The Jew in the Lotus

In 1990, eight Jewish delegates traveled to Dharamsala, India, to meet with the Dalai Lama of Tibet and share the Jewish "secret of spiritual survival in exile." Roger Kamenetz, a writer and good friend of the organizer, Mark Lieberman was invited to go along to observe and perhaps to write about the experience. Unexpectedly, his whole life changed. Award-winning documentarian Laurel Chiten (TWITCH AND SHOUT) follows the writer on an intense personal journey back to his Jewish roots. In his best-selling book of the same title, Kamenetz writes, "I'd come to Dharamsala as a skeptic. A cultural Jew, a Jew by birth. But my religion? Nervous was my religion. They say if you lie down in a deep well, even in daylight, you can see the stars. I was in a deep well, looking up. And I saw something absolutely brilliant." Chiten tells the story of this Jewish-Buddhist encounter with beautiful images of the Tibetan enclave in Dharamsala and interviews with some of the most progressive Jewish thinkers in North America. Included are Jewish renewal icons Blu Greenberg, Reb Zalman Shachter-Shlomi, Rabbi Yitz Greenberg and Rabbi Jonathan Omer Man. We also hear from the Dalai Lama himself.

Laurel Chiten has been an independent filmmaker for more than fifteen years. She is the producer/director of Twitch and Shout, the award-winning documentary about people living with Tourette syndrome that was nationally broadcast on the PBS series P.O.V. in 1995, nominated for the 17th Annual Emmy Awards, and won Best of Sociology Category from the 1995 Golden Gate Awards Competition. Chiten is also producer/director/co-writer of Two in Twenty, a satirical five-episode soap opera, which remains a cult classic in the home video market.