L ifestyle /C ulture
CNN’s ‘Jerusalem’ Worth the Watch
T E L EVISION
JARRAD SAFFREN | JE STAFF
A SERIES IS ONLY as good
as its characters, and when
history is its subject matter,
the characters are all there. It’s
just on the producers to deliver
an interesting and entertaining
product. In CNN’s “Jerusalem: City
of Faith and Fury,” they do
just that.

Blackfin, the production
company behind the six-part
docuseries, premiering on
CNN at 10 p.m. on July 18,
wanted to explore the holy city’s
history to help viewers under-
stand its connection to the
present-day Israeli-Palestinian
conflict, according to Executive
Producer Jordan Rosenblum.

And if
you watch
“Jerusalem,” you will see the
truth in the cliché that history
repeats itself: Jews, Christians
and Muslims all consider
Jerusalem to be their sacred
place, so they keep fighting
over it, but nobody really wins
in the end.

The series makes this histor-
ical lesson clear by focusing
on charismatic leaders in each
religious group, all of whom
try to do the same thing —
establish absolute control over
Jerusalem for their people —
and all of whom fail in the
long run. There’s King David;
there’s Richard the Lionheart,
the ferocious warrior-king of
England; and there’s Saladin,
the tactical mastermind who
defeats the Christian crusaders
in the legendary Battle of
Hattin. There are several others
as well, including David
Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir,
the driving forces behind the
creation of modern-day Israel
and its strategic alliance with
the United States.

Rosenblum and his team
use a stylized combination
of cinematic, academic and
18 JULY 15, 2021
journalistic qualities to bring
these epic characters to life.

Cinematically, actors play out
the ancient scenes. This can be
an annoying and superfluous
feature in documentaries that
are designed more to educate
than to entertain. But in
“Jerusalem,” it works, and it adds
a layer of entertainment that
most documentaries don’t have.

In the series’ first episode,
“The Kingdom,” about King
David’s conquest of Jerusalem,
and in its third episode, “Holy
War,” about the conflict over
the city between Muslims and
Christian crusaders, the actors
who play David, Richard the
Lionheart and Saladin use
walking styles, facial expres-
sions and postures to leave
indelible impressions in the
minds of viewers. That they pull
this off without dialogue makes
it all the more impressive.

The actors don’t need to
speak, though, because the
experts likely have far more to
say than any script could. And
in “Jerusalem,” the experts are
a group of academics/history
nerds who have no trouble
showing their passion for the
subject matter. They inflect with
their voices and gesticulate with
their hands. They offer timeless
lessons about history and power,
like how a good leader can unite
warring factions within a tribe,
in accessible and memorable
terms. They show almost no
bias toward any of the three
religions. Sports TV shows often
make the mistake of not using
enough writers, the people who
spend their days thinking about
the games. The producers of
“Jerusalem” don’t make the same
mistake because when it comes
to the history of the holy city,
these academics are the people
who spend their days thinking
about it, and Blackfin makes
the right call in depending on
them to explain it.

“It was a deliberate decision
not to do dialogue (with the
Cleopatra, ruler of ancient Egypt, in CNN’s docuseries “Jerusalem.”
Herod the Great in CNN’s docuseries “Jerusalem.”
actors),” Rosenblum said.

Rosenblum also said that
CNN was a partner in this
project from the beginning of
its development, which was
logical, as the project, at its
core, was journalistic.

The actors and their colorful
scenes, the professors and
their passionate commentary
— all of that works because
it’s grounded in not just an
adherence to factual accuracy,
but in an efficient deployment
of the facts themselves. Such
details are used to deepen
the audience’s understanding
JEWISH EXPONENT
without overwhelming its
senses. Years and eras are
mentioned to give viewers
a sense of ancient stories as
history, and not just as tall
tales. Some gray political reali-
ties, like Richard the Lionheart
facing a threat to his English
throne as he tries to expand
his empire to Jerusalem, are
emphasized as much as black-
and-white battle results.

And in later episodes, like
“Independence & Catastrophe,”
about the birth of modern-day
Israel, archival videos and stills
Courtesy of CNN
are wielded to bring figures
like Ben-Gurion and Meir
to life.

“We wanted to tell the facts
as they happened,” Rosenblum
said. “And there’s no better
partner to do that with than
CNN.” By combining cinematic,
academic and journalistic
qualities, “Jerusalem” shows
that, even as history repeats
itself, it’s a scintillating and
riveting ride. l
jsaffren@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0740
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM



L ifestyle /C ulture
Play Inspired by Concentration Camp Story Debuts
T H EATER
JARRAD SAFFREN | JE STAFF
STEVEN FISHER IS NOT
Jewish. He actually grew up in
a Catholic family in Delaware
County. But he was inspired to write
“The Last Boy,” a play about the
Holocaust, anyway.

