One Of Us

This is the title of a documentary that tells the stories of people who had left the Hasidic Jewish movement. Hasidim, for those who do not know it, is a closed movement that arose in Eastern Europe in the 18th century, and its followers fled from Nazism to Brooklyn, America. Several motives led me to watch the film, then write about it, among which is the fact that you can find the very vices it denounces in your own home! The entire film is shocking, especially in its depiction of the ostracism, isolation, and assault that those who leave the Hasidic movement suffer from. The film reveals that the pains of the Holocaust live on in the members of the movement; rather, they rule them in everything, even with regard to the number of their children whom they consider to be a compensation for those of them who had perished in “the Holocaust”. The film shows that whoever leaves the movement does not always find himself outside of it. The protagonist, whose husband fights her throughout her life and through her children, said, in describing her conditions: “every day is like hell”. This is the message of the film to them as well as to us, to flee from the hell of closeness and bigotry.