On The Tube Overcoming Prejudice "Crown Heights" explores conflict resolution. WALDEN NAOMI PFEFFERMAN Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles r Thursday, August 26 to Sunday August 29, 2004 in Cheboygan, Michigan for campers and staff from the '60s, '70s and '80s (spouses welcome) Limited space available so reserve your bunk now! Go to www.campwaldenmi.com and click on the REUNION link "...there's nothin' to do back in the city..." Was $34,204 - NOW ONLY $29,995 Auto, leather, navigation, Bose & more! Rated Best Compact Sports Sedan S-Plan For Everyone!! All prices plus tax, title, plates, doc fee. Sale Jan. 30th through Feb. 29th, 2004 Sterling Mazda 2 Great Locations to Serve You! STERLING HEIGHTS 586-698-5200 South of 18 Mile on Van Dyke WOOD HAVEN 734-362-1800 Allan Road and West Road Announcing the opening of the LOW CARB L. A WAREHOUSE Your Single Source For Low Carbohydrate and Sugar Free Foods. LESS CARBS • MORE TASTE • MOST VARIETY Visit our website www.thelowcarbwarehouse.corn Long Lake 4121 Orchard Lake Rd. and over 100 other brands & thousands of products. VAT 2/13 2004 44 Orchard Lake 248-539-0236 Lone Pine OPEN 7 DAYS THE AREA'S MOST EXCLUSIVE LOW CARB FOOD STORE 804410 hen Jeremy Kagan met • Yudi Simon, a Chasid, and T.J. Moses, an African- American, in 2001, the young men lived just four blocks from each other in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. "But the distance might as well have been 50 miles," he said. Their tenuous relationship is the focus of Kagan's new Showtime movie, Crown Heights, set around the riots that rocked the mixed neighborhood in August 1991. The fictionalized film will be accom- panied by Increase the Peace, a short docu- mentary Kagan made about the events and the real-life Moses and Simon. The youths, then around 15, didn't know each other that hot Monday night when a station wagon in the Lubavitcher Rebbe's motorcade struck and killed an African-American child, Gavin Cato. But both teens were traumatized as black gangs subsequently went on a four-day rampage, throwing rocks and bottles, shouting anti-Semitic slogans and killing an Australian yeshiva stu- dent, Yankel Rosenbaum. In the painful aftermath, Moses and Simon met in a black-Chasidic youth forum, Project CURE — and were sur- prised to discover they had much in common. Moses faced peer pressure to join a gang, and Simon felt pressured to ignore the popular culture he loved. When the teens discovered their mutual obsession for hip-hop, they formed a Project CURE band. But their relationship.— in life and in the film — wasn't always smooth sailing, according to Kagan. "It allowed me to show the potential for conflict resolution and also to make the point that such relationships are hard work," he said. It's what one might expect of the 58- year-old director, who views his films as an extension of the Jewish value of tikkun olam, repairing the world. He learned the mandate from his father, a Reform rabbi descended from the Vilna Gaon and one of the first clergymen to register black voters in the South in the 1960s. Kagan said he approached Crown Heights with the philosophy, espoused in the biblical Exodus, about "knowing the heart of the stranger." "I wanted to explore how one can get past the biases and fears that keep one suspicious of others," he said. To do so, Kagan packed up his digi- tal video camera and flew to Crown Heights in 2001. It was his first trip back to the neighbor- hood since researching his 1981 film, The Chosen, based on Chaim Potok's novel. In a hotel room he interviewed Norman Rosenbaum, who had flown in from Australia when a federal appeals court ordered new trials for the men who had stabbed his brother. At a corn- munity center, he spoke with Cato's father, Carmel, who haltingly told him that when you lose a child, "It's like your whole life is over." Jerry Blackman (Yudi Simon) and Howie Mandel (Rabbi Dr. Lazerson) in "Crown Heights" The director met with the black and Jewish activists who had formed Project CURE at the behest of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and he spent hours with Simon and Moses, now in their 20s. As Kagan's camera rolled, Simon stood in front of his family's ramshackle, three- story home and pointed out the spot where his father had been stabbed -- albeit not fatally — during the riots. Moses, meanwhile, described being humiliated by the police and by media coverage that made it look like "blacks were [always] in the wrong, and Jews were in the right." Nevertheless, he regarded Lubavitchers not as his enemies but as "ghosts, spirits ... like they weren't human." That changed when he met Simon: "I was surprised that white boy could dance," Moses said. Actor Howie Mandel, who plays a Jewish musician and activist in the film, feels the boys' relationship offers a model for bridge building after Sept. 11. "The key is to get the youth talking, because they're flexible," Mandel, a Conservative Jew, said. ❑ Crown Heights debuts 9 p.m. Monday, Feb. 16, on Showtime.