Filmmaker Salvador Litvak on ‘Guns & Moses,’ Blending Faith and Film, and Reaching the Audiences Hollywood Overlooks
…I’m a big fan of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. There’s this one scene where the group is going through a deep, dark, dangerous forest. It’s not just physically dark — it has this dark energy that saps the courage out of you. The further in they go, the more terrified they become. But if you climb a tree and get above the darkness, everything changes. You see a field of treetops, the sun is shining, and you feel strength and courage return. Most importantly, you can see the direction you need to go. That’s what a proper life of faith is like — especially for a Jew. You stop every seven days. More than the Jews have kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jews. It gives you a chance to rise above it all, get that tree-top view, reset your bearings, and figure out what really matters. Then you come back down ready to move forward with confidence, in the right direction. Not everyone is Jewish, nor do they need to be. But everyone has some kind of faith tradition available to them, or some kind of grounding spiritual practice. And it’s necessary — it’s as necessary as water and oxygen, no matter what career you’re pursuing…
I had the pleasure of talking with Salvador Litvak. Salvador is a Chilean-American writer-director, author, and speaker whose unconventional career has bridged Hollywood storytelling and traditional Jewish scholarship. Best known in recent years for his widely followed educational platform Accidental Talmudist, Litvak has built a diverse body of work that spans independent cinema, digital education, and religious outreach.
Born in Santiago, Chile, in 1965, Litvak is the descendant of Eastern European Jewish immigrants. His paternal great-grandfather fled pogroms in Ukraine, settling in Chile in the early 20th century. On his mother’s side, his family history is marked by the Holocaust; his grandmother survived the Theresienstadt concentration camp while carrying and raising Litvak’s mother as an infant. The family fled Hungary during the 1956 uprising, ultimately relocating to Chile, where his parents met.
Litvak immigrated to the United States with his family in 1970 at the age of five. Raised primarily in New York, he grew up in a secular environment, with Judaism playing only a peripheral role in his early life. He attended public school and later earned admission to Harvard University, where he studied English literature. Though he initially pursued pre-med coursework to meet familial expectations, Litvak pivoted toward the humanities and graduated with a focus on writing. He later earned a law degree from New York University.
His legal training ultimately served as a stepping stone to a different path. While studying law in New York’s Greenwich Village, Litvak began to explore creative pursuits, including poetry, theater, and performance art. This artistic awakening prompted a career shift. He applied to UCLA’s prestigious MFA directing program, one of the few film schools that fit his financial constraints, and was accepted despite lacking formal industry experience.
Litvak’s filmmaking debut came with When Do We Eat? (2006), a Passover-themed comedy exploring intergenerational tension within a Jewish family. The film combined irreverent humor with Hasidic teachings, and despite a mixed critical reception, it later developed a cult following — especially within Jewish communities — becoming an annual viewing tradition for some during Passover.
His follow-up project, Saving Lincoln (2013), took a dramatically different tone. Inspired by the Civil War-era friendship between Abraham Lincoln and Ward Hill Lamon, the film employed a distinctive visual style, integrating vintage photographs from the Library of Congress with green screen technology to simulate historical environments. It was a response, in part, to the shelving of a previous Lincoln script he co-wrote that became commercially untenable after Steven Spielberg announced a similar film. Saving Lincoln has since been included in educational materials across the United States and remains accessible via streaming platforms.
Parallel to his film work, Litvak experienced a personal spiritual transformation that led him to a deep engagement with Talmudic study. This journey began in 1997, prompted by the death of his grandmother. Seeking to honor her legacy, he eventually bought his first volume of the Talmud — coincidentally on the first day of a new Daf Yomi cycle, a global program of daily Talmud study spanning seven and a half years.
Initially self-taught, Litvak completed the cycle in 2012 and began writing about his experience, launching the Accidental Talmudist column at the Jewish Journal. What began as a personal endeavor evolved into a broad-reaching educational platform with over a million followers on Facebook and a growing presence on Instagram and TikTok. Litvak now teaches Talmud daily to a diverse international audience, many of whom are not Jewish but drawn to the moral and philosophical insights of Jewish tradition.
Litvak returned to feature filmmaking with Guns & Moses, a thriller involving a rabbi-turned-detective investigating a synagogue shooting. Drawing on his own firearms training and membership in Magen Am — a Jewish security initiative — the film reflects contemporary concerns over rising antisemitism and self-defense within Jewish communities. With performances from actors including Mark Feuerstein, Neal McDonough, and Christopher Lloyd, the film has resonated with Jewish and Christian audiences alike on the festival circuit, and debuts in theaters across America in July.
Litvak is also the author of Let My People Laugh: Great Jewish Jokes of All Time!, a collection of humor rooted in tradition, which emerged from his daily Torah teachings and viral video content.
Throughout his career, Litvak has consistently explored themes of identity, resilience, and spiritual seeking. His artistic and educational projects often intersect, reflecting a personal conviction that tradition and creativity are not mutually exclusive. While Hollywood has often portrayed religion either cynically or sentimentally, Litvak’s work attempts to carve out a third space — one in which faith is examined seriously but not solemnly.
He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and creative partner, Nina Litvak. Together, they have collaborated on multiple screenplays and educational initiatives, and remain active in both the entertainment industry and the Jewish learning space.
Yitzi: Sal, it’s a delight and an honor to meet you. Before we dive in deep, our readers would love to learn about your personal origin story. Can you share with us the story of your childhood and how you grew up?
Salvador: I was born in Santiago, Chile, and so were my father and grandfather. My great-grandfather came from Ukraine, fleeing the pogroms. How he ended up in Chile, we don’t know. He had nine kids. The first ones were Abraham, Isidore, and Malka. By the time the last sons were born, they had names like Manuel and Salvador — my grandfather. It’s not an unusual immigrant story, but this one took place in South America.
