A Life Apart: Hasidism in America

"Illuminating, revealing, extraordinary!" -The New York Times

In New York City, the Hasidim are a common sight, but their way of life remains a mystery to those outside their community. With their use of Yiddish, their distinctive clothes and their strict observance of Jewish ritual and law, the Hasidim are considered by man an insular people with little connection to mainstream America. And yet their values are those that many Americans find most precious: family, community, and a life of meaning.

In this extraordinarily intimate film, seven years in the making, we are taken into the depths of the Hasidim's joyous, sometimes harsh, and often-beautiful world. From mystical tales to mesmerizing music, Rebbes to Holocaust survivors, A Life Apart reveals a strange, insular world few outsiders have seen, and fewer yet could imagine.

Narrated by Leonard Nimoy and Sarah Jessica Parker