Moriah’s
think
Dream
Simon Wiesental Center’s Film Company Focuses on Theodore Herzl By Lynn Wexler-Margolies
I
t is no dream if you live by the courage of your convictions and often were dismissed and criticized by European Jews. prove as good as those words. Theodor Herzl spoke them. He Undaunted, and over a period of some eight years, Herzl orgabelieved in them, and subsequently lived by them. The once-asnized and influenced a worldwide political movement. Within 50 similated Viennese journalist became the unlikely founder in 1897 years, it would result in the establishment of the state of Israel in of the modern Zionist movement and was 1948. Herzl sat with kings, prime minisa main catalyst for creation of the Jewish ters, ambassadors, a sultan, a pope and govState of Israel. His story is portrayed in the ernment ministers from Constantinople to recently released Moriah Films production, St. Petersburg, Paris to Berlin and Vienna It Is No Dream, The Life of Theodor Herzl. It’s to Vilna in his quest to build a Jewish naone of 10 films to be screened at the 2013 tion. He became an indefatigable force deLas Vegas Jewish Film Festival in January, voted to the Zionist dream. Worn down by featuring Jewish drama, comedy and docuhis efforts, he died in 1904 at age 44, never mentary from around the world. realizing his dream. Israel’s founding lay Herzl pioneered Zionism, a movement to more than four decades in the future, after restore Jewish sovereignty in the Land of two world wars and the Holocaust … but it Israel and to enable the return of the Jewwould come. ish people to their ancestral homeland. In Moriah Films founder, writer and prohis book, Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State), ducer, Rabbi Marvin Hier, shares simihe went so far as to lay out a blueprint for a larities with his film’s subject. Like Herzl, future Jewish state, detailing the organized Rabbi Hier has willed much of his own untransfer of Jewish communities to the new likely journey, wielding vision into reality. state, along with the administrative, ecoCompelled by a 1977 trip to Holocaust sites nomic and military structure of the imagin Europe, this Talmudic scholar went from ined country. being an orthodox congregational rabbi in Previously indifferent to matters Jewish Vancouver, British Columbia, to founding a and religious, Herzl claims to have had an Yeshiva in Los Angeles. Shortly thereafter, epiphany after reporting on the felonious he founded what now is the foremost invitriol of the Dreyfus Affair in 1894 Paris. ternational Jewish human rights organizaHe was dismayed by French outcries for tion – the Simon Wiesenthal Center and its Jewish blood, which led to false charges education arm, the Museum of Tolerance. Artwork for It Is No Dream, The Life of Theodore Herzl, and a treason conviction of Officer Alfred Under his dedication and leadership, the 2012. Dreyfus. Herzl understood at once that Center has grown to include a constituency Jews were a people without a country and would remain politically of more than 400,000 U.S. households, with offices in New York, Topowerless and unsafe as long as they had no national home. While ronto, Miami, Paris, Buenos Aires and Jerusalem, hosting hundreds prophetic (given what happened some 40 years hence), his efforts of thousands of visitors annually. 48 DAVID TEVET / SHEVAT 5773
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Theodore Herzl on the balcony of “Les Trois Rois” Hotel in Basel, at Fifth Congress, overlooking the Rhine. JANUARY 2013 DAVID
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and only rabbi to be a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He remains eligible to cast his ballot each year for his film favorites. Narrated by Elizabeth Taylor and Orson Welles and introduced by Simon Wiesenthal, the film’s original music score was composed and conducted by Elmer Bernstein and performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. The movie was co-written by British historian Martin Gilbert and Hier, and adapted for the screen and directed by Arnold Schwartzman. It was co-produced by Schwartzman and Hier and introduced by Frank Sinatra at its Kennedy Center premiere. Clearly, Genocide’s credits alone would turn any Hollywood mogul green with envy. “All of this was accomplished on a minimal budget, as I was able to convince three of the biggest stars of the day – Taylor, Welles and Sinatra – to provide their services for free,” Hier said later. At the awards presentation, “Jack Lemmon cracked to Walter Matthau, as I approached the stage to accept the trophy wearing my kippah, ‘In our day we had to go to acting school to win an Oscar. Now you have to go to yeshiva,’” Hier recalled. Also in 1981, Richard Trank, a young USC graduate, joined the Wiesenthal Center staff to inaugurate a regular radio program, which 100 stations nationwide eventually carried. After Genocide came out, Trank, “flying by the seat of my pants,” transferred the film to home video, and then created his own short films for special Wiesenthal Center occasions. By 1991 Trank co-produced and wrote with Hier Echoes That Remain about eastern European shtetl life before the Holocaust. Hier
