Serena Dykman Serves Us Some Babka

PopEntertainment
Aug 8
13 min read

Serena Dykman

Serves Us Some Babka

by Jay S. Jacobs

“You can't beat a Babka,” so said Elaine Benes in a classic episode of Seinfeld. The delicacy is a sweet, braided bread often made with chocolate that originated in the Jewish communities. It is a yummy snack. And now, it is central to a smart short film called “Babka,” which not only looks at the delicacy but takes a measure of the Hasidic community in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

This vibrant film is about an aging Orthodox Jewish baker (played by respected character actor Saul Rubinek) who is famous locally for his wonderful babka and challah. However, he has had to close the bakery temporarily because he has been losing his sight to the point where he is nearly completely blind. He has to deal with the reactions of his community when he has to start using a seeing-eye dog in a very traditional religious neighborhood where dogs are not at all welcome. Adding to the tension is the fact that a Catholic, Hispanic, and gay handler is training the dog.

The film was written and directed by Serena Dykman, a long-time short filmmaker. “Babka” has been getting wonderful response, playing at film festivals and getting nominated for a Humanitas Prize. In fact, the buzz has been so good for the short that Dykman is in the early stages of making a feature film of the story.

A few days before “Babka” was going to be featured at the HollyShorts Film Festival, we caught up with Dykman to learn about her short and baking it up into a feature.

You're Jewish, but like me, I assume you're also not orthodox. I'm reformed, personally. Why did the community of Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn intrigue you to make a film, and how did the idea for the film come about?

I am Jewish, as you noted. I'm the granddaughter of three Holocaust survivors. I was actually born in France and raised in Belgium. My grandparents were from Poland. So even though I'm not Orthodox, this idea of being the descendant of [the faith] is something that I very strongly relate to. That is the foot of the society in South Williamsburg. They are descendants of Hungarian Jews. That's something that spoke a lot to me. Then a few years ago, I was attached to direct a documentary TV show that was about people in the community who were leaving or who had left and were coming back. I got this incredible access into the community and really understood a lot more than what I think the media usually portrays.

Okay…

Fast forward, a couple years later, I just happened to be in South Williamsburg, Brooklyn – with my dog. I saw that people seemed to be scared of my cute little dog and were crossing the street to avoid her. Really of going out of their way to avoid her. Being a dog owner, I'm used to people trying to pet her, so this was quite the opposite. It led me to thinking, what if a dog had to live in this community? What kind of dog is necessary in the eyes of society? Guide dogs. So that's how this whole thing came about. It's an idea I had, and then it stayed in my mind. Usually, if I'm still thinking about something months and months after I've had the idea, I'm like, “Okay, I got to do something about this.”

Definitely.

I reached out to guide dog schools. I reached out to guide dog owners. I reached out to the blind community within the Hasidic community, to really understand where that fear stems from. To understand if a guide dog would actually be allowed or not. The overwhelming answer is that it would. The rabbi does allow guide dogs, but it just something that is not customary. It was such a fascinating thread to pull out between disability and religion.

I see.

What was really beautifully surprising is that the people that spoke to me were really eager to share their stories, knowing that “Babka” is still a work of fiction. It just seemed that they were finally given the spotlight or a voice to tell what it's like to belong in the blind community and the Hasidic community, never fully feeling like they can belong in both at the same time. This idea for a short turned into a feature which we're very actively developing right now, and we're so grateful to the Humanitas prizes to have shone the spotlight on this very special story,

Saul Rubinek, Barkley the dog, Jonny Beauchamp, Betsy Aidem, Hani Furstenberg and Ronald Guttman in "Babka"

Like you, I had never really known that Orthodox Jews had an issue with dogs, although from the explanation that's given in the in the movie, I can somewhat understand. What were some of the other things that you found out about the community while making this film that surprised you the most?

A lot of things. It's funny, because when you're Jewish, but not Orthodox, I think the Hasidic community is almost as foreign to you as any other religion or minority. At the same time, there is that thing that unites us, right? Especially being that I'm not Jewish American, I'm Jewish European. So being the descendant of survivors is something that we share. Honoring their heritage, and honoring the fact that they did survive, and they have allowed us to be here, is something that that was a real point of connection.

I understand.

I think what has been the most surprising is how open people were to sharing their stories. I literally was getting phone calls from people who are low vision and blind, who have either had a dog. There's very few of them, but I didn't need [but] a few. Or the cane. I met this wonderful woman in the community who's helping other blind people in the community to remove the stigma around low vision or blindness. It's really the openness. There's this barrier to start with, and then once I would explain my intentions, and they would understand that my intentions were good and were really to ensure authentic portrayal of the community and portrayal that's also a lot more nuanced and three dimensional than what a lot of what we see out there.

That’s great.

