One of the vital extra enticing figures in Ondi Timoner’s 2022 documentary, “The Final Flight House” — concerning the determination of her 92-year-old father, Eli Timoner, to make use of California’s end-of-life possibility — was once the director’s sister, Rachel. A rabbi, Rachel Timoner introduced a pastoral heat and non secular perception to the sorrows and joys, rites and non secular reckoning of a circle of relatives honoring their cherished’s departure.
Now, with “All God’s Youngsters,” Timoner provides her older sister an maintaining however unsentimental close-up. Nonetheless, this documentary isn’t a circle of relatives memoir piece. As a substitute, Rachel Timoner, the executive rabbi of Brooklyn’s historical Congregation Beth Elohim, stocks best billing with Reverend Dr. Robert Waterman, the lead pastor of Brooklyn’s similarly storied Antioch Baptist Church, in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuy community.
The establishments are a trifling 4 miles aside, however their leaders intention to traverse the broader gulfs of racism and antisemitism. “All God’s Youngsters” follows this Jewish lady and this Black guy as they are trying to unify their congregations in worship — it does now not cross smoothy — which makes this simple movie so consequential and instructive.
The 2 leaders are close to in age and recognition. Sen. Chuck Schumer attends Beth Elohim. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries has visited Antioch. So has New York Legal professional Common Letitia James. Every has a maverick sensibility. (“God is past gender,” the rabbi tells a category of college children.) That those two would embark on a adventure towards larger figuring out isn’t a wonder. What does come now and then as a surprise are the occasions that pinch their fledgling rapport and threaten to upend their quest for communal cohesion. As certainly one of Antioch’s parishioners places it, “Love will carry us in combination, however our traditions will stay us aside.” Various instances, his evaluation proves spot-on.
The histories of migrations — Black and Jewish — to Brooklyn are touched upon, the that means of 2 other diasporas engaged. Pogroms and slavery, the Holocaust and the Pink Summer season that discovered Tulsa’s black neighborhood decimated, are mirrored in acquainted, still-wrenching footage and newsreel photos.
In 2019, the 12 months the movie opens, Black citizens of Mattress-Stuy have been sufferers of “deed robbery.” The predatory observe permits third-party actors to take the identify of a house with out the landlord’s wisdom, purchase the valuables and evict the real homeowners. It had turn into a device of competitive gentrification. And regardless of its identify, it was once now not unlawful in New York. Given the demographics of Brooklyn, one of the most landlords and realtors enticing within the act have been Jewish. Virtually all of the injured events have been Black or brown citizens. Rabbi and preacher had just right explanation why to achieve out.
When the parishioners of Antioch discuss with the CBE (as its affectionately known as by way of congregants) for the primary time, a musical efficiency by way of the guests contains the waving of flags. A vivid yellow one says “Jesus.” What turns out blameless sufficient sends Rabbi Timoner and her 2d, Stephanie Kolin, right into a involved, whispered frenzy: Will have to they are saying or do one thing? Later, when Timoner does talk out at a meeting of contributors from each properties of worship, it’s slightly bumpy.
Nonetheless, all of them persist, and after the flag incident, the congregations cross on a shared box go back and forth to D.C.’s Nationwide Museum of African American Historical past and Tradition and the USA Holocaust Memorial Museum. And whilst there’s a shared acknowledgement of traumas rooted within the histories, the harm and wariness of the flag incident hasn’t absolutely dissipated.
Halfway during the movie, every congregation visits the opposite’s space of worship all over celebrations of Passover and Easter. The seder at CBE is going off with nary a hitch, with the exception of some particularly bland matzah balls. However issues cross even worse than the flag incident when the Antioch provider contains its theatrical retelling of the Christ tale with its trial, crucifixion and resurrection. “Will have to we stroll out?” Timoner asks fellow rabbi Stephanie Kolin, sitting miserably in a pew.
After all, there’s sufficient “now not getting it” to move round. To learn Antioch’s annual pastime play strictly throughout the context of an extended Eu custom of antisemitism and “blood libel” is to in all probability pass over a extra Other people of Moses-resonant case of ways that tale of God’s love took grasp within the lives of The united states’s enslaved Blacks.
Issues get so frayed, a mediator professional in main discussions on antisemitism and racism will get known as in. She makes the adventure to Brooklyn from Kansas Town, Mo., greater than as soon as.
Because the difficulties proceed, a viewer can rightly surprise, what on earth possessed Timoner and Waterman to start out this adventure with the sort of deep focal point on faith, steadily the reason for historic and ongoing enmity? “Perhaps beginning with worshipping in combination was once the incorrect first step,” Timoner says reasonably sheepishly.
However then because the movie heads towards its conclusion — one that comes with ultimate October’s terrorist assaults by way of Hamas and the killing of 1000’s of Palestinians by way of the Israeli govt — it’s laborious to believe that any of those contributors would have felt as deeply about every different have been it now not for confronting the ones missteps. There’s a lesson in that, and the movie makes a persuasive case that a minimum of two Brooklyn congregations and their leaders, have an excessive amount of sensible knowledge to percentage.
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