arts&life

film

One Of Us

The new documentary, streaming on

Netfl ix, reveals the consequences of

leaving the Chasidic community.

Etty, left, is featured in One of Us.

A group of Chasidic women in One of Us

64

December 7 • 2017

jn

GERRI MILLER N.Y. JEWISH JOURNAL

F

ewer than 2 percent of
Chasidic Jews ever leave
the fold. The documen-
tary One of Us reveals why, tell-
ing the stories of three people
who have left — and paid a
high price for their personal
freedom.
Etty, a young mother of
seven, walks out on her abusive
husband and loses custody of
her children. Luzer, an actor,
struggles with depression and
his decision to leave his family.
And Ari battles addiction as he
comes to terms with the trau-
ma of childhood sexual abuse.
“Coming from a community
where the collective is all that
matters, these people had a
‘me’ inside that needed to have
a voice,” said Heidi Ewing,
who co-directed the film with
Rachel Grady.
The filmmakers met in 1999
while working on a TV docu-
mentary about the Church of
Scientology. “We’ve been able
to build a career digging deep
into subjects that interest us,”
said Ewing, adding that film-
making is “an opportunity to go
into unknown worlds, ask ques-
tions and put together a story.”
Among their successes was

the Oscar-nominated 2006
documentary Jesus Camp,
about a charismatic Christian
summer camp, and last year’s
Norman Lear: Just Another
Version of You. They also co-
created Detropia, the 2012
award-winning documentary
about Detroit’s decline and
slow rebirth.
For their sixth film together,
the filmmakers sought to crack
open a window on a world they
knew little about, one hidden
in plain sight in their Brooklyn
neighborhood.
“We were no experts on the
Chasidic community before we
started doing this film,” Grady
said. “As outsiders, we will
never truly understand.”
Grady, a nonreligious Jew,
and Ewing, a non-practicing
Catholic, found their way into
that world through Footsteps,
a support organization that
helps Chasidic Jews who want
to leave.
There, they found Etty, the
young mother, who agreed to
participate, Grady said, “with
a lot of caveats,” such as hid-
ing her face until she was
ready to reveal it. “This is not
someone who seeks attention,”

Grady said. “She would never
have chosen the spotlight had
she not been in these circum-
stances.”
The film chronicles Etty’s
custody fight amid ostracism
and a smear campaign by the
Chasidic community. “We
couldn’t even grasp how dif-
ficult it was for these people to
exit and start over — especially
in Etty’s case,” Ewing said.
“She’s considered a turncoat,
a traitor because the suspi-
cion is that she won’t raise her
children Chasidic,” Ewing said.
“The way they look at it, these
are the community’s children,
to make up for what was lost”
in the Holocaust.
Grady finds it ironic that
Jews, who have a long history
of facing religious oppression,
would persecute their own. The
Holocaust, she said, “gives you
some context for this extreme
behavior — things start to
make sense, like why they hate
the police, why they hate dogs,”
she said.
Another of the film’s story
lines follows Ari Hershkowitz, a
young adult who as a boy was
raped and beaten by a counsel-
or at a Chasidic summer camp.

