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Podcast: North Star with Ellin Bessner
Episode: ‘We weren’t even considered Jewish’: Documentary searches for filmmaker’s cultural identity
Description: In the months following Oct. 7, Vancouver native Kai Balin learned wanted to dig deeper into his Judaism, but learned that, despite his strong Jewish upbringing, his family actually isn’t considered Jewish by some in the Orthodox community. The discovery shocked him to his core—not only is Balin the grandson of Holocaust survivors, but he always felt destined to become a rabbi, right from his early childhood.
The rejection of his family’s Jewish identity sent Balin on a years-long quest to find out what being Jewish meant to him. He took his cameras along the way as he tra...