THE SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTER PRESENTS A MORIAH FILMS PRODUCTION The Jack & Pearl Resnick Film Division of the Simon Wiesenthal Center
Artwork for Winston Churchill, Walking with Destiny. 2011
Rabbi Hier’s mission to combat anti-Semitism, bigotry, hate and the resurgence of neo-Nazism and international terrorism, to stand with Israel, to defend the safety of Jews worldwide and to teach the lessons of the Holocaust for future generations had only just begun. The roots that influenced this path took hold when he was a young teen. He had this to say in 1999 after the Columbine massacre: “As a student in high school, a revered sage, Rabbi Joseph Kahaneman, whose students and family were wiped out in the Holocaust, addressed us one day. He leaned forward, his voice barely audible. He spoke less than 30 minutes, but I never forgot his message: ‘I stand here before you,’ he began, ‘for probably the last time in my life. So please be so kind as to pay attention to these final remarks that I have for you.’ He went on to cite references from the Talmud regarding our responsibility to the world and to each other. It was profoundly important, sincere and honest and had a lasting impact on my life.” In 1981, Rabbi Hier wanted to reach the masses more effectively and thus willed it so. With no production or screenwriting experience, he co-wrote and co-produced a documentary (Genocide) about the Holocaust. It won an Academy Award for best documentary feature. It was the first Oscar for a documentary on the Holocaust; the first Oscar bestowed on a rabbi; and Hier is the first
The story of a young activist’s relentless efforts to rescue Europe’s Jews during the Holocaust
NA R R ATED BY AC A DEMY AWA R D ™ WINNER
DUSTIN HOFFM AN
Artwork for Against the Tide. 2010
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Rabbi Marvin Hier, Sir Ben Kingsley and Richard Trank, working on the soundtrack of It Is No Dream, The Life of Theodore Herzl.
realized it was time to create Moriah Films, the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s documentary film division. He and Trank collaborated in 1994 on Moriah’s first production, Liberation, a World War II documentary about the Allied campaign to liberate Europe, and Hitler’s genocidal campaign against the Jews. The Long Way Home, Moriah’s next film, chronicled the struggle of postwar refugees to reach Palestine. It brought the Wiesenthal Center its second Oscar (in 1997), which Hier and Trank accepted. Marshaling experience, clout, respect and confidence, Hier and Trank expanded the range of subjects that Moriah Films would take on. The division has completed eight additional documentaries since 1997, and a ninth film, The Prime Ministers, based on Yehuda Avner’s 2010 book on Israel’s greatest leaders, is due out this spring. The eight documentaries since 1997 are: In Search of Peace: 19481967 (on Israel’s peace efforts); Unlikely Heroes (on Jewish resistance to the Nazis); Ever Again (on the resurgence of anti-Semitism); Beautiful Music (in which an American-Israeli musician teaches piano to a blind Palestinian girl); I Have Never Forgotten You: The Life and Legacy of Simon Wiesenthal; Against the Tide (Peter Bergson’s struggle to awaken American Jews to the Holocaust); Winston Churchill: Walking With Destiny; It Is No Dream, The Life of Theodor Herzl (narrated by Academy Award winner Sir Ben Kingsley, with Oscar winner Christoph Waltz as the voice of Herzl). “I would like us to do two or three films a year and end up with a library of 50 documentaries on the history and major experiences of
the Jewish people,” Hier said. Moriah Films, under Hier’s direction, also served as a consultant for Steven Spielberg’s epic Schindler’s List, and ABC Television’s miniseries adaptation of Herman Wouk’s War and Remembrance, among others. Newsweek described Rabbi Hier as, “… one phone call away from almost every world leader, journalist and Hollywood studio head.” Universal Studios President Ron Meyer and DreamWorks Animation chief Jeffrey Katzenberg are Hier’s chief tutors and sit on Moriah’s board of directors. Like Herzl, Hier has dedicated his life to sustaining the Jewish people. They share the Zionist dream; recognize that it must be realized; and live by the will to pursue that end at all costs. In an interview with the principals of the documentary film, Between Two Worlds, Hier said, “Jewish life had its renaissance because Israel was born.” Hier, like Herzl, believes the State of Israel is the center of Jewish identity and survival. “Did you know that after the Second World War nobody wanted to look at Jews?” he said. “They said, ‘Jews, these are the victims. Who wants to be associated with them?’ But when Israel thrived, Jewish life in the Diaspora thrived. We’re intertwined. With no Israel, all of us who walk around here … in Beverly Hills, in New York City walking up Fifth Avenue, thinking we’re big machers (a high-powered leader) … that would all go down the drain if there wasn’t a State of Israel. Every Jew should know that.” JANUARY 2013 DAVID
