A new Netflix documentary, ‘One of Us,’ falls short in a few keys ways in its portrayal of Hasidim — ‘It kind of blew my mind’
Hasidic Jews often lead very insular lives, and their strict practices can be confounding even to more assimilated American Jews.
Documentarians’ attempts to shed light on Hasidic groups can reveal their own — sometimes apparently willful — misconceptions about them, as an Oprah Winfrey film crew did when it toured a Hasidic group’s ritual bath, or mikvah, in Brooklyn in 2012.
As the Hasidic woman leading them remembered, Oprah and her team were clad in black, while she — who was interviewed for but asked not to be named in this piece — wore white, and her daughter, burgundy.
Why, one of Oprah’s producers asked the two women, do Hasidic women wear only black?
“It kind of blew my mind,” the mikvah guide said.
A new Netflix documentary, “One of Us,” also falls short in its portrayal of Hasidim, as the different groups of Hasidic Jews are collectively known. In the 95-minute film, Ari, Etty and Luzer allege abuse and discuss their struggles to leave the Hasidic lives into which they were born.
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