‘Between the Temples’

In the very Jewish film “Between the Temples,” Cantor Ben Gottlieb, played by Jason Schwartzman, has lost his voice and his faith.

His wife, a successful novelist but also an alcoholic, died after she slipped and fell on the ice outside their home.

Now Gottlieb sits silently during services. He spends the rest of his day listening to the dozens of voice messages she’d left him, each filled with laughter and promises of afternoon delight if he’d just hurry home.

After a drunken brawl — “brawl” perhaps is a bit of overstatement, because one punch knocked him out — Ben is picked up off the floor by an older woman, Carla Kessler O’Connor, who turns out to have been his fourth-grade music teacher.

Carla, now widowed and played by Carol Kane, grew up secular. Her parents, she says, were Jewish communists and the “temple wouldn’t let me in.” Now widowed, she, like Ben, is a little lost. Eventually, she convinces Ben to give her bat mitzvah classes.

Surprisingly, unexpectedly, the film becomes far more than a standard she-fixes-him-happy-ending flick. It is more — you should pardon the expression — unorthodox, propelled forward by outstanding performances, great chemistry between the actors, and a sweet, funny, reality-based script.

Director and co-screenwriter Nathan Silver, who spent his youth in Massachusetts, explains in a Zoom interview: “My mother grew up in a socialist household and wasn’t one for religion at all. When I was growing up, we didn’t go to temple. Maybe I went like three or four times in my life. We celebrated Chanukah and Passover, but beyond that we were culturally Jewish.”

Mr. Silver — not to be confused with Nate Silver, the pollster/statistician who created FiveThirtyEight (though he often is “when I put down my credit card at a bar”) — became a prolific independent filmmaker, and like all prolific independent filmmakers made some interesting (i.e. cheap) casting choices.

One of his regulars was his aforementioned mom, Cindy. And thankfully, through many films there were no mother-son conflicts.

Until.

Once, her appearance ended up on the cutting room floor and her anger, well…

“She wouldn’t forgive me,” Mr. Silver said. So, in order to make it up to her, I suggested I make a film about her. And while I was making the film, I discovered she was studying for a late-in-life bat mitzvah. That came as kind of a surprise to me.”

At a party, Mr. Silver told the story to Adam Kersh, who became one of the film’s producers.

“He said there’s a film there. I should make like a May-December romance between a woman who is getting a late-life bat mitzvah and a rabbi. That was the seed of the film.”

But what blossomed from that seed was so much more — a series of genuinely warmhearted performances by a largely Jewish cast. (Schwartzman’s father is Jewish.) Of special note, kudos to the always-wonderful Caroline Aaron and Dolly DeLeon, Ben’s film moms, who do all they can to snap their son out of it. The same goes for Madeline Weinstein, who plays the rabbi’s daughter, fresh out of a broken relationship of her own and anxious to provide solace.

Everyone here is so hamish, you — or at least I — can’t help rooting for a happy ending. But Mr. Silver kind of leaves that up in the air. So I ask what in his mind happens after the camera is off for Ben, Carla and the mishpocha. “I don’t actually know,” he said. “I’d like to know as much as you.”

Referring back to the other Silver, the poll analyst Nate, I ask the film director Nathan what he thinks the odds are that “Between the Temples” will be a hit. “I’d like to believe they’re high,” he said. “It’s a movie from the heart, and I hope people can connect with it. It’s about how we need each other.”

I wondered if he was afraid that his film will be targeted by protesters in the post-October 7 environment. “I would hope that people don’t immediately politicize this movie,” he answered. “It’s about connections first and foremost, even outside the framework of Judaism. But I think there was a fear that people would pigeonhole it as a Jewish film even more than they would have before October 7.”

Despite his protestations, though, it is a Jewish film, and I wonder if making it has changed Mr. Silver’s relationship with his religion. “I went to a seder this past April,” he said. “It’s the first one I’ve attended in decades. I think that has renewed my interest in keeping up the tradition.”

Does that extend to following in his mother’s footsteps and studying for a late-in-life bar mitzvah? “I think I learned enough through doing research on this film,” he said.

On the subject of his frequently cast mom, she gave Nathan a two-thumbs-up for “Between the Temples.”

I wonder if she liked all his films.

“That’s a good question,” he said. “I guess it proves she’s a good actress, because she always convinced me that she liked all my movies.

“But I feel she liked this one the most.”

“Between the Temples” opens in theaters on August 23.