Rabbi Wolff (2016)

The film follows the turbulent daily life of the liberal rabbi, who travels between London and his congregations in Schwerin and Rostock in the course of his religious duties. Alongside his varied life on the road, director Britta Wauer explores William Wolff’s eventful past and his encounters with his Orthodox relatives in Jerusalem. Wolff was born in Berlin in 1927 and fled with his parents and siblings from the Nazis to Amsterdam in 1933, and from there to London six years later. His wish to become a rabbi initially went unfulfilled because, after the family fled, they did not have enough money to pay for his rabbinical seminary education. After leaving school, Wolff therefore chose a career in journalism and, as a parliamentary correspondent, followed political affairs around the world for three decades. But he never forgot his old dream of becoming a rabbi. At the age of 53, he began training and was ordained as a rabbi in 1984. At 75, he took up the post of state rabbi of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania in 2002. From then on, he served the three Jewish communities in Schwerin, Rostock, and Wismar. The year-long documentary also shows Wolff’s reflections, at the end, on relinquishing his office and on the period afterward. William Wolff (in Stralsund, 2009)