\u201cMy mother\u2019s family, both my mother and grandmother, were Holocaust survivors who came to Chile from Hungary and my father\u2019s family ended up in Chile fleeing the pogroms in the Ukraine about 1905,\u201d he told the Independent<\/i>. As immigrants, he said, \u201cwe got to this country and my parents wanted me to go to Harvard to be a doctor and, since I was 5, I said OK, but, eventually, I figured out that I didn\u2019t want to be a doctor and I didn\u2019t want to be a lawyer because I enjoyed writing and creating very much.\u201d \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n He said, \u201cEventually, I talked my way into UCLA film school, where I arrived in the 1990s, attended the MFA director\u2019s program, and said thank G-d I didn\u2019t miss this because this is what I was meant to do.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Pictures from the Fringe\u2019s first feature film, When Do We Eat?<\/i>, about a dysfunctional family\u2019s Passover seder, was inspired by the fact that there were no Jewish holiday movies and the Litvaks wanted to \u201ccreate a Jewish version of It\u2019s a Wonderful Life<\/i>.\u201d Both filmmakers are baalei teshuva<\/i>, or returnees to Judaism, and were \u201cin the early stages of their journey,\u201d said Salvador Litvak. They infused the movie with a \u201ctremendous amount of spirituality, Torah and Chassidut,\u201d but, he noted, \u201cnow that we\u2019re Orthodox, we admit that it\u2019s a little edgier than we would like.\u201d However, he said, \u201cAll of the deep stuff in it, the Torah, the love, in addition to the raucous humour, stands the test of time.\u201d<\/p>\n Litvak said his journey as the Accidental Talmudist and the establishment of accidentaltalmudist.org have helped When Do We Eat? <\/i>gain new popularity and provide a built-in audience for Guns & Moses<\/i>, which was partially inspired by a tragic shooting in California on April 27, 2019.<\/p>\n The couple had \u201cbuilt a large audience interested in authentic Jewish content, and we are filmmakers, so we knew that our next movie would be somehow Jewish. I wanted it to be an action thriller because I love action thrillers,\u201d he said. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The Litvaks watched a thriller a day for three years to \u201clearn the genre inside out,\u201d he said. \u201cWhile we were immersed in that, there was a tragic murder, a shooting at a Chabad synagogue in Poway, Calif., where a young white nationalist came in and murdered a woman named Lori Gilbert-Kaye, injured the rabbi, and would have killed a lot more people if his gun had not miraculously jammed and members of the congregation rushed at him and then he fled.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI went down the next day and attended Lori\u2019s funeral and interviewed the rabbi and congregants and got to know what happened there personally, and I said there is something in this that can become an action thriller with a murder\/mystery structure,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Litvak said he knew that a movie about Jews under attack who fight back \u201cwould always be relevant, but we had no idea how relevant it would be\u201d after Oct. 7, 2023.<\/p>\n One of the important themes of the movie, said Litvak, is that Jews are in danger and need to protect themselves and be responsible for their own safety. For him personally, that has meant joining a Jewish self-defence organization called Magen Am (which means Shield of the Nation) and going through extensive training (including learning how to use a gun) so that he can protect his own synagogue in case of an attack like the one in Poway. In the movie Guns & Moses, the character of Rabbi Mo Saltzman goes through the same training that Litvak went through.<\/p>\n In Guns & Moses<\/i>, Saltzman is played by actor Mark Feuerstein, who starred in the hit series Royal Pains<\/i> and appeared in the movie Defiance<\/i>, among other things. The cast includes American-Israeli actor Alona Tal as the rebbetzin, Christopher Lloyd as a Holocaust survivor, as well as veteran actors Neal McDonough and Dermot Mulroney, Jake Busey, Craig Sheaffer, Mercedes Mason, Mark Ivanir (who also appeared in When Do We Eat?<\/i>) and young actor Jackson Dunn, who Litvak believes will become a star. Litvak praised his cast, who only had 20 days to film Guns & Moses<\/i>.<\/p>\n Litvak is looking forward to coming back to Vancouver, where he has visited many times because he has family here. The city is \u201cvery dear to my heart,\u201d he said, and he loves the people and feels at home as soon as he lands here.<\/p>\n For tickets to Guns & Moses<\/i> and other Vancouver Jewish Film Festival screenings, visit vjff.org<\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n David J. Litvak<\/b> is a prairie refugee from the North End of Winnipeg who is a freelance writer and publicist, and a mashgiach at Louis Brier Home and Hospital. His articles have been published in the <\/i>Forward, <\/i>Globe and Mail and <\/i>Seattle Post-Intelligencer. His website is cascadiapublicity.com<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n![\"image](\"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/new-poster-for-Guns-and-Moses.jpg\")
<\/a>And so, Guns & Moses<\/i> \u2013 about a Chabad rabbi who becomes an investigator and gunfighter after witnessing a tragic shooting at his synagogue \u2013 came into being. It was filmed in 2022.<\/p>\n