Note: Soul Sessions is produced as a podcast first and designed to be listened to. If you are able, we strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which includes the emotion and inflection meant to be conveyed by human voice. Our transcripts are created using human transcribers, but may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting.

Paul:
I'm a bit of a podcast junkie, always looking for a new show or the latest episodes of my favorite ones. So when my friend Abram mentioned his latest binge-worthy podcast over breakfast recently, I started to think hey, he's got an event coming up and being a podcast fan well, he might make a great guest on this podcast.

Hey, it's Paul Wolf with a front row seat to conversations on culture from Jackson, Mississippi. We call the podcast Soul Sessions. It's the people, places and events that make the City With Soul shine. Today, president of the Beth Israel Congregation and Co-Chair of Jewish Cinema Mississippi, Abram Orlansky is my guest, and I always love a chance to introduce my friends to our audience.

Abram:
Well, I'm a Jackson native. I've lived here for 33 of my 39 years, and I'm an attorney at Watkins and Eager in downtown Jackson.

Paul:
You are also the... Are they calling you Associate Director? The Deputy director of Jewish Cinema Mississippi?

Abram:
Well, I am the president of Beth Israel Congregation.

Paul:
Well, there you go.

Abram:
President of the board and a former chair of the Jewish Cinema Mississippi Film Festival. Now, our current chair, the wonderful Cheryl Katz, because I've helped out a little bit with this year's planning. She has been kind enough to list me as co-chair on all the materials, but the truth is that Cheryl Katz and her committee of Beth Israel congregation members have really been the driving force behind bringing this festival back for its first post covid year.

Paul:
Yeah, it's been, what? Four years since this happened?

Abram:
We last had the festival in 2019, and then obviously COVID came along. Like a lot of other events, it took us a little longer to get it back on schedule than obviously one would hope. But luckily our community was strong in working together to get the program back on track and to put together a film selection committee for the first time in a few years to watch some films.

Cheryl and her team have done a great job of marketing the event and getting some sponsors on board, both from within the Beth Israel congregation and the wider community. We're just really excited that it's back.

Paul:
Abram, what are those dates for Jewish Cinema Mississippi?

Abram:
It's going to be March 19 through 22. The first film is playing at 2 PM on March 19. That's a Sunday. Then that film is called "Finding Hannah," and we actually have the film's co-producer and editor, Steven Eckelberry coming in to participate in an introduction and a Q&A for that one. So that's really exciting.

Paul:
Maybe a little background for our listeners on Beth Israel. It's the only Jewish congregation here in Jackson, right?

Abram:
It is. It always has been. Beth Israel congregation was founded in downtown Jackson in 1860. We've been in our current building on Old Canton Road since 1967, and the Jewish Cinema Mississippi is a project of Beth Israel congregation. It's an opportunity for us to both within our community and for Jackson and the Jackson Metro area in general to put on a cultural event.

Paul:
Yeah. How many years has it been going on now?

Abram:
This will be, I believe, the 16th in total, and it's moved around. When it first started, it was a project of the Institute of Southern Jewish Life. It was called Jewish Cinema South. After a few years, I think part of the idea... don't quote me on this, but my understanding is that part of the idea was for local communities to take it over after a few years of the institute sort of providing the festival to all the different communities in the south.

So Jewish Cinema Mississippi became Jackson's local version of the Jewish Film Festival, and for a few years, we would host it at Millsaps. Then the last few festivals have been hosted at Malco, and they were great partners. It was a cool place to do it, but this year we're really, really excited that we're for the first time going to be able to do the festival at the Capri in Fondren.

Paul:
Yeah, Jackson's only movie theater. This is a perfect location for the festival.

Abram:
It is. People can get great food and a full beverage menu and experience. I'm hopeful that some of our folks that come to the festival will be seeing their first film or four in the new Capri Theater. That it'll help some of our attendees understand what a great facility it is and bring them back for future bigger budget films as well.

Paul:
Abram, what's the significance of a film festival like Jewish Cinema Mississippi? What does it do on kind of the grander scale of things? I guess what I'm saying is what is Beth Israel trying to accomplish with showing these films and promoting the Jewish film culture?

Abram:
Yeah, it's a great question. Beth Israel, as I mentioned, has been part of the Jackson community now for over 150 years. The Jewish community in general has been part of, sometimes a big part of Mississippi's history for 200 years.

Through art, we have an opportunity to bring, whether it's Israeli culture specifically, or just films on Jewish themes dealing with Jewish history. We have an opportunity to not only for Beth Israel congregation members to further explore their own culture, their own identity, but also for our friends in the wider community in Jackson to interface with Jewish culture.

Paul:
What do you want our listeners of Soul Sessions to know about the Jewish community here in Jackson?

Abram:
I think it's important to us that folks in Jackson know A, that we're here, B, that we've been here a long time. Then C, I think that a lot of our history is your history.

Somewhat famously, at least within our community, in 1967 very soon after Beth Israel moved into its current building on Old Canton Road, the Ku Klux Klan bombed the new temple. They set off a bomb near the rabbi's office, and around the same time bombed the rabbi's home. Because our rabbi at that time, a man named Perry Nussbaum was an outspoken advocate for civil rights.

The turmoil within the congregation about whether it was the right thing for the rabbi to be out there publicly supporting the Civil Rights Movement in the late sixties was a microcosm, a reflection of I think what a lot of white Jackson was debating and experiencing at the time. Now, of course, we look back with a lot of pride with respect to Rabbi Nussbaum and what he did. His reaction to the bombings was to go on WLBT and very forcefully say that what happened at the temple, what happened at his house was Un-American, was unacceptable, and he was defiant in the face of the Klan's violence.

So for us, looking back, obviously it's an important and meaningful part of our history, but I think it's also important to know that at the time it's not like the whole congregation was aligned behind him, everybody fully supporting his work in the Civil Rights Movement. So it's complicated. Our history is complicated here, and so is our city's, and so is our states.

So I do think that's important, I think, for people to understand that we have been experiencing the growth and change of this city along with everybody else, and we've always been here and we plan to hopefully be here a long time.

Paul:
Abram, I guess the final question then would be, what do you think makes Jackson Mississippi such a special place?

Abram:
Well, for me, it's very personal, Paul. It's home. I grew up here, my father's from the Mississippi Delta. My mom is from Memphis. I just think that Mississippi has got to have a city that kids can grow up in and feel like obviously they would want to come back to. We've got to have a city where there is a dynamic economy, a tremendous amount of opportunity for young people.

The reason Jackson matters to me is because this community made me who I am, and I want to be a part of its future and to be a part of the opportunities in front of us to hopefully follow the lead of a lot of other booming southern cities in becoming that kind of place where kids grow up here and just figure, of course, I would move back to Jackson. It's a great place to be. It's a great place to find an opportunity. So that's what matters to me about Jackson and that's why I'm here.

Paul:
That's Abram Orlansky. He's the co-chair of Jewish Cinema Mississippi. It's March 19 through 22 at the Capri Theater in Jackson. You can buy tickets online at their website, Jewishcinemams.com, or you can buy them in person at the theater.

Soul Sessions is produced by Visit Jackson, the destination organization from Mississippi's capital city. Our executive producers are Jonathan Pettus and Ricky Thigpen. You can learn more about Visit Jackson at our website, always up to date at Visitjackson.com. I'm Paul Wolf, and you've been listening to Soul Sessions.

Listen to previous episodes of Soul Sessions