GREENFIELD — It’s a story with a timely appeal, and a timeless one as well.
Even as it endured a brutal Nazi occupation, the small European country of Albania, an estimated 70 percent of whose inhabitants were Muslim at the time, opened its borders to shelter Jewish refugees.
In the 2012 film, “Besa: The Promise,” Rexhep Hoxha, a Muslim-Albanian toy shop owner, sets out to return three precious books to the last surviving member of the Jewish family his baker father had sheltered 60 years earlier. Their meeting bridges generations and religions and unites fathers and sons as well as Muslims and Jews.
The documentary by Rachel Goslins, which opens a new “Embracing Diversity” film series at Greenfield’s Temple Israel on Dec. 3 at 7:30 p.m., was described by reviewer Jana Monji as following “Hoxha’s journey from Albania to Israel, and finally to the completion of his besa. The Albanian Jews suffered for their faith during World War II, but their neighbors protected them. All Albanians suffered for their religious faith under communism. (American photographer Norman) Gershman strongly feels that “this little country, doing what they did, has something to teach the world” and that “this message of besa is so needed in the world.”
Although the theme for the film series, a project of a newly formed cultural programs committee at the Pierce Street synagogue, sounds like a response to post-election societal stresses, member Daniel Yalowitz said the film “feastival” was arranged prior to the election, aimed at building more educational and cultural programs, for the Greenfield, Franklin County and Temple Israel communities.
Yalowitz called this “an inclusive kind of a film series” to invite a wide gathering together “for films that really told a story about inclusiveness, the challenges to inclusiveness, what does diversity mean, what are the conflicts embedded in diversity, the struggles and also the joys of bringing people together.”
“We wanted to bring anyone who’s interested together, first for a social hour of connection, with refreshments, the film showing and then a discussion afterward based on themes and issues brought up, so that people can really focus on listening to one another, hearing different points of view and perspectives and bringing the larger community to look at what diversity means and how we talk about it ourselves, at a time when there are all kinds of splinter groups and so on.”
It’s called a “feasitval,” Yalowitz said, since “It’s a feast on many levels: getting to know new people, a culinary feast with finger foods, and a visual and aural feast with films that haven’t been shown here and aren’t easily available — and then having people have an opportunity to think, talk and reflect together.”
He will serve as facilitator for the discussion, he said, “to get as many voices in as possible” to help people learn from one another about issues and controversies raised.
And it’s all free, says Yalowitz, who’s helped plan the annual Pioneer Valley Jewish Film Festival for six or seven years and arrange for showings at Greenfield Garden Cinemas and Pothole Pictures in Shelburne Falls. He hopes the Greenfield series can be successful enough to schedule monthly showings next year.
Inspired by the introduction of its new rabbi, Andrea Cohen-Kiener, Yalowitz said, “We really wanted to make a bold statement as Temple Israel to the interfaith council and the community, that who we are and what we represent is about embracing diversity, so (this theme) made a lot of sense. Embracing diversity is exactly who we are as a faith-based community, and we want to extend that out. Now more than ever do we need something like this.”
The series will continue at the synagogue next March 4 and May 6, but Yalowitz said the films have not been selected yet.
On the Web:
www.besathepromise.com
bit.ly/2grkH5J