In her former job as an NBC producer, Molly Resnick attended Broadway premieres, interviewed the world’s most popular celebrities and, in the case of John Travolta, kicked them out of the studio.
When the “Saturday Night Fever” star’s agent found out Resnick was planning to mention that many movie critics preferred Travolta’s dancing to his acting, the agent threatened to take his client and walk. Resnick told him not to let the door hit Travolta’s disco-dancing behind on the way out.
Despite a glamorous lifestyle and the power to give the boot to international superstars, by the late 1970s, when she was in her 30s, the Bulgarian-born and Israeli-raised Resnick felt she lacked a raison d’être. She found it, oddly enough, in Rio de Janeiro.
Hoping to spend Passover with a Brazilian Jewish family, Resnick found herself at the home of Rio’s chief Chabad rabbi.
“My friend, who is totally not religious, never bothered to check who he was sending me to. When I opened the door, the man had this beard, and his wife had a thing on her head, which was, of course, a wig,” recalled Resnick. “I thought, ‘Oh my God, how I gotta get out of here!'”
Resnick didn’t take off screaming, however, but instead ran back to Judaism. The Lubavitcher family’s candlelighting ceremony re-ignited Resnick’s dormant faith.
“They asked me, ‘Have you ever lit the candles?’ It was Shabbat eve, and I’d never lit the candles before in my life,” said Resnick, who will discuss her religious renaissance Monday night at Palo Alto’s Albert L. Schultz Jewish Community Center.
“You’re supposed to put your hands over the eyes, and some people bring the light toward themselves. To me all this gesticulating, I thought it was weird, like voodoo. But I forced myself to do it; I wanted to show respect for their home. I always considered this act the opening of the gates. That’s when my real journey started, the journey into my heritage.”
Resnick headed back to New York City a “proud Jew, instead of the kind of Jew who wanted to be a WASP.” Tired of playing relationship games, she consulted with a shadchanit (matchmaker), who set her up with the Lubavitcher rebbe’s personal physician. They are still married and are observant Jews associated with Chabad.
“My friends thought I’d lost my mind,” said Resnick with a laugh. “I knew Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem, I was raised on their laps, right? But I thought, ‘Look at these religious people, they’ve got it right. Before they let their hormones get loose, first they find out if they have something in common.'”
Resnick left NBC in 1986 after she found herself unable to balance the demands of being both a full-time mother and producer. She plied her trade in a variety of freelance positions around the nation until, spurred by a news report about the content of Palestinian Authority schoolbooks, she founded Mothers Against Teaching Children To Kill and Hate in 1998.
Unable to interest anyone in doing a straight news story about the Palestinian texts, Resnick dusted off her show biz expertise.
“You know how they say you can’t beat a story about a child and a dog?” she said. “I decided to package the story for the media.”
Resnick traveled from school to school, with students writing “letters of peace” on construction paper. The letters were woven together into peace quilts. The producer’s ploy enticed a stampede of camera crews.
Resnick says her religious odyssey is ongoing and she wants more secular Jews to achieve a similar revelation.
“When I started learning and delving into Judaism, I thought, ‘Oh my God, how much I missed!'” she said. “I always emphasize that the greatest thing that ever happened to me is becoming a proud Jew and realizing how much we’ve contributed to the world. If every Jew realized this, we’d walk a lot taller.”