If you should happen to tune into Showtime's "The American Tapestry: Searching for the American Dream" which is scheduled for showing Nov. 8, yes, that is Cantor Alisa Pomerantz-Boro of Tifereth Israel Synagogue of San Diego singing "Let My People Go" at a recreated Passover seder at the home of Murray and Harriet Schneider.

But don't expect to see the cantor's name in the credits of the documentary, nor the name either of Rabbi Leonard Rosenthal, who conducted the special seder. You see, Hollywood folks apparently have a hard time saying "thank you." 

Taking up without any recompense the time, effort and special knowledge of people -- well, that's easy for the folks from Hollywood. But thanking these same people, giving them even a line of credit at the end of the documentary -- puh-leese, what kind of manners do you think Hollywood folks display? Courtesy? Forget about it!

So instead of this documentary being a moment of unabashed kvelling for our community, and a time when Murray Schneider, as gentle an 89-year old gentleman as you'll ever meet, can take pride in the fact that his life story potentially will be seen by millions of Americans, the showing of this film will cause him a little stab in the chest.

His rabbi, his cantor, and his friends in the Retired Seniors Volunteer Patrol (RSVP) -- the organization that Schneider sees as his vehicle for giving back to the community because America has been so good to him, and whose members Showtime filmed with Schneider for the better part of a day -- all of them were left unthanked. 

And so Schneider, with tears in his eyes, has been calling up his friends to say, "I'm sorry. I didn't know how they would edit it. I didn't know that they wouldn't even acknowledge you for the things you did for them."

Rabbi Rosenthal, allow me to say thank you, even if the Showtime people won't. I know that when Showtime wanted to film a Passover seder as a metaphor for the escape from slavery to freedom, Murray Schneider initially was reluctant to go along with the idea. 

He didn't want television viewers at home to see a seder that wasn't 100 percent perfect. He feared that he wasn't religiously knowledgeable enough to lead a seder that could be watched by millions of people. So you graciously agreed to lead the seder. Relieved, only then did Schneider consent to have the camera crew film the seder in his home. Because I was there, taking notes off camera, I know the great care you took to make certain that everything at the seder was done perfectly.

And, thank you too, Cantor Pomerantz-Boro. I know how beautifully you chanted prayers and sang "Let My People Go" during that seder. I saw how transfixed the camera and sound crew were by your heart-felt, beautiful solo. So I was not at all surprised that a snippet of your singing was included in the documentary, nor that the filmmakers used that universal song as a segui to a section of the program about the hopes and dreams that African Americans in the south carried with them as they migrated to the north.

I wasn't there the following day for the filming of the Retired Seniors Volunteer Patrol, which consists of seniors who volunteer to keep an eye on their neighborhoods and perform a myriad of helpful tasks for law enforcement. But I know how important all of you RSVPers are to Schneider; how, raised in the Jewish belief that our lives must be filled with tzedakah (acts of charity) and chesed (kindness), he has found in you -- Jews and Gentiles alike -- companions who make his life ever more meaningful and richer. I thank all of you too.

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So after all that, what can we say about the documentary itself? Can rude people make good documentaries? Surprisingly the answer is yes, although in this case, the product while good was uneven. 

The film looks at the immigration experience through the eyes of representatives of various religious and racial groups. 

The story about how Murray Schneider as a 10-year-old Jewish boy emigrated in 1920 with his mother and siblings from Poland through Ellis Island at times is quite moving: 

He and his wife Harriet were taken by the movie makers back to New York City, to revisit such sites as the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and the Lower East Side.

Schneider told on camera how his family boarded a ship in Rotterdam for a two-week trip to America in steerage. Within a half hour of sailing his sister got seasick and stayed in that condition the entire voyage.

Steerage was "stinking, hot, humid, worm infested, rat infested," Schneider remembered. 

Seeing the Statue of Liberty, Schneider recalled the first time as a child he stared uncomprehendingly at this wonderful lady rising out of the harbor.

