{"id":27114,"date":"2017-12-01T03:31:12","date_gmt":"2017-12-01T11:31:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=27114"},"modified":"2017-11-29T23:30:14","modified_gmt":"2017-11-30T07:30:14","slug":"to-leave-a-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2017\/12\/01\/to-leave-a-community\/","title":{"rendered":"To leave a community"},"content":{"rendered":"

A still from One Of Us<\/em>. (photo from lokifilms.com\/one-of-us<\/a>)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The riveting Netflix documentary One of Us<\/em> follows three New Yorkers in various stages of the painful process of leaving their Chassidic community. The lone woman among them is far and away the film\u2019s most memorable character, in part because she has the most harrowing journey.<\/p>\n

\u201cEtty was in the middle of a case and under massive personal duress from the beginning,\u201d co-director Rachel Grady recalled. \u201cShe was apprehensive at first [about being in the movie] because she\u2019s somebody that does not seek attention and would never under normal circumstances want to be filmed or photographed for her ego.\u201d<\/p>\n

Etty had filed for divorce after 12 years, claiming physical abuse, and she was fighting an uphill battle for custody of her seven children. At the same time, her family and friends abandoned her.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had agreed we wouldn\u2019t show her face,\u201d said co-director Heidi Ewing. \u201cShe had very good reasons for not wanting her identity to be shown to the world. What happens in the film is what happened to us in life, which is, about halfway through the project, she said, \u2018I\u2019ve got nothing to lose anymore. I\u2019m not going to hide.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was very much alone and isolated and this insane, unexpected reaction from the community was happening to her,\u201d said Grady. \u201cShe couldn\u2019t believe it herself. I think she needed some documentation that this was real.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of Us<\/em> debuted on Netflix in mid-October, but the New York-based filmmakers were recently on the West Coast for screenings and Q&As with Academy members who will vote on Oscar nominations.<\/p>\n

Grady and Ewing, whose films include last year\u2019s Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You<\/em> and Jesus Camp<\/em>, took steps to include the Chassidic community\u2019s perspective, including a portion of a rabbi\u2019s speech at an assembly at New York\u2019s Citi Field that laments the threat \u2013 assimilation on steroids \u2013 that the modern world poses to Chassidism.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnything we had to show the warmth among the people in the community is in the movie,\u201d said Ewing. \u201cIf you\u2019re in the community, if you\u2019re standing by all the rules and doing the right thing, there\u2019s a lot to be gained. People will know about you and care about you. It\u2019s when you deviate a little bit to the left or right, there\u2019s going to be consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n

While most of the duo\u2019s films focus on a religious community, Grady noted that they are interested in the belief systems that create community rather than matters of doctrine.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really about the community, how you identify yourself, how you identify yourself compared to others, your worldview based on your community,\u201d Grady explained. \u201cIt\u2019s something we could explore over and over and over, and religion is just a great way to do it. You could do the same thing on the zealots at my food co-op.\u201d<\/p>\n

Grady, who was raised Jewish in Washington, D.C., confided that she had never thought more about being a Jew than in the three years that she and Ewing were making One of Us<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis idea that Jews always talk about, is it an ethnic group, is it culture, is it religion? It\u2019s all of those things, and it weighs heavily one way or another depending how you were raised. In this case, there\u2019s a group of people who are my neighbours in Brooklyn that I see every day and I know that I have a deep connection with them.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m always thinking, \u2018Did my great-grandfather do that? Would I have done that?\u2019 It was kind of like an exercise every day when I was working on this film.\u201d<\/p>\n

While those questions will come up for some viewers as well, they are more likely to be moved by Etty\u2019s struggle to leave the only society she\u2019s known and forge a life in the wider world.<\/p>\n

One of Us<\/em> is now streaming on Netflix (unrated, in English and Yiddish, 95 minutes).<\/p>\n

Michael Fox<\/strong> is a writer and film critic living in San Francisco.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A still from One Of Us. (photo from lokifilms.com\/one-of-us) The riveting Netflix documentary One of Us follows three New Yorkers in various stages of the painful process of leaving their Chassidic community. The lone woman among them is far and away the film\u2019s most memorable character, in part because she has the most harrowing journey. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27037,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[787],"tags":[7646,218,7645,4751,7647],"class_list":["post-27114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tv-film","tag-heidi-ewing","tag-judaism","tag-netflix","tag-orthodoxy","tag-rachel-grady"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27114\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}