we took him to Yad Vashem the Holocaust Memorial. He had a million questions about what was going on and it was like he had discovered what really happened during the Holocaust.
Although he had personally been through it, he didn’t really know all the information and at Yad Vashem picked up a lot of the information. Now this precedes by about I think less than a year, after he became cardinal, the desire and applaud of a small group of nuns in Poland to establish a convent at Auschwitz the great concentration camp the biggest concentration camp. Which of course roused the ire of the Jewish community. This was an unholy Jewish place but it was a very important Jewish place. They didn’t think that and I don’t think that a convent belonged on that turf.
The question was how did they have that happen and Lustiger apparently was a friend of Jean Paul II. He went to speak to him we don’t know exactly what the conversation was but what we do know, the mood he sort of makes out that there was a conversation but it was a made up conversation. He basically did it he said, “Look you have to get the Polish Catholic Church to get rid of this, I won’t do it.” The question was how to do that, Lustiger had to go to his counterpart in Poland the Cardinal of Poland and get him to withdraw this thing. The Cardinal of Poland really wasn’t convinced as a lot of people weren’t that there really had been a Holocaust the way it had taken place.
There was an arrangement made where the two cardinals were going to meet. Interestingly enough in the film they identify where that meeting takes place I don’t know if you remember that. It took place in Geneva Switzerland at the Rothschild Estate in Geneva. Now the question is how, did they get to the Rothschild Estate. Well Lustiger was friends with the Rothschild’s and that’s how it happened. What happened was the Cardinal of Poland who was reluctant to be there as a matter of fact they show that in the film where he is like coming and his aides tell him he has to be there. What ends up happening is Lustiger says, “You don’t know what really happened to the Jewish people you have to go to Yad Vashem you have to see what I saw.”
He finally gets the cardinal to go and the cardinal comes back and says, “I had no idea.” That was the end of the convent in Auschwitz. That’s what the story is about and my part is that I was there with him prior to his having convinced the Polish Cardinal that he should go. We had a number of conversations he was interested in Jewish history; he was interested in what the psyche of the Jewish people were after the holocaust. He was interested in what the importance of the state of Israel was to the Jewish people. I had those conversations with him and I found him to be extremely well informed. Very, very smart and very committed to both his Jewish roots and to his catholic religion.
Dr. Lisa: That’s an interesting duality to be able to have especially when you are that high up in the Catholic Church?
Larry: Yeah it is. It caused great consternation for his parents, his father. His mother died in Auschwitz but his sister accepted it and understood it but his father never really did. He was conflicted about it himself because there were Jewish ritual prayers when his father died that he could not say because he was a Catholic. He always felt, apparently according to the movie I don’t know I never talked to him about this. Apparently he felt very badly about it. His father died after I knew him so this was something that happened after his trip to Israel. He had some conflict about it in terms of the two religions butting up against each other. His Jewish roots and his loyalty to the … the concept of the people of Israel was there.
Dr. Lisa: The goal of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour is to help make connections between the health of the individual and the health of the community. The goal of Ted Carter Inspired Landscapes, is to deepen our appreciation for the natural world. Here to speak with us today is Ted Carter.
Ted: I’m going to read directly from Black Elk, The Sacred Ways of Lakota. My people I call them earth people never discovered anything because we are part of the fire. We are part of the rock and we are part of the water and green. We never discovered anything or created anything because we are a part of it. We know we are a part of it because we are still connected to our roots. When I went out in the desert with my Sherman, I studied for four years out in the Sonora Desert with a Sherman. He would take me to the stone people and the grandmother trees.
We would call these spaces out and we would go visit them and we would feel spirit there. It’s important to realize that we bring spirit to a place, it doesn’t just happen. We invoke that and we can look at the world in a very sterile way and a very perfunctory manner or we can look at it with spirit and through the eyes of spirit and it makes all the difference. I’m Ted Carter and if you’d like to contact me, I can be reached at tedcarterdesign.com.
