SOME BACKGROUND ABOUT JEM/GLO: 

At JEM/GLO we measure success by the opportunities of viewers to learn about many issues that we believe are important, and we feel particularly successful when that knowledge is transformed into concrete beneficial action. Using those rulers, we at JEM/GLO are very proud.

JEM/GLO's documentary, A Torah Returns to Poland, narrated by Theodore Bikel, is currently airing on 39% of the PBS market. The documentary traces the journey of one particular Torah that had its origins in Alsace, France in 1876. Nourishing its healthy Jewish population for decades, World War II tragically altered its fate. When the Alsatian Jewish community was deported to the Nazi death camp of Auschwitz built in Poland by the German army, they brought their Torah with them; it was found in tact in Poland after the war, a survivor of the Holocaust that had consumed almost all of the community it had once served. From the ruins, the Torah somehow found its way to New York's Lower East Side. There it was obtained by the Manhattan family of Harley and Marie Lippman who brought it full circle back to Poland in June 2005, contributing it to the Polish Jewish community in honor of their daughter's Bat Mitzvah, a Jewish ceremony celebrated when a child turns 13. Individuals who are a part of the recipient community of this gift express their gratitude in moving ways in the documentary, explaining that the public fanfare that accompanied the Torah’s entry into the community – which included a march thru the streets of Warsaw -- made them realize how openly they can express their Jewish background in today’s post-communist society. Another commentator noted that the gift made him feel that the community is not alone, that others around the world recognize its existence. This is a story that celebrates the continuity of Jewish life, manifested both by the survival of the Torah itself as well as the rebirth of Jewish life in Poland today.

In its preview form, the documentary won a silver Telly Award, the highest Telly bestowed, and a Summit Award. The program was presented at the Wroclaw, Poland Jewish Culture Festival in June 2006 where Marty Fogel and Mitch Schechter, who composed and played the music for the documentary, also performed. For JEMGLO, the biggest reward so far has come in the form of education: Providing viewers with ways in which their actions can beneficially impact others, JEMGLO has already received phone calls from teachers working with children who are preparing for their Bar and Bat Mitzvahs; the instructors want to encourage the children and their families to use the happy occasion to help others in need.

In October 2006 JEMGLO began production on a new documentary based in Uganda tentatively entitled Delicious Peace Grows in a Ugandan Coffee Bean . Highlighting industrial cooperation amongst Christians, Muslims and Jews, this program has been pre-dubbed “the greatest coffee story ever told.” The documentary will focus on the Mirembe Kawomera organic coffee cooperative, comprised of 580 farming families. It is one of six co-ops under the larger Gumutindo Cooperative which brings together over 2,400 Ugandan farmers. Grown high on the slopes of Mt. Elgon, a dormant volcano in eastern Uganda, Mirembe Kawomera -– literally translated as “delicious peace” – coffee is produced in small batches by the family farmers of the Mirembe Kawomera cooperative. The Mirembe Kawomera cooperative has strong leadership, with all three faiths serving on the executive board. Significantly, the coop has been very successful in increasing harmonious relationships between all the religious groups who perceive of themselves as partners focused on the larger goal of economic success. It is anticipated that the documentary will take about two years to produce.

Another documentary currently in the production phase is entitled A Rumbling of Coexistence at the Israeli/Palestinian Crossroads: A School in Muqeible Teaches a Lesson. The program will focus on a grammar school that highlights coexistence as a thematic principle. The Green Valley School sits in an Israeli village called Muqeible which is occupied almost exclusively by Arab Israelis and which abuts the security barrier separating Israel from the West Bank. A handful of children who attend the school have parents living on the Palestinian side of the barrier. JEMGLO has begun to capture on video the realities of life at the school. Over the coming months, funding permitting, JEMGLO plans to return in order to continue to track whether, and if so, the ways in which, the evolving political situation will alter the student population, curriculum, and/or other aspects of the school.

JEMGLO’s 2004 production, Klezmer Musicians Travel "Home" to Krakow, also narrated by Theodore Bikel, intersperses traditional and nouveau-Klezmer music with introspective thoughts and feelings of some of today's greatest Klezmer-style musicians examining why they return annually to the Krakow Jewish Cultural Festival. The documentary is bookended by an old Yiddish folktale that flavorfully sets forth the theme of Krakow as a destination for a treasure trove of Jewish history and culture. The documentary was a Telly Award finalist and the recipient of a Communicator Award.

A previous JEMGLO documentary, From Refugee to Immigrant: A Story of Three Kosovar Albanian Americans, began playing on PBS nationwide in April 2003. In June 2004, the documentary was awarded the prestigious Aurora Gold Award and was a Finalist for the Telly Awards in the documentary category. The program focuses on the struggle of three refugees from Kosova now living in the United States as they confront the turmoil they experienced in their homeland of Kosova and at the same time prepare themselves for their new lives as American immigrants. In reviewing the documentary, distributor NETA gave it "a rave review" and the Thomas Edison Black Maria Film/Video Festival cited it as a "noteable and accomplished piece of considerable merit."

A JEM/GLO documentary released in 2001 has motivated viewers to take a positive role in helping the Polish Jewish community. JEM/GLO has learned incidentally about ways in which the Jewish community of Wroclaw, Poland has been assisted in the aftermath of the broadcast of the 2001 JEMGLO documentary entitled From Kristallnacht to Crystal Day: A Synagogue in Wroclaw Glows Again. In one instance, an American student volunteered to help clean graffiti in the community’s cemetery; in another, Wroclaw was included in the itinerary of families traveling to that region who wanted to celebrate Shabbat with an established Jewish community that often evades the tourist map. That community continues to grow and improve: two liberal Bat Mitzvahs (for girls) were held and an upcoming wedding is being planned in the White Stork Synagogue, the only synagogue in the city to survive World War II.

From Kristallnacht to Crystal Day was presented on close to 40% of US public broadcasting stations, totaling over 40 million households, including stations in major metropolitan areas such as NY, LA, Chicago, Miami, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and many other areas. The first two JEM/GLO productions, Poland: Creating a New Jewish Heritage (1997) and Swiss Jewry: An Island in the Twentieth Century (2000), have been aired on over 30 public broadcasting stations across the United States as well as in Canada and Poland.

JEMGLO’s work is not limited to documentaries. JEMGLO is also a partner with the East Brunswick, New Jersey public school district program on Holocaust education. JEMGLO helped middle and high school students interview survivors, then videotape their testimonies. Over the coming months, JEMGLO will work with other students in the district to edit the materials in various ways so that future generations of students will be able to learn from the testimonies. This project breaks new institutional frontiers in furthering JEMGLO’s mission of educating about Jewish-related issues, and we are open to additional avenues to accomplish this broad goal.