Q&A with Rabbi Chaim Bruk, Amy Geller and Gerald Peary of "The Rabbi Goes West"
Channel: Boston Jewish Film
Date: 2020-07-29

Q+A conversation with The Rabbi Goes West protagonist Rabbi Chaim Bruk and directors Amy Geller and Gerald Peary, moderated by Boston Jewish Film Artistic Director, Ariana Cohen-Halberstam.

Originally recorded on November 17, 2019, as part of the 2019 Boston Jewish Film Festival.

Amy Geller is a long-time producer whose credits include: the PBS/BBC broadcast docudrama Murder at Harvard (2003), the Sundance Institute-supported narrative Stay Until Tomorrow  (2005), the four-hour PBS mini-series, The War That Made America (2006), and the documentary feature, For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism  (2009). From 2012-2014, Geller served as the Artistic Director of the Boston Jewish Film Festival, where she received a young Jewish leadership award. Her feature-length directorial debut The Guys Next Door (2016) has won jury prizes and audience awards at film festivals across the country. She currently teaches production classes at Boston University.

Gerald Peary is the director-writer of For the Love of Movies: American Film Criticism (2009) and Archie’s Betty (2015). He was a film studies professor at Suffolk University, is a veteran film critic for The Boston Phoenix, and acted in the 2013 feature film, Computer Chess, which premiered at Sundance. Currently, he writes reviews for The Arts Fuse and is the programmer of the Boston University Cinematheque.

Rabbi Chaim Bruk is Co-Director of Chabad Lubavitch of Montana & Spiritual Leader of The Shul of Bozeman. Together with his wife Chavie they are raising their five adopted children.

About The Rabbi Goes West:
When Rabbi Chaim Bruk moved from Brooklyn to Bozeman, Montana, he left a large Chabad Hasidic community. In all of Montana there are just 2,000 Jewish families—and Rabbi Chaim is determined to put a mezuzah on each of their doorposts. While Rabbi Chaim builds his community, becoming beloved by his congregants, some of the state’s Jews believe he is a threat to the other denominations of Judaism. At the same time, threats of anti-Semitism, including from neo-Nazis, loom. 

Watch the trailer at https://youtu.be/9yhG31g6kUI