“The Tailor”
After much soul searching, I have decided that I made a mistake. This post is not appropriate for Seraphic Secret. It will, however, appear in BIG Hollywood in a few days.
How I Married Karen
The new book
by Robert J. Avrech
Available in All Major Book Stores
Adobe Digital Edition's version is available through the Lulu store!
- About Me
Robert J. Avrech
Los Angeles, California
I'm an Emmy Award winning screenwriter. I'm also an observant Jew, a religious Zionist, a conservative Republican, and a member of the NRA. I've been writing and producing in Hollywood for over twenty-five years. But the focus of my life is my family: my radiant wife, Karen—with whom I have been in love with since I was nine years-old—and my two daughters, who, thankfully, look like Karen. Not too long ago, we had three children. But our son, Ariel, died at the age of twenty-two from cancer. We miss him terribly. We think about him practically every minute of every day. People tell us that time heals, but Karen and I know this is not true. Time grinds away doing its terrible work. Ariel is gone. Yet absence becomes presence.
Ariel Chaim Avrech, ZT'L, May His Righteous Memory be a Blessing.
NOTE: Mac users will need to download a Windows Media Player for the Mac before viewing the videos below.
2012
video wmv [423MB]:
audio-only mp3 [15MB]: Ninth Annual Ariel Avrech Memorial Lecture
2011
video wmv [499MB]:
audio-only mp3 [18MB]: Eighth Annual Ariel Avrech Memorial Lecture
2010
video wmv [540MB]:
audio-only mp3 [80MB]: Seventh Annual Ariel Avrech Memorial Lecture
2009
video wmv [332MB]:
audio-only mp3 [64MB]: Sixth Annual Ariel Avrech Memorial Lecture
2008
video wmv [359MB]:
audio-only mp3 [70MB]: Fifth Annual Ariel Avrech Memorial Lecture
-
Contact
Seraphic Press
About Seraphic Press
About Ariel Avrech
About Robert J. Avrech Behind the Scenes at Seraphic Press
On the Horizon: Upcoming Projects
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The Hebrew Kid and the Apache Maiden
Download The Hebrew Kid and the Apache Maiden
THE HEBREW KID AND THE APACHE MAIDEN, by Robert J. Avrech, the debut novel for Seraphic Press, is out now.
What they are saying about The Hebrew Kid and the Apache Maiden
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ISBN #: 0-9754382-1-2
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25 Comments
Cute film, but I’m <b>very</b> lucky my boss wasn’t in the office when I watched it. (I was eating my lunch, BTW.) And I certainly can’t put this one on my iPod to share with the chillun.
One aside about the “yeshiva dress code” – it’s a fairly recent development. Look at photos of the Mirrer Yeshiva when it was relocated in Shanghai during WWII, and you’ll see the students wearing clothing of all sorts. One of my teachers was there in Shanghai with the yeshiva (he was six or seven years old), and he alleges that the current “uniform” is a combination of Chassidic influence and imitation of seminary rabbis (some of whom really do traditionally dress in black and white).
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Most of the Catholic orders have given up the nun’s habit. The last time I saw nuns wearing habits was two years ago, in Rome, and they were knee length, not full length.
Telling the difference between black and navy blue can be difficult.
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Not funny, Robert. Thanks for the new system; it will enable me to correct typos. Shabbat Shalom! Hodesh Tov!
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Do remember that "te absolvo" should usually have the emphatic "ego" in front of it. Most Latin verbs contain the person in the word itself, so facio = I make or doceo = I teach but absolvo is almost always an emphatic utterance thus the one saying it will say "Ego te absolvo". It's the latin equivalent of bold type in a combox.
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Eamonn:
Rewrite!
Thanks so much.
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Interesting and entertaining video! It had an aura of the lost art of making a good silent movie – where the body movements (except for Greta Garbo?) tell much of the story!
..And I improved my Latin vocabulary!
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Bill:
In the script I'm writing now there is a Catholic character who frequently breaks into Latin intoning: “Te absolvo.” Latin is kind of habit forming. Once you learn a little bit, you have to learn more. At least that's what's happening to this screenwriter.
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Believe it or not once upon a time in CA – in the 6th grade I had to take Greek and Latin – in a public school – and once I got a little exposure to it at the age of 12 you could see the origins of so many words .
You could even ferret out the meaning of an unknown English word seeing its Latin origins…
Bill
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Watching the movie reminded me of the time when I was about 12 and our family was on vacation in Canada. At Niagara Falls as were standing on the rim looking at the Falls when the Maid of the Mist came out with a boatload of people wearing black raincoats and caps.
I said "Hey Mom! Look at the boat down there full of nuns."
"Ted! Ted! Look at that boat full of nuns down there!" she cried to my dad.
My younger brother and I tried to muffle our laughs and figured we should tell her the truth before another boat came out and it would dawn on her that they were either wearing raincoats or Niagara Fall has the largest convent in the world.. Fortunately my mom was always a good sport and laughed it off.
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Johnny:
Sounds like Catholic humor and Jewish humor are cut from the same cloth. As a kid, when my parents took me to Niagra Falls, I got a huge migraine from the ROARING water.
Ever since then I've hated vacations.