For instance, one of the things I love the most in the film is the lead couple, which is Esther and Moishe. They are this elderly couple, and we always think of arranged marriages and of people who have to be together and don’t want to… that's the stories we always get. I very purposefully made this couple absolutely in love with each other. They're in their 70s, and they've been arguing and fighting the same way for the past 50 years, but they really have profound love and admiration for one another, and that's something that also in the future version is much more explored.

Very nice.

It's finding what is beneath or beyond the clothes and the modesty. We tend to be scared of what we don't know as humans, right? What if we go a little deeper? What if we show that these people are as real (laughs) as we are and have lives that are as profound, complex, beautiful, and sad as ours? Find those points of connection, which is also why it was really important for me to put someone from the outside world, which serves as our audience's way into the story.

That makes sense.

This is the character of Jesus, who's a Latino Puerto Rican Catholic trainer. Both characters realize that they actually both have grandmothers who were cooks and who fought to give a better life to their descendants. Who were the pillars of the family. I think we need more stories, especially now, of things that gather us. Of things that we have in common despite visual or other more obvious differences.

Chocolate babkas, most Jews know what they are, but people on the outside, mostly they've only heard about them on Seinfeld, and they're not sure exactly what they are. How important is it to expose this type of specificity, even the cuisine of that world, to a wider audience?

It's important, because I think that food is one of those things that puts us all together, right? We all love food. Each culture has their own specialties. But then each grandmother, each family, has its own way of making whatever it is; the babka, the mallorcas. That's something that, even though it's incredibly specific in the story, it's actually a very universal feeling.

That’s true.

We have, for instance, the character of Jesus who enters the kitchen of Moishe, and he says, this reminds me of my own grandmother's kitchen. It's that baking smell. I did some research, because I really wanted to find a common thread between both cuisines of Puerto Rico and Jewish ancestry. I found that mallorcas, which is a specialty of Puerto Rico, actually come from a Sephardic heritage in Spain. Food travels. Recipes travel. It's really cool to see how different cultures have taken them different ways. But the source, at the end of the day, is the same, right? How do you bake? How do you make the most out of whatever you have locally? So the babka is important.

Yes, it is.

I call it a sweet movie. It's double chocolate babka. A lot of people come out of the screenings and they're like, “Oh my God, I need a babka right now.” (laughs) Actually, we're bringing some babka to HollyShorts. Some babka from New York. So if you come to the screening, you can have some babka.

Saul Rubinek and Jonny Beauchamp in "Babka."

Saul Rubinek is one of these great character actors that people have seen hundreds of times, but they don't necessarily know him by name. How did he get involved and why did you feel he was right for the lead role?

He was so perfect in so many ways. I got incredibly lucky. My producer knew Saul's daughter. We worked with phenomenal casting directors, but that really helped facilitate how to get him the script. What was wonderful is that he read it. He had no idea who I was. The next day, we got on a zoom for like, an hour and 45 minutes. We had straight away a very profound conversation about the script and the research that went into it, etc. By the end of the call, he's like, “Yeah, of course, I'm in.” And he's like, “Just so, you know, I was in already before the call.” He's the descendant of survivors. His first language is actually Yiddish. He was born in a displaced persons camp in Germany and emigrated to Canada, I think, when he was four or five, if I'm not mistaken.

Oh, really?

Even though he's also not Orthodox, it's a story that… again, it's those common threads. Even though the specificities are different, that feeling of having to carry out the duty of having ancestors who survived is very important. What a chance, I had the biggest honors of my career, to be able to work with him.

Right.

He flew all the way from LA to New York to shoot, in pretty hard circumstances. We shot exactly a year ago, early August, on location in Hasidic Williamsburg, in a heat wave, with a dog. It was quite a big production for a short. Saul actually came to New York a few days early because he really wanted to meet the dog that we were going to work with, whose name is Barkley. He's a real guide dog who was [finished] his training and was about to be matched.

Oh, nice.

We visited the school that consulted and lent us the dog, which is called the Seeing Eye in New Jersey. They opened their campus to us, to Saul and to Jonny Beauchamp, who plays a guide dog trainer. [They] really made us understand what this whole process entails, which is two years of training and then a very intense matching and pairing process, once they choose the guide dog and the owner. We really got to share some very special moments together, even before the shoot. Now he's coming to the LA premiere in a few days, which is really exciting.

When I was watching the film, I kept thinking I recognized Jonny, but it took me about a couple minutes to realize I had seen him on a short-lived TV series called Katy Keene.

Yes, he was fabulous in that.

How did he get involved in this film?

