Jewish role models focus of series

CHICAGO — 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.”

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. 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 percent 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.”

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 this month. 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.