On my mother’s side, she was a Holocaust survivor. My grandmother, who was in Hungary, had my mother in 1944. She carried her as an infant through a concentration camp. Absolute miracle. My grandmother lost her husband — my grandfather — who was taken away while she was still pregnant, so my mother never met her father. She and my grandmother both survived the concentration camp at Theresienstadt, and they were liberated by the Russians. At first, they thought the Russians were great, but then they experienced Soviet rule in Hungary, which wasn’t great at all. They managed to escape in 1956 and followed a relative who had already gone to Chile. That’s where my mother and father met.
In 1970, a communist president was elected in Chile. The Hungarian side of the family said, “We’ve seen this story before. We know how it ends.” And that’s how we ended up in America. We came in 1970. I was five years old. My parents asked around, “What’s the thing to do in America?” The answer was: go to Harvard and be a doctor. So they said to me, “You’re going to go to Harvard and be a doctor.” And being five, I said, “Okay.” That was the plan.
We spent a few years in New York City, in Riverdale, but most of my childhood was in New City, New York, not far from Monsey. I went to public school and had a very normal childhood. I got into trouble quite a bit, but I kept my grades up. I was lucky enough to go to Harvard. That was an incredible experience. It wasn’t what I thought it would be. As a troublemaker, I assumed I wouldn’t fit in at all, that it’d be full of preppies and nerds. But in the 1980s, it was actually a very diverse place.
I spent much of my time on the rowing team, which I started in college and became completely obsessed with. It’s a sport with mystical qualities. When all eight guys hit that synchronicity — what we called “swing” — it was amazing. We were national champions.
I eventually realized I didn’t want to be a doctor — I wasn’t enjoying my pre-med classes at all. I was loving my writing and English classes, so I became an English major. When I told my parents I wasn’t going to medical school, they said, “Well then, obviously you’re going to law school.” And that’s what I did.
I went to NYU Law in New York City, in the Village — one of the great artistic centers of the world — which was very fortunate for me, because that’s when I really started asking myself: Who am I? What am I doing here? I felt like I was at the end of this conveyor belt my parents had put me on when I was five. There’d been a slight change in direction, but it still didn’t feel true to my authentic self. So I started filling journals, just exploring those questions — who am I, what was I meant to do?
I’d had a Bar Mitzvah when I was a kid. I went to Hebrew school a few days a week, but later on, I was very disconnected. Religion wasn’t a part of my life, but spirituality was. I always believed in God. I was kind of a science guy most of those years — I loved science fiction. And from the rational part of me, it just didn’t make sense that a world full of stuff would come into being randomly, for no reason. So I figured, there must be a Creator. And if there’s a Creator, He’d probably be interested in His creations — especially if the creations were interested in Him.
I was always curious. I didn’t really explore other religions, but I got into drumming, meditation, martial arts, rowing, and other endurance sports. I went to Grateful Dead shows. I was always seeking something else — some experience of the higher world.
I also got involved in poetry, poetry readings, and performance art. I was really living two lives. Law student by day, poet warrior by night. That all kind of culminated in this performance art show I put on in Chelsea. I rented a theater, put up posters around the Village, and people actually came. The review was always something like, “Interesting.” And I realized, if I wanted to do something artistic with my life, it was going to have to be more disciplined — something that could sustain itself and me.
At that point, I thought I’d write novels because my heroes were novelists. I started writing one, and then a friend of mine said he was going to film school. I said, “Film school? What’s that?” He said, “What do you think it is? You go and learn how to make movies.”
Now, back at Harvard, I’d gone to a screening of student films once. It had nothing to do with actual movies — just really pretentious, unwatchable, philosophical, angst-ridden stuff. Nothing like what you’d see in a movie theater. So if you’d asked me back then who movie directors were, I would’ve said, “I don’t know — children of celebrities? Who gets a chance like that?”
But it turned out, you could go to film school and actually make that happen. And I thought, if I could imagine the ideal job for me — well, I’d always loved movies. It just never occurred to me that it was possible. So I looked into it. I still had law school loans, and of the top film schools, the only one that was a state school and even semi-affordable was UCLA. They were going to take 18 out of 700 applicants to their MFA directing program. I had no business getting in.
But what I had learned in law school was how to get a job or campaign for a position. I knew how to interview. One of the things your magazine, Authority Magazine, does is give people advice on how to pursue different paths. And I think a great piece of advice for anyone interviewing for anything is this: find out who’s interviewing you. Learn something about them — what their problems are, their past, what they’re proud of. Then, when you’re in the interview, get them talking about themselves as much as possible. Because people don’t really remember what’s said in an interview. But if the interviewer talks about themselves, they’ll walk away thinking it was a very intelligent conversation.
This was back in the days before the internet, so I went to the NYU library and did some research on the professors who were going to interview me. How did I know which professors were coming? I called the UCLA Film Department, got a secretary on the phone, chatted with her, and eventually found out the names of the professors doing the East Coast interviews. One made documentaries, one made B movies, another did more artsy, experimental videos. I learned a bit about their work in the library.
So, when I went into the interview, we talked about their work. And afterward, they remembered it as a really intelligent conversation — because it was about them.
When I arrived at UCLA, I thought, thank God I didn’t miss this. I was born to do this. I just loved it. I never feel more alive than when I’m on a film set, or even just in the process — prepping, doing pre-production, editing, post-production. The whole thing.
A director’s job is to have a vision from the start — what the movie will look and feel like when it’s playing in a dark theater full of people. You’ve got to hold on to that vision through all the ups and downs — and there are so many downs!
You raise money, and then the money falls through. You cast the film, and an actor drops out. You finally get to production, and then the location falls through, or a crew member doesn’t work out, or a cast member turns out to be difficult. On our most recent project, we actually had a thief on the crew who stole a significant amount of money from the production budget. It caused a huge setback.
