Parity Pipeline

Genre

Synopsis

My father Sol Waksman, a Polish Jewish immigrant and son of Holocaust survivors, has made his home in a small Midwest town for the last 40 years. In addition to a regular small town, Fairfield, Iowa is a Transcendental Meditation community first established by the followers of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. However, he no longer subscribes to the points of view on which this community was founded. My mother, Carolyn, is the opposite, and is deeply devoted to the teachings. Through following Sol in his day to day activities - from meeting up with his coffee group where he chats with other baby boomers who similarly followed Maharishi’s vision; to shooting practice, a hobby he took up first for protection and then for sport when the Iowa gun laws changed, we see the world through Sol’s complex eyes. Sol’s past is brought to life with Super 8 footage from his parents. Through this footage, we see silent glimpses into the immigrant Jewish community of Brooklyn in the 1950s-1960s. We see my father’s Bar Mitzvah, a housewarming party, vacations in Florida, and my grandfather’s big smile which my dad always described as forced, or a mask hiding deep sorrow. Sol has a present, yet distant connection to his Jewish identity. It is a community that he is a part of, whether he tries to be or not. He says to his mother when he was in college, “I don’t believe in G-d” which was his reasoning to stop going to the synagogue with his parents, and they did not force him to continue. For the first time in our lives, we travel to the villages in Poland where my grandfather and grandmother are from. We visit graves of family members. We see the buildings where my great grandparents lived and where they were married. We visit the refugee camp where my father was born in Germany. What does forgiveness look like for my father? Does facing our family’s tragic past first hand give a greater sense of self and place? What does healing look like for him? What does healing look like for me?