On the surface, this documentary (which won “Best Film” at the DocAviv International Film Festival) by Israeli filmmaker Tamar Tal is about 96-year-old Miriam Weissenstein, who is faced with losing her late husband’s photography shop—The Photo House—which is filled with historic Israeli photos taken by Rudi Weissenstein and is considered a Tel Aviv institution. But the real story here centers on Miriam’s relationship with her 20-something grandson, Ben, who is helping Miriam trying to save the shop. Their relationship is a complicated one, made especially challenging by the fact that Ben’s mother (Miriam’s daughter) was murdered by Ben’s father, who then killed himself. In spite of these huge personal and professional obstacles, Miriam and Ben embark on an intimate journey of love and compassion.

Watch the trailer: lifeinstillsfilm.com/trailer.html

You made a short film about The Photo House before Life in Stills. What made you want to stick with this topic and turn it into a feature film?

The short film was telling the story of Miriam’s daily life in the shop and the fact that there was no one to continue the family business. After completing the short film, I got to know Ben as he was just starting to get involved in the shop. I realized it was the beginning of a very complex relationship between them, so I felt obligated to keep on telling their story.

In the film, it takes a while to learn that Ben’s father murdered his wife (Ben’s mom) and then killed himself. Was it a challenge to figure out when to introduce this highly charged topic into the film, and how did you ultimately decide?

I think that it was the biggest challenge of this film, understanding how this tragedy would be told. In the beginning I didn’t even think it would be part of the film, as I really wanted to protect Miriam and Ben from bringing up such a painful matter. But through the making of the film I understood that the basis of this wonderful relationship is the fact that they share the same pain and grief over the closest person in life for both of them. Finally the decision was to tell it through them, by using the 8 mm home videos, and by Miriam telling it in her way to a stranger, and Ben talking about it with his boyfriend while packing his stuff in his parents’ home.

Although he was apparently approached many times by media to discuss the murder, Ben opened up publicly for the first time in your film. Why do you think he chose to trust you with this story? Were you friends beforehand?

We met in the shop through Miriam. Ben says that after seeing my short film, he felt very privileged that I wanted to continue filming and, through the years (all together seven years), he learned to fully trust me, and actually neither he nor Miriam saw any of the footage all those years. They both know that I love and care for them so much and that their well-being will always be first priority.

Ben clearly wants to be able to talk about his mother with Miriam, but gets frustrated when Miriam verbally attacks Ben’s father. Was it hard for you to watch this dynamic played out over and over, knowing it was causing so much pain?

It is such a delicate situation; each one of them experiences this tragedy from a whole different perspective. I wished that Miriam would manage to see it more from Ben’s point of view and be able to share with him the pain through memories and nostalgia, but unfortunately it didn’t work. We are putting out an official DVD soon, and there will be some extra features, one of them is an interview I made with Ben after Miriam passed away, and he is talking there about this issue.

In many ways, I feel this film is far more a complicated love story between Ben and Miriam than it is about a mission to save the shop and preserve the historic photos of Israel. Did you feel that way? What was your intention before filming?

When I started I knew right away it was going to be about the unique and strong relationship of Miriam and Ben. But the back story was always the shop and the fight to save it. Through the making of the film, and especially the editing, we realized that the scenes connected with the shop’s future are less interesting. And the most powerful scenes are with Miriam and Ben’s relationship.

What did you learn, if anything, about relationships by spending so much time observing the dynamics between Ben and Miriam?

I learned that honesty and love are keys for having a deep and strong relationship—and that passion for life, love, and creation make you live longer.

What was the most challenging part of making this documentary for you emotionally?

The most challenging part emotionally was dealing with the family tragedy. Miriam and Ben were so dear to me, and I felt part of this family. To touch the most painful spot was a very complicated mission.

For more information about the film and where you can see it, visit lifeinstillsfilm.com.

In their compelling documentary, DEVOUT, 20-something filmmakers Diana Neille from South Africa and Sana Gulzar from Pakistan follow the lives of seven women trying to reconcile their homosexuality with their commitment to Orthodox Judaism. Each of the main characters, located in New York and New Jersey, struggles to find some way to stay connected to her Jewish community and faith, despite the fact that Orthodox Judaism has always condemned homosexuality in the harshest terms. Find out how Chani, Pam, Elissa, Hayley, Lina, and Miriam deal with being “unacceptable” while still remaining devoted to their strict faith and community.

Watch a clip from the film: www.diananeille.com

Neither one of you is Jewish. What made you want to tell this story?

Diana: In November 2010, I was searching for a compelling idea for a documentary for my master’s project at Columbia’s journalism school. I’d selected central Brooklyn as “my beat” and spent a lot of time in Boro Park. The first time I went there, it was a blazing Saturday night in August, and I wore a strappy top to keep up with New York fashion in the heat. I somehow stumbled onto the main street of the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood just as shul was finishing and families were exiting. As a Christian girl from Johannesburg, South Africa, I had many Jewish friends and acquaintances, but had never seen Hasidim. I was curious about them—so curious that I didn’t immediately notice that I was being eyeballed myself, for my immodest clothing. One Hasid even shielded his small son’s eyes as they hurried past me.

So you were interested in Orthodox Jews; what then led you to focus on gay members of the community?

Diana: At the time, there were several ghastly attacks on gay men in the Bronx, which were widely reported on in the media. There was also gubernatorial campaign frenzy and, in an effort to win the Jewish vote, Republican Carl Paladino had enlisted the help of Rabbi Yehuda Levin (well known for his conviction that gay people are the cause of natural disasters) to write a speech for the synagogue in which he stated that children should not be “brainwashed” into thinking homosexuality is acceptable. I reported the story, quickly realizing what a contentious issue this was in the frum Jewish community. The more reporting I did, the more I wanted to learn about the seeming anomaly of being gay and Jewish, particularly for women. It turns out it’s not an anomaly. In December, I met Sana in our documentary seminar, and she was also interested in the story, so we paired up to produce, direct, and edit what would become DEVOUT.

One of the gay women in the film, Pam, says, “I accept that Torah says this is a sin and this is wrong. Torah also says that it is wrong to curse. There are some things I can change about myself and some I can’t.” Do you get the sense from other gay people you talked to that they accept the idea that being gay is a “sin”?

Sana: During the making of the film, we did not come across many from the gay community who said that to us. Most of the time—and especially in the case of gay women—they said it is not as black and white as some might believe it is for men. And we also came across a lot of interpretations of the Torah and the Talmud that were more accepting of the gay community. So you can imagine that it was a very surprising moment for us when Pam said this. Later she also says “being gay is as essential to my soul as being a Jew.” In a way these two quotes sum up the essence of our entire documentary because the women we profiled are all deeply religious and observant Jews, and they struggle with the idea that the religion that they are devoted to shuns them. Yet they remain committed to it in every aspect of their lives.

Chani, another main character in the film, says that she likes the commitment that orthodoxy gives Jews, but not the rigidity. Do you get a sense that the rigidity will change over time or that it is what it is?

Sana: The rigidity comes from all these pressures gay women, like Chani, face in their communities. Some had to change synagogues they attended; some had to move their children to another school; and some lost contact with their families after coming out. So, essentially, what Chani meant is that she wants acceptance from her religious community so she won’t feel compelled to break away. This rigidity might lessen in that gay women would not be completely ostracized anymore.

