Critical Acclaim for OUT OF FAITH!!

Chicago Reviews

PIONEER PRESS, Sun Times News Group

Review appeared in approximately 50 local newspapers

April 3, 2008

««« ½ The last thing you’re likely to expect from a documentary on interfaith marriage is a profoundly moving experience, but “OUT OF FAITH” delivers just that. Ostensibly the story of how marriage outside of the faith places stress on three generations of a North Shore-area Jewish family, “OUT OF FAITH” gradually becomes a portrait of the Welbel family’s iron-willed matriarch Leah, whose survival of Auschwitz and Birkenau makes her strong , but defines her for the rest of her life. When one of her grandchildren marries a Christian girl, Leah turns her back on him, creating a rift in the family. When a granddaughter does the same, she disapproves, but keeps the lines of communication open, hoping for a conversion. “If I let this happen, I feel like I’m betraying my family,” Leah says, thinking of the brothers, sisters, parents and cousins who were killed in the same camps she survived. “OUT OF FAITH” succeeds because it allows us to see precisely why Leah feels the way she does—personal memories arising from a return to Auschwitz and Birkenau are devastating—and to understand how, for her, there can be no other way.

Author: Bruce Ingram

CHICAGO TRIBUNE

February 29, 2008

««« (good) (U.S.; Lisa Leeman, 2006). Three generations of a Chicago-area family struggle with the issues of Jewish identity and intermarriage in this documentary by Leeman, herself a product of an interfaith union. Holocaust survivor Leah Welbel and her husband, fellow survivor Eliezer, raised two sons in Skokie in a fairly non-observant Jewish household. But when a grandson married a gentile, Leah, stoked by memories of suffering and loss in Auschwitz and Birkenau, cut him off, a six-year standoff that continues as the film opens. She maintains affectionate ties with his sister, also married to a non-Jew, in the hopes of prompting an in-law conversion. The indefatigable Leah (who travels back to the death camps for moving recollections) is the film's focus, but all sides get their say, particularly at a seminar about intermarriage and the risk to a Jewish future.

Author: Maureen M. Hart

NEWCITY CHICAGO

February 29, 2008

The factors behind the fears of interfaith marriage are dealt with judiciously in Lisa Leeman’s “Out of Faith.” No answers: many questions. Leeman begins with her own curiosity, as the product of an interfaith marriage, and works her way efficiently outward. Leah, her central figure, survived “those damn Nazis’” Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Leeman meant to capture her tenacity and history, but soon realized there was a larger story to be told, eddying down beyond today. As producer L. Mark DeAngelis writes cogently, “Two of Leah’s grandchildren had married outside Judaism and this had hurt her deeply. On many occasions, Leah poured her heart out to me. She had lost nearly her entire family in the Shoah for no reason other than that they were Jewish; yet, her grandchildren seemed not to care. That she had not lived a religiously Jewish life did not matter to Leah; she was ‘Jewish in her heart,’ and she had always expected that this meant the same thing to her grandchildren. To some, Leah’s rejection of her grandchildren for their decision to ‘marry out’ seemed cold and shallow. However, to me, Leah’s pain was too sincere, deep and routed in the tenets of our faith for me to condemn her in any way. We want people to consider the balance between living one’s life independently of the obligations of the past and in proper reverence therefore. Nevertheless, I would be remiss if I did not say forthrightly, ‘Leah was my hero.’”

Author: Ray Pride

TIME OUT CHICAGO

February 28, 2008

«««« “We’re finishing the job that Hitler started.” So says a Jewish man about interfaith marriages. Fifty percent of American Jews marry out of the faith, and only about a third of their children identify as Jews. For some of the survivors of the Holocaust, that amounts to a betrayal of those who died. It certainly seems that way to Leah Welbel, the woman at the center of this emotional documentary. When we meet her, Welbel has not spoken to her grandson Danny in six years because he married a Christian. But with her granddaughter Cheryl, who has recently done the same thing, Welbel tries to keep the channels of communication open in hopes that her grandson-in-law might convert. Leeman started this documentary with her focus on Welbel as a Holocaust survivor. Only during filming did Leeman realize how central the issue of interfaith marriage is to the family. While Welbel’s return to Auschwitz is undeniably powerful, a number of films have been made about survivors recounting the horrors of the camps. Leeman brings something fresh to the screen when we hear a family (and, in one remarkable scene, a whole discussion group at a conference) talk about what marrying out of the faith means. Rather than explore the topic in cool abstractions, Leeman takes us into one family’s struggle with these big questions. To her credit, Leeman leaves us as uncertain as the Welbels about what the answers might be.

Author: Hank Sartin

The Windy City Joins the OUT OF FAITH Dialogue

For the past week at the Wilmette Theatre, and at the Gene Siskel Theater downtown before that, we have enjoyed several evenings of thoughtful, inspirational, and often lively post screening conversations. The conversations--concerning how the Jewish community can survive as a distinct group in a society that places great pressure on its members to assimilate and embrace secular lifestyles--presents the most important issue facing Jews today. It has become clear to all that have heard me speak at these discussions what I believe. However, we produced a film that provides a balanced, non-propagandist, approach to the questions. Rather, it invites all Jews who care about the future of Judaism to participate, to have their voices heard, on this essential issue. We hope to replicate our efforts in other cities. Stay tuned and thank you for the wonder support we have received from those of you in Chicago.