Nathan Silver’s Between the Temples, a story of faith starring Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane, owes its existence to the filmmaker’s mother, Cindy Silver.
She had prominent parts in his films until his 2016 project, Actor Martinez. Her scenes didn’t work, so he cut them. He didn’t realize how much she would be hurt — until she told him she would never forgive him.
He thought about how to make it up to her, and dramatized the experience with a four-part documentary called Cutting My Mother.
“Have I let you down?,” she asks in one scene of the doc. “I had large roles in some of your movies and now I don’t.”
But she wasn’t leaving her fate up to her son. In making the film, he learned that she was attending classes to have an adult bat mitzvah.
He was surprised. Cindy Silver had grown up as a Jewish “red diaper baby” — someone raised by communist parents — but they weren’t particularly religious.
Nathan told the story of his mom’s late-in-life bat mitzvah to his producing partner, Adam Kersh. Kersh encouraged him to combine her experience with a May/December romance between a character Cindy’s age and a cantor — the person who leads a Jewish temple in song and prayer.
And Between the Temples was born.
The film, which premiered to raves after its Sundance Film Festival premiere, continued its festival run at the Berlin International Film Festival in February.
The film stars Schwartzman as Ben Gottlieb, a middle-aged cantor who may be losing his faith. Trying to meet the needs of the rabbi, congregants, and his two Jewish mothers (Caroline Aaron and Dolly de Leon), he is taken for an unexpected turn when his childhood music teacher Carla Kessler (Carol Kane) comes back into his life as an adult bat mitzvah student.
Robert Smigel — the brilliant actor, writer and producer whose credits include Saturday Night Live, Late Night With Conan O’Brien and Hotel Transylvania, as well as creating Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog — plays Rabbi Bruce, who putts golf balls into a shofar in the privacy of his office.
The cast also includes, of course, Cindy Silver.
Nathan Silver on Writing Between the Temples
Silver wrote Between the Temples with C. Mason Wells, and was inspired in part by his parents’ real-life temple, where he filmed scenes for the movie. Between the Temples recognizes the wide array of people within the synagogue. For example, Ben’s mother Meira (Aaron) is married to another woman, Judith (De Leon), who converted to Judaism.
“Some people are observant, but you know, it’s a Reform temple,” says Silver. “As a convert, the Judith character is much more about the rules and regulations of the religion and not so much just the culture of it. Someone like Meira is about the culture.
“I feel like Ben is stuck in between a lot of these notions and I think he’s confused about his Jewish identity. And then the rabbi is probably just going through the motions at this point in his career. I think he likes getting up on stage and the attention this congregation gives him.”
Ben, in contrast, is still searching for meaning.
“The whole notion of Judaism in the movie is about questioning everything in front of you at all times and not taking anything for a given,” says Silver.
“In Kabbalah, wisdom is buried in the world and you’re digging for these nuggets of truth. In that same way, I feel like that’s the constant questioning of things in everyday Judaism.”
Loss and Connection in Between the Temples
Carla and Ben’s chemistry is undeniable, but where it leads is up to interpretation. Both people have experienced profound, undeniable loss, and their connection allows them to both grieve and discover.
“They have found some kind of love where there’s no erotic aspect to it and that intrigued me,” says Silver.
“It’s these two people coming to each other, not knowing what they need from the other, but knowing that they do need each other.”
Schwartzman felt a similar connection with Silver after reading the movie’s script.
“When I met Nathan I just knew. It’s really weird,” says Schwartzman. “I had this feeling of, ‘Yes, I would like to go and have this adventure and ultimately help this person tell their story.’ It’s like, who do you want to go and fight for?”
Jason Schwartzman’s late father, the producer Jack Schwartzman, was Jewish, and his mother came from the same Italian Catholic upbringing as her brother, Francis Ford Coppola. Schwartzman felt enough of a connection with Judaism to play the cantor.
He found himself especially moved by a scene performed with Jason Grisell, who plays a Roman Catholic priest.
When someone close to Ben dies, he goes to see the priest, wondering if the dead person could be in heaven or hell.
Since Ben “believes there’s no heaven,” says Schwartzman, “he thinks if he switches over to Catholicism, maybe this deceased character could be grandfathered in. Could they get to heaven even though they’re probably nowhere? Can we rescue them? It was such a sad and really desperate scene.”
Grisell helps run sound at a church in New York City and has a deep knowledge of Christianity’s view of the afterlife. During the scene, Schwartzman and Grisell improvised questions and anecdotes about life after death.
“Nathan just suggested, ‘Why don’t you just ask Jason every question you have and see what he says?,’” says Schwartzman.
“There’s a way that Jason speaks and it’s kind of hypnotic. I was quite lured in and I never wanted the scene to end because he said so many things that changed my perspective.”
Between the Temples arrives in theaters Friday from Sony Pictures Classics.
Main image: Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane in Between the Temples.
This story first appeared in the summer 2024 issue of MovieMaker Magazine.