I've actually known Jonny socially for like 15 years. I wrote this part with him in mind. 100% with him in mind. I was working on this script for months and months and months; especially given how specific everything had to be with the community, the religion, the trainer. So I'm writing the script, and I'm gathering my team and trying to find the funds and all of this. In my head, it's always been Jonny, and I'm like, you know what? I completely forgot to ask him. I never told him about this project. So I finally picked up the phone, and I'm like, “Hey, Jonny, I wrote something for you. Are you interested?” Luckily, he was. We had been wanting to work together for years. The opportunity had never come about.

Very cool.

He told me, which is really funny, which I didn't know, that when he was little, his mom actually put him in a Jewish school. He's not Jewish at all. He is Puerto Rican, but because it was just an easier commute or something. For a year, I think, from age four to five, but I might be mistaken, he was in a Jewish school. He would come back home and wanted to do Hanukkah and wanted to do all the Jewish holidays. His mom was like “No.” I think he even spoke a little bit of Hebrew, because he would learn the songs in school. So it's actually something that spoke to him even more on that level, which I had literally no idea about. But he's just the perfect Jesus. I mean, this actor is absolutely phenomenal. It was really a treat to get to work with him. We hope to be able to continue this collaboration into the feature film.

You also just recently made another short film called “At See,” which is a documentary on a similar subject. Tell me a little bit about that one.

“At See” – spelled S, E, E – is a short documentary. One of the people that I met through my research on “Babka” – his name is Frank Senior – he's a jazz singer who was born blind. He really helped me a lot with understanding the matching process with guide dogs, etc. I happen to be a huge jazz lover, and he happens to be a jazz singer, so long story short, we became really close friends. I am making a documentary about him at the moment, but he told me last year, he was like, “Yo Serena, I'm going on this Carnival cruise with a group of visually impaired friends and their dogs. Maybe you want to come just so you're around guide dogs and guide dog users.” [It was] more for my research on “Babka.” And I was like, “Frank, yeah, that sounds like a movie to me.”

Definitely.

So we went on the ship, and we filmed this weeklong cruise. It was fascinating on so many levels of how people can travel without sight, but with a lot of insight. What it takes to travel with a dog and to travel internationally. One of the special, unique things about this documentary is that it's apparently the first documentary to feature what we call open audio description.

What is that?

Audio description is kind of close captioning for people that are low vision or blind. It's a voice that describes what's on screen. But it's an add on, right? It's an option on your TV, and it's not available for all programs yet. Instead of putting it as an option on the film, we really wanted the sighted audience to understand not just what it's like to travel without sight, but also what the experience of watching a movie without sight is.

That makes sense.

So the audio description is fully incorporated into the narrative of the film. It's done by Nefertiti Matos Olivares, who's a blind Latina audio description narrator. It really kind of came full circle that this little walk in the neighborhood of Brooklyn that I had with my dog really led to two finished projects and to two projects that are in development or in production at the moment. Follow the thread, follow the instinct. It's been one of the most rewarding professional and personal experiences of my life.

Jonny Beauchamp and Saul Rubinek in "Babka."

Up to now, you've mostly done short films. I believe you did do one feature-length documentary. How do you feel about your aspiration to make this into a feature film? Is the idea of a feature intimidating? Are shorts more comfortable for you?

I think that features can, in a way, actually be easier. You get an hour and a half to two hours to tell a story that, in a short needs to make sense in 15 minutes. I wrote the feature version of “Babka,” which has gone through some labs already, and so it's very much something that we're pursuing. Plus another big feature project that I am not allowed to talk about, but it's definitely in the works. And I did do a feature documentary which was theatrically released a few years ago.

“Babka” recently played at the Cleveland Film Festival, and it's doing HollyShorts, and like you said, you've got the la premiere coming up with Saul coming in. As a director what is it like to go through these screenings and meet the people who are seeing your films?

It's the reward. It's really the reward of the work, is meeting the audience. I think that's where those festivals are so precious, because we get to share those stories and we get to see how they're impacting the audience. It's really the fun part. I also get to travel the US and the world with my colleagues, who are really my most cherished friends. I was in London a few days ago for BFI, the British Film Institute’s We Crip Film Festival. They invited us for “At See.” [I’m] flying to LA tomorrow.

Busy time.

To see how, within 15 or 17 minutes, people are invited to learn about -- in the case of “Babka,” worlds that are so different and that they might not know anything about – and then 17 minutes later, they're intrigued. Maybe their biases are different. Maybe the next time they meet someone who's low vision, they will speak to them. The idea is also, there's such a big barrier between the sighted world and the blind world, which so many of my blind friends are saddened by. So it's also to open the dialogue. For people to see guide dogs, or to see any type of service dogs, and to understand the incredible and immense value that those dogs have on people's lives. To understand that they shouldn't be petting them and distracting them when they're on the job, because if they're distracted, they might cross the street the wrong way, and that can put someone in actual danger.

Right.

My personal biggest reward of all of this is when I hear people laugh at a joke I wrote. The biggest possible professional accomplishment is laughter.