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Rick:
That is funny. But do you have any idea of the tuition costs of private Jewish schools? Let me put it like this: Harvard is cheap.
But a good orthodox yeshiva education is priceless.
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Exactly what I was going to reply. If I had a nickel for every time I was harassed by Catholic kids, or accused of killing the Catholic god, I'd have a lot of nickels.
Sort of funny story: I was an innocent yeshiva kid, had never even heard of JC, and these Catholic kids came up my block with a kite bearing a picture of a bearded man who I assumed was Abraham Lincoln. They pointed to the kite and told me that it was a picture of their god who we Jews supposedly killed. I was confused, having never realized that Catholics worship Abraham Lincoln. I remember also thinking how supremely silly it was to talk about killing their god. The God I was familiar with couldn't be killed; otherwise, what would be the point?
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JC? Do you mean James Cagney? However cruelly you were treated as a child, by anti-Semitic bullies, (I’m very sorry for that), I want you and everybody on this website to know that it irks me no end when religious Jews use those all-around the-mulberry-bush circumlocutions to avoid mentioning Jesus Christ.
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Miranda: My use of “JC” has nothing to do with being bullied as a kid. I’m sorry it irks you, but I shall continue using it nevertheless.
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Ach, yeah – that awful stuff. It was seriously on the wane when I was a kid. I can honestly say I never heard an anti-Semitic comment from friends or family growing up; the first time I ever heard such stuff was as a teenager – the Hungarian father of a friend had imported old school Central European Jew-hatred in his luggage and passed it on to his son. Classic "Elders of Zion" stuff – it sounded like ignorant, fantastical bulls**t even then, and I couldn't help but make fun of it. I ended up hanging out with a bunch of Conservative and Orthodox guys in college – met them, funny enough, in a World Religions course taught by the dullest Lutheran alive. Always thought Jews and Catholics had far more in common than almost anyone else I'd met, so that terrible, crabbed pre-Vatican II hostility felt like something from another world. Sorry to hear you had to live through it.
You'll be happy to hear that the Good Friday Mass now features a petition to "pray for the Jews" – not because they need to be saved, but because they're "God's chosen people," full stop. We can thank John Paul II and Cardinal Ratzinger for that. The Church is doing its damnedest to kill the anti-Semitic bacillus, so much so that the biggest Zionists I know these days are Catholics. Change happens, and sometimes it happens fast, and hard.
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Rick:
To be fair, the Italian kids from St. Rose of Lima, around the corner, also used to kick the crap out of me and call me Christ killer. Ironically, years later, one of my best friends in Hollywood, a screenwriter, attended St. Rose of Lima as a kid.
This sounds dopey but my very best friends in Hollywood are Catholic. They are huge supporters of Israel and deeply honor Judaism.
My enemies and the enemies of Judaism are Islamists. Period.
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Where I went to yeshiva, in Flatbush, we would wait for the city bus on a corner that was a block from a public school in one direction and a block from a Catholic school in the other direction. The stuff we had to put up with was crazy. We were in fifth grade, the oldest class in that building. When I think of it now, I can't believe how young we were. We had one super-brave kid in the class who took nothing from anyone, regardless of size. He once broke an attache case over the head of one of our tormentors.
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Whoa Nellie!!… what happened to rule #1??
I like the layout of the new site, Robert, but I'm not a big fan of Intense Debate. Took me more than 10 tries to login using my nom de plume.
PJ
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Propeht Joe:
Beleive me I thought about rule #1, but decided that this film warranted an exemption. If I've offended you I apologize.
If Intense Debate contines to be a problem for our readers we will find an alternative. We are here for you.
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No Offense taken! I rarely use the word, but (unfortunately) it's not too uncommon in the office where I work!
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In Hollywood an expletive laden vocabulary is a sign of sophistication.
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It's cute, but why do these guys always have to get the hats wrong? No yeshiva guy wears a fedora with the brim bent down all the way around, nor do most wear it in that dopey back-of-the-head way. Hats worn properly look sharp, not shleppy.
I don't think black is b/c of mourning for the Temple. I think it's more of a statement of modesty, not trying to catch the eye. And once enough people are doing it, conformity kicks in, and everyone does it. But there are still plenty of black hats – even in Lakewood – who wear blue suits, grey suits, pinstriped suits, etc. I'm one of them.
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Kishke:
Yes, they always get the hats wrong but you really have to be on the inside of the frum world to know proper costume design.
Modesty, yes. No question. But I was always told that mourning for the Beis Ha-Mikdash was also a prime mover of black.
A female film person told me that she figured the black was because it's slimming.
Sounds like Lakewood has gone kind of wild since I last visited:-)
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Not realy. As a whole, it keeps getting more black & white, although there are some holdouts still. Even the women now wear black & white almost exclusively, although that might be b/c it's slimming. I hate the boringness of it, and I'm constantly nagging my wife & daughters to buy clothing of different colors.
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I think when fedoras were in, there was only one way to wear them. The rest looked silly. Come to think of it the old garrison cap in the Army was the same way. Now only the Marines wear them.
Now that I am obsessing on this any man's hat has one way to look sharp – the rest goofy. And what's with that "gang look" of wearing a baseball cap backwards?
Women – I think – have a lot more latitude about how to place the hat.
Except they don''t want to look like Ma Kettle.
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