In honor of the 15th anniversary of the passing of the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory, Jewish Educational Media has released a new collection of interviews featuring people personally touched by the Rebbe’s concern for every Jew.
Titled “Sensitivity,” the new DVD presents 15 stories of individuals who experienced the Rebbe’s care and attention to their smallest needs, exploring through each retelling the global reach of the Rebbe’s personal touch.
“So little is known about the Rebbe’s life, but we can learn a great deal by the way he impacted the world through one-on-one contact with people,” said Chabad-Lubavitch Rabbi Elkanah Shmotkin, the executive director of JEM who served as executive producer and director of the new release. “The power of video and hearing these stories in first person is that people can be inspired by the stories in a way that is different from hearing a teaching of the Rebbe.”
Each of the 15 interviews demonstrates how the Rebbe related to every person with the same intensity, depth of understanding, and familial concern. Among its segments, “Sensitivity” shows how the Rebbe reminded a man the date of the man’s own wedding anniversary, advised a young mother what foods to feed her new baby, and walked a lost newcomer across the street to his desired destination.
According to the video’s introduction, which explores the role of a Jewish leader throughout history, these types of interactions teach “what it means to care for another individual truly and selflessly.”
To create the DVD, JEM sorted through some 250 video interviews, old and new, to find ones that were most fitting with the production’s theme.
“We were really looking for the more simple stories that sometimes one may overlook. They’re not miraculous stories, they’re just instances of helping another person,” said Rabbi Yechiel Cagen, producer of the film. “The more I am involved with documenting these interviews, the more I see these fascinating stories about how the Rebbe affected and was involved with people on so many levels.”
With a running time of 98 minutes, “Sensitivity” is one of the longest videos that JEM has released, namely because “there is so much that had to be included,” said Cagen. It is narrated in both English and Hebrew, and has subtitles in English, French, Russian, Hebrew and Spanish.
The interviews included in the film were culled from JEM’s oral history project, which for the past eight years has recorded the stories of hundreds of individuals who had personal encounters of the Rebbe.
“In essence, the goal of this project and the video is for people to learn from the Rebbe’s life,” said Shmotkin. “If they are inspired and moved to improve their own lives, then the video has done well.”
To order “Sensitivity,” click here.
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