One of the most compelling characters in Ondi Timoner’s 2022 documentary, “The Last Flight Home” — about the decision of her father, 92-year-old Eli Timoner, to use an end-of-life option in California — was the director’s sister, Rachel. . Rabbi Rachel Timoner brought pastoral warmth and spiritual insight to the sorrows, joys, rituals, and spiritual reckoning of a family honoring the passing of a loved one.
Now, with “All God’s Children,” Timoner offers her older sister an emphatic but unsentimental close-up. However, this documentary is not a piece of family memoir. Instead, Rachel Timoner, lead rabbi of Brooklyn’s historic Congregation Beth Elohim, shares top billing with the Rev. Dr. Robert Waterman, lead pastor of Brooklyn’s similarly storied Antioch Baptist Church, in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuy neighborhood.
The institutions are located just four miles apart, but their leaders aim to traverse the wider gulfs of racism and anti-Semitism. “All God’s Children” follows this Jewish woman and this black man as they try to unite their congregations in worship — it doesn’t go smoothly — which makes this live action film so relevant and enlightening.
The two leaders are close in age and reputation. Senator Chuck Schumer attends Beth Elohim. Representative Hakeem Jeffries visited Antioch. So did New York Attorney General Letitia James. All of them have a maverick sensitivity. (“God transcends gender,” the rabbi tells a class of schoolchildren.) That these two are on a journey toward greater understanding is not surprising. What is sometimes surprising are the events that put pressure on their budding relationship and threaten to undermine their quest for communal harmony. As one parishioner of Antioch said: “Love will unite us, but our traditions will divide us.” More than once, his assessment was correct.
The history of migrations—both black and Jewish—to Brooklyn, and the meaning of two different diasporas, are touched upon. The massacres and slavery, the Holocaust and the Red Summer that devastated Tulsa’s black community, are reflected in images and news footage that are still painfully familiar.
In 2019, the year the film opens, black residents of Bed-Stuy became victims of “deed theft.” This exploitative practice allows third parties to take ownership of the home without the owner’s knowledge, purchasing the property and evicting the actual owners. It has become a tool for aggressive improvement. Despite its name, it was not illegal in New York. Given the demographics of Brooklyn, some of the landlords and landlords involved in this business were Jewish. Nearly all of the affected parties were black or brown residents. The rabbi and preacher had good reason to connect.
When Antioch parishioners visit the CBE (as congregants affectionately call it) for the first time, the musical display for visitors includes flag-waving. Bright yellow color says “Jesus”. What seems innocent enough sends Rabbi Timoner and her second, Stephanie Cullen, into a whispering frenzy: Should they say or do something? Later, when Timoner speaks publicly at a gathering of participants from both houses of worship, it’s a bit bumpy.
However, they all insist, and after the flag incident, the group goes on a joint field trip to the National Museum of African American History and Culture in D.C. and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Although there is a shared recognition of trauma rooted in history, the hurt and wariness of the flag incident has not completely dissipated.
Halfway through the film, each congregation visits the other congregation’s house of worship during the Passover and Passover celebrations. The CBE’s Seder party goes off without a hitch, except for some particularly cute matzah balls. But things go worse than the flag incident when the Antioch service includes a theatrical retelling of the story of Christ with his trial, crucifixion, and resurrection. “Should we go out?” Timoner asks his colleague, Rabbi Stephanie Cullen, as she sits miserable on a bench.
Of course, there is enough “lack of understanding”. To read Antioch’s annual passion play strictly in the context of a long European tradition of anti-Semitism and “blood libel” is perhaps to miss a more resonant case from Moses’ People of how the story of God’s love took root in the lives of enslaved blacks in America. .
Things get very tense, and a mediator skilled in leading discussions about anti-Semitism and racism is called in. She makes the trip to Brooklyn from Kansas City, Missouri, more than once.
As the difficulties continue, the viewer can rightly wonder, what possessed Timoner Waterman to begin this journey with such a deep focus on religion, which is often the cause of ancient and persistent animosity? “Maybe starting to worship together was the wrong first step,” Timoner says somewhat sheepishly.
But then, as the film heads toward its conclusion — which includes Hamas’s terrorist attacks last October and the Israeli government’s killing of thousands of Palestinians — it’s hard to imagine that any of these participants would have felt so deeply about each other if that had been the case. Not to confront those mistakes. There’s a lesson in that, and the film makes a compelling case that at least two Brooklyn parishioners, and their leaders, had a great deal of practical wisdom to share.