Our Bet Torah Film Club is a fun and relaxed way to get more from your movies. Watch the film on your own and then we join together for what is always an engaging and enriching discussion. Newcomers always welcome. Curated by Liz Schonfeld and facilitated by Rabbi Sacks. Meetings in-person and on zoom.

October Pick: The Tiger Within

An unlikely friendship between a troubled, homeless teen, and a Holocaust survivor, sparks larger questions of ignorance, fear, lies, family, love, forgiveness and our divided world at large in this moving story. (Movie available on Amazon and iTunes)

November Pick: Golda

GOLDA is a feature film directed by Academy Award-winning Israeli filmmaker, Guy Nattiv, and stars Helen Mirren as Golda Meir. The film focuses on the 1973 Yom Kippur War and fallout. (Movie available on Amazon, iTunes and YouTube)

December Pick: Where Life Begins

An Ultra Orthodox family from France comes to a farm in Italy each year to harvest citrons. The farm owner, Elio,  meets the Rabbi's daughter who is tired of the constraints imposed by her religion. Through this relationship, she will understand importance of freedom and find her path. In the same way Elio will find the peace he had lost. (The link for "Where Life Begins" will be made available on December 10. Anyone interested who has not attended film club in the past should contact Liz Schonfeld for the link.)

January Pick: Raise the Roof

The 10 year journey to rebuild one of the 200 wooden synagogues destroyed during WWII.  We will meet on Zoom and be joined by the director, Yari Wolinsky, on zoom to discuss the film. (Streaming on Amazon)

February Pick: Golden Voices

Victor and Raya Frenkel were the golden voices of the Soviet film dubbing for decades. All the western movies that reached Soviet screens were dubbed by them. In 1990, with the collapse of Soviet Union, the Frenkels decided to do Aliyah - immigrate to Israel, just like hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews. There's no need in Israel for Russian speaking dubbing artists, and Victor's and Raya's attempts to use their talent will cause bizarre and unexpected events during their first months in Israel, and turn the beginning of the new chapter of their life into an amusing, painful, and absurd experience. (Streaming on Amazon)

March Pick: Rabbi on the Block

Tamar Manasseh, the charismatic rabbi and community activist from the south side of Chicago, wants African Americans and Jews to become closer allies. With one foot firmly in each of these two communities, Black Jews like Tamar are the natural bridge to help overcome decades of fear, misunderstanding, and lack of communication. 

Rabbi on the Block is a feature-length documentary film that will show how Manasseh brings together Jews of all colors and is building bridges that will serve as the foundation for a revitalized alliance of African Americans and Jews while creating a new style of activist Judaism that takes the religion out of the synagogue and into the streets. (Please contact Liz Schonfeld for the link.)

April Pick: Remembrance 

Inspired by true events, Remembrance is a remarkable love story set against the backdrop of the darkest of times. A German concentration camp in Poland, 1944: romance blossoms between a young Jewish woman, Hannah (Alice Dwyer) and Polish political prisoner Tomasz (Mateusz Damięcki). They steal passionate moments together and fuelled by love, they manage a daring escape. But during the chaos and confusion of the last moments of war, they lose all trace of one another. More than thirty years later, happily married New Yorker Hannah (Dagmar Manzel) sees a familiar face on TV. Could it really be Tomasz, the man she loved and lost all those years ago? (Available on Amazon)

May Pick: Zero Motivation

Zero Motivation is a unique and sharply observed, sometimes dark and often hilarious portrait of everyday life for a unit of young, female soldiers in a remote Israeli desert outpost. Talya Lavie's brilliant debut details the power struggles of three women with different agendas and very little to do. (Movie available on Amazon and ChaiFlix)

Eden Edrei, our Sahliach, will join the discussion to share her army service experience with us.

June Pick: The Jewish Cardinal 

The Jewish Cardinal tells the amazing true story of Jean-Marie Lustiger, the son of Polish-Jewish immigrants, who maintained his cultural identity as a Jew even after converting to Catholicism at a young age, and later joining the priesthood. Quickly rising within the ranks of the Church, Lustiger was appointed Archbishop of Paris by Pope Jean Paul II - and found a new platform to celebrate his dual identity as a Catholic Jew, earning him both friends and enemies from either group. When Carmelite nuns settle down to build a convent within the cursed walls of Auschwitz, Lustiger finds himself a mediator between the two communities - and may be forced at last to choose his side. (Available on Amazon)