Bari Pearlman talks with director Pearl Gluck about Divan.

As the first Yiddish Fulbright scholar, Pearl Gluck set off to Hungary in March, 1998 to collect oral histories for her graduate thesis in European Studies. With a small Hi-8 camera as a field research tool, she began what would eventually become Divan, a multi-layered documentary weaving the traditional Hasidic stories she found into the story of her own personal journey to understand how the identities we chose relate to our histories, our communities and our families. And then of course, there’s the story of the divan, a couch held onto by her family in Hungary because a great Rabbi once slept on it, and which she wants for her own. Fellow documentary filmmaker Bari Pearlman sat down on the divan in Pearl’s Manhattan apartment to discuss how and why it got there.

Bari Pearlman: I understand that when you set out to Hungary for the first time, you weren’t planning to make a film.

Pearl Gluck: I knew nothing about film before I started. I was trained as an ethnographer, and was doing an oral history project at NYU in their European Studies program. And then I got a Fulbright to go to Hungary and collect Yiddish stories. My father, ironically, was the first one to give me a camera, as just a Hanukkah gift. He gave me this garbage Hi-8 camera, which then was hot new technology. So I took that with me to Hungary on my Fulbright.

Pearlman: So he just thought you’d take some home movies of the Old Country to send back to him.

Gluck: Correct. And I don’t think he or I realized it at the time, but when I look back I realize that that was a sign that he was kind of accepting my path in a way. So I took this camera instead of using a tape recorder. But then people just changed completely in front of the camera. I mean, I took the camera out, and here are people who hadn’t used Yiddish in 50 years, who didn’t pass on the language for various reasons, one of which is they just don’t want their kids to be identifiably Jewish in Hungary. And all of a sudden they were groping for some dusty yarmulke in a corner somewhere, and the women put their little doilies on their heads that they picked up at synagogue, and just really sort of arranged themselves for what they perceived to be a public discussion. I realized that, for them, behind that camera wasn’t some Yiddish-speaking Brooklyn Jewess, it was like hundreds of people who might hear them orate. And that’s the process that got me really excited, and we both discovered it together as I collected these stories.

Pearlman: So, when you decided to turn your thesis into a film project, you were going to make a film about Yiddish storytelling?

Gluck: My Master’s thesis was supposed to be about the last Hasidic story. New Hasidic stories are essentially not being told. But the old stories, which you hear in the film, about Rabbis healing or saving lives, or their somehow knowing something. It’s almost like Martin Luther King, like they have a dream and they don’t know quite how they’re going to get there, but the steps that they take become miraculous looking back. And I believe that the last true Hasidic story told, and it was such a miracle story, is the one about the Holocaust. Some might disagree with me, but that was my theory.

Pearlman: And then how did that develop into what eventually became Divan?

Gluck: In writing all this up for my thesis, I discovered that in fact, as much as I loved writing, I loved it for visual reasons. And I remember being in my friend’s office and getting on the Internet and [researching] documentary film. I started to watch as many as I could get my hands on in Hungary. And then when I came back to NYU after my Fulbright, I started taking classes related to documentary filmmaking. And I met Josh Wiletsky, and then I met Judith Helfland. I started to get into this community of filmmakers and to ask certain questions, and I started to learn. And then I put together a proposal for a Yiddish storytelling documentary, and Josh Wiletsky said, you can’t be a first-time filmmaker and get anyone to fund a film about Yiddish storytelling. And then he asked me, “Do you have a Hasidic or Yiddish story in your family?” And I said, of course I do. And it was about the couch, and the Rabbi, or Rebbe, coming to sleep on it.

So originally, the idea was to tell the story about the couch as a way of [relaying the history] of Hasidic stories. And I did get a grant to research that, which sent me back to Hungary, where I met with Baruch in that scene where he takes me to the couch. William Tyler Smith shot it, and kept it so personal and so intimate. There are 10 people in the room when I’m sitting on the couch with Baruch, and it really just looks like it’s the two of us. And then when I lost the couch and said, that’s it, there’s no film, Billy was the one who said, “Oh no, this is where the film starts, Pearl.” And he kept rolling. And at that point, it just became clear what the story was really about. How do you make sense of your past? What is your responsibility to your history? And then I had to figure out how those all come together.

Pearlman: Did you decide then that it was going to be an autobiographical film?

Gluck: No. It was in the editing room that Zelda Greenstein said, “This is your story.” And then finally she was like, “This is your story with your father.” And I was so resistant to that. I didn’t want to bring my father into this – this is my sin (laughs), it’s my wrongdoing, why does he have to suffer? But then that resistance added to the creative energy. Zelda and I wrote like 85 versions of narration, but it was not until we brought in Susan Korda, an outside writer who had not been involved with the film for 18 months, or 5 years for that matter, that we were able to finally get the distance that was necessary to refresh the project. I showed Susie the work in progress, and our conversation began at 12:00 in the afternoon, we walked the dog, we did her errands (laughs), and came back at midnight and were still talking about the film. So whereas Zelda was the editor of incredible talent who pulled together all of these layers, when Susie came in, it was about the glue that would hold it all together, the personal element that I was rejecting so much. And then after all of that, with Zelda gone and Susie gone, it was me alone in the editing room, and at that point I was so tired of the film that I was an outsider. So I then made the last edits, and finished it.

Pearlman: Throughout the film, there are other individuals sitting on the divan in your living room speaking about their experience in the Hasidic or ultra-orthodox community. When did you decide to add those other voices?