The playwright described
the story of “The Last Boy,”
which opened a two-week
off-Broadway run at the Theatre
at St. Clement’s in New York
City on July 10, as “Dead Poets
Society Meets Anne Frank.” It’s
a historical fiction inspired by
Terezin, a Nazi concentration
camp where a group of young
boys created a secret literary
society and hand-produced a
weekly magazine, Vedem, with
poems and prose. Toward the
end of World War II, as the
Allies advanced and the Nazis
started burning their records,
the only remaining member
of the society left in the camp,
Sidney Taussig, buried the
Vedem archives.

Upon liberation, Taussig dug
up the archives and brought
them with him to Prague,
ensuring their survival. Most
of his friends in the society,
though, about 85 out of the
100, according to Fisher, died
in the Holocaust.

Fisher discovered the story in
his former life as a youth choir
director in the Philadelphia
area. Every year he would take
his Keystone State Boychoir
on performance tours/educa-
tional trips. Several years ago,
he decided to take the choir to
the Terezin site in the Czech
Republic because he was worried
that the historical memory of
the Holocaust was fading, he
said. During a pretrip to the
site, now a museum, to scout
the location, Fisher bought a
book with the highlights from
those old Vedem archives. He
took it back to his hotel room,
started reading and didn’t sleep
that night.

JEWISHEXPONENT.COM Fisher was hooked on the
boys’ stories about missing
food and about being excited
to be away from their parents,
and to be living with other
boys their own age. He was
also amused by their bawdi-
ness and their evisceration of
their “dorm dad.”
“These were teenage boys,”
Fisher said.

After the choir trip to
Terezin, Fisher learned that
Taussig was still alive, and
living in Florida. He visited
the survivor and got a first-
hand account of life in the
camp. Taussig told his guest
stories about hearing other
boys crying themselves to sleep
over hunger, and about seeing
the Nazis post regular lists of
about 1,000 people who would
be “transported east.”
“They didn’t know what was
east,” Fisher said. “But they
knew it wasn’t good.”
Taussig also explained
Vedem’s editorial process: The
100 or so boys would submit
entries to the editor each week,
and three or four would be
selected. Then, the boys would
gather every Friday at sundown
— in the attic during winter,
outside during summer — to
read their poems and stories
aloud. After that visit, Fisher
brought Taussig to Philadelphia
for the choir to honor him
at the National Museum of
American Jewish History. For
that June 2019 event, Fisher
wrote a musical performance
about the Vedem story. But
when the performance ended,
he asked Taussig if he could
take it a step further: Fisher
wrote plays in his spare time,
and he was still holding onto a
childhood dream of getting one
to Broadway. Now he wanted
to write a play inspired by the
story of Taussig and Vedem.

Taussig gave his blessing, on
one condition.

“I just want to see it on
Broadway before time does to
me what Hitler failed to do,”
The title card for “The Last Boy,” a play about Jewish boys who created a literary magazine while living in a
concentration camp.

Courtesy of Steven Fisher
I just want to see it on Broadway before time does to me what Hitler
failed to do.”
SIDNEY TAUSSIG
Taussig said to Fisher.

The choir director wrote
the play and in October 2020,
after 30 years of running youth
choir programs, he retired.

Then, he decided to raise
money and turn the play into
an off-Broadway production,
hoping it would be ready to
debut just as the world was
ready to reopen after the
pandemic faded.

“The Last Boy” was the first
NYC premiere since the theater
industry closed in March 2020.

Taussig can’t attend this run
because he’s recovering from a
broken femur, but the plan was
never for him to be there: It was
for him to be in the audience
for the Broadway opening.

“We do have hopes of
moving it to Broadway, and
we’ll bring him up from Florida
as the inspiration for the story,”
Fisher said.

Tickets to the remaining
shows are available via the
event’s website: thelastboy.info.

JEWISH EXPONENT
Ten percent of the proceeds
will go to NMAJH in honor
of the late real estate icon Ron
Rubin, who was instrumental
in the museum’s founding,
according to Suzanne Cohn,
a Philadelphia resident,
Holocaust survivor and friend
of both Fisher and Rubin. l
jsaffren@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0740
JULY 15, 2021
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