Also, there are many forums and platforms where gay Orthodox Jews are coming together and talking about their struggles rather than keeping them secret. As a result, you see the Orthodox rabbis and religious leaders slowly trying to interact with this community. However, within the ultra-Orthodox communities, it might still be a long way to go.

What was the most challenging part of making this film for you, both emotionally and in terms of getting it completed?

Diana: One was getting members of the Jewish community who weren’t gay or pro-gay to talk to us, which I guess sounds obvious. Here we were, two women—neither of us Jewish—trying to get Orthodox rebbe and congressmen to talk to us! Not going to happen. All our many phone calls to synagogues in Brooklyn ended abruptly at the secretary. We so badly wanted to show the Jewish community respect and report the story in as fair a way as possible, but we never got a chance to talk with Jewish leaders, which I tried not to make me feel bitter. In the end we had to focus on the Modern Orthodox community and not the Hasidic, as we’d originally hoped. In spite of it all, I feel confident we got more or less to the crux of the matter, and we answered the question we set out to answer—how do you stay true to who you are when your faith condemns you?

How do you feel your attitudes have changed in the process of making the film?

Diana: Well I certainly know a lot more about Judaism than I did in 2009! I’m even singing in a synagogue choir here in Johannesburg, much to the amused puzzlement of my family. I’m not planning on changing faiths or anything, but I must say I am still fascinated by Jewish culture. I think more than that, my attitude towards the LGBTQ community has changed somewhat. I’ve always been a very tolerant person, but I grew up in a very conservative household—and South Africans are generally pretty conservative people, too. So making DEVOUT really opened my eyes to extreme devotion to a religion that I personally think demands an incredible amount of discipline and self-sacrifice. Making the film opened my thinking about sexuality and my awareness of the boundaries we place around each other according to our own beliefs and upbringing.

For more information about the film and where you can see it, visit devoutthefilm.blogspot.com.

At a time when romantic comedies seem to be getting increasingly bland and lame, Dorfman in Love is a breath of fresh air. In this feature film, written by Wendy Kout, we meet Deb Dorfman (played by Sara Rue), a slightly nerdy single woman, still living at home in the ’burbs. Deb lives a sheltered life caring for her widowed father (played by Elliot Gould) and working as an accountant for her brother. But when Deb agrees to apartment-sit for her enormous crush (a self-absorbed jerk), she starts to spread her wings, relish independence, and find romance with a hot neighbor who shows her that real men support their women.

Watch the trailer: www.dorfmaninlove.com

If you took out all the Jewish references in the film, you would still have a solid storyline. Why was it important to you that the film have a Jewish family at its center?

Growing up, I experienced very few relatable contemporary Jewish characters on the big or little screen or stage. As I began to find my own voice as a storyteller, I wanted to create the characters I had been missing. So, when I was inspired to write Dorfman in Love, Deb and her family came to me as Jewish. But I didn’t write a Jewish movie. I wrote a universal movie about a family who happens to be Jewish. This contributes to the specificity of the characters and places them in a particular world. But Deb and her family’s dynamics and dysfunctions are relatable in any world. Our film has toured festivals around the country and the globe. Red state or blue state, Jewish festival or non-Jewish festival, the audiences resonate with the characters and themes. You don’t have to be Jewish to be moved or entertained by Dorfman in Love… but if you know a little Yiddish it couldn’t hurt!

Typically, when we see a Jewish character in a mainstream film or TV show, there are only one or two mentions of the character’s Jewish identity. In Dorfman in Love, the film is full of Jewish references throughout the entire film. Was that a conscious decision on your part? Why or why not?

The conscious decision was to trust and respect the voices of my characters. They spoke to me and through me and I wrote what I heard them saying. Fortunately, our wonderful producer, Len Hill, who is also Jewish, loved and protected the Jewish references and vision of the film. Had I sold this script to a studio, the first thing that would have changed is that the characters would no longer be Jewish. The second is that I would have been replaced by a slew of writers. Dorfman in Love is a pure indie film—made from passion and expressing a singular vision.

Were there any points in writing the film that you worried the Jewish jokes might be too insider for your non-Jewish audience?

How about too inside for our director? Our gifted 24-year-old Asian American director, Brad Leong’s first question to me after reading the script was “What’s a flag-ella?” I explained what a “fagella” is and what other Yiddish words meant. Len, Brad and I knew that not all audiences would understand the Yiddish, but we never worried about it. Missing a laugh or two isn’t important. The audience understanding the themes and arcs of the characters is what is important.

Ultimately, Deb is left to choose between two different men, neither one Jewish. As you screen the film at Jewish film festivals, have you gotten any backlash about this? Any thoughts you want to share?

I wouldn’t say backlash. To me that connotes a group reaction. There have been a few individuals who questioned why I didn’t create a Jewish male for Deb. The answer is that the film is not a polemic and it is not about Deb learning to appreciate her Jewish identity. Crossing Delancey has already been well written, acted, and produced. I’m telling a different tale. It’s about Deb needing to break free from the oppressive perceptions of her family and the confines of her small life. She needs to experience the outer world and celebrate individuality and diversity… so that she can begin to be authentic about what makes her diverse and an individual. Deb is torn between two very different men, but first she needs to discover and love herself before being able to make the right choice.

Clearly, transformation and journeys are huge themes in the movie—Deb moves to a new part of LA, there are several transportation shots, a major beauty makeover. The big transformation, of course, is that Deb starts out as sheltered and learns to stand on her own two feet. Do you think Jewish kids are more sheltered than non-Jewish kids? Thoughts on this?

I’m not an expert in those matters. Do I observe sheltered Jewish kids? Sure. But I also observe sheltered gentile kids. The instinct to protect one’s children from harm is universal. What a delicate balance to ensure your child’s safety but to also let them fall, fail, and feel hurt and confused, so they can grow. Writing is tough. Parenting is tougher. When I screw up a story, it doesn’t send anyone to therapy… except maybe me!

Was it challenging to find the line between showcasing “Jewish” commonalities and traits without getting into stereotypes? (How did you approach?)

My characters came to me as fully-formed, contradictory beings. If you can express contradiction in character that helps avoid one-dimensional stereotyping.

You’ve written many screenplays, but this was the first one that was green-lit. What, beyond passion, gave you the determination and confidence to keep going?

The simple answer is if I don’t write I feel crazy. So despite acceptance or rejection of my work, I have to write. But I didn’t keep writing screenplays. After decades of trying to get a movie made, I turned to the theatre, where writers are highly respected. Then I ran into an old friend, Len Hill, in downtown Los Angeles. He had produced my first television pilot and had gone on to produce over 50 movies for television. Len excitedly explained he was no longer producing and was now a real estate developer committed to revitalizing our city’s urban core. After a tour of the block he and his partners had transformed in the Arts District, we stood on the rooftop of one of his repurposed live/work loft buildings with an extraordinary view of the d-town skyline. Moved by the juxtaposition of our revitalized city and my revitalized friend, I told Len that the capacity to re-imagine and repurpose not just a city, but also ourselves, would make a rich arena for a film. Len immediately replied, “You write it and I’ll produce it!” And that is what we did. The film is not autobiographical. I was a seen and encouraged child. But in creating Deb, I did draw from my own experience of feeling unseen and unappreciated as a screenwriter. My goal had once been to get a movie made. This time I wanted to write an entertainment that would encourage those who felt stuck or diminished to re-imagine and repurpose their lives. Dorfman in Love was worth the long wait.

