How can L.A. festival chief Hilary Helstein continue after this? She’s a disgrace. How can she reject this new film recently written up in the Washington Post?
Hilary Helstein
Is Hilary right when she says this is a community that reveres its rabbis? We have more than our share of sexual predators in the rabbinate. We have a rabbi in the San Fernando Valley who does Orthodox conversions and is sexually predatory. We have Abner Weiss in Westwood. We have Joel Grishaver (not technically a rabbi, but still somebody with a past of molesting boys). We have an Orthodox rabbi on Pico Blvd with a sordid sexual past who’s had to settle sexual harassment lawsuits. In 2001, Los Angeles had three Orthodox rabbis plead guilty to sexually abusing children in separate incidents. Los Angeles hosted sexual predator Aron Tendler for decades, moving him around various positions in Orthodox Jewish life (from YULA to Shaarey Zedek). We’ve had a string of children molested at Beis Midrash Toras HaShem In North Hollywood.
Does Los Angeles revere these rabbis who either practice sexual molestation or abet it?
I don’t blame Hilary Helstein for refusing to publicly defend her indefensible actions.
Steve Karras comments on my FB: “I think that from the LAJFF’s myopic POV, the aim is to celebrate Jewish life, and not screen films that risk upsetting its benefactors. I don’t think the film maker should get his balls in an uproar over this. Festivals like these typically pass on shonda-like subjects. Did Capturing The Friedman’s play at this festival?”
Producer Scott Rosenfelt, whose credits include “Home Alone” and ”Mystic Pizza,” is threatening a major Jewish film festival after its director raised concerns that Rosenfelt’s documentary about sexual abuse in the Orthodox Jewish community amounts to a “witch hunt.”
Rosenfelt sent a scathing email last week to the director of the Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival after learning that she had warned colleagues at other film festivals about “Standing Silent.”
The film, which features interviews with several victims of sexual abuse by Baltimore-area Orthodox rabbis, is slated to be screened at several Jewish film festivals across the United States. It was the subject of a lengthy feature article in The Washington Post.
In an email to Jewish film festival directors in September, L.A. festival chief Hilary Helstein wrote that while the film was well made, “Our committee felt with a community that reveres it’s [sic] rabbis this was not something they wanted to show.”
Rosenfelt called the email the “most unprofessional act” he has seen in his 35-year career.
“The idea that a festival director would go behind the back of a filmmaker and do this gives me great pause to ever recommend your festival to anyone,” Rosenfelt wrote to Helstein on March 22. “As you know, I’ve produced films such as ‘Home Alone,’ so I know a couple of people in the business. I plan on letting EVERYONE I know to stay away from you and your festival, because you are clearly not someone who supports filmmakers.”
