Joseph's mother · The songbook
Rebecca Shapiro
The songs are the soul of his people. He must carry them.
Rebecca Shapiro is Joseph Shapiro's mother and the keeper of a handwritten songbook: Jewish songs she carried largely in Russian, adapted from Yiddish, Hebrew, Polish, and other older sources.
When she dies, Joseph buries her and finds the songbook she left behind. She comes to him in a dream and tells him the songs are the soul of his people, and that he must carry them.
That songbook becomes the engine of the whole story. Joseph gives it to his class, and her Russian versions, old sources, recordings, and memory become the material the students translate, adapt, and rebuild in English and in modern arrangements.
The film holds two mothers. Rebecca feeds it with songs, and Kate Miller feeds it with food.
