Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By richards on February 28, 2017

Its a cooperative building project, like a barn-raising, that gets artists Rick and Laura Brown to bring together more than 300 students and building professionals from 16 countries over 10 years in Sanok, Poland.

Together, theyre reconstructing the Gwozdziec Synagogue, with its elaborate roof and painted ceiling one of many 18th-century wooden Jewish houses of worship destroyed or desecrated during the Holocaust.

The exhaustive and detailed work logging, hewing, sawing and carving, as well as building and re-creating the synagogues ornate, colorful murals are captured in the film Raise the Roof, to be shown Saturday at 7:30 as part of Temple Israels Embracing Diversity Film Feastival.

The film showing, which is free and open to the public, will be preceded by a 6:30 nosh and chat.

The dedication in restoring by hand the magnificent structure using old tools and techniques to revive Gwozdziecs history, culture and science reflects the work of Temple Israels Cultural Programs Committee to build not only the Greenfield synagogues community, but the greater Greenfield community as well, says an organizer of this second festival presentation.

Temple Israel, with an internal Israel Dialogue Project, a refugee resettlement effort and a new program to build a sustainable-neighborhood community, in December launched what Culture Programs spokesman Daniel Yalowitz called an inclusive kind of a film series for the wider community to view 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 whos interested together, first for a social hour of connection, with refreshments, the film showing, and then a discussion afterwards 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.

Yalowitz added, We want people to feel comfortable and safe talking about diversity in all of its aspects, both the comfortable and safe aspects and the challenging and difficult ones, where conflict comes up.

That was certainly the case in Poland, which prior to World War II was home to 3.5 million Jews, more than 90 percent of whom perished in the Holocaust.

Poland is a country where many folks have history and heritage, said Yalowitz, speaking for not only the Jewish community but also Franklin County as a whole. We want to take time on one evening to really remember that and bring it forward. The meta-story were going for is what does it really take to build a community, to come together to raise a building?

The film focuses on the metaphor of the Gwozdziec synagogues reconstruction, with a magnificent roof that was unveiled in 2014 as the centerpiece of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw.

We selected this film because of its beauty, poignancy and relevance to so many in the Greater Greenfield community with roots in Poland, says a flier for the event, to which the Rev. Stanley Askamit of Our Lady of Peace Roman Catholic Church and church members have been invited, in particular. Its message and visuals are potent reminders for us today, of our need to live in peace, of the importance of building and maintaining our communities and our need to remain open to one another.

On the Web:

polishsynagogue.com

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Film 'feastival' features Polish synagogue's rebuilding - The Recorder

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