Gluck: When I first came back with footage, I put together a short presentation, and did a screening in Borough Park, at an undisclosed location (laughs), and showed it to people who were living on the edge. Afterwards, there was this unbelievable discussion that I videotaped. And when I came home and looked at the footage, I discovered that the sound hadn’t been on. I thought I was going to cry. That night, I woke up at 4 in the morning, and I know this sounds dramatic but it’s true, and I knew I needed to put ex-Hasidim or formerly ultra-Orthodox people on the couch as part of the narrative. Because I was so uncomfortable with it just being me. I didn’t feel like my story was representative or a microcosm of what happens when you have to make peace with your history, even your very recent history. I felt like it had to be a communal narrative about that, because part of storytelling is the communal voice. And through the chorus on the couch, a lot of elements of Hasidic culture were coming together. First of all, the storytelling. Second of all, this passionate hunger for keeping the past alive, and that torn place that we’re all in, in and out of the community. And third of all, the interaction, the court, the tish.

Pearlman: And then, woven throughout the film are the Hasidic stories you actually went there to find in the first place.

Gluck: This is a subtle piece, and if you know about Hasidism, you would catch this, but it’s okay if you don’t. What I wanted to do was to tell the history of Hasidic storytelling by the stories I’d chosen. So I picked stories from the different historical periods of Hasidic storytelling, and I tagged them onto the Rabbi who slept on the couch. Because Hasidic stories can be about anyone, and the point is the lesson you learn from them. So there are actually stories dating back to the first generation of Hasidic Rebbes. Only the third story, about the child who was healed, is about the Kossony Rebbe that slept on the couch in the 1900s. And he was famous for being open-minded to the secular Jews. He was the one who harbored them when they were going to be sent to Poland during World War II. So actually, he is the perfect metaphor for the possibility of openness. And then the whole film, the story of the couch, is a Hasidic story of the 2000s.

Pearlman: That’s a lot of layers to integrate into 77 minutes!

Gluck: It was so hard to weave those layers. It was a very creative collaboration, but I think for Zelda to sit there and listen to me insist on bringing those three layers together — the making and unmaking of the couch, the actual vérité story of getting the couch, and the people sitting on the couch and telling their stories — and then I wanted on top of that to add the Hasidic stories, she was like, how in the hell are we going to do it? And I was pretty adamant, I can’t say I am an easy director to work with (laughs). But we did it.

Pearlman: As you’ve said, this film is very much about your relationship with your father and all it represents. But it would seem that your mother, who pioneered your way into the secular world in the first place, should be more of a protagonist for you.

Gluck: There’s definitely some ladylore in here (laughs). Back to my grandmother, back to my great aunt in the film who says, “Your husband is not going to want this couch” and I’m like, I don’t have a husband. She herself was sneaking Sholem Aleichem books out of the library in Hungary, and her father was furious when he found them under her pillow. And then there’s my mother, who left for her reasons, very different from mine. She is a hero for me, but she does not speak to my issues of the longing, because from her perspective, and she says it point blank, “My life just went on. I don’t see it as changing.” And I do see it as changing. And it’s changing not just the people who leave or have to deal with their decisions, but those around them. And that’s also a guiding force of the film, a woman telling a Hasidic story. You will not find a woman sitting and holding court, but here you do. So in the film, the hero is really my father, because he’s the one who had to overcome an obstacle. And the question is, “Does he, or do I?” And that’s really what the film is about.

Pearlman: Has he seen the film?

Gluck: Oh yeah. But I didn’t show it to him until the very, very last minute. And I explained to him that this is really going to change people’s lives, it already has. People are reaching out to their parents, parents are reaching out to their kids. And he was like, “Why do I care? Why do I have to be out there for that?” But then he turned to me and said, “But, it’s your life.” And really, you know what I say when I tell this story, I say that my life changed 360 degrees in that moment. I was still standing in the same place, but I was seeing it from a whole other perspective. He single-handedly removed a burden that maybe I personally put onto myself, but he removed it by looking at the film. I mean, he said, “Take out the following five shots” and we negotiated (laughs), and then, you know, two out of the five stayed in. But he understood that there really are people’s lives at stake here.

Pearlman: What is your relationship to the spirituality that comes across in those stories, which, in the way you tell them, are clearly so magical and wonderful and miraculous to you? Is that where your longing comes in?

Gluck: That was the big elephant in the middle of the editing room that I never wanted to deal with, which is the question of belief. The word I am comfortable with for spirituality – spirit – is what inspired me to do it in the first place, the love and passion for these kinds of stories. And what makes Hasidism so interesting to me still, in addition to the family, which is for me my biggest religious connection, is the spirit. There’s such a sweaty, passionate, mystical, mythical place, and you can open that whole imagination side of you up, and connect that to your observance and obedience to some higher power, whatever that may be. And that’s so exciting. It’s almost like using the arts to create community, which is what I love doing. But I’m cheating, because the big elephant in the middle of the room was, but are you religious? Do you keep Shabbat? Do you go to synagogue? These are the questions I always get after every screening. And I let the people on the couch do the talking along those lines. As one woman says, “I am a good person though I am not religious.” Whereas you hear someone else say the opposite, which is “If you don’t continue in the Jewish orthodox tradition, your kids won’t. You are cutting off the line.” And by “the line,” she doesn’t mean blood. She means orthodoxy. So I put in both voices, because I myself didn’t want to make a film that answers questions. I wanted to make a film that asks them. And so I’m not really sure, actually, where I stand personally. I feel like I have a foot in both places, and that’s cheating, but so what? That’s what I do. I have already gotten calls from people who run programs for troubled teens in the Hasidic community, and they want me to come and talk to them. Because they don’t see me as someone who is saying “Leave.” They see me as someone who is saying “Deal with it.”

Divan opens at New York’s Film Forum on March 17, followed by other major cities nationally. For more information, visit www.palinkapictures.com.