Events

Past Events

Our past events reflect the museum’s ongoing commitment to education, dialogue, and action. From film screenings and lectures to community conversations and cultural programs, each event has offered opportunities to learn, connect, and be inspired by voices that challenge intolerance and encourage understanding.

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Screening

The Optimist

Lucky Mann Productions and the Museum of Tolerance invite you to this film premiere of The Optimist. The film follows Holocaust survivor Herbert Heller and the unlikely friendship that transforms two lives.

Date & Time

Location

Museum of Tolerance 9786 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90035  
FREE UNDERGROUND PARKING

Watch the Trailer

About

Based on a true story, The Optimist follows Holocaust survivor Herbert Heller and the unlikely friendship that transforms two lives. At 15, Herbert escaped the Auschwitz-Birkenau death march, carrying the weight of silence for six decades. When he finally breaks that silence, he forms a life-saving bond with Abby, a troubled teenager confronting her own pain. Together, they discover hope, healing, and the transformative power of being truly seen.

The film concludes with a special musical performance by violinist Jenny Scheinman.

A Q&A will follow the screening featuring director Finn Taylor, producer Jeanine Thomas, actors Stephen Lang and Luke David Blumm, and Herbert’s grandson, Daniel Cohen.

Guests are invited to a reception immediately following the conversation.

This event is offered free of charge. RSVP required. Register here.

 

 

THE-OPTIMIST (1)

More Upcoming Events

Education Program

Rooted and Targeted: Teaching Jewish and Black Life, Antisemitism, Anti-Blackness, and the Cities We Inherit

In partnership with TOLI, This five-day seminar invites educators to rethink how they teach history and identity. The program begins with everyday life — community, culture, and the richness of Jewish and Black experiences — and then examines the legal, social, and institutional systems that made exclusion, discrimination, and erasure possible, both historically – through the histories of the Holocaust, domestic slave trade and lynching – and today.

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