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Young, Jewish, and Left is a US documentary that presents several US-based Leftist Jews grappling with identity, politics, and culture.

Tagline:

Outside the mainstream for their race, spiritual practices, sexuality, gender, and politics, young Jews build radical communities.

Official Synopsis

A celebration of diversity, Young, Jewish, and Left weaves queer culture, Jewish Arab history, secular Yiddishkeit, anti-racist analysis, and religious/spiritual traditions into a multi-layered tapestry of Leftist politics . Personal experiences from many of today’s leading Jewish activists reframe the possibilities of Jewish identity. It presents a fresh and constructive take on race, spirituality, Zionism, queerness, resistance, justice, and liberation.

Meet Shira Hassan. After she and her trans-gender partner "were literally laughed out of synagogue,” she created a radical Machzor (prayer book) for the high holidays and organized her own queer-positive celebration.

Listen as Loolwa Khazoom, an Iraqi Jew and editor of Flying Camel: Essays on Identity by Women of North African and Middle Eastern Jewish Heritage, recounts her experience in a U.S. Hebrew School when the Rabbi told her it was a sin to use a Sephardi (non-European) Jewish prayer book.

And follow Micah Bazant as he praises the feminist possibilities within Jewish masculinity.

As these community organizers, playwrights, artists, and rabbis speak of building progressive organizations, new rituals, and more inclusive communities, it is clear that their inspiration is drawn from a proud Jewish past. Inspired by the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the Workmen's Circle, and by their own communist & socialist grandparents, these Jewish radicals are creating a more just future by learning from and identifying with a collective, rich Jewish heritage of reform and rebellion. At a time when religious fundamentalists take power in the US and around the world, this documentary is an inspiration. Grab your Bubbe (grandmother) and your habibi (loved one) and check it out.

Young, Jewish, and Left was shot throughout the US and focuses on Jews who came of age after the New Left movements of the 60’s and 70’s. Activists from the previous generation provide historical context. Music by Mirah, Nomy Lamm, and Divahn.

People Featured In Documentary

Vicki Alcoset - Working Class, Mixed-Race Jew
Micah Bazant - Co-Author of the Love & Justice In Times of War Haggadah
Rabbi Haim Beliak - Co-Director, Stop Moskowitz Campaign
Jenine Bressner - Artist
Lena Broderson - Hebrew School Teacher
Julia Caplan - Co-Founder of A Jewish Voice for Peace, San Francisco Bay Area
Yonah Diamond - Union Organizer
Nava Etshalom - Writer and Activist
Harmony Goldberg - Educator, SOUL (School of Unity & Liberation)
Miriam Grant - Former Participant and Staff, Jewish Youth for Community Action
Shira Hassan - Social Worker
Haddasah Ladies for Homos
Molly Hein - Media artist and Klezmer singer
Julie Iny - Community Organizer and Historian of Arab Jewish Left
Loolwa Khazoom - Editor, The Flying Camel: Essays on Identity by Women of North African and Middle Eastern Jewish Heritage
Paul Kivel - Violence Prevention Educator
Rabbi Michael Lerner - National Chair, The Tikkun Community and Author
And A. Lusia - Rabble Rouser
Josina Manu Maltzman - Feygelech for a Free Palestine
Rachel Marcus - Student, Oberlin College, grew up going to Kinderland – Jewish socialist summer camp
Emily Nepon - Co-creator of Suck My Treyf Gender, Bar Mitzvah-boy drag performer, author of [www.newjewishagenda.org NewJewishAgenda.org]
Steve Quester - Early-childhood Educator and Queer Jewish Activist
Penny Rosenwasser - Jewish Voice for Peace, Board Member
Jna Shelomith - Revolutionary
Deb Shoval - Playwright, Director of An Olive on the Seder Plate
Dara Silverman - Director of JFREJ- Jews for Racial and Economic Justice
Rabbi Arthur Waskow - Director of Shalom Center and Author
Liz Werner - Writer/Translator/Teacher, grandparents blacklisted in McCarthy era.

Festivals and Conferences

2006 ARPA International Film Festival
2007 Pioneer Valley Jewish Film Festival
2007 Minneapolis Jewish Film Festival
2007 Not Quite Kosher Film Festival, San Diego State University Hillel
2007 Big Muddy Film Festival, University of Southern Illinois
2007 Jewdas Jewish Film Festival, London
2007 National Conference on Organized Resistance
2007 Practicing Jews: Art, Identity, and Culture Conference
2008 Maine Jewish Film Festival

External Links

Official Website
Official Myspace Page
Interview in Jewish Forward
Review in Left Turn Magazine
Abstract from article in Bridges: A Jewish Feminist Journal
Screening schedule on Free Speech TV
Clip from movie about anti-Semitism on youtube