Temple Shalom invites the community to attend its Cantor’s Adult Education Class, an installment of the Temple Shalom Jewish Film Festival that will feature the highly acclaimed 2015 documentary “Raise the Roof.” Artists Rick and Laura Brown are not Jewish and not Polish, and yet they set out to rebuild Gwoździec, a magnificent wooden eighteenth-century synagogue in Poland that was later destroyed by the Nazis. Their vision inspires hundreds of people to join them, using their hands, old tools and techniques to bring Gwoździec’s history, culture, science and art back to life.

“Raise the Roof” follows the Browns and the Handshouse Studio team to Sanok, Poland, as they begin building the new Gwoździec roof. The crew has only six weeks to hew, saw, and carve 200 freshly logged trees and assemble the structure. Working against a seemingly impossible deadline, and despite torrential downpours and exhaustion, the team must create the structure, and disassemble it again for shipping and eventual installation.