You never know what’s going to happen. You have to stay steady and keep that vision alive, even when people are telling you you’re crazy, you don’t know what you’re doing, this isn’t going to work. And I love the whole process.
While I was at UCLA, it quickly became clear to me — this was still before YouTube — that the short films we were making had little inherent value. It’s a calling card. It’s training. It shows that you can make a movie. Today there are more options — you can use a short in more places, maybe even make money from it. But back then, it was just a way to show you had potential, maybe get into some festivals.
If you wanted to make a living making movies, you had to plan to make a feature. And that starts with a script.
So I went to the classes taught in the highly successful MFA screenwriting program at UCLA. I said, “I’d like to take this class.” They said, “No, you’re in the directing program. We don’t take directors.” I said, “Why? I’m a writer-director.” They said, “Nope. Directors never finish their scripts.”
There was this terrible reputation among the writers and producers at UCLA that directors never finished anything. And to be honest, with a lot of my classmates, that was true. They weren’t there to figure out how to get out of school and make movies that played in theaters. They were doing therapy through film — making movies about their angst and personal struggles. With no job waiting for them, they put off graduation. A lot of them ended up teaching or just left the business.
But I was 100% determined to make movies. And that started with writing scripts. So I just kept showing up on the first day of the screenwriting class — where, in ten weeks, you write a feature-length script. I said, “Let me in, and I will finish.”
After four quarters of being turned away, they finally said, “This kid seems serious. Let’s give him a shot.” I finished my script that term. Then I wrote two more. So I came out of film school with three completed screenplays, and then wrote two more.
I ended up teaching screenwriting while I was getting my first movie together. I always told my students, you don’t know what you’re doing until you’ve written at least five scripts. You need to go through that process a few times to really understand that you don’t just write a script — you grow a script.
A script has to have a beginning, middle, and end that you can tell in one sentence, three sentences, ten sentences, a one-page treatment, a two-page treatment, a ten-page outline, a fifty-page outline. Once you’ve done that, you’re ready to write the script. You already know your characters, the story beats, and all the scenes. But if you just open up Final Draft, type “Fade in,” and go with “Dark and stormy night,” odds are, you’re never going to finish.
So I had my scripts. I was armed and ready. I knew how to make a movie. My short films had even won some awards. But a feature is a feature — and when you come out of film school, no one’s inviting you to make one. You’re qualified to either write and direct or fetch coffee. And the only job they’re offering is coffee-fetching.
I was getting by — teaching screenwriting at a community college, managing a 30-unit apartment building, and reading scripts for CAA, Creative Artists Agency. It was the biggest agency back then. They paid terribly, but being a reader for CAA was a good credential.
As the internet started taking off, I began offering my services as a script consultant. I’d give people the kind of coverage you’d get at CAA — before they submitted to CAA. Because coverage lives forever. Once it’s written, it stays in your file. And if it’s bad, that’s it. So people came to me first. After giving them coverage, I’d give advice on how to make the script better. It turned into a pretty good gig. I made decent money giving notes — pointing out the problems, suggesting fixes, all of that.
In the meantime, I met my wife Nina. She was a frustrated writer working as an executive at Disney. The corporate culture, at least where she was, was pretty toxic. But she really wanted to write screenplays. She had written a few, and so had I. We got romantically involved, and we also had a lot in common creatively.
Yitzi: Can you tell us the story of how you first started making films?
Salvador: Our first project together was a Lincoln script. A friend of mine had originally wanted us to write a negative Kennedy script. I told him, “This town is so liberal, so Democrat — you’re not going to get far with a movie slamming JFK.” Since he was a Republican, Nina said, “Why not go with the original Republican — Abraham Lincoln? Everybody loves Lincoln.” He said, “That’s a good idea. Let’s do that.” Nina is a livelong Lincoln buff.
So we dove into the research. Lincoln is the second most written-about human in history after Jesus. There were about 16,000 books on him at the time — probably 18,000 now. We didn’t read them all, but we read a lot. It was a huge undertaking.
Eventually, we found an angle. The script would focus on Lincoln and his rivals in the 1860 election, who later became members of his cabinet as he led the country through the Civil War. Our visual device was this: even if Lincoln wasn’t in every scene, his hat would be. The script was called Lincoln’s Hat. It was really about him, of course, but the story followed the hat as a symbol.
We worked on it for two years. Once it was polished and ready, we got an agent. She told us, “Historical dramas are very hard to sell to studios. But this script is fantastic. I can sell this.”
The script was supposed to go out on a Friday, and we were dreaming — thinking maybe this would be one of those big auctions where all the studios fight over it. Our careers would be made by Monday.
But then on Wednesday — two days before it was supposed to go out — Steven Spielberg announced he was doing a Lincoln movie. Tom Hanks was attached to star. An Oscar-winning screenwriter was adapting it from Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book, and she’s a Pulitzer Prize winner. The project had a beautiful pedigree, all around.
And just like that, our script became radioactive. Not only was it not going to sell — no one would even read it as a sample. Spielberg is famously protective, and there had been some earlier controversy where someone claimed he’d ripped off material, so now everyone was extremely cautious. Nobody wanted to go near our Lincoln project, no matter how different it was. We’d spent two years working on it, and it was incredibly frustrating.
At that point, I said, I didn’t come here to sell screenplays. I came here to make movies. And we’re going to figure out a movie we can make ourselves, with our friends and a Best Buy camera if necessary.
We started looking around for an idea and landed on a dysfunctional family comedy. We thought it was funny that one of the kids slips his dad a hallucinogen at a holiday dinner. There have been tons of Thanksgiving and Christmas movies — but no Passover movie. So we decided to set the whole thing during a Seder.
Then — this is one of those times I believe God helps those who’ve done the work to move forward — an executive producer heard the idea and said, “I like that. What do you need to make it?” I was stunned. I said, “I don’t know… a few million dollars?” He said, “Okay.”
