Title: Brooklyn Religious Leaders Try to Diffuse Tensions in the Documentary 'All God's Children' (DOC NYC)

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Tiffany Hansen: This is All Of It. I'm Tiffany Hansen in for Alison Stewart. Before we get into our next conversation, I want to let you know that we've got-- Coming up in our second hour, because I'm pretty excited about it, we're going to talk about the life of Allee Willis who wrote well-loved hits like the Friends theme song Earth, Wind and Fires, September. A new documentary we will talk about shares her life story, and next hour as well, comedian Lane Moore will be here to talk about the 10-year anniversary of her stage show Tinder Live, which gives the audience control of her dating profiles.

We'll also talk with the show's special guest star Janeane Garofalo. Right now we're going to continue with a series of conversations about films that you can see at this year's DOC NYC Festival. We're looking now at a story that's close to home. For the last few years, one Jewish temple and one Baptist church in Brooklyn have been collaborating on a project to get to know each other, to understand their respective faiths, their agreements and disagreements, and how to confront racism, discrimination, and anti-semitism together, not divided.

The documentary follows the Rev. Dr. Robert Waterman of Antioch Baptist Church in Bed-Stuy and Rabbi Rachel Timoner of the Congregation Beth Elohim in Park Slope. The Reverend Doctor and the rabbi are both active in their communities. They care about social justice, standing for what they believe is right, and also want to address underlying tensions between Black and Jewish residents in Brooklyn, especially around deed theft and a rise in anti-semitism.

The documentary is called All God's Children. It follows their congregations through the ups and downs of their relationship. That film, as I mentioned, is screening at the DOC NYC Festival. It's online now through December 1st. With us now is the director, Ondi Timoner. Ondi, hello. Welcome.

Ondi Timoner: Hi there. Thank you.

Tiffany Hansen: I'm glad you're with us. The Rev. Dr. Robert Waterman. Welcome.

Rev. Dr. Robert Waterman: Welcome.

Tiffany Hansen: Thank you for being here. Rabbi Rachel Timoner, welcome to you as well.

Rabbi Rachel Timoner: Hi. So glad to be here.

Tiffany Hansen: Rabbi Rachel, I would like to start with you and your congregation at Beth Elohim. You joined that congregation in 2015. This partnership began five years ago. I'm just curious about the timeline here. Talk us through how you got connected.

Rabbi Rachel Timoner: Ever since I arrived I knew I wanted to work deeply on issues of race and racism in Brooklyn and in America. It took me a while to get to the place where I was ready to reach out for a partner. Rev. Waterman, actually, first reached out to me because he was wanting to do a session about antisemitism in a gathering that he was hosting at the church. Brad Lander, a mutual friend, recommended me. I went and I had a chance to meet him and see what he was building there, and got it in my head, like, "Huh, maybe Pastor Waterman would be a really good partner for me and for our congregation for the kind of work I wanted to do, which was deep thoughtful work around racism and antisemitism and really healing the various forms of suffering and injustice in Brooklyn.

Tiffany Hansen: Rev. Waterman, when she reached out, what did you think? You thought, "This is a fantastic idea."

Rev. Dr. Robert Waterman: No, actually, what happens, again, I reached out to her because Brad Landers and some others of our Jewish politicians came to me about the conversation that was happening in the community where some of our young Black boys were running around knocking the hats off of some of our Hasidic communities over there, as when they asked to do something on antisemitism. I host a monthly meeting with elected officials, community organizations from education to NYPD and clergy.

I used that month to educate us on antisemitism. That's when I reached out to Rabbi Timoner and we started from there. She came, she observed, we prayed, and then I let her go. Then she came back to me. Rabbi Timoner, you can pick it up from there.

Ondi Timoner: Just with the proposal of what if we brought our communities together and what if we got to know each other deeply and not just to do what I call the Kumbaya moment. I was really wanting that. I wanted to, yes, have really built relationships, but based on really being truthful with each other about what each of our communities was facing and the ways that our communities had interacted in the past that had caused harm, and so we did all right.

