The Lilith Blog

May 13, 2020 by Leah Lax

On Unorthodox: The Hasidim Are Not An Anomaly

Not long ago, I saw a young woman in hasidic garb on the plaza outside Lincoln Center. She was sitting at the top of the steps with a cup and a cardboard sign, her long skirt spread around her. I wasn’t surprised—young people are leaving hasidic communities in a steady stream, and those who leave often lose their support system, with little or no education or skills. She wore a look of abject shame. Or perhaps it was despair, her eyes trained on the ground.  

I pictured her as I watched the recent Netflix series Unorthodox. In an accompanying documentary, director Maria Schrader said that television is “aspirational.” Aspirational stories have a simple shape—the heroine escapes a monster and finds her way to freedom. At the end of Unorthodox, the heroine, Esty, fingers a compass given her as a gift and smiles.

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April 12, 2018 by admin

Girls at Hasidic Summer Camp

Be on the lookout for Pearl Gluck’s Summer, a short film of sexual exploration set in a Hasidic sleepaway camp in the Catskills. Gluck, 45, went from growing up Hasidic in Borough Park, Brooklyn, to college at Brandeis, with a quirky feminist affection for her roots. At the film’s world premiere at the January 2018 New York Jewish Film Festival, she cheerfully admitted to autobiography in this film she wrote, directed and produced.

The 18-minute film captures the ferocious energy of a camp full of adolescent girls and the gentle secrecy of two friends’ illicit inquiry into a copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves. (Though with all the current complexities of “consent,” one girl’s pressuring another makes this reviewer a little uncomfortable.) The attractive young rebbetzin entrusted with the campers’ moral education stays on message: “You are always in the presence of God, but you are also always in the presence of matchmakers.… Above all, don’t mess up your chances for a good match.” Look for Summer, with score by The Klezmatics’ Lisa Gutkin, on the film festival circuit.

Gluck’s Hasidic filmic feminism goes back to Divan (2003/Netflix, Amazon, Fandor). It’s her own Hasidic tale, journeying through Hungary in search of the ancestral couch where revered rebbes slept. Not a one-note filmmaker, her latest film, The Turn Out, explores sex trafficking at America’s rural truck stops. More on Gluck’s films and contact information to arrange screenings, at palinkapictures.com. 

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