Mitse-tants of the bride with her father, the Rachmestrivke Rebbe, David Twersky, Netanya 2011
© Yuval Nadel.

A World Apart Next Door: Glimpses into the Life of Hasidic Jews at the Israel Museum
Fill the Void, Israeli entry for Academy Award
The exhibit and the film offer outsiders a revelatory glimpse into this world apart.

To outsiders, the Hasidic community is a mystery. It is insular and content to remain so. Self-segregation, strange dress, and often unfamiliar speech brand Hasidim unfathomable even to Jews within Israel.

Two current cultural events, an exhibit and a film, are unraveling a bit of the mystery.

The Israel Museum is winding up a major half-year long exhibition, A World Apart Next Door: Glimpses into the Life of Hasidic Jews. Prominently displayed and promoted, it has been viewed by some 90,000 people. In broad strokes, the exhibit introduces the history of the sect since its founding in Eastern Europe in the 18th century, and its major tenet: Serving God through a joyful heart is as worthy as the study of sacred texts.

But the show’s thrust is not didactic: a visual and auditory kaleidoscope of hundreds of photographs, clothes, toys, books, drawings and religious articles steeps the viewer in the day-to-day life of vibrant Hasidic communities, especially those in modern Israel. Video clips are the most memorable part of the exhibit. Powerful and mesmerizing, they capture the fervor, emotional power, mob ecstasy, joy, and cathartic effect of Hasidic ceremonies. Rabbis hold court with power and fanfare reminiscent of absolute monarchs. Hundreds of their faithful sway, chant, gesture, dance, petition, gesticulate, and exhort. 

Women, though, are glaringly missing from public life. One video highlights that women are passive objects in the world of men. In the widespread wedding custom of “Mitzvah Tantz,” a lone bride in her white gown stands in the spotlight on a stage in a large hall. An opaque veil totally masks her face. The stage is ringed with bleachers bursting with dozens of men, a swaying male sea of black coats, beards, and hats. The bride holds one end of a long white ribbon; her father holds the other. While he prances and leaps around the stage, the bride shuffles stiffly in a stiff caricature of dance. To the non-Hasidic eye, this video highlights the gender imbalance in Hasidism.

It has taken an ultra-Orthodox woman filmmaker to bring the humanity of Hasidic women to light. Fill the Void shows that despite their secondary roles, women wield power behind the scenes. The movie is a familiar story with a twist. Shira, a Hasidic girl at the threshold of marriageable age, is asked to renounce her dreams of marrying a man her age to be paired off with an older one, a widower with a child. The widower is her brother-in-law, the husband of her older sister who died in childbirth, leaving behind a newborn boy. When the widower considers remarrying another woman and moving abroad, the grandmother panics. Not only has she lost her beloved daughter, but now she is set to lose her grandchild too. So she hatches a plot to persuade the widower and Shira to marry.

Despite the strict religious rules, Hasidic marriage demands the full consent of both the bride and the groom. Persuading the widower is not difficult, perhaps because of the angelic care taken of the baby by Shira, coupled with her purity and beauty. Originally repelled, Shira understands that by agreeing to the marriage, she will keep the family together. She strives to bring her heart into line with what she perceives as her duty. The girl’s father, aunt, and the community rabbi all insist that Shira must choose freely. The young heroine’s struggle to deal with her mother’s not-so-subtle pressure is paralleled by the growing emotional and physical interaction between the bridegroom and herself.

Although the constraints of the Hasidic universe frame its parameters, the film’s universal theme is the tension between self-fulfillment and familial duty.

The Hasidic world is exquisitely, albeit sentimentally, brought to life, down to the smallest details of décor, food, customs, and speech. American-born scriptwriter/director Rama Burshtein knows this world from the inside. Burshtein became observant after completing her film studies, and, until now, has concentrated on making “for women’s eyes” only movies for female Orthodox audiences.

What began as a small film by a first-time feature director has blossomed into an international cinema event. Fill the Void won the Ophir Prize, making it Israel’s candidate for the best foreign film award at the upcoming Oscars in Hollywood. Star, Hadas Yaron, won the best actress award at the Venice Film Festival. Sony bought the North American distribution rights, and the movie opened to good reviews at the New York Film Festival.

Not since the work of the great novelist Chaim Potok has the Hasidic way of life enjoyed such wide general dissemination. The exhibit and the film offer outsiders a revelatory glimpse into this world apart. 


Poster for Fill the Void

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About the author

Helen Schary Motro

Helen Schary Motro is author of Maneuvering between the Headlines: An American Lives through the Intifada (Other Press, New York 2005). An American lawyer living in Israel for 20 years with her fam...
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