LOS ANGELES JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL 2026 PREVIEW
This year’s Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival, (which has been going on for over two decades!,) kicks off on Tuesday, May 12th, with their always-special Opening Night Gala. As usual, it takes place at the comfortable Saban Theatre in Beverly Hills. The dates of the festival are sooo appropriate because May is Jewish American Heritage Month, which honors the contributions of Jewish people to American history and culture, and the LAJFF celebrates both situations.
A previous year’s LAJFF Opening Night Gala. Photo by Karen Salkin.
There are always celebs in attendance on that first night, and I understand that this time there will be a pair that I’m especially interested to see. Firstly, I want to meet the kind music biz exec, Irving Azoff, and thank him and his wife, Shelley, who, along with a consortium of pals he put together, saved not only the eighty-one-year-old Beverly Hills deli, Nate N Al’s, but also the iconic Apple Pan, the likes of which there are no other eateries in all of Los Angeles. Trust me, my fellow foodies and I will be eternally grateful to the Azoffs for doing all that.
The other celebrity, Jon Voight, is one with whom I’m a tad keen to reunite. We’ve met several times, including when we sat next to each other on the celebrity panel of the Chabad Telethon for a few years in a row. He always asked me to help him, which sort-of cracked me up; it was so easy to take the pledges over the phone, and record them on the sheets right in front of us! But I give him credit for showing up every year, especially when he’s not even Jewish!
However, the real star of the evening will be the inspiring Rabbi Marvin Hier, about whom the documentary, The Hollywood Rabbi, will open the festival. Just a smidgeon of what he’s accomplished in his long life is the founding of two super-important human rights institutions—the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Museum of Tolerance. How’s that for being a kind and productive member of society?!
The Hollywood Rabbi.
On top of those major accomplishments, Rabbi Hier is also a two-time Academy Award-winning documentarian! There’s so much good to this man, and we’re all going to find-out the rest together on opening night when luminaries such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bill Clinton, Steven Spielberg, Billy Crystal, and Gavin Newsom sing his praises in the film.
The Opening Night Gala also features a pre-screening dessert and wine reception. I can’t tell you exactly what to expect, but the offerings are usually delish. And I always appreciate that, in this crazy world, there will be armed guards on the premises, as there have been for at least the previous two years. Having that knowledge always gives me a modicum of peace.
Since this is a film festival, after all, in the days following the Gala, there will be other interesting Jewish-centric films playing in several other venues over town through May 19th. (For the entire list, just click on the link at the bottom of this preview.)
We Met at Grossinger’s.
In the meantime, there are a couple that caught my eye. The first one is We Met at Grossinger’s. Growing-up in Brooklyn, I feel like I had always heard of the Catskills, which is where Jewish families from New York went to vacation. I believe that many of the smaller resorts and hotels were gone by my childhood, but my family would have never frequented even the still-in-existence-at-the-time bigger, famous ones, such as the Concord or Grossinger’s, (which is depicted in this film,) anyway. Because both my parents were teachers, we had much more travel time than the rest of the people we knew, so we were able to go to more special and charming places than that often-usual destination for families from my borough.
But as a late teen, my bestie’s fam took me with them to the Concord, and it made me realize that…I hadn’t missed a thing. Eating in a big dining room with families of strangers has never been my thing. (I did meet a guy there, though. Of course. Where didn’t I, in my cute teenage years?!) But the venue featured in this documentary is the one depicted in Dirty Dancing, so that should be interesting. Even though I’m far from a fan of that laughable ‘80s movie, I can’t wait to see this doc to see what went on there in real life!
Monument.
The other film that caught my eye is the historical suspense drama, Monument. It features the last work from the late prolific Israeli actor Alon Aboutboul, so his fans will be happy to have this wonderful opportunity to see him on the big screen one more time.
To sum it up, the Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival is a major cultural event for Los Angeles, which I feel that everyone will enjoy, no matter your ethnic persuasion.
So I hope to see all you SoCal film fans at the Festival, especially at the Opening Night Gala. Come up to me and say, “L’chaim!”
For the LAJFF schedule, and all the info on the films and special events, just click here: www.lajfilmfest.org/2026-film-selections.