Dr. Lisa: The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast understands the importance of the health, of the body, mind and spirit. Here to talk about the health of the body is Jim Greatorex of Premier Sports Health, a division of Black Bear Medical.
Tim: Hey let’s get festive, lace up your running shoes or your walking shoes and let’s get active. I want you to take a moment and think about the people in your life. How would they define being active, is it training for a marathon or you are like me you like to play golf on the weekends or hit the slopes. Or is it just getting out to the backyard for a change of scenery. My point is, it’s your perspective regardless of what you define as active we all need to take some time each day to make that happen. What’s better than a three hour long workout a week? It’s 20 minutes everyday of activity.
It’s good for your body and your mind and the consistency can be good in helping you avoid injuries. For more information on how to stay active, visit us in Portland or Bangor or online at blackbearmedical.com. Black Bear Medical keeping you active in the game of life. With medical equipment, sports health and rehab products, wellness products and more.
Speaker 1: Experienced chef and owner Harding Lee Smith’s newest hit restaurant, Boone’s Fish House and Oyster Room Maine seafood at its finest. Joining sister restaurants The Front Room, The Grill Room and The Corner Room. This newly renovated two storey restaurant at 86 Commercial Street on Custom House Wharf, overlooks scenic Portland Harbor. Watch lobstermen bring in the daily catch as you enjoy baked stuffed lobster, raw bar and wood fired flatbreads. For more information, visit www.theroomsportland.com.
Dr. Lisa: What you are describing on this side of your life and actually your life as a whole, is in such stark contrast to what happened during the holocaust where lives were effectively erased. People went in with a very rich cultural heritage and personal histories. Many were never heard from again. Is that part of what’s happening with the Maine Jewish Film Festival or is this attempt and maybe in your life as well is this attempt to almost live more fully. Almost sort of reconstitute and have the stories be told?
Larry: Well that’s truly a motivation, certainly a motivation for me to do what I do. Although I will tell you that I am more motivated in doing the work that I do and being involved as a volunteer in a not for profit world. I’m more motivated by the ethic and ideology of the United States which I think is unique. We are a unique country, one of the most important books I think ever written about the United States is Alexis de Tocqueville Democracy in America. That where he describes the importance of the volunteer sector in the United States and making it unique. The involvement of volunteers and volunteerism and fundraising and in support of not for profit institutions that improve the community in which they exist.
Which doesn’t exist in Europe the same way Europe is much more government controlled and as a result nothing works right in Europe. Here things work much better and it’s very important for us as Americans to be volunteers and to support volunteer institutions that function for the public good. That’s a major motivation for me and that’s why I tell people all the time, actually tomorrow, Thursday I’m doing a training session for an arts program under the auspices of the Maine Arts Commission. To help them do better fundraising so that we can have stronger arts institutions in the state. I think that the Maine Jewish Film Festival is going to that as well. I’m very committed to this concept of this American concept of volunteerism.
Dr. Lisa: I do agree with volunteerism is very important but I think equally compelling or the story is that bring people to volunteer. This is why I love the fact that you can come in and you can tell the story about the Jewish cardinal and you can actually, you mentioned to me when we were talking before that there is a Jewish film festival relationship with the Kachmar organ.
Larry: Yes.
Dr. Lisa: These stories I think are as just as important and your ability to tell them, other people’s ability to go and watch a film at the film festival because I think that that does draw people in.
Larry: I think you’re right. I’m very proud of what the Maine Jewish Film Festival does because it brings to the entire community not just the Jewish community a good piece of the Jewish cultural life. If you see any of the films there, it’s not a religious festival. It has all kinds of attachments to the Jewish community it could be through the state of Israel, it could be Jewish producers, it could be Jewish directors, it could be Jewish subject matter. I actually had an absolutely fascinating time being involved with this. I can think of one particular young woman I met who was a director of a film that was produced … she made it about herself she was a film student in NYU in New York but her family was from Israel.