For more information about the film and where you can see it, visit www.dorfmaninlove.com.

In this fascinating documentary, filmmaker Efrat Shalom Danon brings us inside the lives of two Haredi women—teacher Ruchama and wigmaker Tikva—both also mothers with aspirations of expressing themselves through filmmaking. While Ruchama yearns to tell intimate stories about the lives of women from behind the camera, Tikva dreams of acting in front of the lens. In addition to the hurdles all filmmakers face, these women must face the censorship of their rabbis, who hold a deep mistrust of film in general, as well as a broader suspicion of a woman’s desire to step outside rigid social norms. But the need to be strong and express themselves compels these women to keep fighting for their goal of completing a film and having it shown to their all-female audience.

Watch the trailer: www.go2films.com/New-Releases/The-Dreamers

As a secular Israeli, how did you get access into the world of the Haredi, and why were you interested in telling this particular story?

The Orthodox world is not a strange world for me. My elder sister became religious 17 years ago, and through her I got acquainted with the Orthodox women in cinema. I was fascinated with the idea of these women filmmakers, who’d never seen a movie in their lives and are not allowed to visit movie theatres. For me these women are pioneers, and that’s what drew me into the story—the power of creation through all the limitations. I was fascinated with the power of femininity in this closed world in which they live—the power to speak out in spite of all the boundaries.

But it was clear that it wouldn’t be easy to enter their world, especially with a camera. One of the main values for these women is to be modest and not to show themselves in public. So they were quite suspicious toward me as a secular director. It took quite a while until they could trust me. We shot the film over four years, and during that time they learned to know me and we connected as women.

How did you go about choosing the two main characters to follow? What interested you about them in particular?

After extensive research, I found Ruchama and Tikva, my two main characters, who were both Jewish mothers interested in filmmaking. Ruchama wanted to be a film writer and producer, alongside her job as a teacher and a religious woman. Tikva, a wig maker, was auditioning as an actress for the first time in a film. They both agreed to participate in my documentary, but with some reservations. First of all, it meant they each had to get approval from their rabbi; plus, they both had fears. But as artists, it was clearly important to them to express themselves and be heard. I should add that neither of them had ever seen a documentary and didn’t know what to expect when I asked them to participate in mine. I think they showed a lot of courage by allowing me to film them.

Plots that are considered subversive to Haredi beliefs are forbidden for filmmakers in the community—as is showing a man and woman together on screen. How do most women filmmakers you met in this community feel about the restrictions? Is it frustrating or just part of what they deal with?

In their movies, they can’t film men at all, or deal with certain issues, including divorce, relationships between men and women, and criticism over religion. In general, they can’t explore any kind of criticism against the world in which they live. In one of the scenes in the movie, we see Ruchama being told by an Orthodox director that she doesn’t have creative freedom. I really wanted to think that these women can express themselves without limitations, but unfortunately this is not possible. Although the fact that these women are making films is a breakthrough, they are still constricted by self-silencing and censorship. I think they feel frustrated that they can’t say everything they want, but they would never admit that out loud. In my point of view, there is a mechanism of self-convincing by these women, that everything is all right, and that they are happy with the things they can’t do. This is what allows them to continue living in the Orthodox world. So they just have to find creative ways to handle these boundaries.

The audience for Closed—the film that is being created in your documentary—is packed. Is this usually the case with films by and for these women? What do you think is the huge appeal?

Yes, normally a lot of women come to these films, and they are all ages—8 to 80. It’s their entertainment. Usually the screenings take place during the holidays so these women have more time to go see them.

Filmmakers must consult with their rabbis every step of the way for film approval. We watch in the film as Ruchama (the main filmmaker you follow) is told that her film is no longer considered acceptable by her rabbi because the daughter in the film is too rebellious to her mom. Is it common that filmmakers get this kind of push back?

I think that Ruchama’s story, and the fact that she is not allowed to go forward with her film, is uncommon. Most of the time, the women intentionally create “Kosher films,” and adapt themselves to the conventions.

I should say here that while there is no doubt that making films is a complex experience for every person, it is even harder for an Orthodox woman. In addition to needing a rabbi’s sign-off, these women have to raise their children (and, as you said, between five to eight children for every family), support their family while their husbands are learning “Torah,” and they must take care of all the household chores. As far as I can tell, there are not many Orthodox women filmmakers, but there are between six to eight movies released per year. There are more and more young girls and women that are discovering this world of cinema and then go on to create movies.

What was your biggest challenge in making this film?

 Well, first of all, Haredi women can not be revealed to the camera, meaning that they can’t feel free while someone is shooting their life. It’s not accepteble in the Orthodox society that women are participating in such films. And, they can’t say everything they really feel, because they know it can harm them or their family, like everyone else. Although they agreed to participate in the film, they were afraid to sound critical of their community or to come across as provocative. In addition, there were many limitations in filming the movie. My camera could not be a “fly on the wall,” and it was hard to get free access to shoot in such a closed community. But most of all, I think it was very challenging to tell this story and bring to screen the drama of the characters. Their drama was hidden and underneath the surface, so we had to use means of cinematic expression like editing and photography to tell this story.

For more information about the film and where you can see it, visit www.go2films.com/New-Releases/The-Dreamers.

Once you hear the song “Hava Nagila”—at a wedding or bar/bat mitzvah—that’s it, the tune is stuck in your head for all your days. But why? What is it about this song that makes it so remarkable and infectious? And where did the song originally come from anyway? Filmmaker Roberta Grossman decided to find out, digging through history to figure out the mystery and meaning of the classic standard (literally, it translates to “let us rejoice”). Along the way, we learn the song is far more than a celebratory melody; it’s a symbol of Jewish joy and resilience. Featured interviews include Harry Belafonte, Connie Francis, Glen Campbell, Leonard Nimoy, Regina Spektor, and more, all of whom have had the pleasure of belting out “Hava Nagila.”

Watch the trailer: www.havanagilamovie.com

What was the moment you decided this movie needed to be made?

In 2008, when I was finishing my last film, Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh, which is a sad film, my daughter, who was 10 at the time, begged me, “Mommy, please make a happy film next time!” Although I explained to her that documentary filmmakers are, as a rule, not happy people, I thought there was wisdom in her request. And just a week or two before this conversation, I’d had a thought bubble appear over my head, and it said “Hava Nagila, what is it?” Although Hava had been a very important part of my childhood, growing up in a strongly culturally identified, but religiously assimilated home in Los Angeles, I didn’t know anything about it: What did the words mean? Was the song 100 years old or 1000? Did someone sit down to write it, or did it come down from Sinai? And so began our Hava quest… to figure out the history, mystery, and meaning of the ubiquitous Jewish standard.

In the film, you discuss the controversy about who actually created the song—Israeli musicologist A.Z. Idelsohn or New York cantor Moshe Nathanson. When did the controversy arise, and have you come to a conclusion?

Well, the debate in the film is really not about who created the song, but rather about who wrote the lyrics. We know A.Z. Idelsohn collected the nigun from some Sadagora Hassidim in Jerusalem in 1915, and we know he used a new arrangement of the nigun, complete with words, at a concert he conducted in Jerusalem in 1918—and that was the song that we know as “Hava Nagila.” According to Idelsohn, he took inspiration from Psalms to craft the words (as he had done previously with many other traditional Jewish melodies he was intent on repurposing into “folk songs” for the emerging Hebrew culture and nation in Palestine).