Suddenly, the money was there. And now we had to move — fast — before the money disappeared. We found a great producing partner in Steven Wolfe, and we started the casting process. And it all came together.
The movie is called When Do We Eat? It stars Michael Lerner, Lesley Ann Warren, and Jack Klugman in his final role. I discovered Max Greenfield — this was his first major film, and now he’s a big star. Ben Feldman was also in it — pretty much his first film too. Shiri Appleby, Mark Ivanir (who I’ve worked with again since), and Mili Avital, a big Israeli star — all part of an amazing cast.
One thing I definitely learned: if you want to make a low-budget independent film, having eleven people in every scene is a terrible idea. You want two people in a scene, maybe three, maybe four. But eleven? That’s a nightmare to shoot — just getting coverage from all the different angles and handling all those conversations. It made the shoot really difficult, even though the whole movie was essentially contained, a dinner party. And on top of that, there were a lot of visual effects — because the dad is tripping.
We were hoping it would become the Jewish It’s a Wonderful Life.
Yitzi: What’s the story behind why you started the Accidental Talmudist?
Salvador: Along this journey — actually while I was still in film school — my grandmother passed away. I was at her bedside.
I was very close with her. Her name was Magda. She lost her husband — my grandfather — in the war, so she always lived with us. And there was something we all knew about her: she wasn’t in a rush, but she was waiting to be reunited with her husband, Imre — her beshert, her soulmate — in the next world.
After the war, she danced at so many weddings in the DP camps — people who had lost their spouses, found someone else, and started over. But for her, there was only one. There was only her beshert. She sounds like a saint, and in many ways, she was. But she was also really funny, very down to earth, and made incredible Hungarian food. I was very close to her.
The day came when my mom called and said, “Come home — it’s time.” She was 88. It was melanoma in the end, but really, it was just Magda’s time. I was sitting in a chair beside her bed. She was lying there, my mom was kneeling on the ground, my brother next to her. We were all holding her hands.
It’s not always this way, but in her case, we knew when she took her last breath. She died, and my mom was crying, my brother was crying, I was crying. But then, something pulled my attention away from her face and toward the center of the room. The air shimmered — and something opened.
And I saw her. Not sick with cancer, but the way I knew her — this charming older woman — moving away from me, toward something, toward someone. And I realized it was my grandfather. I recognized him from the photos we had in the house. I thought, Oh my God. This is what she’s been waiting for all her life. I can’t believe I’m seeing this.
But then something strange happened — she didn’t want to go. I thought, Why not? And then I understood — she was embarrassed. He was a young, handsome man, like the last time she saw him in 1943. And she was an old woman now. She was self-conscious. But then he reached out, took her hands, pulled her in, and they embraced.
And then it got bright. And then she was young again. It was this love-drenched moment — something Hollywood could never get right. And then it got even brighter, and they were gone.
My jaw hung open. I didn’t know what to do with that experience. But when I got back to LA, I felt like I needed to honor her in some way. So I went to a synagogue, a big conservative shul, like the one I grew up in. I thought I would say Kaddish. But I was so moved that day. The rabbi was a great speaker, a great teacher, a real educator. The music was beautiful.
And I was moved to tears. I thought, this thing I’ve been searching for in all these other practices — maybe I should try my own backyard. So I started going to shul and taking classes. Thank God, there are some great rabbis in LA, and all of them would, sooner or later — usually sooner — mention the Talmud.
I didn’t know what the Talmud was. When I’d go to the Mitzvah store on Pico and see the Artscroll edition, I’d be like, look at that thing — it’s vast, 73 volumes. I didn’t go to Yeshiva. I don’t speak Hebrew. How would I know where to begin? I didn’t even know if I was allowed to read the Talmud. I’d heard that with Kabbalah, you’re supposed to be 40. Maybe with the Talmud, you’re supposed to be a rabbi. Who knows? I figured it just wasn’t for me.
Over the years, we got more and more involved in the Jewish community. We went to shul every Shabbos. We weren’t shomer Shabbos yet, but we went to synagogue every week. We had a lot of friends in the community. And whenever I’d get a gift, or need a ritual object — I was already wearing tzitzit — I’d go to the Mitzvah Store on Pico Blvd, see those volumes of the Artscroll, and think, there’s the Talmud. I’m sure it’s full of wisdom, but I didn’t go to Yeshiva, I don’t know where to begin. So I’d just walk away. That probably happened a dozen times.
Then in 2005, When Do We Eat? was on the festival circuit. I was in that store again, looking at the volumes, thinking, I’d like to read that — but again, I figured it wasn’t for me. I turned to walk away. And then something stopped me. I thought, this is ridiculous. They’re just books. I was an English major at Harvard. I went to law school. I went to film school. My wife and I are book lovers. Our house is full of them. There must be a book one of the Talmud. I’ll just get that and see what it’s like.
So I picked up the nearest one, looked at the table of contents. Book one is Berachos. Berachos, okay. Now I’m buying a volume of Talmud, feeling good about myself. I go to the counter, and the kid at the register says, “You’re doing Daf Yomi.”
I said, “What’s Daf Yomi?”
He looked over his glasses at me, like, are you kidding? I thought, Daf Yomi must be a code. If you don’t know the code, you’re not allowed to read the books. Now he’s got to get rid of me without embarrassing me. This is so awkward. How do I get out of here?
Then he says, “Daf Yomi means ‘page of the day.’ It’s a program where people around the world read the entire Talmud, one page a day. It takes seven and a half years. And today is day one.”
Now, it would’ve been amazing if it were month one. It would’ve felt like a miracle if it were week one. But it was day one of the cycle. So I thought, okay God, I get the message.
I also saw pretty quickly that you’re not supposed to learn alone. So I started looking for a Daf Yomi shiur. Found one in LA. There were three kinds: one in Yiddish — not for me. One in Hebrew — not for me. One in English — okay.
