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Abstract
Footage from the 1997 documentary “A Life Apart: Hasidism in America” (directed by Menachem Daum and Oren Rudavsky), the first in-depth documentary about Hasidic Jews, members of a distinctive group within Judaism that has roots in pre-World War II Eastern Europe.

Interview with Moshe Levertov, a Chabad (Lubavitcher) Hasid. (Part 2) Interview with Rabbi Lubart, a Ger Hasid. (Part 1) (Yiddish) 6/1/994

00:00:06 - Interview with Moshe Levertov: About his father's arrest in the USSR in 1947 where he died in gulag. About how he and his siblings, already in the US, located his mother.

00:02:06 - About how he became a soyfer (scribe). Demonstrates how he repairs the writing in a Torah scroll. About the scarcity of mezuzahs (verses from Deuteronomy affixed to the doorposts of Jewish homes), Torah scrolls in the USSR.

00:05:59 - About having to use someone else's tefillin (leather straps and boxes containing biblical verse worn for weekday morning prayer) and tallis (prayer shawl) for his bar mitzvah. About trying to save Torah scrolls from a synagogue closed down by Soviet authorities. (Levertov continuing to work on the Torah scroll.) About how Torah scrolls are used in synagogue ritual and how a Torah scroll needs to be without defects (kosher). About how there are Torah scrolls still locked away in Russia. (Audio continues over family photographs).

00:11:32 - Moshe Levertov leaving his house, kissing the mezuzah, walking down the street, carrying his tallis bag.

00:13:33 - Interview with Rabbi Lubart: About how the differences between Hasidim and Misnagdim (traditional Jews who were opposed to Hasidism) are largely a thing of the past. About the foundations that Aaron Kotler laid that facilitated the postwar revival of Orthodox Jewish life in America. About how the institution of the kollel (institute for the fulltime study of Talmud for married men) didn't exist in prewar Eastern Europe .

00:17:24 - About how difficult it was in prewar Europe for boys to continue their studies in a yeshiva and for young men to continue their Torah studies after marriage. About Rabbi Meir Shapiro and the Yeshiva of Lublin. About his own situation as a boy in Lodz and about the lack of communal resources to support Torah study in prewar Poland. A mention of Jabotinsky.
Collection
Duration
00:24:50 (HH:MM:SS)
Language:
English
Copyright Date
1997
Rights Declaration:
This recording is protected by copyright. You are free to view it but not download it. Please contact the Brooklyn College Archives for further information about how you may use this recording.
Persistent/Share URL
https://54098.surd9.group/show.php?pid=njcore:194856
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pid=njcore:194856
PID
njcore:194856