Lights, Camera, Action!

Congregation B’nai Israel’s annual Nagle Family Jewish Film Festival offers a series of inspiring films with hosts who introduce each film and lead a discussion afterward.

The films take place on Wednesdays at 7:00 pm in the VIP Cocktail Lounge with popcorn and dessert accompanying each film. There is no cost for members and a $10 donation per film for guests. The Film Festival is generously sponsored by the Nagle Family.

This year we have an exciting lineup of Films! Registration will take place at the door for each film. We encourage you to come early as there is limited seating!

If you would like to learn more about our Film Festival, please contact our Programming Coordinator, Minda Shaiman.

November 14, 2018 – Theodore Bikel: In The Shoes of Sholom Aleichem

Sholom Aleichem and Theodore Bikel–are woven together in this enchanting new documentary. The two men have much in common: wit, wisdom and talent, all shot through with deep humanity and Yiddishkeit. Theodore Bikel, the unstoppable performer whose career spans more than 150 screen roles (including an Oscar-nominated turn in The Defiant Ones) and countless stage and musical productions, is also the foremost interpreter of Sholom Aleichem’s work. Now 90, Bikel has played Tevye the Milkman on stage more than 2,000 times, and he has animated Aleichem’s work through his creation of two celebrated musical plays about the great Russian author. The new film Theodore Bikel: In the Shoes of Sholom Aleichem combines Bikel’s charismatic storytelling and masterful performances with a broader exploration of Aleichem’s remarkable life and work. A pioneer of modern Jewish literature who championed and luxuriated in the Yiddish language, Sholom Aleichem created dozens of indelible characters. His Tevye the Milkman, Motl the Cantor’s Son, and Menachem Mendl–“shtetl Jews” for whom humor and pathos were two sides of the same Yiddish coin–remain invaluable windows into pre-war Eastern European Jewish life, real and imagined.

December 12, 2018 – Hannah’s Holy Communion and Dreaming of a Jewish Christmas

A spirited 7-year-old, growing up in Dublin in the 1970’s, can’t wait to make her Holy Communion. The only problem is – she’s the wrong religion.

 

 

Depicts a journey — a tale of immigrant outsiders who became irreplaceable players in pop culture’s mainstream.  They were a generation of songwriters who understood the times they were writing for and who would go on to transform themselves and pop culture at the same time.  They found in Christmas the perfect holiday in which to imagine a better world and, for at least one day a year, made us believe in it.

 

January 16, 2019 – Harmonia

A modern adaptation of the mythological triangle between the childless Abraham and Sarah and young Hagar. Sarah is the harpist of the Jerusalem Philharmonic; Abraham is its almighty conductor. When Hagar, a young horn player from East Jerusalem joins the Western Side Orchestra, she bonds with Sarah and a unique friendship evolves between the two women. Hagar, feeling Sarah’s pain from not having children, offers to have a baby for her from Abraham, shaking the thin balance in the family.

February 13, 2019 – The Sturgeon Queens: Russ and Daughters, Bagels in the Blood, and A Reuben by Any Other Name

Four generations of the Russ and Daughters family discuss their experiences as immigrants and their life behind the counter in their successful fish business.

 

 

The third-generation owner of Fairmount Bagel discusses the history of the business.

 

 

Takes a hilarious look at the differences between Orthodox and Reform Judaism in terms of the Reuben sandwich.