‘One of life’s true optimists’: Film about popular local rabbi to be screened at Abney Park
Rabbi Gluck in a still from the documentary. Image: Winstan Whitter / Elin Moe
A documentary about beloved local rabbi Herschel Gluck is coming to Abney Park next month for a special screening and a Q&A with the film’s star.
How to Get On With Everybody, by award-winning filmmakers Elin Moe and Winstan Whitter, explores Gluck’s extraordinary life and work.
The film was very well received when it debuted at the Rio Cinema in May as part of the Hackney History Festival.
Now people will have another chance to catch the charming feature when it is shown in Abney Park’s Harriet Delph room on 9 September.
Guests will also have a chance to hear from Rabbi Gluck himself as he fields questions after the screening.
As for what to expect from the film, it is billed as a portrait of ‘one of life’s true optimists’.
Moe and Whitter follow Gluck as he carries out his responsibilities with Jewish neighbourhood watch group Shomrim, and explore his friendships with members of the local Muslim community.
Gluck established the Muslim-Jewish Forum in London 25 years ago and was awarded an OBE from the Queen in 2013 for his services to interfaith relations.
The film also examines Gluck’s upbringing, and how being surrounded by Holocaust survivors as a child shaped his commitment to building bridges between people of all backgrounds.
The documentary is the latest in a series of Hackney-focused films by Whitter, who was raised in Stamford Hill. The former professional skateboarder spoke to the Citizen back in 2011 about his mission to spotlight interesting stories.
The screening at Abney Park takes place from 7.30-9.30pm on Tuesday 9 September in the Harriet Delph room.
For more information, including how to book tickets, head here.
Rabbi Gluck is an old aquaintance of mine and he is motivated by genuine belief in building bridges between communities that we ALL admire. He also, on Remembrance Day, proudly wears the medals of his late father who served in the British Army in the terrible fighting in Italy during WW2. But is is worth remembering that his founding of the Shomrim (‘Guards’ in Hebrew) watch group, was and remains deeply grounded in the need to protect Jews from appalling racist attacks which have been common in Stamford Hill since the 1970’s , but especially since the 1980’s and until now. He quite brilliantly reaches out to other cultures and rightly so, but there are a lot of haters out there who in the name of ‘political correctness’ , demonising of Israel, and downright anti-Semitism, have been particulary targeting ‘Visible Jews’ , and so led to the establishment of the Shomrim in the first place.