Rev. Dr. Robert Waterman: Then I said, "I agree based upon our agreement of doing both antisemitism and racism because to educate us on antisemitism is one thing, but to educate our Jewish community on racism is another." We both are experiencing something that's similar. We agreed that we would tackle both issues at the same time.

Tiffany Hansen: Those issues, speaking that truth, Rabbi, is not easy. I can't anticipate you thinking there was going to be a Kumbaya moment. I'm sure you had concerns, and I wonder what they were.

Rabbi Rachel Timoner: My number one concern was that people would get-- I knew people would get uncomfortable, and it would be difficult and painful. My number one concern would be that, either side, either group would walk away, that we'd say, "You know what? This is too much. This is uncomfortable. This is painful, or we don't actually trust this is going anywhere and we give up," because I know this is a lifelong thing. It's going to take a lot of work for a long time, a lot of difficult conversations.

We have to have the courage to stay in it, even when it's really uncomfortable. That was my biggest fear, is that we would do something shallow or do something light or do something that just looked good but wasn't actually substantive.

Rev. Dr. Robert Waterman: Likewise with me, when the conversation, rather than the Kumbaya moment, a lot of the time, it was almost a goodbye moment to deal with the issues and the struggles that we had to go through. It was not an easy thing, starting with ourselves, understanding our theology with each other, before we even brought our core group or even before we brought our congregations in.

It was a working pattern that we had to go through first to get past our own ills as leaders of our two congregations and then to invite a core group of people that were close to us and allow them to converse and then bring the congregation. It was a step by step in the five years that we participated in this venture.

Tiffany Hansen: Reverend, I have to believe that you had some conversations with the people involved about sitting in your discomfort and what it means to do that and what the benefit of it is. I'm just wondering what you say to someone because that's life. We have to sit in our discomfort many times in our lives, many times throughout our day, even. I'm just wondering how you talk to people about that and what words of encouragement you have. Did you have those words before you started in this endeavor?

Rev. Dr. Robert Waterman: Because of the community that I resided, I took over Antioch about 23 years ago. Understanding the transition of the community through the gentrification and all of that that happened within our community and sitting in, "Is that something that I do?" You look for the change that you can occur. Sometime I always relate this relationship that we have more so of a marriage partnership, that it's easier for us to change partners versus changing ourselves.

Sitting in discomfort is more so adjusting ourselves toward the condition that's happening, but yet making a manifestation to change the environment that we live in, and that is only by communicating. Me going through my transformation was more about understanding who I am and then helping the people that I serve, from the church to the community, to understand that it's going to go through some changes, but yet that we have to be a part and participate in the change versus just accepting change when it comes.

Tiffany Hansen: Ondi, I want to bring you into the conversation. When you hear the rabbi and the Reverend Doctor talk about the very real possibility that things could just fall apart and people walk away, one, I can imagine that you're thinking that makes for great film. It also doesn't, because it could have just fallen apart. I'm wondering what you saw here that you thought would be just important, magical to put on the screen.

Ondi Timoner: That's funny. I am standing here in the Hamburg airport and listening to these two and I'm just thinking how surreal it is that we've reached this point, that we actually have a film, that we actually played the film, that it was a standing ovation and sold out and people love it so much, and I'm just like, "How did this happen?" Because there were so many times that I thought there would be no film because it was so difficult and they went through so many challenges.

I think back to a scene in the movie where Rachel says, "Whatever happens, we will not walk away because we're going to change in here," meaning herself, "In the temple," talking to both congregations, "And out there." That's exactly what happened, but it was really tumultuous along the way, and of course that does make for great verite documentary footage. I am the rabbi's sister. I was making a film about the rabbi from before that called Rebel Rabbi.

I was always very inspired by my sister's absolute dedication to social justice and to fighting racism. She was always in jail. Every time I landed in New York because I live in California, she was always being arrested for putting her body on the line in nonviolent protests. I thought, "I make movies about all these impossible visionaries who take on impossible things. Why am I not filming my own sister?" I started filming her and then our father passed away.