We also know, on the other hand, that Moshe Nathanson was a student of A.Z. Idelsohn in Jerusalem when he was 12 years old. According to the Nathanson family, Idelsohn gave his students an assignment one day to put words to the nigun that would become “Hava Nagila.” According to Nathanson, it was he who found the verse from Psalms and gave the song with words back to his teacher Idelsohn. Nathanson was an important and beloved cantor in New York for 40 years. He was also a prolific composer and recorder of Hebrew melodies, which he, too, like his teacher before him, believed were a powerful tool to help American Jewish youth become ardent Zionists.

What do I think happened? I think both Idelsohn and Nathanson were incredibly gifted and accomplished and good men. I don’t think either of them lied. I think a collaboration of some kind took place in that classroom, and the teacher saw it one way, and the student saw it another way. Anyone who has ever collaborated creatively knows that it is very easy to forget and quickly argue about who came up with an idea.

It was interesting to hear from so many Jewish musicians about why they can’t stand this song, including Klezmer musicians who wanted kill it once and for all. Yet nothing can stop it—why not, do you think?

I’ll go with Harry Belafonte on this one… Some songs have a spiritual essence to them, and those songs endure; “Hava” is one of those songs.

I had no idea how many celebrities had sung and recorded the song over the years, including Elvis, Glen Campbell, Harry Belafonte, Liza Minnelli… on and on. As someone who has probably heard the song a thousand times or more, which is your favorite version?

Two favorites: Belafonte and Connie Francis!

It was fascinating that, for some people, “Hava Nagila” is a song of longing and sorrow and, yet, it is a song of celebration and hope for so many others (depending on the speed it is played, in large part). Do you think that this is part of the song’s intrigue and endurance? Are there other songs with such a split that you know of?

I don’t think the song is different things to different people. I think that even when it is sung as a slow nigun and as a sped-up party song, it has the full range of happiness and loss wrapped within it. That’s why it endures. Because that’s the way life is.

Of everything you learned on your Hava Nagila journey, what surprised you the most and why?

The things that surprised me most were the things that were right in front of me, the things that were like the air I breathed as a child. Israeli music and folk dance were so much part of my early life that I never stopped to think—until Henry Sapoznik of Klezkamp and Lorin Sklamberg of the Klezmatics explained it to me—that the influx of Israeli culture in part supplanted what was left of Eastern European Jewish culture in the U.S. Also, I had never really stopped to think about what Jewish Americans were grappling with in the 1950s and 60s in terms of dealing with the Holocaust. By making the film, I’ve come to see the ‘bar mitzvah Hava Nagila culture’ not so much as wholesale assimilation, but as an attempt to embrace joy and Jewish identity after the Holocaust.

In the film, musicologist Josh Kun says the song is officially stripped of religious meaning at this point. Do you agree?

No. But Josh is brilliant and adorable and I agree with most of what he says!

What question would you like to be asked about the film or the making of it?

Why would any sane person spend three whole precious years of her life making a movie about “Hava Nagila”?

For more information about the film and where you can see it, visit www.havanagilamovie.com

The Foundation for Jewish Culture
www.jewishculture.org/film
The Lynn and Jules Kroll Fund for Jewish Documentary Film honors exemplary work in the field of Jewish documentaries. Check out the 2012 winners, and bookmark the page to keep tabs on the upcoming 2013 winners.

The National Center for Jewish Film
www.jewishfilm.org
The National Center for Jewish Film’s mission is to collect, preserve, and exhibit films with artistic and educational value relevant to the Jewish experience, as well as the dissemination of these materials to the widest possible audience. According to its website, NCJF exclusively owns the largest collection of Jewish content film in the world, outside of Israel. Check out their comprehensive list of Jewish women filmmakers.
www.jewishfilm.org/Catalogue/womenfilmmakers.htm

Jewish Women’s Archive: Jewish Women Filmmakers
jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/filmmakers-independent-north-american
jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/filmmakers-independent-european
jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/filmmakers-israeli
The Jewish Women’s Archive compiled these comprehensive lists of Jewish, female filmmakers in North America, Europe, and Israel.

Filmmakers Who Are Ultra-Orthodox and Ultracommitted
www.nytimes.com/2012/10/21/movies/filmmakers-who-are-ultra-orthodox-and-ultra-committed.html
This New York Times article peeks into the world of filmmaking by ultra-Orthodox Haredim, and, in particular, films made by trailblazing women such as Rama Burshtein.

Chabad.org: Robin Garbose
www.chabad.org/theJewishWoman/article_cdo/aid/804426/jewish/Robin-Garbose.htm
This is another article about the growing world of observant filmmakers who make films only for women. It features Robin Garbose, founder and artistic director of the Kol Neshama Performing Arts Conservatory for Orthodox girls, in Los Angeles.

Jewish Film Festival List on DMOZ
www.dmoz.org/Arts/Movies/Cultures_and_Groups/Jewish/Film_Festivals
Contains links to major Jewish Film Festivals in North America and in the UK.

Six Points Fellowship
www.sixpointsfellowship.org
The Six Points Fellowship supports Jewish artists in the areas of film, performing arts, and visual arts. According to its website, at the core of the Six Points Fellowship is the belief that creative expression is essential to Jewish community, identity, and our understanding of the world.

Tablet Magazine: 100 Greatest Jewish Films
www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/84451/100-greatest-jewish-films
A compilation by Tablet magazine writers of the 100 greatest Jewish films, with justifications for the placement of each film on the list.

Disclaimer:
At the time of publication, all of these links work. We apologize if they stop working in the future. Sometimes links “go dead,” and there is nothing we can technically do about it.

Reporter Leslie Maitland goes back 50 years to fill in the blanks of her mother’s remarkable life story. Janine Gunzburger, the author’s mother, was a teen in 1942 when she boarded the last refugee boat to escape France before the Nazis choked off its ports. While Janine eventually makes it to New York, she spends her days pining for Roland, the beloved fiancée, a Catholic French man, she left behind. Maitland, who grew up hearing repeatedly about her mother’s old flame, sets out to find whether Roland is still alive. This dramatic nonfiction account spans over six decades and creates a gripping portrait of Jewish life in Germany before and under Nazi rule, in occupied France, and in a little-known Cuban detention camp.

Do you think Janine’s intense love for Roland was in part a way to stay focused on something positive amidst so much tragedy and chaos?

The formal nature of Janine’s relationship with her parents when she, her brother, and sister were children—reared by strict governesses who fostered sibling rivalry—left her craving the sort of intimate closeness she would discover with Roland. But she had barely won him in the fall of 1939 when the declaration of war sent everyone in Alsace fleeing from that region that bordered the Rhine. Not yet 16 years old when her family was forced to run for the second time, she clung to the memory of the tenderness she had shared with Roland and yearned to reclaim the sweet joy of their summer days. From then on, her desire to reunite with him became the only thing that mattered to her. And yes, as France fell to the Nazis and danger mounted every day, she hid from her fears by living in dreams.

In Lyon, where Janine and Roland rediscovered each other after a year and a half of forced separation, she embraced the moment and rejoiced in his love. She couldn’t bear to think of leaving him again and closed her eyes to the inevitable, even as her father desperately pursued escape from Europe. A young woman in love for the first time, she kept her thoughts, her heart, and her desires focused only on her beloved and pretended that persecution and war had nothing to do with them and would have no lasting impact on their future together.

