The recent imbroglio over a Holocaust art exhibit at New York’s Jewish Museum that has offended some survivors and others illustrates only too well that what is art to one person can be extremely distasteful to another.
That the art of filmmaking is no different was illustrated at an Adult Learning Session at Congregation Sinai on March 5 entitled “Then and Now: Exploring Jewish Life Through the Filmmaker’s Art.”
Facilitated by Laurie Herman, library/media coordinator for the Coalition for Jewish Learning, the education program of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation, it was followed this week with a session on how film images of Jewish men, women and families have changed over the past 75 years.
In a discussion of their three favorite films on video, the 17 participants at the first session sparked a lively debate about the controversial film, “Life is Beautiful,” Robert Benigni’s Academy Award winning “Holocaust comedy,” released in 1998.
Rabbi Jay Brickman, spiritual leader emeritus of Sinai, said this movie was his favorite because it “handled a terrible situation with such delicacy” and that he was “deeply moved” by it. Others in the group, however, felt the film gave an unrealistic portrayal of life in the concentration camps and was offensive for that reason.
Moving on to a discussion of what makes a film Jewish, the group determined that the film must have as its primary subject or focus some aspect of Jewish life or an identifiable Jewish character. Participants agreed that a movie that has a Jewish director or Jewish actors who don’t identify themselves as Jewish during a film does not meet these criteria.
They then viewed and discussed a sampling of the top 20 Jewish films as determined through a survey Herman conducted last year of 100 members of the local Jewish community, including rabbis, cantors, school principals and several teachers and communal workers. The survey asked people to name their three favorite films.
According to the 50 people who responded, the top three films were “Schindler’s List,” “Fiddler on the Roof” and “The Frisco Kid.”
“We’re just skimming the surface with these two [learning] sessions,” said Herman. “You could fill a top 20 list with just Holocaust films.”
The movies discussed are part of an extensive collection of close to 800 videos at CJL’s library, located on the Karl Jewish Community Campus, which are available for rental by anyone in Wisconsin for $1 per week. The collection includes documentaries, Israeli and Yiddish films with subtitles, and films about Jewish culture, history and ethics.
“I’m hoping this presentation will stimulate awareness that these resources are here for the community,” said Herman, who prepared a catalog of the collection. “We have the largest Holocaust video collection in town. Many of our videos are not easily accessible.”
The catalog provides a brief description of each film, its running time and an appropriate age range. It was recently made available online at www.cjlmilwau kee.org through a grant from the Ethel and Norman Gill Education Enrichment Fund.
For more information about CJL’s collection, call Herman at 414-962-8860.
For more information on the Jewish Museum exhibit, visit www.jta.org.
JoAnn Hornak is a freelance writer based on Milwaukee.
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