JEWISH

Title

A feature musical in development.

An eleventh-grade class at MASA collides by accident with old Jewish songs, then reimagines an inherited songbook in their own modern arrangements. A contemporary Jewish musical about who gets to sing it next.

Logline

The songbook becomes a spark.

To honor their teacher, Joseph Shapiro, who has just found his late mother Rebecca's handwritten songbook, the class stages a concert of her songs, reborn in their own modern arrangements. It grows into a forty-five-minute student musical they take to a national competition, which they win, and name JEWISH.

Why now

Jewish culture answers with music.

In a moment of rising antisemitism and cultural fragmentation, JEWISH answers with cultural reactivation: old songs returned to living voices, told as memory, humor, argument, and renewal. The film does not explain identity from a distance. It makes identity audible.

Story

Preservation collides with performance.

Joseph Shapiro wants the inherited songs treated with dignity. His students want them loud, playable, and alive. The film lives in that collision, where reverence becomes rhythm and a class names itself The Sharpies.

Music

The songs of JEWISH drive the film.

Klezmer becomes hip-hop. A wedding tune becomes pop. A Yiddish folk song becomes a stage anthem. The score follows two rules: at least two-thirds modern arrangement, and the famous melodies stay recognizable through any treatment.

Proof

Forever is the first open door.

Forever rebuilds the Mezinka wedding ritual as a communal song anyone can sing. It shows the central move of the project: inherited melody, contemporary pulse, public joy.

Watch Forever

Proof of concept

A ten-minute, AI-assisted proof-of-concept proves the engine.

A ten-minute, AI-assisted proof-of-concept brings the world, the songs, and the key situations of JEWISH to the screen. It can serve more than one role at once: proof vehicle for the feature, a standalone concept film, and, if Reboot prefers a smaller first step, the first contained production unit.

Cast

Many worlds in one room.

Japanese, Ukrainian, Italian-American, Sephardic, Mizrahi, observant, secular, adjacent, Mayflower-descended. The ensemble is the diaspora arguing with itself in harmony. Production-quality portrait art is locked for the eleventh-grade class and the supporting circle around them.

Audience

Young Jewish audience, broader reach.

The students carry the present tense for younger viewers. The musical form opens the door wider: everyone understands inheritance, fear, family, belonging, and the need to sing anyway.

Reboot fit and need

A mission-aligned project asking for development support.

JEWISH speaks directly to expansive diaspora identity, young audiences, antisemitism, social participation, premium musical storytelling, and cultural scale.

A recoupable seed investment funds the ten-minute, AI-assisted proof-of-concept and finished English song recordings: the lever that raises full production financing, with returns to follow.

Timeline

Twenty-four months to premiere target.

Creator and contact

Walter J. Kin. Music as RIGLI.

Walter J. Kin is the creator of JEWISH and a Member of The Dramatists Guild of America. His music is released as RIGLI, with a catalog of 28 original songs and roughly 10 million combined streams: about 5 million on the RIGLI YouTube channel and 5 million across streaming platforms.

Materials package available by request: pitch deck, treatment, character one-sheets, song map, timeline, development budget, and demos.

doublesign28@gmail.com