Media: Rabbi Douglas Goldhamer is greeted by colleague and former student Alison Brown, left, as his wife Peggy Bagley assists the rabbi at home on Oct. 26, 2021, in Evanston. Rabbi Goldhamer is one of the subjects of a documentary series about Jewish role models. (John J. Kim / Chicago Tribune)
By SHANZEH AHMAD
CHICAGO TRIBUNE |
OCT 28, 2021 AT 1:34 PM
[EDITOR’S NOTE: Rabbi Douglas Goldhamer of Bene Shalom, a reform Judaism congregation in Illinois, is mentioned in this post]
Tiffany Woolf has always had an affinity for the older generation. She worked in a nursing home during college. Both of her parents died in their 60s, which she said led her to want to seek out older role models.
The San Francisco-based executive producer and now director said she pitched her “passion project” to Reboot, an arts and culture nonprofit centered around Jewish thought and tradition, telling them, “I would love to pick up a camera and start filming older role models and capture their stories.”
Media: Tiffany Woolf makes her directorial debut with “Sign of the Times,” a documentary-style series featuring role models, some based in Chicago, from the older generation of the Jewish faith. (Hillary Jeanne Photography)
Woolf’s production company, Silver Screen Studios, was then born in 2017 with the help of Reboot and her co-founder, Noam Dromi. The studio’s name, Woolf said, is a “cheeky nod to the older generation and to the old days of Hollywood.”
The company already has put out a few series on YouTube consisting of six or seven “snackable” episodes, as Woolf calls them, ranging from seven to 10 minutes each. The most recent series, “Sign of the Times,” is in association with Reboot and began its release with the first episode in late September. The series is Woolf’s directorial debut and features role models from the older generation of the Jewish faith.
The series is national but focuses on Chicago, Woolf said, because it “just so happens there’s so many great and interesting people to feature in Chicago.”
Episode one features 76-year-old Douglas Goldhamer, a rabbi who founded Skokie-based synagogue Bene Shalom in 1972. It’s a Reform Judaism congregation that interprets all of its services in American Sign Language (ASL). Peggy Bagley, the 66-year-old executive director of the synagogue and Goldhamer’s wife, said the synagogue’s main theme is to be kind to all.
Goldhamer said he was interested in serving people who are deaf because he “knew what it was like to be discriminated against.” As a newborn in Montreal in 1945, he was put under a radiation machine to remove a birthmark on his hand. The team working with him left him under the machine for too long, and he suffered radiation burns on the entire left side of his body. This caused him to get Klippel-Trenaunay syndrome, a rare disorder involving blood and lymph vessels and abnormal growth of soft and bone tissue, according to the National Institutes of Health. Goldhamer said the syndrome caused him severe pain and he had over a dozen surgeries throughout his childhood.
When he was in his 20s, Goldhamer saw a friend, who at the time was a student rabbi for a community of people who were deaf in Chicago, giving a service in ASL. That friend invited Goldhamer to the community’s Passover Seder, which was conducted in sign language, and Goldhamer met the 11 families of that community. He started learning sign language that night.
Two years later, the community of 11 families became established as a “full-fledged congregation” with regular services for people who are deaf and hearing. In 2021, Bene Shalom serves about 150 families with 30% of the congregation made up of people who are deaf, Bagley said.
“I knew that God wanted every individual, whether they be blind or be unable to walk, whether they’re in a wheelchair, whether they’re autistic, whether they’re deaf, I knew God wanted every person to be respected for who they are,” Goldhamer said. “People who are different are just that. We respect them, we honor them, we love them as God does.”
Media: Sharon Silverman, chair of the board of directors at Spertus Institute, also spent years as an administrator and teacher at Loyola University Chicago.
Woolf, who is deaf in one ear, said “this idea of celebrating your adversities” really resonated with her.
“I’ve learned to compensate for being deaf in one ear and advocating for my well-being in Judaism and in understanding,” she said. “Rabbi Goldhamer was a powerful connection for me.”
Woolf said the stories she is sharing are not just about aging but aging well. With each episode of the new series comes a theme. For Goldhamer, Woolf said the theme is kindness. For the second episode set to feature another Chicagoan, Sharon Silverman, 77, the theme is curiosity.
Silverman was born and raised in the city. She is chair of the board of directors at the Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership. The higher education institution offers a number of graduate programs, certificates and professional workshops that apply the basics of Jewish texts and learning to contemporary issues.
Silverman’s episode is expected to be released in November. She discusses her “strong Jewish identity and upbringing” in tandem with a lifelong career as an academic, not only teaching but also teaching the process of teaching. Most of her career took place at Loyola University Chicago as an administrator. She founded the university’s Learning Assistance Center and taught in the school of education.
After leaving the university, she began a private practice with a colleague to work as education consultants, which she did for some 20 years before retiring last year. Silverman was also a Fulbright Senior Scholar in 2000 working at Nelson Mandela University in South Africa and a Fulbright Senior Specialist contributing to teaching and learning in Almaty, Kazakhstan, in 2014.
Silverman said she “thoroughly enjoyed” working with Woolf on the series and said being able to share her experience to hopefully inspire others was “really meaningful.” She said she wants her four grandchildren and everyone else to understand the “value of intergenerational sharing.”
“Individuals my age, elders and seniors, have had long lives,” Silverman said. “We’ve had so many experiences. We share our stories with others so they can be inspired in their own lives. I’ve seized opportunities and grown and developed through them. By sharing my experiences, I hope it inspires others to do the same.”
Besides inspiring generations, Woolf said with each episode and each series Silver Screen Studios puts out, the “hope is that people will be inspired to call their own elder loved ones.”
