The film for teens tells about the old and new buildings of the Green Road synagogue | Local News

A 2021 Beachwood High School graduate created a 16-minute film, “Make Me a Sanctuary,” which chronicles the life of the congregation that built the original Green Road Synagogue building that opened in 1973, and the decision to demolish this building for a new one on the same site.

With a budget of less than $ 1,000 and at least 500 hours of time, with the help of his father and the help of former Green Road Synagogue President Ari H. Jaffe, Jacob Pincus researched and chronicles the life of the congregation and its history.

Pincus, 18, interviewed members of the synagogue, including Holocaust survivors Sarah and Louis Radzeli, who have since died, and to whom the film is dedicated.

“The building was built by Holocaust survivors,” Pincus told the Cleveland Jewish News. “But really, it was with their hands, and a lot of them weren’t formally trained. … So there are a lot of structural and architectural flaws in the previous building that were a little too far away for it to be reasonable or able for them to really do it right again.

Pincus was born in Pittsburgh and moved to Beachwood in 2011 at the age of 8. His family has belonged to the Green Road Synagogue for several years.

Pincus attended the Agnon School (now the Joseph and Florence Mandel Jewish School) in Beachwood and later the Fuchs Mizrachi School in Beachwood. At that point, he and his family turned to the Green Road Synagogue. He graduated in the spring from Beachwood High School.

“Even though you can’t visibly see it in the previous building, there’s still a story to be told there,” Pincus said.

Pincus has submitted the film to the Cleveland Jewish Film Festival and the Chagrin Documentary Film Festival, as well as the Cleveland International Film Festival and other festivals.

He had previously made a film, “Stronger Than Steel,” about his family’s synagogue in Pittsburgh, The Tree of Life Congregation, which in 2018 became the site of the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in history. the United States.

Pincus is a camp counselor at Camp Stone in Sugar Grove, Pa., Which is headquartered in the Green Road Synagogue building. He will study at the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem in the fall and travel to the University of Southern California, Los Angeles to study film in 2022.

Editor’s Note: Ari H. Jaffe is a member of the board of directors of the Cleveland Jewish Publication Company.