Filmmaker and former full-time Islander Barry Rosenthal returned to the Vineyard Sunday for a screening at the Film Center of his feature-length documentary, The Jewish Jail Lady and the Holy Thief.
The documentary focuses on Beit T’Shuvah, a Jewish recovery center in Los Angeles for addicts and ex-convicts. The center was created by recovering alcoholic and “ex-con-turned-Rabbi” Mark Borovitz and Harriet Rossetto, a self-described misfit and “nice Jewish girl who liked bad boys.”
The film won best documentary at the Santa Barbara Jewish Film Festival and is available on Amazon Prime.
Mr. Rosenthal, who is in recovery himself, discovered Beit T’Shuvah when he was eight years sober and living in Los Angeles. A friend invited him to a Friday night service, and he was instantly enthralled — so much so that he approached Rabbi Borovitz and Ms. Rossetto about making a film.
“I went and they were singing the liturgy and the prayers to Bob Marley songs, and I said, wow, what a way to get people back into religion,” Mr. Rosenthal said to the audience at the Film Center while introducing the movie.
Ms. Rossetto met Rabbi Borovitz when she was doing outreach at the prison where he was incarcerated. He and Ms. Rossetto, now married, created an environment where those in treatment could find purpose outside of their addictions, whether through baking Challah bread or putting on an original musical. The film highlights Rabbi Borovitz’s unusually abrasive — and usually profane — style of reaching out to struggling people. Together, the unlikely pair has shepherded thousands into long-term recovery.
Mr. Rosenthal lived on the Vineyard for 20 years, co-owning for a time Outerland, a bar located in the former Hot Tin Roof space at the airport. Mr. Rosenthal said he was moved by the opportunity to show his film to the community he once called home. Many of his closest friends from his Island years were in attendance.
“It felt unbelievably good,” he said after the screening. “I could see [people] I haven’t seen for five years. It just felt very special.”
Following the screening, Mr. Rosenthal was joined onstage by writer, film producer and Vineyarder Larry Mollin. Mr. Mollin’s son went through Beit T’Shuvah twice and is now 13 years sober, and started a recovery center of his own.
“Somehow, that roughness of [Beit T’Shuvah] and everyone there kind of appealed to him,” Mr. Mollin said.
Mr. Rosenthal also talked about his next project: a documentary on the foster care system. The idea came to him after he was appointed to the board of Kids in the Spotlight, a program that helps young people in foster care make Hollywood-style short films.
“I found out that 51 per cent of the unhoused people in Los Angeles went through the foster care system, and we spent $82 billion trying to attack homelessness last year, and we have more people on the street,” he said. “My theory is, if we can get to the youth young and work with them, it’s going to be a lot cheaper and lifelong.”
As a documentarian, Mr. Rosenthal says he hopes to get people to notice things they didn’t before and move them in the process. As his film’s credits rolled to the song Best of Friends by Livingston Taylor, he couldn’t help but get sentimental himself.
“I hadn’t seen the film in maybe close to a year, and I watched it and I was crying through the whole thing,” Mr. Rosenthal told the audience. “I don’t know why, but I do still get emotional about these people and what they did.”
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