“Several years ago, after meeting with Rabbi (Lisa) Goldstein and Jackie Tolley, we helped them launch the "Not Quite Kosher Film Festival," which happens on the SDSU campus—although, not all their showings featured up-and-coming filmmakers. In 2003, the year that I passed my film chairmanship to Judy Friedel, my husband Joe Fisch, as a surprise birthday gift to me, made a donation to SDJFF for a special program to be created.  Jacqueline Siegel, the producer at that time, suggested that we create a segment of the festival for up-and-coming filmmakers.  That's when the Joyce Forum was created.

“Each year the forum takes on a different face.  The first years we showed only student films.  The best films were coming from Israel. We brought in young filmmakers to represent their films from as far away as Argentina, Israel, and Mexico City.  It became increasingly difficult to find small films done by film students so we branched out to films by emerging filmmakers.  This past year, we showcased three  ilms by filmmakers who were all successful in other professions, but who made their first independent film.

“Each year the Joyce Forum evolves into something slightly different–but the underlying theme is to help up-and-coming filmmakers. Judging by the attendance at this year's Joyce Forum Day, this aspect of the festival is something that San Diego film-goers now really value and support."

Axelrod  has become a talented filmmaker in her own right. She says she isn't interested in making money from her films, but in making human-interest films for non-profit organizations. 

Said she: "I have been making small films for myself for about eight years.  One year, a one- minute film that I made with Don and Marcia Wolochow and starring Marcia's mother, Irene, was accepted into the SDJFF.  People to this day still remember the film, which launched 80-year-old Irene into her career as an actress in television commercials.  On three occasions I have teamed with local artist Viviana Lombrozo to make a film, one being for Congregation Beth Am.  One year Viviana and I received a grant from the California Arts Council to do a documentary involving the Hispanic community.  I am currently making a documentary about a belly-dancing troupe called Fat Chance Belly Dancers of Julian.

Axelrod has won several video competitions  She also was awarded  second place at the  
Del Mar Fair for a documentary on a woman dying of anorexia.

Greenberg is a freelance writer based in San Diego

FRIENDS—Maya Baldwin, left, as Hanna comforts Jessica John as Luisa in A Shayna Maidel

ARTS IN REVIEW

A Shayna Maidel: a post-Holocaust story

By Carol Davis

SOLANA BEACH, California—Show me Jewish parents who have not addressed their child as either a shayna maidel or shayna punim and I’ll show you people who never grew up with Eastern European ancestors. It came as easily as eating mandel bread in our family to refer to any young child as a shayna. It means beautiful, good-looking, attractive, pretty, inner beauty; you name it. It is a term of endearment for all to know and use. It has crept into the modern day vernacular as well. It’s one of those sayings that, even though you know the meaning in English, in Yiddish it takes on a different tone.

 When the character Mordechai Weiss, (Ralph Elias) in Barbara Lebow’s emotionally charged family reunion play, A Shayna Maidel, takes a picture of his late wife (as a young girl) out of his vest pocket, looks at it, shows it to both his daughters and one comments contemplatively, ‘a pretty girl’, there is a hush.  Then realizing, says,  “It’s Mama, isn’t it?”  Mordechai responds, “At age sixteen only, a shayna maidel” and puts the photo back into his pocket. You could hear a pin drop after that exchange at the opening night performance of the North Coast Repertory Theatre’s production of the same name.

Mordechai Weiss is not a sentimental man. In fact, he is completely shut down, distant and wracked with guilt since he and his younger daughter Rose (Christy Hall) escaped Nazi Poland just in time to make it to America. His wife (D. Candis Paul) and their older daughter, Luisa (Jessica John) had to stay behind because Luisa came down with scarlet fever the night before they were about to leave and could not travel. The decision was made for them to escape, oh so long ago and even over protestations nothing could stop them from their journey. As an Orthodox Jew who is somewhat overbearing, he now finds his life a bit more complicated since his long estranged daughter Luisa will be coming ‘home’ to America to live.

His already Americanized daughter Rose, who has been with him since childhood, has fallen into step with him even though she has moved out of their Brooklyn home that he shares with a relative, to her own flat. There is no question here of who's in charge.  While he has risen in his job and stature at work in America, he has not lost his ‘old world ways’ of the always-right, always proud patriarch.  

