Soul Man Singer-songwriter Doc Pomus beat the blues. Michael Fox Special to the Jewish News was 6. "He's a person who has to deal with a world that's completely inhospitable to ames Brown was Soul Brother people with disabilities and in many ways No. 1. Surely Jerome Felder hostile Miller said during an interview deserves an equally affectionate last summer, hours before the film's world moniker. premiere at the San Francisco Jewish Film Felder, who died in 1991, is better known Festival. as Doc Pomus, the stage name he adopted "All of this — does it make him bitter?" when he began singing in Miller continues. "No, it makes New York City blues clubs as him one of the most humane a teenager. He's known pri- and thoughtful and compas- marily, however, for writing sionate people that I've ever dozens of hit songs like "Save encountered. Doc Pomus is a the Last Dance for Me," "This mentsh of the first order. He's Magic Moment:' "Up on the a mentsh who comes to that Roof" and "Can't Get Used to through challenges." \ .1 Jerome Felder, aka Losing You." Imagine a Jewish teenager Doc Pomus Peter Miller and Will on crutches in the 1940s driven Hechter's marvelous docu- to haul up and down stairs mentary, A.KA. Doc Pomus, produced with to catch elevated trains to Harlem to sing Pomus' daughter, Sharyn Felder, summons the blues at African-American nightclubs. the spirit of a remarkable talent and an When he gravitated to songwriting, Pomus extraordinary man. maintained his friendships with black art- Felder grew up in Brooklyn in the 1920s ists like Joe Turner and Jimmy Scott and and '30s with prevalent anti-Semitism and added white performers like Dion, Dr. John the squeeze of the Great Depression. He had and Lou Reed to his circle. another disadvantage: Felder contracted Pomus' colorblindness hearkens to the polio and lost the use of his legs when he heyday in black-Jewish relations. Miller J observed, in his terrific previous doc, Jews and Baseball, that Hank Greenberg was one of the first players to reach out to Jackie Robinson. "I think that as Jews in America, we do understand what other people have gone through who have been discriminated against, who have been mistreated, who have not been welcomed, who've been con- sidered outsiders:' Miller asserts. Even taking that into account, Miller is convinced that Pomus, who expended enor- mous energy in later years to procure gigs and unpaid royalties for Turner and Scott, was special. "Does Doc come to his passion for social justice because he's Jewish? I'm sure that's part of it:' Miller muses. "I think he comes to it because of all of the things that made him who he was, and I'm certain that a large part of that had to do with his Jewish background." Miller was raised in the Boston area and now lives in New York City with his wife and their children, who attend NYC public schools, which was one of the factors that led Miller to his other new film, Sosua. The one-hour doc, co-directed with Renee Silverman, follows a group of YOU KNOW HIS SONGS NOW HEAR HIS STORY The film poster for AKA Doc Pomus Washington Heights teenagers, half of who are Jewish and half Dominican and Latino, who write and perform a musical together. The subject: the little-known story of how the Dominican Republic saved 800 Jews from Hitler. "I think history is alive and part of who we are today:' Miller says. "I look at a story like Doc Pomus' and see someone who has so many lessons for the way we should live today." ❑ AKA Doc Pomus screens at 5 p.m. Tuesday, April 9, at the Berman Center for the Performing Arts in West Bloomfield; 2 p.m. Tuesday, May 7, at the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor; and 7 p.m. Thursday, May 9, at the Flint Institute of Arts in Flint. See the Arts cover story for ticket info. The Power Of Music Hava Nagila filmmaker unearths roots of cultural anthem. Michael Fox Special to the Jewish News T he cliche that every creative work ultimately proves to be autobiographical turned out to be true for acclaimed filmmaker Roberta Grossman. "I grew up in an extremely Jewish- identified family in Los Angeles but completely religiously assimilated:' she explains. "But when I would go to family events — bar mitzvahs and weddings — and the `Hava Nagila moment happened, I felt something really powerful. When I set out to make the film, I wanted to know what was so powerful about it." The simple perfection of the title of her rousing and poignant documentary, Hava Nagila (The Movie), notwithstand- ing, Grossman notes with a laugh that she could have called it, Who Knew? She traced the melody to a shtetl in the Ukraine and the lyrics to a cantor and composer in Palestine at the turn of the last century. Decades later and many miles away, Harry Belafonte and Connie Francis scored crossover hits with the song. Today, 62 March 28 • 2013 JN "Hava Nagila" turns up everywhere from Thai TV shows to U.S. ballparks. "[Moviegoers] are going to learn about Eastern Europe without learning about the Holocaust, which doesn't happen very often:' Grossman effuses. "They're going to learn about the Chasidic movement. They're going to learn about the creation of a Hebrew culture in Palestine. They're going to learn about the klezmer revival." And a whole lot more, leavened with smiles of recognition at the then-new sub- urban lifestyles of postwar American Jews. "It was a complete revelation to me:' Grossman confided last summer when the film had its world premiere at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, "to visit, through the lens of `Hava Nagila: my childhood, and the '50s, '60s and '70s, and to see how `Hava' was reflecting the very rapid changes in American Jewish identity and American Jewish life." At the same time, as Belafonte recounts in the film, the Hebrew song unexpectedly connected with non-Jewish audiences here and abroad. "There was a tremendous outpouring of love and support for the new state of Israel;' Grossman notes. "The world had just witnessed the lib- eration of the camps, and there was a sense that there was a great deal of rightness, or appropriate- ness, for the formation of a Jewish state. At that moment, maybe in a way, [singing "Hava A scene from Hava Naqila (The Movie) helped people feel less guilty about having stood by during the Holocaust. I don't think you could repeat Warsaw Ghetto. that moment." Hava Nagila represented a lighthearted Grossman's beautiful and wrenching change of pace. previous film, Blessed Is the Match: The Life Her goal is that the film transforms and Death of Hannah Senesh, recounted American Jews' relationship with a familiar the story of the idealistic young Zionist yet underappreciated chunk of our story. poet who died fighting the Nazis. The film- "I do hope that [when] people who have maker anticipates revisiting the history of seen the film attend their next bar mitzvah the Holocaust with her next doc, an exca- or wedding and they get up, it's going to vation of the Oneg Shabbat archives of the mean something more." ❑ Hava Nagila (The Movie) opens the JCC's Lenore Marwil Jewish Film Festival at noon Sunday, April 7, at the Berman Center for the Performing Arts. It also screens at 2:30 p.m. Sunday, April 14, at Celebration Cinema in Portage, near Kalamazoo; at 8 p.m. Sunday, May 5, at the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor; and at 7 p.m. Sunday, May 5, at the Flint Institute of Arts in Flint. See the Arts cover story for ticket info.