So I went to a Daf Yomi shiur in English. But “English” means “Yeshivish,” where every other word out of the teacher’s mouth is Hebrew or Aramaic — the jargon of the Talmud. I had no idea what he was saying. I thought, I can make an hour a day to get through the daf using the Artscroll, which isn’t really a translation — it’s an elucidation. It’s like having an incredible rabbi teaching it to you. But I’m not going to find another hour to go to a class I don’t understand.
So I just did it by myself for the next three years.
A lot of guys with the beard, the coat, the hat — they start Daf Yomi and don’t finish, because it’s such a big commitment. But I felt like God put the book in my hand. I had to keep going. Eventually I picked up enough of the jargon and joined Rabbi Mechie Blau’s shiur.
In 2012, I completed the Daf Yomi journey at MetLife Stadium with 93,000 Jews in attendance. I brought my son, my brother, and my best friend. It was an incredible experience.
Then I started blogging about it, and that became a column at the Jewish Journal. David Suissa invited me. To promote the column, I started a Facebook page, and that just took off — completely unexpected. Eventually, we had a million followers on Facebook and 200,000 on Instagram.
Now, since 2020, I teach Daf Yomi — two to three thousand views a day. We also put out a newsletter with five writers every week, who all comment on one verse from the weekly Torah portion.
I started telling Jewish jokes, because the great sage Rabbah would always open with a joke. At first, I was just writing them and putting them on our website, accidentaltalmudist.org. Then, as Instagram grew, I started telling the jokes in videos. A bunch of those videos went viral. Tony Lyons and his Skyhorse Publishing reached out and said, “Let’s do a joke book.” And Let My People Laugh: Great Jewish Jokes of All Time! became a bestseller on Amazon.
All of this came from that glimpse my grandmother gave me of the upper world during her last moments in this world. It changed my life in every way. We continued growing as Jews. We’re shomer Shabbos, kosher Jews now.
Backing up to the movie When Do We Eat? — it played in festivals for a year and was really popular with audiences. When we wrote it, we were already on a Jewish journey. We weren’t Orthodox yet, but it was very important to us. So I actually wove a lot of Hasidic teachings into the story.
One of the kids doses his dad, but the real story is about the oldest son. He was a successful businessman who lost everything and became a Hasid — basically a Chabad Hasid. He doesn’t even want to come home because it’s not kosher, and his mother says, “I’m going to make it kosher enough for Moses.” The whole Seder dinner takes place in a tent. The visuals were based on the Szyk Haggadah that my great-grandfather gave me as a kid.
On the one hand, the movie is edgy, irreverent, kind of raucous. But on the other, it’s about a family that’s deeply dysfunctional — and how Torah Judaism has something to offer them. The traditional, authentic, time-tested teachings of our people have something to offer a family in crisis. And that Seder night is definitely a crisis — multiple crises.
People really appreciated that the film could do both things: be a broad comedy and offer deep spiritual teachings. We hoped it would become the Jewish It’s a Wonderful Life. We knew we had a shot at that.
It was released in April 2006 in a limited run — about 60 theaters in 34 cities. And I know we could’ve done well, but we got attacked. Now, if The New York Times and The Washington Post had said, “Yeah, it’s a mediocre movie, poorly directed,” okay — that would be on me. But that’s not what they said. They said the movie was offensive.
And we were like, who’s the authority that deemed it offensive? Based on what? When you actually read those two reviews, they don’t make sense if you’ve seen the movie. What really happened is, they were triggered by a film that doesn’t mock faith.
Hollywood either mocks faith or makes faith-based films for the Christian market. But a movie that takes faith seriously — made by Jews, in the wrapper of a Hollywood-style broad comedy that’s genuinely entertaining — that was off-narrative.
They savaged it. And in the world of indie film, when the distributor saw those two reviews, they said, “Yeah, this isn’t going to work.” They pulled their resources. We ended up with a terrible DVD deal. And that was it. We thought the movie had died. It was such a heartbreak — our dream had just died.
So we said, we’ve got to move on. What are we going to do next?
Meanwhile, a few years go by and Spielberg still isn’t making his Lincoln movie. So we thought, well, we have a Lincoln script — maybe he’d want to read it. But we were told, “No, you can’t get your Lincoln script anywhere near Spielberg.” Okay, but he’s not making his movie. Maybe someone else will help us make ours. Again — no. Because Spielberg might make his, nobody wanted to touch ours.
Finally, I said, “We’re going to make a Lincoln movie. We’re just going to do it.” And people were like, “That’s nice, but this isn’t a movie about stoners on a couch, how are you going to just make a historical epic?” I said, “I don’t know. But we’re going to figure it out.”
The book Spielberg had optioned was Team of Rivals, about Lincoln and the former political rivals he brought into his cabinet. So we figured their movie would focus on that. Our original script was too similar. But we knew Lincoln inside out, so we decided to write a new script — Saving Lincoln — focused on his friendship with his best friend, Ward Hill Lamon. Lamon was the only person Lincoln brought with him from Illinois to Washington. He brought him because Lamon was funny, sang bawdy songs, played banjo, and could cheer Lincoln up when he was depressed. There was no medicine for that back then — Lamon was the medicine.
But Lamon was also big, Southern, and well-armed. When they tried to kill Lincoln before he was even inaugurated — the Baltimore Plot — Lamon appointed himself Lincoln’s bodyguard. He served faithfully, was present at every major historical event, and would’ve saved Lincoln’s life if Lincoln hadn’t sent him away three days before the assassination. Why did Lincoln send Lamon away? See Saving Lincoln.
So now we had a new script, a new approach — it wasn’t the same movie Spielberg was planning. But still, people said, “He’s making a Lincoln movie. Doesn’t matter how different yours is — it’s still Lincoln.” But he still wasn’t making his movie. Years had passed since his announcement. Tom Hanks was out, Liam Neeson was in, other writers came and went — it wasn’t going anywhere.