Shortly after he and little Rose fled Poland, Mama and Luisa were taken to the camps. Luisa is a survivor who married in 1940 but who had became separated from her husband through circumstances beyond her control. She feels her life won’t be complete until she finds her missing Duvid (Christopher M. Williams). Sadly, Mama perished in the camps, as did Luisa’s best friend Hanna (Maya Baldwin) and, we learn, the infant daughter of Luisa and Duvid. Now the family is reunited when we meet up with them in Rose’s New York City apartment (Marty Burnett) where the action takes place.

It’s been 14 years since the family was together as a unit and 14 years since father and daughter came to America. But it has been a lifetime of change and worlds apart for the sisters who really never knew each other as children and are now meeting for the first time as adults. Mordechai has finally heard through the Jewish Agency that Luisa is on her way to New York and will be arriving, by boat the following Tuesday. Of course, she will be staying with her sister, Rose.

Lebow frames her play by first presenting a prelude (a change in lighting to signify changes in times and places is something the playwright directs in her notes) showing the birth of Mordechai, set in 1876 in a small Polish shtetl. In the background, with only a single candle illumining the scene, a newborn baby is heard crying out and off to the side a rabbi is davening. Noises of unrest can be heard in the distance.  Fast-forward to 1946, seventy years later, and Rose’s apartment.

What follows is a bittersweet story of a family separated by war, who become reunited in the aftermath of the Holocaust; of two sisters, related by blood but whose experiences are as different as night and day, and about the relationships between fathers and daughters and memories and dreams, realities and fantasies. Finally, it is a story of hope and love and healing, humor, pathos and family.

Artistic director David Ellenstein, who directed this same show at the Hahn Theatre in the Gaslamp Quarter some 17 years ago, is at the helm again. He and his wonderful ensemble have taken great care to pay attention to details making this production sensitive, alive and believable. Elias is the best I’ve seen him over the years.

He is picture perfect as the aging Mordechai, from his mannerisms to his accent to his body language to his dress. In character all the time, I couldn’t help feeling almost like gasping for air when he and Luisa took out their little notebooks with ‘lists’ of family members that made up the Weiss Family Tree, to take inventory. With each name he spoke, she countered with 'murdered', or died or concentration camp while he carefully made notes next to their names.  It was like a Schindler’s List in reverse and one of the most telling moments about his character revealing both his vulnerability and resistance to change. Elias was all that and more as his character was felt whether he was on stage or off.

Jessica John, who is making her North Coast debut as Luisa, has been a familiar face at New Village Arts and Cygnet Theatres as both an actor and costume designer and is as versatile as one can get in this industry. She is just drop dead on target and compelling as the lifeless Luisa who saw things no human should have been eyewitness to. In comparison to her frail looking body, drained of life eyes and strained tongue to speak the language of her new family, she is a pillar of stubbornness holding her own against her overzealous father and anxious sister. She stands like a frightened bird, slight of build in her oversized, tattered house dress, refusing any handout from her sister, who is too vivacious, too happy, too talkative and too lonesome, dressed in the latest 40’s fashions, (Jeanne Reith is right on) listening to Benny Goodman on the radio (Chris Luessmann) to fill the void, yet not really connected to anything meaningful. (Christie Hall is most effective)

It is a contrast in opposites that only magnifies itself as the sisters learn more about one another. But learn they do in ways that bring them closer together as a family by breaking down the barriers that kept both Mordechai and Rose in denial of their loss and of their relationship. We also get a glimpse into her past as Luisa remembers little bits and pieces of her childhood and friendships. We catch up with Mama, Hanna and Duvid, who all add to the overall picture of what Luisa’s life was like before and after the camps. Each in his or her own right, there is a story to be told.

Lebow’s play was long overdue on the San Diego scene. It is one that keeps on giving the gift of healing not just from tales of the Holocaust but in dealing with any kind of loss. Ellenstein’s reasons for mounting the show are twofold: He made a promise to the now deceased John Gouth, marketing director and press liaison for the theatre for many years who died at an all too early age, and he feels he has a deeper understanding and appreciation of what the playwright had in mind. I saw the play 17 years ago and still remember bits and pieces of it, but this production is etched in my mind.

Don’t miss this one. It plays through March 23. Following the March 1st matinee Dr. Edith Eger, honored guest and Holocaust survivor, will speak.

See you at the theatre.

Davis is a San Diego-based theatre critic