And when they got to Ellis Island, he recalled that the immigration process was confusing and scary for him as a 10-year-old. Everybody was shouting, yelling. "I had to hold onto my mother, sister," Schneider recalled. He didn't know English then. He spoke only Yiddish and some Polish. Then a woman came and said in Yiddish she was the interpreter. 

His sister suddenly was taken into another line, and the family was petrified with fear. But then she came back, and reported that the people had been nice to her, and that everything was all right. Remembering how relieved he and his family were, Schneider couldn't help but cry. Watching him, neither could I.

Finally, Schneider told of the long awaited moment of finally meeting his father who had come to America years ahead of the family. Father wasn't the "Moses" whom Schneider had expected; he in fact was a short, bald man. But "being united as a family was joyful...we were happy...in a free country!"

From Ellis Island, the documentary whisked us to Angel Island off San 
Francisco where Chinese immigrants to the United States underwent processing. But we learned that rather than being a gateway to America like Ellis Island, the Chinese saw Angel Island as the fort that was intended to keep them from America. 

They knew all about Chinese exclusion laws, as well as a strange American law that prohibited Chinese men from coming to America with their wives, so wives pretended that they were sisters. In Li Keng Wong, the movie makers found someone as loquacious as Schneider, someone like him a wonderful story teller, who remembered how she had to lie to the immigration officers: No, that woman was not her mommy, she was her auntie!

Next, the documentary took us back to Schneider, so we could see how his family lived on the Lower East Side. Although it was a three-room flat with little ventilation, Schneider said that to his 10-year-old eyes the tenement seemed to be a palace. 

And the first time his father prepared some eggs at the stove, Schneider hunted in vain for the chicken! His father had to take him to a nearby grocery store to see the amazing way food was purchased in America. 

For Li Keng Wong, the Chinese section of Oakland, California, was equally wondrous compared to the tiny rural village in China where she once had lived. I couldn't help but wonder how fine an occasion it would be for Schneider and Li Keng Wong to sit and trade their immigration stories over dinner with their families.

Then we were introduced to another wonderful old woman: Janie Chatman, an African-American who narrated her family's history from slavery in Alabama to modern times in Chicago. We sensed the commonality of these three peoples-- Jews, Chinese, African Americans -- all finding their way in the Land of Opportunity. Expand that dinner party!

A fourth segment was somewhat jarring. It was about midwesterners who after World War II moved to California to pursue their dream and find the good life. Beautiful children, swimming pool, wonderful grandchildren. The California dream. But this Anglo family is worried about all the signs in foreign languages that they can't read which are starting to appear in their neighborhood. They say they are not prejudiced but shouldn't people be required to put up signs in English? America is a wonderful country, they note; other countries put up fences to keep people in. We have to put them up to keep them out.

That was another segui -- to the story one senses the documentary makers wanted to tell the most: the story of a Mexican woman who decides to immigrate to the United States--illegally.

We learn initally through subtitled Spanish language interviews that Eva Conseco lives in Tijuana and works in one of the maquiladoras that line the U.S.- Mexican border. 

Her salary is very low, and she fears she cannot ever provide her children with education and a chance to control their own destinies unless she goes north to the United States.

But first she must go south, to Oaxaca, where she was raised, to her mother's grave to say goodbye. We watch a tearful Conseco explain herself to her mother; we see her pray to the Virgin for assistance; we are just behind the camera when she kisses her children and her husband goodbye. As she ducks into a passageway that may lead into the United States, the documentary ends. 

Isn't hers just one more story in a parade of people, good people, searching for the American dream? Wouldn't Murray Schneider, Li Keng Wong and Janie Chatman want her there at that triumphant dinner party too?

The film so clearly documents the fact that Conseco entered this country illegally, it probably will result in her being spotted, arrested and deported back to Mexico.

Do you think perhaps, just perhaps, Hollywood might have cared enough about her as a human being --as opposed to being a film subject -- to thank her?