Long before producing and co-directing a moving documentary about interfaith harmony in a faraway place, Chicago native John Block got the inspiration for it from the day that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.
Block was a student at the University of Chicago Lab School who couldn’t walk home that day because there was, as he put it, “trouble in the street.” During an emergency meeting at the school held to calm trapped students, one of Block’s classmates stood up and delivered what Block called a “life-changing moment.”
“He said in despair, `I wish the whole world was coffee-colored,’“ said Block, who described his family as the last white family to leave their middle-class South Shore neighborhood.
“That had a remarkable impact on me,” Block said. “I kind of vowed to myself that, forever more, I would look for opportunities to be closer to people of all stripes, colors, religions. And actually, it’s kind of how I have conducted my life ever since.”
Now the South Shore native is touring the country promoting a documentary that lives up to that lofty ideal.
“I Will Build This World From Love” is the true story of several young women and men from Georgia — not the state, but the country — who aspire to practice their Judaism without limitations imposed by the Orthodox Jewish community there.
They want to be b’nai mitzvahed — the Jewish rite of passage that normally occurs when a boy or girl is about 13 years old and reads from the Torah for the first time and then is recognized as an adult.
Meredith Greenberg, the cantor at Block’s temple in Bloomfield, New Jersey, tutors the Georgian students remotely in how to read Hebrew from the Torah — challenging because the Torah does not contain vowels.
That’s how Block just happened to get involved “almost by accident.”
“Somebody from temple called to tell me that some of the congregants were going to be leaving for Georgia,” Block recalled. “These were congregants who had helped train some students from, he said, ‘Georgia.’ And he asked if I would like to come along and bring a camera.”
“I readily agreed, thinking I would use frequent flyer milers to fly to the state of Georgia. It was only as we were about to hang up that I suddenly realized he was talking about the country of Georgia.”
Block started by filming some of the Zoom meetings between Greenberg and her students preparing for what would ultimately become a “history-making event” in the former Soviet republic.
For the first time in 2,600 years, women in Georgia would be reading from the Torah in public.
Using a Kickstarter campaign, Block raised enough money to defray travel costs for himself and his small crew. He knew almost immediately that he had “more than a home video,” and instead the makings of a documentary.
Georgia’s Orthodox Jewish community views women reading publicly from the Torah as “contrary to tradition” and a threat to their old world values. But a former Evangelical Baptist archbishop in Georgia, Malkaz Songulashvili, embraces the ceremony.
Demoted for his stand against homophobia and Islamophobia, Songulashvili has established in Tbilisi, Georgia, what he calls a Peace Cathedral.
It’s a church, a synagogue and a mosque all under one roof — an ambitious and somewhat idealistic effort to advance interfaith relationships and global harmony.
Block met the archbishop on his first day in Georgia. He was invited to Songulashvili’s home for dinner, which quickly turned into a four-hour interview with, as Block put it, “one of the most remarkable and brave individuals” he had ever met.
“His philosophy is to confront ugliness with beauty,” Block said.
Songulashvili and Greenberg are “not just great people. They’re amazing historical figures,” Block said. “I am so impressed with people who are marching forward, even with the wind in their face.”
When Block and his crew arrived in Georgia, the Peace Cathedral was still being established. He described it as an “unremarkable looking building” from the outside that is “spectacular” on the inside.
The temple, church and mosque all have their separate spaces. Nobody prays together. But you need to go through common spaces to get to each of the sanctuaries.
Contributions to the Peace Cathedral are welcome. But people can only contribute to a different faith — not their own.
The film captures the moment when the Georgian students meet Greenberg in person for the first time, as well as the b’nai mitzvah ceremony — a particularly emotional moment because members of other faiths were there to witness it.
Later, Jewish members of the cathedral embrace religious tolerance by participating in ceremonies associated with the other faiths.
A 1972 graduate of Northwestern University, Block spent the early part of his career working as a producer for network television. He was a special segment producer for the “NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw” and a producer/writer for “Dateline NBC.” He got off the network treadmill in 2010 because he got tired of doing ratings-boosting crime stories.
Now Block is struggling to raise the $30,000 he needs to resolve outstanding licensing issues impeding broader distribution of “I Will Build This World From Love.”
“This film was made on a wing and a prayer. We had no money. We’ve never had money. People came out of the woodwork to help me … for either very reduced rates or nothing at all,” Block said.
“I did what I promised my wife and myself I would not do. I put my own money into the film because it became a labor of love. It may be my last film, to be honest with you. And I’m so proud to go out on it.”
Until a distributor can be found, Block said people can “track me down” at a church, mosque or synagogue to see a film he believes is more than just a “We Are The World” panacea.
“It’s so contentious right now. But I think there’s some truth to the cliche… ‘With tragedy comes opportunity,’” Block said, referring to the ongoing war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas.
“Things are probably going to get worse before they get better. But I also hold this kind of primitive notion that right will overcome might. So I’m hopeful. When you have people like Cantor Meredith Greenberg and Bishop Malkaz Songulashvili, they’re inspirational. It’s not just words. They really do compel people to bring their best games to whatever they’re doing.”