Why do you think Janine’s father kept Roland’s letters away from her after they moved to the United States? Was it because he wasn’t Jewish, or was there even more to it?

Sigmar (my grandfather) had lived in Germany as a highly assimilated German Jew. But his experiences in the Nazi Reich and Vichy France, his detention in a Cuban camp, and his difficulties gaining entry into the United States all required him to acknowledge that Jews could not depend on living in the world, and being accepted by the world, in the same way as other people. He developed a new and wary sense of Jewish isolation. He certainly did not feel antagonistic to Catholicism. Indeed, he had loved to visit the Cathedral in Freiburg and was close friends with Joseph Fimbel, a Marist lay priest. All the same, his Judaism was important to him, and he expected his children to marry within the faith.

Beyond that, once the war was over, with his son Norbert safe and the immediate family intact, he was all the more zealous to keep everyone together. His sister Marie in Lyon had lost her daughter and three grandchildren to the Nazi ovens, and Sigmar wanted to keep his own daughter close at hand. He feared that if Roland summoned her back to France, she would rush to his side, and Sigmar had little confidence in the sort of welcome she would find in post-war Europe. While I don’t condone my grandfather’s secret intervention in her romantic life, I imagine that in his own paternalistic way, he was doing what he thought best for her. I think that even Janine recognized her father’s motives, which mitigated her resentment of him.

How did your mother’s love story with Roland impact the way you felt about romantic love growing up and now?

My mother often told me, in my teenage years, that she would have gladly faced any danger if only she could have stayed in France with Roland when her family fled in 1942. If need be, she would have lived forever in an attic with him, accepting any privation without complaint, she declared. Nothing mattered to her but being with him. Now, looking back, I can see that when I began dating, I was under the influence of that romantic ideal, which established unreal expectations. As a result, I did not date much in high school, always waiting to be consumed by the sort of fiery passion my mother described.

Parental pressure led me to marry at the age of 25, before I was ready, and I divorced after only two years. In my second marriage, now in its 29th year, I have come to a more mature understanding of love—a place that Janine and Roland may never have reached because they were robbed of the chance to live with each other on a permanent basis.

How did you go about tracking down all the old family photos and German documents throughout the book? What was that process like, and how long did it take you?


Most of the family photographs and German documents in the book come from my mother’s and grandparents’ albums and boxes and files. My grandparents escaped to the United States with a valise full of things that would prove who they had been, even after they lost all that they had, including their nation and German identities. I literally have my grandparents’ kindergarten photographs and their report cards from grammar school. Some records, particularly those relating to the loss of my grandparents’ home and business, came from government archives in Freiburg. I unearthed other documents relating to the family’s escape from France to Cuba from the archives of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in New York. And like my grandparents, my mother held on to everything, even the essays she wrote in school in Cuba, as well as my father’s letters to her in the early years of their courtship and marriage. So I was extremely fortunate to have forebears who made things easy for me! Now I worry about what I should do with this trove of family papers and pictures.

You do an excellent job of describing the gradual changes that happened in Germany, which led Jews to flee. (Many think that it was a radical overnight change, and people knew to flee right away.) Was this something important for you to describe for readers and, if so, why?

I viewed it as my mission in this book to tell my mother’s story within the context of the times. For one thing, that’s the only way to understand her feelings and actions and to understand the pressures she faced. But more broadly, I wanted her story to help illuminate that terrible period in order to further knowledge about it for a new generation. So it was not only the gradual changes in Germany that I sought to describe, but also the historical realities of each situation the family confronted.

In Germany, Jews like my grandparents—who had loyally served their country in World War I and considered themselves good German citizens—had a hard time coming to grips with the fact that their lives were at risk in the land they called home. The gradual tightening of the net around them made it hard for many to act in time to save their own lives. But the same held true for French Jews like cousin Emilie Goldschmidt, who refused to flee and was deported to Auschwitz along with her children. And we must not forget that even the United States failed to save Jewish lives when it curbed immigration, refusing to dole out ninety percent of the visas already approved under existing quotas. Could the American Jewish community have done more to raise the alarm and press the Roosevelt administration to act in time to save lives?

Your book is, in part, a mystery, as you search for your mother’s long-lost love Roland. What was the most challenging part—emotionally or practically—about the search?

Emotionally, at the time I went looking for Roland, I couldn’t help feeling some guilt toward my father. As he was facing a fatal illness, I was, at least in part, worrying about Mom’s future without him. Practically speaking, my visit to Roland’s sister proved an exceptionally difficult venture because I could barely explain to myself or to her why I had come there. I was also terrified of breaking Mom’s heart by raising her hopes of an impossible dream.

To the extent that the long process of writing the book gave me the time to reflect on the past, I also worried that I had not paid sufficient attention to how my mother’s lifelong passion for Roland affected my father. I had always taken her side, but I came to feel that in underestimating how the ghost of another man had preyed on my father, I may have judged Dad too harshly. This was a painful thing I had to confront as a direct result of writing the book, and I deeply regretted that it was too late to discuss it with him. I don’t know whether he would have wanted to talk openly about it, but I would have liked to open the door to hearing his feelings.

How did it feel when Roland and your mother reunited after all those years, and you knew you were responsible for that? What types of feelings did you experience?


I felt incredible joy to have been able to bring her the best present of her life! There was enormous satisfaction in being able to recompense her for the selfless generosity she had shown to everyone else around her for as far back as I could remember. It seemed nothing short of miraculous to see Mom and Roland together at last and to see her enjoy the happiness she so greatly deserved. That I played a role in that was beyond wonderful for me.

Do you think the desire to understand the truth of your mother’s story was responsible in some way for your going into investigative reporting?

Frankly, I’d have to say it’s the reverse. Knowing how to go about digging for facts made it possible for me to pursue the truth of my mother’s story. But as ever, my father’s maxim was a constant guide. "Never make assumptions. Check out everything." The truth turned out to be more amazing than anything I might have imagined.

Any question you would love to be asked? Ask… and answer! What has surprised you most since publication of the book?

Funny you should ask. I have been thoroughly amazed by the way readers have reached out to me through email, letters, and Facebook to express their feelings about the story. I have felt profoundly grateful for the many beautiful and deeply thoughtful messages I have received from strangers who read and loved the book. And I have been delighted and surprised to be contacted by many of my own long-lost friends and voices from the past: the daughter of my sixth grade English teacher, women I haven’t seen since we were 12 at summer camp, former colleagues at the New York Times. I guess that goes to prove, as I suggested in the book, that the past is not a thing forever lost, but a place that’s waiting to be found.

Professor Jay Ladin made headlines around the world when, after years of teaching literature at Yeshiva University, he returned to the Orthodox Jewish campus as a woman and changed her name to Joy. In her memoir Through the Door of Life, Joy shares with readers her emotional journey of transitioning to a woman, the immense struggle of living as the "wrong gender" (including the pain caused to her children), her life-long conversations with God, and how she has wrestled with the larger moral and religious questions that have arisen in her life.

How did growing up as a minority (being Jewish) affect you in terms of transitioning from a man to a woman?


