Special Film Event: “Immoral Soul” Q&A
Live Q&A with Rabbi Nilton Bonder
Monday, April 26 at 7:00pm from Brazil via Zoom
Click here to join
Rabbi Nilton Bonder’s best-selling book, “Our Immoral Soul”, was first adapted into a record-setting theatrical production, and is now a feature documentary. Rabbi Bonder joins us to discuss his book and the film on April 26.
Watch the film at your convenience, and then join us for a live Q & A via Zoom
Click here to join
Monday, April 26 at 7:00pm
About “Immoral Soul”
Directed by acclaimed Brazilian Director Silvio Tendler, Immoral Soul is based on Rio de Janeiro Rabbi Nilton Bonder’s bestselling book of the same name. The book sold over 400,000 copies in Brazil and was translated into English, Spanish, Italian and Hebrew. The success of the book inspired the play, Immoral Soul, which has had an uninterrupted run of over thirteen years in Brazil and has been seen by over a half a million people. Veja, Brazil’s leading newsmagazine, chose this theatrical version as the best Brazilian play of 2009.
Following the success of the book and play, Our Immoral Soul was made into a documentary which is now among five documentaries selected for “Premio Brazil”, the most prestigious prize of the Brazilian Film Academy.
Provocative, poetic and philosophical, the film addresses the need for people to break rules—to “transgress”—in order to survive, evolve and create new paradigms of what is lawful and positive.
The film takes a look at iconoclastic individuals who broke the established order through transgressions, large and small. In the film, Rabbi Bonder sets out on a journey to Brazil, the Unites States and Israel in search of these rule breakers, the so called “Immoral Souls”. He conducts interviews with prominent Jewish transgressors such as Frans Krajcberg, Michael Lerner, Rebecca Goldstein, Etgar Keret, Uri Avneri, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Rabbi Steven Greenberg, and the Rosenberg brothers.
Among the topics covered are adultery, atheism, betrayal, and breakdown and innovation in politics, religion, art and science. Interviews are interspersed with dance segments, choreographed by the Dance Company of Deborah Colker, one of Brazil’s leading dancers and choreographers. The non-English sections are sub-titled.
Rabbi Nilton Bonder was ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary (1986) and holds a second ordination from Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. He is the founder of Congregaçao do Brasil Synagogue and Midrash Cultural Center in Rio de Janeiro. He is the author of 24 books, several of them best-sellers, which have been translated into 18 languages.