Educational Media Reviews Online

Growing up Jewish in Iowa in the 1950's and 60's, filmmaker Marlene Booth learned early that although Jews were accepted as "part of the mix...being Jewish was not for show and tell...you had to be Jewish inside Jewish places together with other Jews." Home movies and family photos reveal how she gained her strong Jewish identity from close-knit family and Des Moines' small but vibrant Jewish community. Although they were Jews, they also considered themselves Iowans: "part of being from Iowa was keeping differences to yourself."

The film also touches on many issues that will be familiar to many racial, ethnic and religious minorities. One of the most interesting is the tension between Booth's more "recent" East European Jewish family, with their more orthodox approaches to worship and the "pioneer" German Jews who seemed more concerned about being accepted into the larger American society. The lingering effects of the blatant anti-Semitism of earlier periods are portrayed by encounters at Booth's father's high school reunion, and Booth's own reunion from the same high school.

Recommended for public libraries, secondary school and college media collections.

Other films by Marlene Booth include, When I Was 14: A Survivor Remembers(1995), The Double Burden: Three Generations of Working Mothers(1992), The Forward: From Immigrants to Americans(1989), Orange Line Symphony(1987), Raananah: A World of Our Own(1981), and They Had a Dream: Brown v. Board of Education Twenty-five Years Later (1980). She is the winner of many awards, including an Emmy nomination.