Meanwhile, during our research, I came across these incredible Civil War-era photos, digitized in super high resolution by the Library of Congress. And I got this idea: we’re going to shoot our movie against green screen like a sci-fi film, and build the environments from these vintage photographs. We’d place our characters literally in 1860 — as if by time machine.
People said, “Interesting idea, Sal. But that’s impossible.” I thought, “Maybe. Maybe not.” And it wasn’t impossible. We did it.
Two days after we announced we were moving forward with Saving Lincoln, Spielberg announced his Lincoln movie was finally happening. Coincidence? Maybe. But kind of an odd one.
So in the end, he made Lincoln and we made Saving Lincoln. And somehow, after ten years of development, millions spent, and with Daniel Day-Lewis giving an incredible performance, Spielberg’s Lincoln movie ended up being about this: the Civil War is over, and Lincoln is twisting arms in Congress to pass the law abolishing slavery forever.
I was shocked — that’s the Lincoln movie of our generation? Spielberg’s movie could’ve been the defining Lincoln film of all time. And they went with such a narrow idea. Their concept was, “Lincoln was the consummate politician. Let’s show him being a politician.”
But Lincoln led America through the Civil War, through the nation’s darkest hours — through his own family’s darkest hours — while people were trying to kill him. That’s the movie. And that’s what Saving Lincoln is.
So I invite anyone to watch both films — Lincoln and Saving Lincoln. Ours has this unique look. I called it “CineCollage.” People love our movie. It’s exciting, it’s interesting. It was made on a small budget, and we had almost no budget for release, so not as many people know about it. But it keeps growing by word of mouth.
In fact, the Gettysburg Address scene from our film was incorporated into the standard Houghton Mifflin textbook used in high schools across America. When students learn about American history, they study that scene from our movie. It’s on Amazon Prime, Apple and other platforms, and the audience keeps growing every year.
And then, a few years later — by that point, Accidental Talmudist had been going strong for a while — Passover was coming up, and we realized something funny. The people who followed us on Accidental Talmudist didn’t even know I was a movie director. They just followed me for Jewish wisdom — Torah insights, jokes, quotes from our sages, reflections on Jewish tradition. They had no idea I’d ever made a film, let alone a Jewish movie.
So we decided to share the trailer for When Do We Eat? This was 2016 — ten years after the film came out. I posted something like, “In case you didn’t know, this movie is available on Amazon, and you might enjoy it. It’s a Passover film we made.”
Immediately, hundreds of comments poured in: “You made that movie? We love that movie!” “We watch it every year!”
Turns out — it had become the Jewish It’s a Wonderful Life. And because our DVD deal had been so bad, we didn’t even know. We didn’t know that our dream had come true.
It’s become a cult classic. Every year, its audience grows. People around the world watch it. So many families have made it part of their Passover tradition. They connect with the crazy family dynamics, the wild shenanigans, the deep spiritual teachings underneath it all, and the memorable characters. People love it.
It’s amazing — we never knew. But because of Accidental Talmudist, we finally found out. And then we were even able to help it grow more.
Yitzi: Please tell us about your latest film, Guns & Moses.
Salvador: We were busy growing Accidental Talmudist. Saving Lincoln did well for such a small-budget movie, but no one was pounding on our door saying, “Hey, come write and direct a movie for us.” But that’s who we are — we’re artists.
Nina said, we’ve got to make another movie. What’s our next movie going to be? It’s going to be a Jewish movie. Because of the Accidental Talmudist audience, we were bringing an audience with us. That’s ideal for a filmmaker — having an audience before you’ve even made the movie.
Then the question became, what kind of movie are we going to make? I said, a thriller. My favorite movies are thrillers, and it’s also the most commercial genre — maybe tied with horror. But we’re not so into horror.
We started looking for a Jewish thriller subject. We set up a projector and screen in our living room and began watching a thriller every day. For three years, we studied the genre, watching a different thriller daily.
During that time, a terrible shooting happened at the Chabad of Poway in California. A white nationalist came in and murdered Lori Gilbert-Kaye. He would have killed a lot more people if his gun hadn’t miraculously jammed, and then people chased him out. I went down there the next day. I attended the funeral and interviewed the rabbi for Accidental Talmudist. I watched him become a national figure, calling for people to do mitzvahs. I felt there was something calling to us in that.
Danger to Jews is nothing new — it’s as old as the hills. Even before October 7th, over the past decade, we’ve seen the danger levels rising, especially in Europe. A rabbi here in California, Rabbi Yossi Eilfort, started an organization called Magen Am — Shield of the Nation. Some of my friends joined. Big synagogues — Conservative, Reform — they can afford armed guards. But in our world, the Orthodox world, where most people go to little neighborhood shuls, there are no full-time armed guards.
And we’re the Jews who need protection most. We’re walking around in kippahs. A lot of guys in my neighborhood wear the black suit, hat, beard — we’re the visible Jews. We have to take our safety seriously.
I joined Magen Am. I got licensed to carry a firearm. I went through an incredible amount of training. Rabbi Yossi makes us pass qualifications that are even more difficult than what FBI agents have to pass. Please God, we should never need such skills, but we will not be a soft target. I wasn’t a gun guy, so I was learning everything from scratch. A ton of training.
And that, combined with the shooting in Poway, led to the basic plot of Guns and Moses. There’s a shooting at a synagogue event. The cops find the murder weapon in the trunk of a kid who had made anti-Semitic remarks to the rabbi in the past — seems like an open and shut case. But it doesn’t sit right with the rabbi. Since the cops won’t investigate, he has to become the detective.
As he gets closer to the truth, the danger ramps up — more killings happen. There’s a lot of action. I feel like most thrillers don’t have enough action, so I made sure to pack in plenty.
