This Song is Old Trailer (2009)

Trailer for the documentary short This Song is Old, which screened at the 2009 Santa Fe Film Festival.

Sam Pfeffer is the 80-year-old retired Chicago lawyer who acquired a Jewish holy text - a Torah - and personally delivered it to the Bnei Menashe in the dangerous, secluded Indian province of Manipur so they could better practice the faith of their ancestors and prepare to return to the Holy Land. Hillel Halkin is the Israeli writer who spent four years researching the claims of the Bnei Menashe and whose own journey from skeptic to believer is chronicled in his acclaimed book Across the Sabbath River. The story of the Bnei Menashe is over 2700 years old but its implications are significant for the future of small ethnic groups determined to decide their own identity and fate in the modern world. It raises challenging questions about ethnicity and nationhood that continue to impact both the everyday lives of the Bnei Menashe and political relations between Israel and India.