An estimated 20 million Japanese viewers will watch a one-hour documentary film on religion in the United States, at the end of March, which will feature a segment filmed by a Japanese TV crew at a Conservative synagogue in Manhattan and a Hebrew Day School in Brooklyn, the director of the Japanese television network NHK office here reported.
Yoshio Uchida, the director here, said a five-man crew came from Japan to film material for the documentary, one of five on religions throughout the world. He said the documentary on the United States would also cover Catholics, Protestants and Mormons and perhaps some other sects. He explained he could not be more specific because the raw film was being taken back to Japan for editing.
The film on the United States, like the other four, will have Japanese subtitles. Uchida also said he could not give a more exact date for the time of the telecast of the American documentary. NHK is a public service network, he said.
FILMING DONE ON SITES
Arrangements for the crew to shoot film at the Magen David School, described as the largest and oldest of six Sephardic day schools in the United States, were made through Torah Umesorah, the National Society for Hebrew Day Schools. Rabbi Moshe Greenes, principal of the day school, said the TV crew filmed a Torah lesson in grade five, filmed the children in the school playground and interviewed the principal. Filming was done on Jan. 7.
The synagogue visited by the TV crew was Congregation Shaare Zedek in upper Manhattan, on recommendation of the Jewish Theological Seminary, the Conservative institution. Rabbi Shlomo Baiter, spiritual leader, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, that the crew, two members of which were fluent in English, asked to film a regular Saturday morning service but was told this was not permitted.
Instead, the crew attended a regular morning service on Jan. 5 in a downstairs room at which some 60 worshippers were present. The camera at one point was angled to shoot over the reader’s shoulder, focussing on the pointer as it was moved across the Torah Scroll.
Baiter said he had called to the attention of one of the cameramen a wall designed by Sol Nodel, president of the congregation who is a well-known artist and miniaturist, to commemorate the Holocaust. The rabbi said that the cameraman interrupted his explanation to say “I have been in Auschwitz.”
Uchida was asked how much of the one-hour documentary could be devoted to any one religion. He said that while this would be determined by the technicians in Japan, he expected that about 12 to 15 minutes of the hour-long documentary would deal with the Jewish material filmed here. He said he had been informed the documentary will not be shown in this country.
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