Shmuel Lynn
- Writer
Rabbi Shmuel Lynn is a screenwriter, playwright, and educator based in Philadelphia and New York City. He is the Executive Director of Olami Manhattan, a Jewish education center for young professionals in NYC, while simultaneously telling Jewish stories through film and theater.
Each year Rabbi Lynn takes a few dozen students to Poland to bear witness to their roots at Holocaust sites and other historic locales (Olami and their partners take over 1000). This year, accompanied by a Holocaust Survivor, the group journeyed to the quaint town of Bardejov, Slovakia. There they immersed themselves into a narrative of resistance and Jewish survival, while experiencing the backdrop setting of Rabbi Lynn's most recent film Bardejov.
His Poland journey of 2019 serendipitously discovered this most remarkable shtetl and even more incredible story. The film Bardejov brings to light the hidden figures of WWII and the clandestine rescue of 312 young women bound for Auschwitz, as well as individuals like Rabbi Lynn who continuously uncover their stories.
Rabbi Lynn's desire to educate and inspire young people to explore their Jewish identities is central to his mission at Olami Manhattan. His own secular upbringing offers relatability during one-on-one mentoring, classes, workshops, educational trips, and the unique atmosphere he curates at Olami Manhattan. His 20 years of field experience and 30 years of scholarship round out a unique brand of Jewish engagement.
Before creating Olami, Rabbi Lynn served for over a decade as the director of Meor, a similar program at the University of Pennsylvania where he built The Maimonides Leaders Fellowship, now available at more than 50 campuses throughout North America. The Israel and Poland trips he pioneered in his early years at Penn have become national entities, receiving generous support from foundations and the Israeli government, and have a community of thousands of alumni.
Prior to Penn, Rabbi Lynn lived in Israel for 9 years. He studied Torah, Jewish philosophy, and Talmudic law at the renowned Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem, the largest yeshiva in Israel. As an unusual path to Yeshiva, Rabbi Lynn first graduated from Duke University, and pursued graduate studies in film at NYU Tisch, later spending several years working as a writer in Los Angeles. Rabbi Lynn is the Executive Producer and writer of immersive theater performances Doña, in which 1,000 young Jewish community members gathered in the streets of Toledo to watch a play on Spanish Jewish history, and New York Circa 1909, a 2022 off-Broadway performance at the Soho Theater reviving the challenges of Jewish American immigration.
Bardejov, starring Robert Davi and distributed by Gravitas Ventures, is his most recent contribution to the world of Jewish storytelling, and will be released on March 19th. He is the husband of Ruthi Lynn, with whom he has 8 children. Rabbi Lynn, like many "hopeless romantic" Jews, finds binding themes and messages across endeavors, infusing cinematic inspiration into his rabbinic passion for telling Jewish stories. His spontaneous writing of the untold Bardejov underscores his belief that we need our history today more than ever, infusing it with life and elevating the mundane to the sacred.
Each year Rabbi Lynn takes a few dozen students to Poland to bear witness to their roots at Holocaust sites and other historic locales (Olami and their partners take over 1000). This year, accompanied by a Holocaust Survivor, the group journeyed to the quaint town of Bardejov, Slovakia. There they immersed themselves into a narrative of resistance and Jewish survival, while experiencing the backdrop setting of Rabbi Lynn's most recent film Bardejov.
His Poland journey of 2019 serendipitously discovered this most remarkable shtetl and even more incredible story. The film Bardejov brings to light the hidden figures of WWII and the clandestine rescue of 312 young women bound for Auschwitz, as well as individuals like Rabbi Lynn who continuously uncover their stories.
Rabbi Lynn's desire to educate and inspire young people to explore their Jewish identities is central to his mission at Olami Manhattan. His own secular upbringing offers relatability during one-on-one mentoring, classes, workshops, educational trips, and the unique atmosphere he curates at Olami Manhattan. His 20 years of field experience and 30 years of scholarship round out a unique brand of Jewish engagement.
Before creating Olami, Rabbi Lynn served for over a decade as the director of Meor, a similar program at the University of Pennsylvania where he built The Maimonides Leaders Fellowship, now available at more than 50 campuses throughout North America. The Israel and Poland trips he pioneered in his early years at Penn have become national entities, receiving generous support from foundations and the Israeli government, and have a community of thousands of alumni.
Prior to Penn, Rabbi Lynn lived in Israel for 9 years. He studied Torah, Jewish philosophy, and Talmudic law at the renowned Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem, the largest yeshiva in Israel. As an unusual path to Yeshiva, Rabbi Lynn first graduated from Duke University, and pursued graduate studies in film at NYU Tisch, later spending several years working as a writer in Los Angeles. Rabbi Lynn is the Executive Producer and writer of immersive theater performances Doña, in which 1,000 young Jewish community members gathered in the streets of Toledo to watch a play on Spanish Jewish history, and New York Circa 1909, a 2022 off-Broadway performance at the Soho Theater reviving the challenges of Jewish American immigration.
Bardejov, starring Robert Davi and distributed by Gravitas Ventures, is his most recent contribution to the world of Jewish storytelling, and will be released on March 19th. He is the husband of Ruthi Lynn, with whom he has 8 children. Rabbi Lynn, like many "hopeless romantic" Jews, finds binding themes and messages across endeavors, infusing cinematic inspiration into his rabbinic passion for telling Jewish stories. His spontaneous writing of the untold Bardejov underscores his belief that we need our history today more than ever, infusing it with life and elevating the mundane to the sacred.