On Sunday December 3rd at 2:00pm, the JCC in Sherman presents an afternoon showing of “A Life Apart : Hasidism in America” with special guest Oren Rudavsky, Filmmaker / Producer.
We are so pleased to be able to offer this as a FREE event!
The documentary "A Life Apart: Hasidism in America" begins and ends with the complex spectacle of a big, ritualized wedding within the world of Hasidic Jews. It's a tribute to the film's illuminating powers that this ceremony is liable to seem quite different by the end of 96 minutes than it does at first.
The filmmakers, Menachem Daum and Oren Rudavsky, take a while to penetrate the strange and sometimes off-putting aspects of the Hasidic world. Initially accentuating the alienness of Hasidic garb and the public aloofness of Hasidic people, the film states: "Hasidim are a minority within a minority. They arouse controversy among other Jews." (Narration is read variously by Leonard Nimoy and Sarah Jessica Parker.) "Who are they? Why have they stubbornly refused to join America's mainstream?"
Such questions take on added force with the film's first view of Hasidim as strange and stubborn outsiders. But this documentary, with its essentially rosy emphasis on loving families and spiritual joy, gradually develops a revealing overview.
Lucid connections are made between American Hasidim and the post-Holocaust exodus from Europe, at a time when the sect's future might have seemed in doubt. Wary as the rabbinic intelligentsia had once been of America, with its rampant consumerism and libertine ways, it became a necessary refuge. And Hasidim wishing to preserve their culture intact were forced into strictures that look particularly extreme by American standards. "I say to myself, these are the urban Puritans," says Prof. Arthur Hertzberg, one of the articulate scholars interviewed here, as he compares Hasidim to the Amish and to the religious refugees of the Mayflower.
"A Life Apart," inevitably explores the extreme forms of denial that govern Hasidic life, particularly those that pertain to women. While some women here speak glowingly of their primary duty to be Jewish mothers, others complain about the barring of women from wider roles in religious life. Pearl Gluck, a thoughtful young woman who has left the Hasidic community in which she was reared, is one of several thoughtful critics of Hasidic narrow-mindedness. Another woman wonders why, if motherhood is so exalted, mothers cannot be among the group's rebbes, or spiritual leaders.
In addition, a black Prospect Park employee in Brooklyn cites "spiritual arrogance" and the refusal of Hasidic children even to say hello. "What's that going to mean as far as the community that they live in?" he reasonably asks. Yet this film ultimately fathoms such stubbornness, even as it wonders how strict Hasidic men can work in electronics stores where they violate certain religious rules to make peace with secular America. Nowhere in their teachings is there protocol for doing business with good-looking, flashily dressed female customers (for modesty's sake, Hasidic women are required to wear wigs and long hemlines). Or for saying, "Have a nice day."
Oren Rudavsky:
Oren Rudavsky, Producer/Director and Director of Photography, is a graduate of Oberlin College in Ohio. He has been producing and directing films since 1980. His first documentaries were made in Ohio and were funded in part by the Ohio Humanities Council and the Ohio Arts Council. The subjects of Mr. Rudavsky's films have ranged from mental illness to race relations, the Amish, Jews in Eastern Europe today, to a portrait of the life of modern day nuns in two communities in the United States.
"I’m the kind of Jew many Hasidim barely consider Jewish. I’m not observant. I’m totally engaged by American culture and immerse myself in it. And even though I come from a strongly Jewish home, my father is a Reform Rabbi, something Hasidim certainly don’t recognize or respect. And yet, I have been making films about Jewish subjects for more than a decade, out of a deep desire to understand the Jewish experience, and my own experience:
My mother is an immigrant from Poland who arrived in 1939, and I found out several years ago that her father was a Ger Hasid. However, when he arrived, there were barely any hasidim in America. The family grew up in Brooklyn, yet unlike my co-producer’s family, my mother moved in the direction of less observant Jewish Zionists and although my grandfather remained Orthodox, his only daughter left the fold.
Perhaps by making this film, I can better comprehend the choices made by my parents and grandparents, and discover what was sacrificed and what was gained.
Running time: 96 min. This film is not rated. Narrated by: Leonard Nimoy and Sarah Jessica Parker.