Maxie and Shelly and the Whole Mishpocha

Maxie and Shelly and the Whole Mishpocha is a personal homage and cultural history about the deep bonds that tied together an extraordinary group of first-generation American Jews, seen through my eyes as part of the second generation. I was born in Brooklyn, as were both of my parents, and I was raised in the New York area.

This film grows out of that life, and my experience growing up around a fantastic cast of New York characters – they were larger than life – loving, generous, caring, joyful and funny. The film moves through Brownsville, Brooklyn, in the 1930s, the Catskills in the 1960s, and goes back to the shtetls of Eastern Europe. It reveals the shared cultural roots and experiences of my parents chosen family – the whole mishpocha – and their parents. And makes connections between the old world and the new.

In 1972, this world was shaken when two beloved members of the mishpocha, Maxie Tekelch and Sheldon Epstein, were murdered in a gangland-style killing. Police and politicians called it a case of “mistaken identity,” but some believed it was a “targeted hit.” The film does not attempt to solve or sensationalize the crime. Instead, the loss itself becomes a reason to look back at an event that I experienced when I was 21, not to assign blame, but to understand who these people were, where they came from, and why their lives mattered. The film exists to honor these lives, preserve their stories, and pass forward a world that shaped me and is now disappearing.

Ultimately, it is a story about continuity – how culture is carried through everyday life, and how memory keeps people present long after they are gone.

Maxie and Shelly and the Whole Mishpocha illuminates the beautiful and dark forces that shaped their lives and mine, told through documented research, interviews and photos from personal archives.