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Sarah Masters reviews the film

The Jewish Americans

This six-hour documentary series shines a light on the hurdles Jewish Americans have faced over the past 350 years as they held dear to their religious identifies while assimilating into American culture. From the first South American Jews to immigrate to New Amsterdam to contemporary Orthodox and Reform Jews, from shopkeepers, peddlers, and labor organizers to Sid Caesar and Louis Brandeis, the film is about the struggle of a tiny minority that has maintained its cultural distinctiveness while melding into the American mainstream.

Actor Live Schreiber narrates this PBS series directed by award-winning director and producer David Grubin. The filmmaker features Jewish Americans who have made significant contributions to American life, interviews their descendents and a number of rabbis, and pans the national landscape for other Jews who have helped to shape American culture.

The elements of the film series that deserve special mention are the graphics, the cinematography, the music, and the quality of the research on the history of Jewish Americans. The narrative arc is strong despite the breadth of the subject.
This is a film about Jewish American history that will captivate all viewers, regardless of their faiths or nationalities.

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Completed: 2008
Running Time: 6 Hours
Director: David Grubin

If you are interested in purchasing this film series, you can do so at http://www.shoppbs.org/product/index.jsp?productId=2966824&cp=2729313.2951553&parentPage=family. The cost is $34.99 for a DVD.

Book Review

Rabbi Dr. David J. Zucker reviews

Jewish Relational Care A-Z: We Are Our Other’s Keeper

This is a volume about Jewish Relational Care. More generally it is about human relational care. Many of the thirty-four chapters can be adapted to fit universal environments. There are ten sections:

• The ABC’s of Jewish Relational Care
• Caring for the Caregiver’s Relational “Self”
• Healing Muses for Jewish Relational Care
• How Spacious is Our Tent?
• When Life Challenges our Human “Being”
• Jewish Relational Care When the Relationship is Fragile
• Jewish Relational Care in the “Golden” Years
• Jewish Relational Care with the Traumatized
• Jewish Relational Care with the Impaired
• Jewish Relational Care at Life’s End

Bloom, who is a gifted Clinical Psychologist in private practice, and a rabbi, as well as the contributors, (most of whom are rabbis, social workers, and professionals in caring disciplines), use the word “relational” in a specific manner.

“This book presumes a specific and eminently practical model of relationship . . . It is a model of individual . . . human ‘beingness.’... “The model proposes that, first and foremost, we are not unitary selves. The ‘self’ we present to the outside world is not all of us . . .” (p. 8)

“Each person is a relationship between ‘selves,’ rather than the position of any given ‘self.’ ... Relationship is the basic psychological and religious unit.” (p. 9)

Divorce, Unwelcome Pregnancies, Child Sexual Abuse/Incest, and Time Management are universal, not simply Jewish concerns. In her chapter, Judith Levitan writes about “Caring for and Supporting Those Going Through Divorce.” Bonnie Margulis and Douglas Maben’s address “When a Pregnancy is Unwelcome.” Rachel Lev’s provocative chapter “Caring for Those Violated by Child Sexual Abuse and Incest” focuses on a taboo subject that we know is widespread throughout the religious world. “Taking Care of Ourselves: It’s About Time!,” the chapter I authored, focuses on issues that most clergy who live in the modern world face: serious calls on our time; a need to use that time wisely; a careful assessment of how judiciously to use, and not be abused by modern technology; and some ideas for self-care.

Short chapters by Bonita E Taylor, “The Muse of Chanting,” Jeffery Silberman, “The Muse of Silence,” Samuel Chiel, “The Muse of Relational Listening,” and Mel Glazer’s wisely practical chapter, “Jewish Relational Care with the Grieving,” can be adapted for use in non-Jewish contexts. It is not difficult to reframe Shira Stern’s “The Muse of Music and Song” for a general audience. In a similar vein, the chapter I authored with Taylor, “The Muse of Visiting,” while partially set in a Jewish context, is true for a visit to any person who is physically compromised.

Other chapters are intimately and intricately personal, written by Rabbis/Jews for and about Rabbis/Jews. That said, Jews may be Jews, but first they are people. It is likely that chaplains, and those involved in pastoral care professions, will find several essays that speak to them directly. With little imagination on their part, they will be able to translate concepts into parallels that reflect their experience and are applicable in their work settings.

Bloom, Jack H., Editor. Jewish Relational Care A-Z: We Are Our Other’s Keeper. Haworth, Binghamton, NY, 2006, pp 453.

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