Growing up Jewish gave me a generally positive experience of being an open member of a minority group that was in stark contrast to the shame, hiding, and sense of utter isolation I experienced as a deeply closeted trans kid. Being Jewish connected me to other people through celebration, family, history, shared difference. It also gave me shared language of story and symbol, a way of connecting with my fellow Jews. By contrast, being trans made me feel different from everyone else on Earth, forever pretending to a humanity that wasn’t really mine. My male body cut me off from the female friendships and community I longed for, and, because I knew I wasn’t really a boy, none of the relationships I formed as a male felt honest or authentic. Jewish culture and tradition generally reinforced the gender divisions that caused me such pain. But in one respect, at least, being Jewish helped me survive: by shaping and grounding me and supporting my relationship with God. Because my family wasn’t religious, I was able to experience Judaism on my own, without transphobic voices to tell me that the God I spoke to all the time hated people like me. That sense of connection to God through Judaism has stayed with me and sustained me all my life, even though Judaism barely speaks to transgender experience.

In the book you share many links between Jewish tradition and your journey. Were these links something you sought out, or did someone help you find them? How important were/are these links for you now?

As my last answer suggests, for the most part, I had to create the links I found between Jewish tradition and my transgender identity—although, teaching at an Orthodox Jewish university before and after my transition to living as a woman certainly added to my perspective. (You could say I work at the corner of transsexuality and Jewish tradition.) Because I’ve been reading, thinking about, and loving the Torah, the Hebrew bible, on my own since childhood, I have accumulated a lifetime of links between my life and the words of the Torah. There isn’t anything unusual about that (that’s the way religious Jews are supposed to relate to the Torah), but the transgender connections I’ve made are unusual. There are a growing number of trans Jewish leaders who are making and writing about these linkages, but I didn’t find their work until my memoir was largely complete.

Why did you decide to teach at Yeshiva University? It would seem that there are many academic institutions that could have provided a unsupportive environment for you to go through this process, and that Stern was a particularly unsupportive place to be.

Honestly, I decided to teach at Stern College for Women of Yeshiva University because that was the only school that offered me a job, or even an interview, that year. But I was delighted to get the offer, excited by the prospect of teaching students wrestling with the connections and conflicts between modernity and Jewish tradition. I was still living as a man—I was told when I joined the department that I was adding much-needed testosterone to the mostly female English department faculty—and had no plans to transition. In fact, I thought that teaching at an all-women’s college would be the closest I would ever come to the sort of female community I’d longed for all my life.

There aren’t many institutions, academic or otherwise, that are supportive of gender transition, but there are many where my transition would have caused less controversy. But I loved teaching at Stern, and had no other prospects when it became clear that I would soon be physically and psychologically incapable of continuing to teach as a man. I knew that I either had to get early tenure at Stern—I did, just in time, in spring 2006—or try to find a job with a brand-new gender identity that would only make a tough job market tougher. Poets struggle to find tenure-track jobs; transsexuals struggle to find any jobs.

Though I wouldn’t say Stern has been supportive of my transition, I was invited back to teach after a year of post-transition "involuntary research leave" and, since returning, have been promoted to full professor. I feel respected and valued by my English department colleagues, and, alas, no one shies away from assigning me to academic committees. And while some students keep their distance, many of my students have been quite wonderful, bonding with me despite (in a few cases, because of) my gender identity.

You’ve discussed that much of the focus on Judaism is on stability and continuity, which was necessary because we were persecuted. Did this focus on keeping things the same ever make it difficult to connect to Judaism?

That’s a fascinating question. Thanks to a terrific Hebrew school teacher, I had a great grounding in ancient Jewish history, which is a history of displacement and upheaval. The Torah (in the limited Five Books of Moses sense) is all about change—in the universe ("Let there be light!"), personal identity ("Your name will no longer be Avram, but Abraham"), family relationships (remember Joseph and his brothers), and, by the end, national history. In fact, there’s nothing but change. By the end of Deuteronomy, no one has reached the Promised Land, and then we start reading about the birth of the universe again. Things aren’t much more stable in later books, either, from the series of military and political disasters that make up the Book of Judges and history of the Hebrew monarchies, to the kaleidoscopic emotions and perspectives in Psalms, to the wildly disparate versions of the future presented in the Prophets, to Ecclesiastes’ insistence that nothing, really, endures. The emphasis on stability comes later, in the laws and traditions accumulated over millennia of exile. But Jews and Judaism have never stopped changing, which is perhaps why we sometimes hysterically insist that we should never change.

Honestly, it’s a great tradition for a transsexual.

What did your children think about you writing this book? What is your relationship with them like now?

I think it will be a while before I really hear what my children thought about my writing the book. My youngest, who will be nine next month, didn’t know I was writing it till it was published, and has been very insistent about reading it and discussing it with me—only the parts about her, of course. It’s given us a way of talking about feelings and situations for which even adults struggle to find language. My 18-year-old son never showed much interest in the writing I was doing, but he has said he’s glad that I tell people how hard transition has been for him and the rest of the family. My 12-year-old daughter, also a writer, has been most conscious of it. She’s read and discussed sections of it with me, and talks often with me about LGBT issues. But I’ve tried to protect their privacy at least a little by leaving out their names, and by not marketing the book in the area where they live.

I have different relationships with each of them, naturally—their ages and personalities are so different—but all of them have been angry at me about the way my transition broke up their family and complicated their own social identities. All of us wish we had more time together; divorce law doesn’t treat transsexuals kindly, and the settlement left me seeing them only two or three times a week. But they are strong, smart, articulate people, and each of them has talked to me about their feelings about the divorce and my transition, and each has found ways of remaking the parent-child relationship I ruptured when I moved out five years ago to live as myself. All of us regret that separation, and all of us have learned that our love is stronger than all the pain, confusion, and anger that came between us.

Throughout the book, you talk about how you often saw yourself as a failure in most aspects of your life, yet you are successful in your academic career. Did that ever give you a sense of accomplishment? Did your poetry ever give you moments of peace?


Poetry has sustained me since I was child. Before transition, the only time I felt really alive was when I was writing, existing in a way that had nothing to do with my body. Much of Transmigration, the first book I published under my true name, was written as an alternative to killing myself; I would get through suicidal despair by writing poetry. No matter how I feel, writing poetry makes me feel better.

My relation to academic work is more complicated. I like the work of academic analysis and argument, and I love teaching—I consider it my other vocation, along with writing—but I’ve never really defined myself in terms of the scales of academic accomplishment. Nothing that I achieved when living as a man felt completely real or true to me, though I did and still do feel proud of some of the academic writing and most of the teaching I did then. I think the biggest issue was actually my identity as a poet; I’ve always felt like a poet playing at being an academic. I admire true scholars and scholarship, and have never felt like I measured up to those standards. And, while I have learned a lot from reading others’ literary scholarship, I tend to see myself as addressing other audiences when I write.

You chose a field (poetry) that can either be considered freeing or isolating. Why did you choose this field? Do you like the fact that much of your work is done alone?

I don’t think I chose poetry; I just started writing it as soon as I learned to write. I’m not sure why. Poetry wasn’t read in our home, and it wasn’t taught much in school, but I felt that I was doing something freeing and fabulous and important every time I arranged words into what I considered a poem. I know poetry can be isolating, but it never felt that way to me, perhaps because I felt completely isolated by my transgender identity. When I wrote, I felt not just the hope but also the certainty that I was connecting to others through language. I’m not sure why, given the way I grew up, but poetry was the one part of my identity that felt completely true, alive, and there.

