COWJEWS AND INDIANS – The SLIFF 2013 Review

Review by Sam Moffitt

You wouldn’t think that Native American Indians and Jewish people would make good allies, much less friends. Mark Halberstadt has put together one of these new type of “personal” documentaries, where in the maker puts himself front and center in the documentary. Halberstadt is Jewish, his family lost property to the Nazis before WWII. His family ended up running a business on Mohawk land in upstate New York. He decided that his family owed rent to the Indians and that the Germans owed his family rent for taking his family home. His solution? Get the Indians to go with him to Germany and demand some back rent.

So Mark Halberstadt and four members of the Mohawk and Lakota tribes go to Germany to state their case and talk to German lawyers. They also try to get German churches to change the image of Jesus to a more Jewish look. The reason? Indians and Jews were robbed of their identity, under the auspices of Christian churches, and the image of Jesus as a really white guy is particularly obnoxious to Jews. But you have got to see the “Jewish Jesus”, looks just like Woody Allen! This documentary is often hilarious, surreal, and heart breaking. You will never look at Jewish people, Native Americans, or anybody else for that matter, the same way again. We are all part of a tribe, and there are more similarities to our tribes than there are differences. This is a great documentary.

COWJEWS AND INDIANS plays Sunday, Nov 17th at 6:30pm at the Plaza Frontenac Theater as part of the St. Louis International Film Festival

For ticket information, visit Cinema St. Louis’ site HERE

http://www.cinemastlouis.org/cowjews-and-indians