Life Apart: Hasidism In America, A

VHS, Not Rated, 95 minutes, First Run Features Home Video

In New York City, they are a common sight. Yet even here their way of life remains a mystery to those outside their community. They are the Jews known as the Hasidim. With their use of Yiddish, their distinctive clothes and their strict observance of Jewish ritual and law, the Hasidim are considered by many 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.