JEWISH DOCS

Set to run on consecutive Saturday evenings from Nov. 25 through
Dec. 9, the “Brooklyn Heights Jewish Film Festival” will
feature screenings of three recent documentaries: “Resisting
Forces,” “A Cantor’s Tale” and “Protocols
of Zion.”

“This was a great way to explore themes of Jewish culture and
identity to people who may ordinarily not enter a synagogue,”
said Simcha Weinstein, coordinator of the festival and a rabbi with
a degree in film history.

The series is scheduled to open with a screening of “Resisting
Forces,” Renee Sanders’s 2001 film about how members of
the Jewish Council of Enschede, a Dutch city near the German border,
risked their lives to save one-third of its Jewish population during
the Holocaust. The documentary is a very personal work for Sanders,
whose grandfather, Gerard Sanders, was one of those who sacrificed
his life so that others might live.

“I am a documentary filmmaker from Amsterdam … and I am in
New York quite often because I have made a number of films of Dutch-Jewish
history, and people seem to be very interested to see my work because
most people here in the United States hardly know anything about
Dutch-Jewish history,” Sanders told GO Brooklyn in a phone
interview Monday. “They only know about Anne Frank and that’s
about it.”

Sanders said she heard about the upcoming film festival during a
recent visit to Congregation B’nai Avraham. After talking to
the rabbi there, she was convinced her film would make an appropriate
addition to the line-up.

“People need to distinguish things for themselves; they need
to distinguish between good and evil and have the courage to make
their own decisions at some point,” she said.

The second film in the series will be the Brooklyn premiere of “A
Cantor’s Tale,” Erik Greenberg Anjou’s feature-length
look at “hazzanut” or Jewish liturgical music, as well
as the contributions of the Brooklyn-born cantor Jacob Mendelson.
Jackie Mason, Alan Dershowitz, ben-Zion Miller, Mati Lazar and Alberto
Mizrahi all appear in the film.

“We’ve been very blessed with the movie,” Anjou told
GO Brooklyn. “The movie has done extraordinarily well, particularly
in the Jewish world. It has played at between 55 and 60 film festivals,
so it is kind of one of the hottest movies on that circuit. Each
community has its special niche and its special thing to offer.”

So, what does Anjou (pictured above with cantor Mendelson) want
audiences to take away from the film?

“For those who aren’t familiar with cantorial music, [the
film gives] a heightened appreciation of classical, Ashkenazic cantorial
music,” Anjou said. “I would also like to see the wall
between Orthodox and Conservative Judaism lowered a little bit.
There seems to be a lot of antipathy from one side to the next.
Really, the only way the Jewish people are going to survive in full
strength is if everybody gets along.

“Part of that means doing something really difficult —
going against rabbinic law,” continued the filmmaker. “There
is a rabbinic prohibition that basically frowns upon the woman’s
voice leading prayer. One of the only ways cantorial music will
survive is if women can become carriers of the tradition. That’s
going to call for a real revolution of people’s attitudes and
outlooks.”

The final screening in the series will be Marc Levin’s “Protocols
of Zion,” a searing look at the rise in anti-Semitism since
the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Inspired by Levin’s
own confrontation with an Egyptian cab driver who claimed Jews were
warned not to go to work at the World Trade Center on 9-11, the
2005 film features interviews with Arab-Americans, black nationalists,
Christian evangelists and white supremacists in an effort to get
at the root of the hatred.

In keeping with the festival’s mission to spark conversation,
Sanders is confirmed to speak after the screening of her film and

Anjou will take questions after the showing of his film.

“It is very important to have the filmmakers in attendance,”
Weinstein observed. “It adds credibility and excitement to
the screenings.”