Films With Hasidic + Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Perspectives

In the ultra-Orthodox community men are educated not to look at women or think about them and a girl practices modesty in clothing, actions and thoughts. Marriage requires complete strangers to suddenly encounter their partner for the first time in an intimate situation with only rudimentary information. According to Jewish law, they are required at that first intimate encounter to consummate the marriage. The forbidden becomes permitted, the impure pure, and modesty turns into full exposure. What was considered sinful transforms to the Holy of Holies. The film draws a portrait of a society and a place: women and men speak bravely about their hidden feelings during matchmaking, the engagement period, the guidance of brides and grooms, the canopy, the special "Yihud" room, until the morning after marriage.

Four ultra-orthodox women who dared to yell "we won't be silenced!". Through their revolution, we manage to make our way inside a closed off community with a very clear code of silence in regards to sexuality in general, and sexual assault in particular. Following these events, the worlds of each of these women has been overturned, whether because she herself has been a victim of sexual assault or a woman in one of their close circles.

An entertaining and good-hearted romantic comedy that gives a light Orthodox twist to "Romeo and Juliet".

A childless young ultra-orthodox couple faces a crisis after a traumatic treatment for barrenness. When the difference between good and bad is unclear, the family must deal with unresolved secrets that raise fundamental questions about religion and faith.

On a road trip like no other ultra-Orthodox Chassidic Rabbis hit the Aussie bush looking for 'lost Jews'. Leaving the comfort of Melbourne Jewish life, two Rabbis and their families are heading into the heart of Australia on a journey filled with surprising and emotional encounters with Aussie outback characters and laced with Jewish wit, music and culture.

Before the Messiah can transform the world, the Shekinah, the feminine aspect of God, has to rise. Women will lead the way into the new era.

The personal journey of Rachel, an ultra-Orthodox film director, through marriage, divorce, matchmaking, and family life. Rachel unveils the world of ultra-Orthodox women and gives voice, for the first time, to their concealed inner world through the wig that covers up women's' hair.

Through the Admor of Sanz-Klausenburg's heroic story, a man who experienced personal desolation and succeeded in rehabilitating his and his community's life, the film exposed the Holocaust stories as they're told in the ultra-orthodox community. It present the complex relations between the ultra-orthodox Jews and the memory of the Holocaust and the ways they experience the revival and the spiritual victory over the Nazis.

A group of tenacious Hasidic women in Brooklyn take matters into their own hands to change their own community from within, smashing the community patriarchy by creating the first all-female volunteer ambulance corps in New York City.

4 Yeshiva students who don't entirely fit in to their own world, although they try, find themselves at odds with their rabbi, their parents, and their matchmaker.

A bar mitzvah mishap causes a major rift in a devout Orthodox community in Jerusalem.

For more than a year, TV cameras were given unique access into a secret subculture: the 200 families of the Adass Israel community, Australia's most ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect, as they strive to maintain their ancient faith in the modern world. Though they themselves shun television and the seductive temptations and trappings of modernity, they agreed to go on camera for the very first time. But not everyone inside this ultra-strict, ultra-insular and virtually self-sufficient community approved: some members opposed the filming because they view exposure to the outside world as a challenge to their strictly Jewish way of life, which largely comprises of piety and prayer. Told through the eyes of three members - Raizel Fogel, Shlomo Abelesz and Rabbi Aryeh Goldman - Strictly Jewish lifts the lid on this closely guarded Jewish sect, revealing a community steeped in ancient rites and rituals, and managing to maintain an ancient faith more than 5000 years old.

An ultra-orthodox scholar is revived after dying for 40 minutes. After coming back to life, he suddenly feels a strange awakening in his body and suspects that God is testing him.

According to Jewish tradition, there is no forgiveness or atonement for the grave sin of 'wasting sperm'. Yet is it possible to fulfill this commandment in today's reality? This sensitive documentary takes us to a personal, complexed and first on a kind journey.