I heard you say in an interview that you do not bring up your transitioning to your students at Yeshiva. What is your reason for this, and does it feel hard for you not to disclose it?

I think that teaching should be about students, not about teachers. I think that personal disclosure by teachers can sometimes facilitate teaching—it can foster trust, and model ways of connecting life to academic study—but I think all teachers need to tread carefully here. Students are a captive audience, and if we want to turn classes into talk shows centered on our lives, we can. I want to be there for students; I don’t want to push them into being there for me. I not only want, but also have an obligation to be the best teacher I can for all my students, even those who might be uncomfortable with my gender identity. I don’t feel any obligation to lie any more, to pretend to be other than I am as I did when I taught as a man, but I want my classrooms and office to feel safe and welcoming to all my students, regardless of how they might feel about my life.

This discipline does feel hard, because it’s unsettling not to know how my students see me in terms of gender (man in a dress? former man? woman? something else?). And because I think it’s important for me to really be present with my students, and to show them that what we are studying really is connected to life, I’m always trying to figure out what, if anything, I should say. Many aspects of gender transition are relevant to things I teach: gender in literature, being true to oneself, representation and self-representation, etc. But I think that I’m right to err on the side of caution, to say less about myself than might be pedagogically ideal rather than say too much and risk making students uncomfortable. And the truth is, I’m as out of the closet as anyone can be. My transition has often been discussed among students and in Jewish media; between Google and my memoir, students can find out more than anyone wants to know about me.

Jennifer Gardner Trulson, a wife and mother living in New York City, was stricken by devastation on September 11, after her husband Doug, a financial broker who worked on the 105th floor of the World Trade Center, was killed in the terrorist attack. In this tragic yet optimistic memoir, we follow Jennifer’s journey of grieving as she struggles to rebound emotionally for her children and to remain connected with friends, relatives, and her Jewish faith. Ultimately, she is able to reestablish these bonds and, surprisingly, even to herself, falls in love again.

We often hear about people clinging to their faith after tragedy strikes, but you write about your struggle to stay connected with Judaism and how you put God on a “time-out” as you sorted through your pain. Can you explain?

Grief is the great leveler. Nothing can protect a person from the bone-crushing agony of the sudden and brutal loss of a beloved spouse. After suffering the greatest loss of my life, I understood why people turned to religion in times of crisis. It is the one thing that might explain the unexplainable, or at least provide a measure of comfort for those who have faith.

Though I am deeply Jewish, God was not an immediate source of comfort for me in the aftermath of the attacks. All I could think about was keeping it together for my two small children (Michael was 4 and Julia was 2) who were never going to know their father. I never lost my faith, but it certainly took a pummeling. I wasn’t convinced that God played a decisive role in the murder of three thousand people, but I also couldn’t bring myself to let him off the hook entirely. Since I didn’t have the answers, and pursuing them required an emotional stability I didn’t possess, I decided to put God on a time-out. Retreating to neutral corners wasn’t a rejection, it was a regrouping. I thought it best to let the anger, fear, and overwhelming emotions settle before attempting to negotiate a détente.

You talk about pushing God and prayer away after 9/11 because you did not want to be silent or meditative. Did you feel pressure from others to return to religious prayers?

I never felt any pressure at all. Not a single friend, family member, or clergy person ever suggested to me that I needed to turn to prayer for healing. In the immediate aftermath, there was nothing to be gained by my being alone with my thoughts. Solitary, contemplative moments jeopardized my fragile composure; they conjured only horrific thoughts of Doug’s last moments and the fear of what lay ahead for our family without him. I didn’t have the capacity to focus on anything outside of our pain during quiet moments. So, I tried to distract myself with endless physical tasks. Errands, answering mail, coffee with friends, taking my children to the playground—all helped move the clock forward to the end of each excruciating day. Meditation, yoga, or religious prayer served only to intensify the emptiness.

You talk frankly about the fact that it was hard to be around Jewish rituals and holidays because they had so many associations to your time with Doug; your kids went to a synagogue nursery school, you were involved in the JCC, you hosted Passover, etc. What ultimately helped you find your way back to the rituals?

Doug was murdered just before the start of the High Holiday season. That my gentle, ethical, deeply kind husband was not inscribed in the Book of Life decimated my desire to participate in religious rituals. I didn’t blame God for Doug’s death, but I just couldn’t sit in a congregation and chant the prayers that, at the time, rang hollow. And, when I did light the Chanukah candles or participate in the Seder, I simply went through the motions without feeling.

That all started to change when my children began attending Hebrew school. I was forced to find a way to re-establish a connection with Judaism because I didn’t want my unease to influence my children’s introduction to their heritage. For a long time I participated with the kids without any spiritual connection, but the numbness ended when my son, Michael, started to prepare for his bar mitzvah. I didn’t want to go through the motions; I wanted to be emotionally present and participate with the authentic enthusiasm and energy that Michael deserved. While working with my son on his service, I was able to draw upon untainted memories of happier times in synagogue when I was his age preparing for my bat mitzvah. I still could recite the aliyot from memory and relished helping him learn to do the same. The ritual of our practicing the trope and interpreting his Torah portion slowly began to heal the rift and opened my heart again to Judaism’s traditions. Michael’s bar mitzvah was fully joyous, and, for the first time in years, I felt embraced by a synagogue service. We celebrated Julia’s bat mitzvah this past December, and once again we were all completely in the moment.

One of the responses from other people that angered you was "Everything happens for a reason." Given how often people say this after a tragedy, can you explain what made it painful for you to hear this?

In the days following the attacks, good-hearted people would try to comfort me with the repeated platitudes of "Everything happens for a reason," and "God only gives you what you can handle." The news media featured countless interviews with survivors who nearly all attributed their survival to "God must have been with me that day." Really, how was that helpful? I know people’s intentions were kind, but the words pierce me even today. Was God not with Doug? What reason could there have been to separate him from the family he adored? Was the speaker telling me that, had I been a weaker person, Doug would have survived?

Though I am no expert in the ways of God, my personal faith tells me that He gave us free will, and we enjoy the freedom and suffer the consequences of that gift. Clearly, the terrorists were exercising their free will when they flew into the towers, even though Al Qaeda would have us believe their actions were manifestations of God’s will. I know many will disagree, but I just don’t believe that things happen for a reason. I think bad things happen, and we are left to decide how to respond. But, of course, I don’t know that for certain. I clearly don’t have the answers and continue to wrestle with my own convictions even as I respond to this question.

If God is anywhere, you say, He is in the healing. Can you explain why?

We may be helpless to stop bad things from happening, but perhaps God leaves us signs and road maps to help us recover and reconnect, provided we know where to look. I have to believe that God is in the healing—not in the form of a great light or heavenly vision, but in the small acts of kindness done by others, which help us remember that life is good despite the heartaches. My friends and family never wavered in their support, and the humanity, commitment, and grit of the New York community excavated all of our spirits from the rubble. For me, God is the source of these lifelines, our precious connections to each other. Without them, I never would have been able to move forward.

In the book, you say you met your now-husband Derek at "the wrong time." How could it be the wrong time if you fell in love with a loving and supportive partner who gives you freedom to miss Doug?

