Beyond the Filter: Q&A with Jill Kargman on Influenced

There’s no single way to be Jewish in America. It’s shaped by migration and memory, tradition, reinvention and stories passed down and stories still being written. This Jewish American Heritage Month, Reboot invites you to explore a range of projects created by artists across our network and in our community, each offering a different lens on Jewish identity, culture and experience. From film and theater to food, digital interpretations and archival storytelling, these works reflect a Jewish culture that is expansive, evolving and deeply rooted in lived experience. This is not one narrative. It’s many. Together, these projects offer a snapshot of Jewish culture as it is being created and redefined today. The annual celebration of Jewish American Heritage Month is organized by the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History. Download Reboot’s guide.

Design professionals Ruth Siegel and Rebecca Garza-Bortman met at a Baby & Me class at the Silver Lake JCC and bonded over new parenthood, creative pursuits and shared loss. Having both lost their fathers, they connected through humor and honesty, jokingly calling themselves “The Dead Dads Club.” Siegel and Bortman saw how hard it was for people losing their parents to navigate grief without tools or tradition. Judaism offers an incredible roadmap for mourning, but most people don’t know where to start. When they searched for something as simple as a yahrzeit candle, everything on the market looked like a repurposed gefilte fish jar. Plastic. Paraffin. Crooked labels. Zero soul. So they designed their own with the concept of “Hiddur Mitzvah”—elevating ritual through beauty, care, and meaning. Their yahrzeit candle, launching through Kickstarted May 8, is sustainable and designed to hold memory, beauty, and tradition. Find out more at meremortals.club.

Noam Dromi, Managing Director of Reboot Studios, sat down with filmmaker and actor Matthew Shear to discuss his new film Fantasy Life, a deeply personal story where Jewish identity isn’t a premise, but a lived cultural environment shaping how characters think, joke and relate to one another. In this conversation, Shear reflects on the origins of the film, the role of intergenerational memory and the subtle, often uncomfortable ways we navigate identity, assimilation and inheritance. Rather than positioning itself as an “issue film,” Fantasy Life offers something more intimate and textured, rooted in character, humor and emotional honesty. Watch the video conversation or read the written Q&A to learn through our conversation with Shear about the making of the film, the ideas behind it, and the cultural questions it raises.