I made the movie Last Flight Home that Rachel's featured prominently in in the middle of this partnership, but she sat down with the Reverend five years ago this very month, and that meeting was so meaningful. They laid out everything from deed theft which is tied to gentrification, racism, and anti-semitism. They decided they were going to start to worship together. They were going to bring their congregations together and they were going to become family.

I thought, "If this can happen, then this will be a model for dialogue and partnership and standing together across all differences." Racial, class, geographical, economic, whatever you have, religious, especially in this case, there's just so many challenges they were up against and they brought a core group together, six people from each congregation, and they sat down monthly and they faced it. They had some really hard times, but they stuck with it.

It has evolved and it turned into this model and emerged at this exact time in history when we need it more than ever. I just feel incredibly blessed that we took that journey and that they let us in. These two are so brave, but they are also surrounded by two congregations that are so brave to not only go out on this expedition together but to allow cameras in and then to say, "Oh, you know what? Don't change anything, let's just do this." Then the way it's been striking a chord with people is truly so heartening, I think, for all of us on this zoom right now.

Tiffany Hansen: We're talking with Ondi Timoner and her sister, Rabbi Rachel Timoner, and the Rev. Dr. Robert Waterman about All God's Children. It's a documentary that's screening now at the DOC NYC Festival. Reverend Doctor, we heard there about the intersection of faith and social justice in the Rabbi's life. I wonder how you viewed that connection between those two.

Rev. Dr. Robert Waterman: I've been so involved in politics, even with the core group that I-- we got about 100 people again, which is the African American Clergy and Elected Officials Organization that meet monthly with elected officials, clergy, community-based organizations, NYPD, educators across the board. Politically-wise. I've ran for office three times, City Council twice, district leader. I sit on Community Board 3. I'm so involved in my community as a whole. For anything that moves in shape within Bedford–Stuyvesant, it has to drop by my door.

Tiffany Hansen: Love it.

Rev. Dr. Robert Waterman: Social justice is something that we do. Our Black history has always been tied to social justice. You cannot function correctly in a Black church and not tie it to social justice because we're always underserved in our education, our healthcare, our workforce. It's always like that.

Tiffany Hansen: We have just a minute left here. Rabbi, I want to know what you hope-- and I know you can't really predict this, but in the last 30 seconds we have here, what do you hope people will take with them when they are finished watching this film?

Rabbi Rachel Timoner: We're in such a bleak moment right now post-election. I think a lot of people are needing to try to find hope and light somewhere. We're also in a moment where we either have cancel culture, if anybody says anything wrong, that they are destroyed, or on the other side, gleeful hate. Here, we have two communities trying to do neither of those things, trying to be in a conversation where no one's expected to be perfect, but where we stay in it together and we try to find a future together in this country that's based on listening and humility and understanding.

I am hoping that lots of people see this and think, "I could do that too. In fact, that's the way forward for my community. Let's try."

Tiffany Hansen: Reverend Doctor, would you say similar?

Rev. Dr. Robert Waterman: Similar to what Rabbi said, but the last thing is that you can't legislate love. I think the problem is that we are trying to allow too many politicians to legislate love and change in community when the only way that you can actually love is communicating. What have been just demonstrated between CBE and ABC is that we demonstrated love by communicating, by speaking, by talking. Even if it hurts to communicate how you feel, go through the experience. That can't be legislated. It has to be demonstrated.

Tiffany Hansen: The film is titled All God's Children. We've been talking with director Ondi Timoner. Ondi, thank you. Also the Rev. Dr. Robert Waterman and Rabbi Rachel Timoner. The film is part of the DOC NYC Festival happening now. The film is screening through December 1st. Thank you all so much for your time today. We appreciate it.

Rev. Dr. Robert Waterman: Thank you.

Ondi Timoner: Thanks for having us on.