An Emmy sits atop a desk cluttered with files, folders and paraphernalia representing Bento Box, the Los Angeles production company behind the US television channel FOX’s Bob’s Burgers, and The Awesomes, an original for the Internet streaming site Hulu.
Bento Box CEO Scott Greenberg calls his father Steve, the chairman of the conference of presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, and puts him on speaker phone. “Dad, who was it that you gave Ronald Reagan the Prisoner of Zion bracelet, was it Begun? It was Begun.”
Back in 1981, Steve met the president and presented him with a bracelet bearing the name of Prisoner of Zion Yosef Begun. A photo of this meeting is part of a traveling exhibit created by Limmud FSU, the Jewish festival of learning, culture and creativity.
Scott Greenberg, a New Jersey native and LA transplant, will be speaking at the first-ever Limmud FSU West Coast conference, which takes places this January 29-31 at the Westin Hotel in Pasadena.
His session will be “The Bento Box Entertainment Story: How we built the award-winning animation studio into a global digital entertainment phenomenon.”
“I had the opportunity at a young age to see my father and his friends – these great men – doing things for the greater Jewish community,” Greenberg says in an interview in his office in Burbank. “When I was younger I didn’t know any different. You had Jewish people in need and they helped – that’s just what we did.”
Greenberg began his career in Hollywood working on the iconic animated series The Simpsons and King of the Hill. He founded Bento Box in 2009 with Joel Kuwahara and Mark McJimsey.
He says that he feels blessed to live in America and being invited as a speaker for Limmud FSU reinforced all the things he is thankful for. “I had the opportunity to go to college and law school, get up and move 4,000 miles away from my family, start a business because I don’t have to worry about being persecuted.
“I don’t have to worry about my family not eating, or my family being questioned, lets say, because we make cartoons who push the envelope of free speech.
I don’t think about it... It makes me reflect on how lucky I am to do what I do. And Limmud represents part of the reason why I’m lucky to do that.”
By LAURA KELLY