Black Flowers / Commandment 613

BLACK FLOWERS (50 minutes, directed by Tammy Federman, 2021): This is the story of five Holocaust survivors: The sculptor Saadya Bahat who lost his entire family in the camps. The multidisciplinary artist Tommy Brayer who was born in the ghetto and survived due to his mother’s wit and strength. The painter Ruthi Goren who spent her childhood in a children's orphanage during the war, Jenny Rozenstein who reclaims her childhood, which was brutally taken from her, through her colorful, playful paintings and Esther Goldman, whose embroidery work enabled her and her mother to survive the war.

COMMANDMENT 613 (23 minutes, directed by Miriam Lewin, 2020): Rabbi Kevin Hale joyfully practices the sacred craft of Torah restoration, bringing new life to scrolls saved in Czechoslovakia during the Shoah. As his scribal work takes him to communities now entrusted with the scrolls, he reflects on his own path to faith and practice – and the many ways to fulfill the final commandment in the Torah: to write the scroll itself.

Interviewees include Rabbi Hale, Sofer STaM; Jeffrey Ohrenstein, Chairman of the Memorial Scrolls Trust in London; concentration camp survivor Frieda Hoffman; and 10-year old Carolyn E.

“COMMANDMENT 613 is a beautiful and moving film, a tender tribute to the labor of preserving not only Torah scrolls, but all the lives and all the history they embody.” - Rachel Kadish, author of The Weight of Ink, National Jewish Book Award winner