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Candy Schneider, Educator Vice President of Education and Outreach, The Smith Center “Education is in our DNA,” Smith Center President/CEO Myron Martin says. “It’s been that way since day one. Candy joined us five years before the first shovel ever hit the ground. Her journey began however, 33 years ago as a visual arts teacher for the Clark County School District. Later, she did a stint as an administrator in visual arts curriculum development, and was an assistant director in the School-Community Partnership Program. Her appointments include the National Art Educators Association, Getty Center for Arts Education, National Endowment for the Arts, Nevada State Education Curriculum Standards, Las Vegas Centennial City of 100 Murals, Lied Discovery Children’s Museum, VSA Nevada, the Nevada Alliance for Arts Education, the Las Vegas Arts Commission, Metro Arts Council of Southern Nevada and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts – Partners in Education program. She served on the Board of the Nevada Arts Council from 1995 through June 2007 and in 2007, received The National Art Education Association’s Nevada Art Educator of the Year Award. A year later, she was honored at the Governor’s Arts Awards for Distinguished Service in the Arts. Candy is practically a native Nevadan. She and her family moved from Florida to Las Vegas when she was 6 months old. She and her husband, recently retired Sen. Mike Schneider, D-Clark County, have a son and granddaughter. DAVID: When did your passion for education take root? SCHNEIDER: I remember clearly my seventhgrade teacher. I wanted to be like her. She had a wonderful and sensitive personality, and she inspired me to dream big. She was able to relate to kids in a way that other teachers could not. DAVID: Why arts education in particular? SCHNEIDER: The arts are part of basic education. They develop the whole child. Arts reach into literary skills, social development, self-confidence, imagination, creativity and problem-solving. Exposure to the arts has proven to enhance a child’s mental and cognitive abilities, increase their cultural understanding, improve performance across
all curriculum areas and develop social skills. DAVID: How do you compete with movies, television and video games to attract young people to the Smith Center? SCHNEIDER: The idea is not to compete but to offer diverse opportunities. Children are naturally drawn to the arts. They automatically respond to rhythm, music, colors and live visual imagery. The proof is in the outcome. There’s the sheer joy of unloading buses and listening to the kids after a performance they’ve been to. Some of them haven’t been out of their neighborhoods. They come here and see sculpture, architecture and then that sea of upholstered seats. When the lights dim they see things on stage that they haven’t seen before. They didn’t know where music came from. They’re energized. They’re learning. DAVID: What are some of the programs and partnerships you’ve developed thus far to realize the value of arts education and outreach? SCHNEIDER: As part of their appearance at The Smith Center, we’ve partnered with the internationally renowned Wolf Trap Institute in Virginia to train our preschool teachers in using the arts to enhance preschoolers’ learning. We’ve partnered with the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., to provide professional development training for K-eighth-grade teachers on how to use the arts to increase learning in all subjects. Camp Broadway, out of New York, brings kids to the Smith Center for a week over the summer for performance training. And the new Smith Center High School Musical Theater Awards debuts this summer with a community-wide competition that culminates in an event at The Smith Center. It will raise the profile of theater students, educators and local high school arts programs. DAVID: Why has it taken The Smith Center to open our eyes to culture in Las Vegas? SCHNEIDER: Las Vegas has always had a ton of arts, but people typically have not gone out of their way to find it. The philharmonic is not going to send a van to your front door. The Smith Center has increased visibility. However, it’s up to our residents to engage. I, frankly, can’t think of a more exciting place to be.
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