By Betzy Lynch
LA JOLLA, California –This week, the San Diego Center for Jewish Culture at the Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center proudly launches the 36th Annual San Diego International Jewish Film Festival.
The San Diego International Jewish Film Festival (SDIJFF) began in 1990 as the San Diego Jewish Film Festival, founded by Lynette Allen, then Cultural Arts Director at the Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center, and Joyce Axelrod, who chaired the inaugural festival. Inspired by other Jewish film festivals, most notably the long-running San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, the first SDIJFF was a modest gathering: five films over four nights in Sherwood Hall at the Museum of Contemporary Art in La Jolla, drawing an audience of about 200 people. The festival grew out of monthly Jewish-themed film screenings held in the LFJCC gymnasium, reflecting a grassroots desire in San Diego to explore Jewish culture and experience through cinema.
As interest grew, the festival quickly expanded in size and ambition, moving into larger venues to accommodate growing audiences and, at times, selling out early editions. Volunteers and community underwriters played a vital role in its early success, helping to extend programming and deepen local engagement. In 1993, the festival introduced the Joyce Forum Short Film Showcase, named in honor of Joyce Axelrod, to highlight emerging Jewish filmmakers and innovative short films. Reflecting its expanding scope beyond local and national stories, the festival rebranded in 2019 as the San Diego International Jewish Film Festival, emphasizing its global selection of films that explore the breadth of Jewish life, culture, and identity. Now in its 36th year, SDIJFF is recognized as one of the region’s premier Jewish cultural events, presenting narrative features, documentaries, shorts, and conversations that engage diverse audiences and foster meaningful community dialogue.
This year, more than 30 community members, under the leadership of co-chairs Chris Fink and Sandy Sherman and in partnership with our professional team, spent months watching, rating, and thoughtfully selecting the films they believed would resonate most deeply with our community. This process requires hours of care, intention, and conversation. Every film was chosen for a reason. Every story is meant to spark a good Jewish conversation, whether you are Jewish or not. Because in Jewish life, stories are never just entertainment; they are how we transmit values, wrestle with meaning, and make sense of who we are and who we are becoming.
Medieval ethicist Rabbi Bahya ibn Paquda taught that “the tongue is the heart’s pen and the mind’s messenger,” reminding us that the meaning of a story lies not only in its content, but in how it is told. This understanding illuminates the deeper meaning of masoret. Often translated simply as “tradition,” masoret (מסורת) means something far more alive: that which is handed over. Storytelling is the mechanism that transforms inherited values into lived, contemporary meaning. The SDIJFF is a communal tradition that honors exactly this intention.
The LFJCC is home to many programs that plant and nurture a love of storytelling, from PJ Library to lifelong learning. Yet SDIJFF leans especially into the wisdom of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, who taught that most stories are told to put people to sleep, while true spiritual stories are meant to awaken the soul, stir memory, and ignite the sparks within us. The films of SDIJFF are crafted to do more than entertain. They have the power to awaken joy, wonder, hope, empathy, and connection, inviting each of us, and perhaps all of us, to explore our own emotional and spiritual truths more deeply.
As Shabbat comes to a close, I hope you will join us over the next 12 days to experience a film or two. We know you will be entertained and I hope something more is awakened in all of us as well.
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Betzy Lynch is the Chief Executive Officer of the Lawrence Family JCC.