Faith in Bloom

The funny and deeply human film, Ethan Bloom, explores faith, grief, and the messy path to finding yourself. Through a 13-year-old boy’s spiritual quest after the death of his mother, the movie reveals a timeless truth: it doesn’t matter whether you’re Jewish, Catholic, or anything else – we’re all asking the same big questions.

Brought to life by director/producer Herschel Faber and writer/producer Maylen Dominguez – both Central Florida natives – the feature-length dramedy is inspired by their own adolescent spiritual journeys. The film’s cast includes Joshua Malina, Rachelle Lefevre, Mindy Sterling, and Hank Greenspan as the title character of Ethan, who turns to both a rabbi and a priest for guidance.

Push and Pull

“I grew up as one of the only Jewish kids in my town,” says Herschel, who is from New Smyrna Beach. “Because of that, I often felt a sense of isolation. My mom converted from Lutheranism to Judaism when she married my dad, so my family straddled two worlds – one side Christian, the other Jewish. There was always a kind of duality to my upbringing.”

That push and pull of identity and belief is a theme that threads itself throughout the independent film, which was shot entirely in South Florida. The movie has been screened at more than a dozen Jewish film festivals and premiered locally to sold-out audiences at the Enzian Theater this past spring.

Ethan’s search for something meaningful resonates deeply with Herschel, the chair of filmmaking at the New York Film Academy in Miami.

“That internal struggle is very real to me,” he says, “and it’s a central theme in the film.”

“At its core, this story is based on the idea that love is bigger than anything that divides us.” – Herschel Faber

On the Right Path

Maylen, an Orlando native and graduate of Park Maitland and Trinity Preparatory schools, navigated a faith journey of her own that started in Catholicism and led her to Judaism.

“When I was growing up in Central Florida, there weren’t as many Latino people, so my parents became friends with the only other Spanish-speaking people in the area, who were Chilean and Peruvian Jews,” she says. “They had a big influence on me. My sister and I went to the Jewish Community Center in Maitland as children, and we would come home and tell our parents that we wanted to do Shabbat.”

Maylen’s interest in spirituality continued as she got older. After meeting her husband, who is Jewish, she eventually converted to Judaism to be respectful of his family. Her husband’s father was a Holocaust survivor, and his mother was the daughter of a rabbi. Like Ethan, Maylen had powerful experiences with a priest and a rabbi during her conversion. At the University of Judaism in Los Angeles, she studied with a wonderful, inspiring rabbi.

The Greatest of These Is Love

“But I also went to my priest at Saint Margaret Mary Catholic Church in Winter Park and told him I was thinking about converting [to Judaism],” says Maylen. “He asked me if there was any chance that my husband would convert to Catholicism, and I said no because of his family background. He told me, ‘If he’s not going to convert, then you should because you don’t want to lose God. The parts of you that are you will always be there, but this way, you’re honoring a tradition that is very important to you both.’”

And that, says Herschel, is what Ethan Bloom represents.

“At its core, this story is based on the idea that love is bigger than anything that divides us,” he says. “Whether you’re Jewish, Catholic, or somewhere in between, Ethan and his journey remind us how much we have in common – and that at the end of the day, love transcends everything.”

To learn more about the movie, visit Menemshafilms.com/ethan-bloom.