Another element in the film’s genesis: I had once driven from LA to Vegas and passed a thermal solar energy facility called Ivanpah. You can see it from the highway, and it’s wild — three 500-foot towers with heat collectors on top that glow like stars, surrounded by over a 100,000 mirrors, called heliostats. It’s massive. I thought, what an amazing location for a cat-and-mouse scene. Like how Hitchcock used Mount Rushmore in North by Northwest — I wanted a predator-and-prey sequence among the mirrors. I just needed the right movie to put that scene in. And that became Guns and Moses.
Of course, they wouldn’t let us shoot at Ivanpah, but we found an even better thermal solar facility in Mojave. It’s so cinematic, and nobody’s ever shot there before. It looks like something out of a James Bond movie. Huge production value.
We found investors and wonderful producing partners in Lee Broda and Aimee Schoof. We were blessed with an incredible cast — Mark Feuerstein plays Rabbi Mo, Neal McDonough, who’s really big right now, especially in the conservative Christian world — he’s got a big movie called The Last Rodeo coming out next month. Christopher Lloyd — everyone loves him from Back to the Future. Dermot Mulroney, Alona Tal, Jake Busey, Craig Sheffer, Jackson Dunn, Mark Ivanir, Mercedes Mason…profoundly talented stars who all fell in love with the project.
We’ve been doing the festivals, and people love it. We shot it in 2022, wrote it before that. We knew a movie about Jews under attack who fight back would always be relevant. But we never imagined what would happen on October 7th, nor what’s happened since.
For 80 years after the Holocaust, it was considered unacceptable to be openly anti-Semitic. That time is over. Now the Jew haters are loud and proud, and they’re willing to spread their vile lies publicly. The threat level has skyrocketed.
The weapons training the rabbi goes through is based on my training in Magen Am. It’s authentic, and people in the firearms community appreciate it.
When we finished editing the movie–we hadn’t polished the sound yet, but the movie was essentially presentable, my producing partners said, let’s show it to this big agent from a major agency who sells independent movies to distributors.
This is a secular Jewish guy. We show him the movie. He says, “Great movie. Really entertaining. You’re going to make money in streaming.” I said, “Well, thank you. I’m glad you like the movie, but we think it’s a theatrical release.” He says, “Yeah, but how many Jews are there really? New York, LA, Florida?”
I said, “That’s an important part of our audience, but a much bigger part is conservatives and Christians.”
He says, “What are you talking about? Those people hate Jews.” And I was like, “Have you ever met the people you fly over between New York and LA? Because you don’t know them. I do.”
At Accidental Talmudist, I’m an Orthodox Jew sharing authentic Torah wisdom, and about half my audience isn’t Jewish. They tend to be Christian because Jesus was Jewish. They’re interested in an unbroken wisdom tradition that stretches back to Mount Sinai. I interact with this audience every day. I know them. They’re my friends. They’re massive supporters of Israel, and that’s probably why America is so supportive of the tiny and besieged Jewish state.
It was amazing to me how wrong this guy was. But that’s so many people in Hollywood. They’ve been producing flop after flop because they don’t know what America is really like. They’ve been pursuing an agenda America’s often not interested in. These people don’t respect half their audience. They don’t know how to communicate with half the audience. And that leaves the field wide open for someone like me, or an Angel Studios, or Kingdom Story Company. Faith-based movies used to be cheesy, but now they’re operating at top quality.
But in the faith-based space, they’re all Christians. I’m the only Jew in this field, I bring a fresh voice, and that audience loves it. We’ve tested it. We show them the trailer, and they say, “I want to see that.” And when I tell them what this big Hollywood agent thinks of them, how he slanders them as anti-Semites, they get so offended. They say, “Sal, we’re coming. We’re coming on opening weekend, and we’re bringing all our friends.”
Yitzi: You’re such a great storyteller. What are the lessons and messages you hope viewers will take away from the film?
Salvador: From Guns & Moses… FIrst, as Jews, “never again” means we’re responsible for our own safety. And second, thank God we have allies — people who stand beside us. We need to nurture those friendships and relationships. Thank God people will stand with us in our hour of need, but we also have to be ready to defend ourselves.
There were people who fought during the Holocaust — but not enough. Thankfully, we have the example of Israel now, the model of the strong Jew, which wasn’t a character in much of Jewish history. Between the destruction of the Second Temple and modern Israel, we often had to run away with our heads down. I’m very grateful that we live in a country where we’re free to be ourselves, to educate our children, and to teach them our tradition. But we still have to be prepared to protect ourselves.
There are two more messages that are part of the movie, thematically, that I think are important. There’s a song in the film — “The whole world is a very narrow bridge, and the main thing is to have no fear at all.” Israeli soldiers sing that song, composed by Baruch Chait based on lyrics from Rebbe Nachman, as they go to war. I love the tune, and it becomes a story beat in the movie. It always meant something emotional for me, but I didn’t fully understand it until I made the movie.
When you’re overcome by fear — and we all are, in one way or another, whether it’s fear of not closing a deal, not having enough money, not being able to pay tuition, getting sick, a breakup, something happening to your kid — we start spiraling. We go through all the possible outcomes, unsure what to do, and we get paralyzed by the multiplicity of choices in front of us. We’re scared we’ll choose wrong.
But if you pretend you’re not afraid, even just for 30 seconds, everything changes. To do that, you first have to identify what you’re afraid of. Most of us are so entangled with our fear we don’t realize it’s there — it becomes our standard mode. But once you name the fear, you can ask, “What if I wasn’t afraid?” Pretend you’re not afraid, and then act from that place.
As a person of faith, I can give it over to God. God has a plan. Whether I fail or succeed, I’m not in control. All I can do is my hishtadlus — my effort. I do my part, and I leave the outcome to God. For someone who isn’t a person of faith, just try pretending for a moment you’re not afraid. If you can stretch that 30 seconds into a minute, then two minutes, you’ll see that when fear is out of the equation, your next step comes into focus. It’s not a hundred different bridges or paths — there’s only one bridge to the next shore. That’s what the song means. When you overcome fear, you can see that narrow bridge in front of you.