PONEVEZH is an unprecedented glimpse into the best ultra-orthodox seminary in the world. We discover that amidst the constant prayer and scholarly study, are fragile confused young men, with hopes, dreams and worries often not so foreign from our own. In a sea 0f 1200 scholars, it's easy to lose yourself

An ancient Kabbalistic secret was kept hidden for centuries, but now filmmaker Ricardo Adler and leading Rabbis of this generation are breaking a historical tradition and revealing it for the first time.

Shekinah takes us into the rarefied world of young hasidic women. Although they have rules for almost everything, their lives are filled with passion. With unprecedented access, Shekinah will capture the intimate details of every aspect of how they live and what they believe. They will tell us why 'kosher' sex is as intense and blissful as any Eastern Tantric philosophy and why they they see themselves as more liberated than most women today. Shekinah will break many long-standing stereotypes and reveal secrets of which even Hasidic men are unaware.

Dana and Amit met when they were 25, they married and had 2 children. Soon after their second child, Amit turned ultra-orthodox. Dana stayed secular. They are still very much in love. Will their love be able to overcome the growing gaps between them?

When the older sister of Shira, an 18-year-old Hasidic Israeli, dies suddenly in childbirth, Shira must decide if she can and should marry her widowed brother-in-law, which also generates tensions within her extended family.

It's not easy living in the shadow of a public figure. Everyone expects us to behave according to the involuntary title of "The Rabbi's Daughter". To dress modestly, to express humility, to know all the answers to religious questions, to never stumble, never breakdown, to always keep the good name of you father, an educator and community leader. I went looking for how to stop blushing every time my "lineage" was exposed. How to leave my conscience behind. How did other girls do it before me.

Orthodox teacher and wigmaker, Ruchama and Tikva, embark on a journey to fulfill their dream of making movies within the closed society in which they live. Ruchama is writing and producing her first film while Tikva prepares for her first acting role. Like other orthodox women who in recent years have started making films for strictly female audiences, they feel a strong need to express themselves despite strict rabbinical censorship. The Dreamers delicately sketches the portrait of women trying to break new ground as artists in a patriarchal world. Will they find freedom in their art

An Orthodox Jewish couple's faith is tested after praying to the Lord for a child on the Succoth holiday.

A respected rabbi is forced to come to terms with the demands of his faith and the welfare of his own family.

Hasidic Jews seem alien, and even hostile, to those outside their culture,which frequently includes other Jews. They dress differently, don't mingle between the sexes, speak Yiddish, and wear side curls, all in an attempt to rigorously follow the commandments of the Torah. They tend to keep to themselves, shunning television and the media so outside influences cannot corrupt their values and views. Yet filmmakers Oren Rudavsky and Menachem Daum were able to enter their world, and the result is the fascinating documentary A Life Apart: Hasidism in America. Using interviews with academics and members of the community and some historical footage, the filmmakers trace the growth of Hasidic groups in the United States. Groups formed around particular Rebbes (learned leaders) and they took their names from their Eastern European home cities (the Satmar Hasids, the Breslov Hasids, and so on). Leonard Nimoy and Sarah Jessica Parker narrate, explaining how this movement came to America and how it was able to flourish. Dissenting voices also appear, in the form of neighborhood people who are distressed at the Hasids' refusal to speak to members not in their community and of a young woman, Pearl Gluck, who left the community in order to pursue her writing and to follow a life of her own choosing. Many Hasids refuse to speak on camera, and we see many shielding themselves with hands or coats so as not to appear on film. But those who do appear are poignant in their discussions of why the Hasidic life is important to them. One man speaks to the directors, even as he acknowledges that he will never see the movie, but he will do it "in order to help a Jew make a living." One couple, Holocaust survivors, are not Hasidic, but their children are, and the reasonings of both the parents and the children are interesting. This film, shown on PBS, is a consequential look into a lifestyle many of us don't understand, and it may help in increasing an understanding.

The 1941 invasion of Soviet Ukraine by Nazi Germany is shown through the life of inhabitants of a Yiddish village at the border of Poland.