Her father a very famous man Amos Elon who was a major political figure in Israel. She was his only daughter and he and his wife did not have time to raise her. He hired a male nanny to take care of her and he was a Palestinian, because there were Palestinian Arabs that live in Israel as citizens and that’s what he was. She grew up really more with this Palestinian-Arab as a father than her own father. He had children and she identified with them as brothers and sisters. Then what she did is after many, many years came to the United States and tried to find all of those people many of whom had come to the United States including the father, the ersatz father that she had.
She made a film about finding these people and Robert and I my wife and I went to dinner with her and talked to her about it. It was just unbelievable to hear her story, a person aside from the film that we saw, then it turned out and we thought for sure her husband and her little baby were with her. We were sure her husband she had married an Arab we were sure of that. This guy was dark skinned and we just thought he was maybe she had met him in Israel he was Israeli-Arab. It turned out that he was from Morocco and his father was the chief rabbi of Paris. We meet all these incredibly interesting people as a result of this film festival. We met a guy who was the director of a film called the Hasidic Actors Guild.
It was about … it was a fiction. He made this whole thing up, it was a comedy, most people didn’t realize it was a comedy. They thought he was making a documentary about this Hasidic Actors Guild which didn’t exist. He was a riot this guy was the funniest guy we’ve ever met and again we got to meet him because of the Maine Jewish Film Festival. We end up meeting all these unbelievably funny people, good people, smart people, creative people because of the film festival. That’s what the film festival brings to the State of Maine. As I said it’s not just Jewish stuff its all kinds of stuff that Jews may be related to so could be a regular story.
It could be a story … there was an incredible story a movie we saw about a guy whose father died and kept calling him from heaven on the phone. He kept getting these phone calls, had nothing to do with Judaism it was a French film. It was directed by a Jew so that’s the reason the film festival showed it. It was one of this very funny stories where every time this guy got involved with a girl his father would call him and say, “No this is not the right girl for you that kind of thing.” Anyway we find it to be an illuminating part of cultural life of Portland to go to these films. We don’t go to all of them we go to some of them. My wife goes to all of them I go to some of them.
Dr. Lisa: Wow it’s been quite a privilege to have you and talking to us today about a broad variety of subjects, the least is the Maine Jewish Film Festival. We appreciate your coming relocating to Maine and becoming a part of the fabric of the culture and doing the work that you are doing. We’ll be speaking with other people who are also involved in the Maine Jewish Film Festival. If anybody would like to Google the friends of the Kachmar Organ, The Portland Museum of Art, the Bicycle Coalition of Maine any of these things. Get more information about the things that you are passionate about I would really, I would encourage it. We’ve been speaking with Rabbi Larry Rubenstein who is the retired rabbi and does so many things. Thank you so much for coming in.
Larry: It was a pleasure to be here thanks for giving me the chance to talk about these things.
Speaker 4: You’ve been listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast. Show number 131 Maine Jewish Film Festival. Our guest have included Louise Rosen, Richard Kane and Larry Rubenstein. For more information on our guests and extended interviews, visit dsctorlisa.org. The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is downloadable for free on iTunes. For a preview of this week’s show, sign up for our eNewsletter and like our Dr. Lisa Facebook page. Follow me as bountiful1 on Instagram and give my take on health and wellbeing on the bountiful blog. We love to hear from you so please let us know what you think of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour.
We welcome your suggestions for future shows. Also let our sponsors know that you’ve heard about them here. We are privileged that they enable us to bring the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour to you each week. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle I hope you have enjoyed our Maine Jewish Film Festival Show. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your day. May you have a bountiful life.
Speaker 1: The Dr. Lisa radio Hour and Podcast is made possible with the support of the following generous sponsors. Maine Magazine, Marci Booth of Booth Maine, Apothecary by Design, Premier Sports Health, a Division of Black Bear Medical, Mike LePage and Beth Franklin of RE/MAX Heritage. Ted Carter Inspired Landscapes, Tom Shepard of Shepard Financial, Dream Kitchen Studios, Harding Lee Smith of The Rooms and Bangor Savings Bank. The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast recorded in the studio of Maine Magazine at 75 Market Street Portland Maine. Our executive producers are Kevin Thomas, Susan Grisanti.