18 April 18 • 2019
jn

Proud To Produce

Davidoff fi
 nds his niche in the fi
 lm 
industry.
P

roducer Kale Davidoff is ready 
to launch his first feature film. 
New Money will be released 
by Gravitas Ventures on April 16 on 
Blu-Ray and DVD as well as Video 
On-Demand platforms including 
Amazon, iTunes and YouTube. 
The movie deals with the 
transferring of wealth, the drug 
crisis, the cost of higher education 
and more, Davidoff says. “I think 
we’
ve created a movie that explores 
these issues from sides that may 
surprise some people.” 
The former West Bloomfield 
resident talks about his love of 
movies and his blossoming career.

HOW DID YOU DECIDE TO
BECOME A PRODUCER?
I’
ve wanted to make movies since 
middle school. And I always knew 
that meant going to New York or 
LA. When applying to schools, I 

only applied to Michigan State. That 
kept me in Michigan, which turned 
out to be a big help for my career. I 
started college in 2008, right when 
Michigan implemented a huge film 
incentive and movies began to flock 
to the state. Things were booming 
then, and it provided opportunities 
for newbies like me to get a start in 
the industry.
Like most, I wanted to write, direct 
and edit movies. But my first gig was 
working as an intern in a production 
office, working under the producers 
and production manager. 
That internship led me from 
production office to production 
office, where I learned (and am 
still learning) the ins and outs of 
producing and production. I realized 
it was something I had a knack for … 
and [it] became my focus.

WHAT WAS IT LIKE STARTING 
OUT IN LOS ANGELES?
I’
ve been out here for two years. I 
always wanted to make it work in 
Michigan but after the incentives 
went away and the productions left 
town, there wasn’
t any work for 
me there. The transition to LA was 
pretty easy. Professionally, I had the 
benefit of eight years of connections 
in the industry working in Michigan. 
My girlfriend had been here a year 
before me so that also made it easier. 
In general, I’
ve enjoyed LA a lot 
more than I thought I would have. 
There are so many people out here 
from the Midwest and Michigan. 
A lot of people I know from high 
school, MSU and the film industry 
are here with me. In December, 
I hosted a Chanukah party with 

Actor Louisa Krause, producers Kale Davidoff and Anja Wedell 

and writer/director Jason Kohl

jews d
in 
the

ALLISON JACOBS DIGITAL EDITOR

Kale Davidoff

Meet Ollie Elkus

Offering “fi
 rst-class Yiddish for those taking their 
fi
 rst class in Yiddish!”

O

llie Elkus, 22, is new to 
the Detroit area this year. 
Drummer with the indie-rock-
jazz-punk trio Alluvial Fans, an herb 
and spice merchant at Germack in 
Eastern Market, and freelance Yiddish 
translator for organizations like the 
Yiddish Book Center, Ollie plans to 
share his love of all things Yiddish with 
the community in a series of classes this 
spring at the Isaac Agree Downtown 
Synagogue.
We caught up with Ollie and asked 
him a few questions about his love 
for what he calls “the language of the 
heart.
”

Where did you come from and how 
did you end up in Detroit?
OE: I was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, 
and then my family moved to New 
England when I was young. The 
Jewish community where we were was 
between small and non-existent, which 
naturally lead to feelings of isolation. 
My proverbial tvile (immersion) in 
externalized Jewish life was going to 
Israel for a semester in high school, 
where I met my best friend Gilad 
Granot, a native of Metro Detroit. After 
returning to the States, we continued to 
visit each other every several months, 
resulting in my move to Detroit. We see 
each other often, though not as often as 
I’
d like, and continue to play and per-
form music together.

From where did you get your love of 
Yiddish?
OE: Although my time in Israel was 
formative, and it was an opportunity to 
see a wholly developed Jewish existence 
that I had never seen before, I couldn’
t 
claim it. Becoming part of Israeli soci-
ety would require an act of assimilation, 
just as functioning in gentile America, 
and specifically the “goyish wilderness” 
of New England, would require. So, 
the question to me became, what is my 
culture? And further, as American Jews, 
what is our yerushe (cultural inheri-
tance)? 
My study of Jewish history led me 
inevitably to Yiddish, and not just the 
language but everything that it implies; 
the language being, at the very least, the 
vehicle.

What’
s your favorite thing about 
Yiddish?
OE: Since the “golden age” of secular 
Yiddish culture in the 1920s, assimila-
tion has moved quickly, exponentially 
even. Jews who made the decision not 
to raise their children in Yiddish have 
lived to see the Yiddish world unrav-
el, and some have remorse or deep 
regret about that. In this way, learning 
Yiddish could be a frustrating task. 
There was even a sort of indignation 
about it. Everything about Yiddish still 
felt so familiar and natural, how could 
we lose it? 
Stranger still, is that I’
m frequently 
cross-examined about my origins due 
to my “unidentifiable” accent. Yiddish 
is sometimes assumed to be my first 
language and, of course, in a more 
abstract sense, I do consider it to be. I 
never found any sort of creative voice 
in English the way I have in Yiddish. I 
never felt the impulse to write poetry 
until writing in Yiddish. S’
iz Neshome-
loshn! It is the soul-tongue or the lan-
guage of the heart. 
It’
s heimish (homey), which in 
a larger sense is its appeal to me. 
Yiddish is for everyone. Yiddish writ-
ers, more often than not, had knowl-
edge of Hebrew and even published 
in Hebrew, but preferred Yiddish to 
reach the common Jew. It is border-
less, fundamentally a language without 
a land, making it the perfect vehicle 
for both anarchistic and metaphysical 
expression. 

JACKIE HEADAPOHL MANAGING EDITOR

Ollie Elkus

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