‘We've all come over from somewhere else'

Monroe - Jon Huberth, director of “A Jew Grows In Brooklyn,” and playwright Jake Ehrenreich have known each other for years, having both lived on Round Lake in Monroe. They met with through Ehrenreich’s wife, Lisa, an actress, who participated in a group where Huberth and others read plays together. When Ehrenreich first asked Huberth if he would be interested in directing his show, Huberth’s first response was to suggest that he find someone in the city. But after checking out different people, Ehrenreich told Huberth that he was the only one that he wanted to work with. “It’s good to work with (Jake),” Huberth said. “He listens. He is a marvelous entertainer who lets (the audience) in and is very intimate in a very embracing way.” Huberth said the material for the show was 80 percent complete the first time he read the script. The show, he added, “spoke to me and I’m a ‘goyim’ from Germany with relatives who had fought on German side as well as relatives who fought on the American side. “The audience is primarily going to be Jewish,” Huberth added, “but what it shares is that we’ve all come over from somewhere else. We all have another culture where somebody once said, ‘I’m going to start a new life.’ The fact that Jake’s parents had 10 brothers and sisters before the war and none after the war is a very personal part of his story. It is more than just statistics.” Huberth, a graduate of Amherst College and Yale Drama School, is an adjunct professor of Theatre at Manhattanville College. He has directed plays for Off-Broadway and regional theatres. His film company produces videos for such clients as Dartmouth and Kenyon colleges, NYU School of Law, The Nature Conservancy, the American Cancer Society and the New York City Police Department. Huberth wrote for “Sesame Street” and has acted in dozens of plays in the Northeast, Off-Broadway and locally. Huberth also is a member of the Monroe-Woodbury School Board. He has had a summer home in Monroe since 1971 and has lived there permanently since 1991. He and his wife have one daughter attending college in the Midwest and another daughter, Madeline, who attends Monroe-Woodbury High School, plays the cello with the College Youth Symphony in New Paltz and attends pre-college at Manhattan School of Music.