I met Derek ten months after the 9/11 attacks. No time really had passed since Doug’s death, and I was still reeling. It took all of my strength to maintain a façade of competence for my children; a relationship was not anywhere on the to-do list. I knew Doug had loved me enough to last a lifetime. Even after he was gone, I felt truly lucky that I had him even for the short time we were together. I decided that I would stay in New York surrounded by supportive friends and try to raise our children to be everything they should have been had Doug lived. A second chance at love wasn’t a consideration because there could not be any actual happiness when the person who made me real was gone. My life, however, seems to be the epitome of the old saying, "If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans." Derek and I met when he inadvertently stepped on my foot at a restaurant where I had been eating with the friends to whom I had been surgically attached since the attacks. Clearly, I was in no shape to meet a stranger, let alone start a relationship. But I think that is why it worked. Derek saw the emotional wreckage from the beginning and participated in the arduous healing process. I didn’t have to explain to a dinner date years later how awful it was when Doug died, how intensely we suffered. Derek witnessed all of it in real time and didn’t flinch. Instead he has helped us carry Doug’s loss by giving the kids and me the freedom and encouragement to talk and remember. I know how lucky my children and I are that Derek found us. He gave us the miracle of a second chance, one which probably would not have been possible if we’d met at a later time.

What question do you wish I would ask you about this book, and what is the answer?

If I could leave the reader with anything, I would say that I certainly do not have a monopoly on pain and loss, but I think that all Americans felt connected to the 9/11 attacks and the grieving and recovery that followed. I hope that my story will inspire others to extend themselves to those who are suffering, even if they feel awkward or don’t know what to say. A sympathetic ear, a bag of groceries, an unexpected email—each can profoundly change the course of a mourner’s otherwise unbearable day. Mostly, I would like a reader to know that one doesn’t have to shut the door on the past in order to move forward. We hear all the time that we should find "closure" and "move on." I don’t think we move on; I think we simply continue to move through a loss like this and learn to live again. I’ve never looked for closure, not only because it doesn’t exist, but also because I want Doug’s memory to sting, to remind me that he existed and mattered. It’s the only way I can give him to my children and love Derek with the full and open heart he deserves. I have to believe that you can live a fully present life, carry your loss, and somehow joy will find you.

New York Times best-selling author and former NPR correspondent Eric Weiner goes on an unexpected exploration of faith after a health scare lands him briefly in the hospital. While awaiting his diagnosis, a nurse asks him whether he has found his God yet. Luckily, the health problem was nothing serious (a painful bout with gas), but the nurse’s question nagged at Weiner, a self-proclaimed agnostic. So he launches himself on a global journey—into the world of Shamanism, Kabbalah, Buddhism, Wicca, and other religions—to find out whether there is, indeed, a God that he can believe in.

You say in the book that “God is to religion as food is to a menu.” Can you explain what you mean by this?

I mean that the menu is important only as a means to the food. You wouldn’t walk into a restaurant and eat a menu. Likewise, religion is valuable only as a way to know God (however you define Him/Her.) The problem, I think, is that too many people forget this and obsess endlessly about the menu, worry if the menu is printed on the right kind of paper, fret if they spill something on the menu, worry that someone else might have a better menu, or a dangerous one. They’ve completely forgotten that the menu is a symbol, a point of entry. They end up choking on all that paper. There’s an old Buddhist expression, "Not the finger pointing to the moon, but the moon." Same idea.

For one of your chapters, you go to Israel to explore Kabbalah. Why did you choose this over another path of Judaism?

I needed to catapult myself clear of my past relationship (or non-relationship) with Judaism. What little I knew about Judaism struck me as very head-centric, and all about following rules, do this and don’t do that; sort of like a religious version of the childhood game Simon Says. Kabbalah seemed different—more heart-centric, more intuitive, and that appealed to me.

What do you make of the fact that this generation today is becoming known for mixing and matching different religions? Are there concerns here or does it just help us connect better?

To be honest, I’m torn on this question. On the one hand, I think the mixing and matching is a very good thing. It makes us more tolerant of others, since the "other" is now part of us. We see this phenomenon in the way that some Eastern practices, such as meditation and yoga, are incorporated into "mainstream" faiths in this country. Churches and synagogues, for instance, now offer meditation classes. It’s also helpful, I think, to be able to choose the "best of" various religions. We do this in other areas of our lives—from music to fashion—why not in religion? So, overall, I applaud this a la carte approach to religion, but with one caveat: have a foundation. Without a foundation, we risk becoming spiritual dilettantes. Afraid of making a commitment, we hop from one faith to another, moving on whenever the going gets tough (and it always gets tough). This is the New Age movement at its worst.

While in Israel, you say before departing “It’s important to know when to travel to a holy city. It’s just as important to know when to leave such a place.” When should you leave?

You should leave when you start to get too comfortable, or smug. Holiness is like anything else in life. We get used to it, numb to it. We need to leave every now and then in order to stay fresh.

You begin this book as an agnostic. Having dipped your toe into various religions, have your beliefs changed in any profound way?

I’ve changed in many ways, though I’m not sure my "beliefs" have changed. Let me explain. We are too hung up on belief. It’s the only way we have, it seems, of talking about the religious experience. Not all faiths, though, are so belief-centric. Buddhists, for instance, could care less what you believe. What do you do? What do you experience? That is what they care about. In that regard, I have changed. I begin the day by meditating, even if I’d rather drink coffee. I pause before meals, not exactly saying grace but more conscious of the gift of food nonetheless. As for labels, neuroscientist David Eagleman calls himself a "Possibilian." So would I.

Many people are not quite sure of their spiritual beliefs and feel this is okay… until they have a child who starts asking for answers. You have a 7-year-old daughter who is surely looking for answers. How do you advise her?

Before I wrote this book, I was planning on exposing her to a variety of religious and spiritual practices so that she could choose for herself. Now I realize that is too much to ask of a 7 year old and would only confuse her. She needs to be grounded in one faith, the faith of her parents, so that when she turns 18 years old, she can abandon that faith and break our hearts. So has it been, is, and always will be. Seriously, we’re sending her to Hebrew School, and I hope she finds meaning in Judaism. If not, I hope she finds meaning in another faith. The other day, she was talking to a friend and said, "I’m Jewish now, but when I grow up I can be whatever I want." That sounds right to me.

In Israel, one of your spiritual mentors tells you that Judaism needs people like you. What did he mean by that?

I think he meant that Judaism needs doubters, those who question assumptions and desire a meaningful religious life, not one that checks off boxes—people, in other words, who are more interested in the food than the menu.

Throughout the book, you refer to the idea numerous times that “What you see is not.” What does that mean to you, and how does it alter your everyday life?

I first heard that phrase from a Buddhist in Kathmandu, and it stuck with me. "What you see is not." It’s an important reminder, I think, that we skate only on the surface of life. We think we know things, understand them, but the fact is we don’t. None of us do. We haven’t a clue, really. Today’s truths (scientific and otherwise) are tomorrow’s embarrassing myths. In our own lives, what seems at first like wonderful news—or terrible news—turns out to be exactly the opposite. What you see is not. In a way, it’s a call for humility, a recognition that we do not know and never will. And that’s ok.

Anything you wish I would ask you that I didn’t?

Humor. You forgot to mention how incredibly funny I am. For some reason, there is an unwritten law that books about God and religion can’t be funny. I don’t know why this is. God gave us a sense of humor for a reason. At its best, humor illuminates truth. That’s what I’ve tried to do in my book.