Spotlight on CLAL
Welcome to Spotlight on CLAL. Here you will find stories about what is happening at CLAL and about the work that CLAL is doing across North America. Sometimes we will focus on a program, or a special event, or upon a CLAL faculty member's work and interests. Bookmark this page if you want to get to know us better.
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Freaks Like Me - Provocative New Film Examines Religion in the Age of Terrorism
Featuring CLAL's Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, the Film Will Be Screened at the Santa Cruz Film Festival on Thursday, May 5 @ 8:00pm at The Del Mar Theatre, 1124 Pacific Avenue, Santa Cruz (For more info click here: http://www.santacruzfilmfestival.com)
Freaks will also be showing in the Jacksonville (May 19-22) (http://www.jacksonvillefilmfestival.com/ )and Mountain Telluride (May 28-30) (http://www.mountainfilm.org/) film festivals. Check back here for information on show times.
Freaks has already been shown at the Cinequest Film Festival in San Jose, March 8-9, 2005 and at "South by Southwest" Film Festival in Austin, TX March 13th and March 16th.
By Judy Epstein, Director of Public Affairs
In July 2004, 7,000 inter-faith religious leaders
from across the globe
convened in Barcelona for the 2004 Parliament of the World's Religions.
Seeking spiritual connection and greater peace, they explored how
religion,
often an inciter of violence today, can provide the catalyst for building
a
better world.
Freaks Like Me, an acclaimed new documentary, captures their efforts to
better understand each other and break down the fears of each other's
traditions. Featuring Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, a well-known religion
commentator and Vice President of CLAL-The National Jewish Center for
Learning and Leadership, Freaks examines how "the faithful" look at
themselves and their attitudes towards other devouts.
"Religion can inspire the very best and very worst acts," said Rabbi
Hirschfield. "This film addresses both. We're living at a time when
religion is doing more damage than at any other period since the Crusades.
But people seem to need religion more now than at any other time since
then."
Filmed in Barcelona, where one thousand years ago people of all faiths
peacefully congregated, the film depicts how the different traditions view
violence, justice, and doubt. Interspersed throughout are conversations
with swamis, imams, monks, yogis, rabbis, priests and other earthly
wanderers, all seeking a higher truth.
Joining Rabbi Hirschfield in the film is a group of students from the
University of Oklahoma who visited this historic city to deepen their
understanding of the world's religions and face their suspicions of those
from other spiritual communities.
Directed by award-winning filmmaker David Holbrooke, Freaks Like Me
provides
a compelling picture of the world's cultures coming together to offer an
alternative to dangerous religion and soulless secularity. It allows us
to
confront the darker elements in each of our traditions and also to embrace
the light.
Accepted by film festivals nationwide, Freaks Like Me will be shown at the
Cinequest Film Festival, Short Program 3: DocuNation, at Camera 12 in San
Jose on March 8 and 9, 2005.
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