Filmmaker to Capture Seders
Among the celebrants at Pastor Charles C. Queen’s Passover Seder will be Ruth Broyde-Sharon, a Culver City filmmaker who is making a documentary about Passover experiences around the world.
Inspired by a 95-guest Seder she put on for friends and family last year, Broyde-Sharon has interviewed Ethiopian Jews, Soviet emigres, organizers of a feminist Seder and others.
After an article about her project appeared in the Jewish Journal, a Los Angeles weekly, Broyde-Sharon said offers poured in to film Passover meals around Los Angeles, including one done in Yiddish at the Workmen’s Circle club and a Seder for battered women.
Monday, she filmed a Seder at the California Institute for Men in Chino, where participants included Black Muslims, Mexican-Americans, Jews for Jesus and mainline Jewish inmates.
She found Queen when she overheard two black patrons of her library talking about checking out a Passover film.
“I hope Passover could become an international holiday,” she said. “You could be Muslim or any other religion, and respond to the story of slavery and freedom.”
Broyde-Sharon is trying to raise $350,000 to complete the film, which she hopes to sell as a one-hour television documentary.
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