And there’s one more teaching from the movie. The Rabbi quotes Hillel: “In a place where there are no men, strive to be the man.” What does that mean? It means everyone is a soul. You don’t have a soul — you are a soul. You have a body because you were sent here on a mission. The challenge is that we all come into this world with amnesia — we forget what our mission is. Because it’s something we once knew, when we finally figure it out, it feels like coming home, but we won’t find it unless we keep asking, “What is my mission?”
Another way to ask that is, “Is there a problem only I seem to notice? If I don’t step up to solve it, no one else will.” The very first commandment wasn’t “I am the Lord your God”from the 10 Commandments — that came much later. The original commandment was “Be fruitful and multiply.” Peru u’revu. But if it only meant to have children, it would’ve just said “multiply.” “Be fruitful” must mean something more. Not everyone can have children, but everyone can bear fruit. Everyone can bring something into the world that only they can bring.
So the question becomes: What’s the fruit only I can bear? What’s the problem only I can solve? What’s the service only I can offer? That’s what I was wrestling with instinctively when I got to law school — Who am I? What am I? Why am I here? What am I supposed to do?
Sadly, too many people go from one job to another, from school to whatever profession is convenient or available, and they never ask that question. But you’ve got to keep asking in order to figure out what your mission is. And then you do it.
Yitzi: This is our signature question. You’ve been blessed with a lot of success. Looking back to when you first started, you must have learned a lot from your experiences. Can you share five things you’ve learned that you wish you knew when you first started filmmaking?
Salvador:
- Don’t put yourself in a position where you’re waiting for someone else’s green light. You have to pull yourself up, save yourself, promote yourself, and make it happen. Especially when you’re talking about your mission — what you were born to do. Chances are, no one’s waiting to invite you in. It’s more like a crowded table where there’s no room, and you’ve got to elbow your way in. So find a way to keep taking one step after another without waiting for permission.
- Number two: you have to understand the business side of whatever you’re doing, especially if you’re a creative. You can’t say, “I’m a creative, someone else will handle the business.” Because no one will care about your work as much as you do. Whether it’s your contract for writing a screenplay, acting, or even providing healthcare services — whatever it is — you need to understand it. Yes, have a lawyer. Lawyers are like nuclear weapons: the other side has theirs, so you need yours. But you should still read your contract. And if you don’t understand the accounting or business terms, take the time to learn or get someone to explain it. You need to know the business side of your work.
- Third: do the research. It’s connected to number two, but it deserves its own point. Research the field, research your competitors, get people on the phone. Ask questions — just like you’re doing now, Yitzi. It’s not hard to get people to talk when they’re being asked about themselves. People love being asked for advice and wisdom. Ask them. Do that homework. It’s funny — women are often better at this than men. Think back to high school. The guys would just say, “Okay, I’ve got this homework, I’ll figure it out.” But the girls? They’d go find an upperclassman who’s more than happy to answer questions. And they’d get the benefit of experience from someone who’s already done it. That’s smart. Then yes, go get your own hard-won experience. Your second screenplay will be better than your first, your third better than your second. Same with films. You have to go through those iterations, but also take advantage of other people’s wisdom.
- Fourth: at the very beginning of your career — whatever age you are — check out your faith tradition. I’m especially talking to Jews here, because I used to be like a lot of Jews who turn their backs on Judaism without actually knowing what they’re turning their backs on. My wife says it’s like trying supermarket sushi that’s three days old, and saying “sushi sucks,” and then never trying it again. What you rejected wasn’t the real thing. Our tradition, our sages, brilliant people adding to our wisdom over thousands of years — there’s profound value there. A life of meaning. I’d imagine other faith traditions also offer that, but for me, rediscovering Judaism changed everything.
- And fifth: be a balanced person. You’ve got to do your work, yes, but you also have to work out, take care of your body, tend to your soul. Eat well. Sleep enough. I don’t always do it as well as I should, but I know how important it is. When I fall behind on sleep, I feel it. When I eat poorly, I know I’ve got to get back on track. You have to care for all parts of yourself — body, mind, and spirit.
Yitzi: This is our final aspirational question. Because of your great work, Sal, and the platform you’ve built, you’re a person of enormous influence. If you could put out an idea or inspire a movement that would bring the most good to the most people, what would that be?
Salvador: I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — it’s what I pray for every day: that Jews should come closer to Torah Judaism, and that all people should come closer to God. We’re not here by accident. We were created by a Creator who gave us abilities, opportunities, challenges, and problems — and all of it is purposeful.
I’m a big fan of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. There’s this one scene where the group is going through a deep, dark, dangerous forest. It’s not just physically dark — it has this dark energy that saps the courage out of you. The further in they go, the more terrified they become.
But if you climb a tree and get above the darkness, everything changes. You see a field of treetops, the sun is shining, and you feel strength and courage return. Most importantly, you can see the direction you need to go. That’s what a proper life of faith is like — especially for a Jew. You stop every seven days. More than the Jews have kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jews. It gives you a chance to rise above it all, get that tree-top view, reset your bearings, and figure out what really matters. Then you come back down ready to move forward with confidence, in the right direction.
Not everyone is Jewish, nor do they need to be. But everyone has some kind of faith tradition available to them, or some kind of grounding spiritual practice. And it’s necessary — it’s as necessary as water and oxygen, no matter what career you’re pursuing.
Yitzi: Amazing answer. Sal, I want to thank you so much for your time and for these profound and inspirational ideas. I hope we can stay in touch and do this again next year. I can’t wait to share this with our readers.
Salvador: Absolutely. I can’t wait to read it.
Filmmaker Salvador Litvak on ‘Guns & Moses,’ Blending Faith and Film, and Reaching the Audiences… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.