Case Study
The Room Already Knows
The films premiere at the school's annual dinner, in front of the people they are about — a room that already knows the story. Since 2023: a music video with 1,200 of its students, honoree films, and the interviews I did not see coming.
- Client
- Lubavitch Educational Center
- Industry
- Narrative & Education
- Year
- 2023–present
I have been filming for the Lubavitch Educational Center in Miami since 2023 — dinner films, honoree films, a music video with the whole school in it, and the ongoing coverage a place that size needs.
Most of it has been alongside Rabbi Yakov Garfinkel, who produces. Some of it has meant hiring and running a team so several events could be covered at once. One project put me on a private plane out of the Space Coast to get where the story was.
The partnership
A school that makes its own films
LEC does not treat video as an afterthought. The films premiere at the dinner, in front of the people they are about. That changes how they have to be made — they have to hold a room that already knows the story.
Filming inside a working school means shooting around the day rather than through it. The lesson keeps going. You get what is actually happening instead of a version of it staged for you.
Film 01 / 09
The dinner film
The first big one, in 2023 — a short film built around the community itself, cut for the annual dinner.
Watch the film
LEC Jewish Day School dinner short film
Film 02 / 09
Gift to the Rebbe
More than 1,200 students took part in this one, across the Early Childhood and Boys Elementary and Middle Schools. It sets an original tune to the pesukim matching the first and last letters of the Rebbe’s name — the verses said at the end of Shemoneh Esrei — and follows a student who cannot remember them until his teacher — the singer Shlomo Simcha — and his classmates help him.
Composed by Yossi Green, arranged by Eli Klein and Yitzi Berry, produced by Yossi Tyberg, performed by Shlomo Simcha. Rabbi Yakov Garfinkel executive produced, Rabbi Mendy Shachar produced. I shot it. It premiered at the dinner on 25 February 2025.
Its release was covered by COLlive, and the school published it on its own site — where the cinematography is credited to Dov Gurewicz.
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Film 03 / 09
Campus Chaya Mushka
Built around a premise rather than a walkthrough: Rabbi Benjy Korf’s car breaks down, and the LEC girls come to the rescue. That carries you through the girls’ schools without it ever feeling like a tour. Made for the same dinner. Read the full article.
Rabbi Avrohom Korf brought Chabad shlichus to Florida. Everything I film at LEC sits downstream of that — the classrooms, the dinners, the kids in the hallway who have no idea they are the point of it. Filming the next generation of that work, with the family still leading it, is not a small assignment.
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Film 04 / 09
Our Teachers, Our Heroes
A film about the people who do the work every day, for years, mostly without anyone pointing a camera at them.
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Film 05 / 09
When Students Become Shluchim
Made for the gala dinner on 10 March 2026, and the most structured thing we have built together. Two stories that never touched each other, told side by side: Yakov Zabryn, a fourth grade general studies teacher who came to LEC because he loves teaching and ended up asking where his students’ decency came from; and Eldad Shay, who arrived from public school, came back from camp with questions and songs, and brought his family along behind him.
It runs about six minutes and keeps its theme unstated until the end — actions leave an impact, and influence does not only travel downward. Produced and directed by Rabbi Yakov Garfinkel; I shot it. Arie Forma, my chief editor, cut it — this is one of the ones he carried over the line in the edit room.
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Film 06 / 09
The new court
The outdoor basketball court opened just before Chanukah in December 2025, sponsored by the Blachman family. A ribbon cutting is a small thing to film and a big thing to the boys who now get to use it.
Watch the film
Ribbon Cutting: New Outdoor Basketball Court at Lubavitch Educational Center
Film 07 / 09
The Mesivta campus
Mesivta Lubavitch Miami opened a new campus in Miami Gardens in March 2026 — three acres, a 180-bed dormitory, an on-site mikvah, a dining hall, and a beis medrash walled in windows. LEC had bought the land five years earlier. The yeshiva had grown past ninety bochurim and out of the room it had.
Rabbi Motti Schurder, the Menahel, gave the reason for the whole thing in one sentence: “This year we have over ninety bochurim, ka”h, and we’re bursting at the seams.” Easy to say. Hard to shoot. A full room reads as energy on camera, not as a problem. So the crowding had to be spoken instead of framed. A camera can show ninety bochurim in a room. Only a person can tell you the room stopped fitting.
The brief said plainly what the film was not: not a recruitment video. Documentary, not sales. So it is built out of interviews — leadership, rabbeim, the guidance staff, the shluchim who run the trips and the mivtzoyim, alumni, and the bochurim themselves — cut against the new building and an ordinary day inside it. Show what the place does; do not argue for it. Arie Forma edited this one too.
Watch the film
Miami Mesivta Promotional Film
Film 08 / 09
B’Lev U’Nefesh
Rabbi Rafi Rosenberg teaches Chumash at LEC. He also donated a kidney to someone he had never met.
The film is about the second thing without ever letting go of the first — that for him the two are the same job. He is careful in it not to sound like a hero; he talks about it as responsibility, and about chinuch as presence rather than performance. The recipient speaks too, and stays unnamed.
Made for the dinner, where he was recognised on stage.
Only one of the two people in it is named. That closes off the obvious structure — letting the recipient do the praising he will not do for himself. It would honor one man by spending someone else’s privacy. So the recipient speaks and stays unnamed. It costs the film its loudest moment.
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Film 09 / 09
From searching to belonging
The Anderson family came to LEC from Oklahoma. It started with a challenge to read the Bible for thirty days, and the father finishing it with more questions than he had started with. It turned in Israel, standing at the Cave of Machpelah, where he says the Bible stopped being the Bible and became the Chumash.
They converted together. The children arrived with no Hebrew and went into the older grades anyway, and the school opened the doors rather than the file. The film was made for the dinner where the family was honored on stage, and it builds to their eldest son’s bar mitzvah — the first in the family.
They were honored on a stage that night, which sets its own limit — anything overstated is something the family has to sit through in public. So the film says what they said, and stops. The line about the Chumash is the father’s, not mine.
It is a four to five minute film about a decision that took years, made at a time when a lot of people are quietly stepping back from being visibly Jewish. This family stepped forward.
Beyond the films
Coverage
Work from these years has been written up by the school and in the wider community press:
- COLliveShlomo Simcha joins Miami’s LEC on new music video
- LECShlomo Simcha collabs with Miami’s LEC on new music video
- LECWhen Rabbi Benjy Korf’s car breaks down, LEC girls come to the rescue
- Anash.orgSefardic Chief Rabbi visited LEC in Miami, when Rishon Letziyon Rabbi David Yosef came to the boys’ schools
- LECMesivta Lubavitch Miami opens new campus
Looking back
The part I did not expect
The interviews.
A young woman who walked out of a church in South America, converted, and now learns at Beis Chana — and whose father converted after her. A girl who left Israel after October 7th and found somewhere quiet to land.
I sat with people while they told me things like that, on a normal working day, with a camera between us. You do not drive home from that thinking about the gear.
That is the actual job here. Rabbi Garfinkel and Rabbi Korf keep handing me the real story and trusting me to carry it properly, and three years in they are still doing it.
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