The World’s Most Secretive Jewish Community: Hasidic Jews (I Spent 48 Hours Inside)
Ruhi Cenet Documentaries
Entering a Closed World 0:00
The film crew gets special permission to enter 770, described as the heartbeat of the Hasidic Jewish world in New York, a community that keeps itself largely closed off to outsiders. Before people will speak to the crew, they are almost always asked one question first: are you Jewish. The neighborhood looks completely unlike the rest of the city, and beneath the main synagogue there are passageways not visible from the street, including one that stretched for dozens of feet and was found to contain clothes, boxes, and personal items.
Inside the Synagogue 3:00
Inside the synagogue, young men and boys, many from Israel, chant and dance in circles waving flags welcoming the Messiah, the promised leader they believe will bring a new divine order. The building holds around 500 students on ordinary days and up to a thousand during holidays, and it functions as a synagogue three times a day for prayer and a study hall the rest of the time, focused on Jewish mysticism and Hasidic philosophy. Students describe studying more than ten hours a day, memorizing texts like the Tanya, and trusting that God will provide for their livelihood rather than planning conventional careers. Education runs from 7:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., with students eating and napping in the building, and it includes very little exposure to the internet or the wider modern world.
Prayer, the Mikvah, and a Former Insider 6:30
Men and children pray on the main floor while women pray separately in an upstairs gallery behind darkened glass. Before morning prayers, many men visit the mikvah, a ritual bath believed to cleanse the soul, a practice boys also follow on Fridays. Beatrice Weber, a mother of ten who was once married to a rabbi and later left the ultra-Orthodox community, appears to describe her experience and explains a belief that the world's current turmoil is like the hardest month before a birth, a sign that the coming of the Messiah may be near.
Trying to Talk to the Community 8:00
Walking through the neighborhood without their rabbi guide, the crew finds most residents unwilling to be interviewed, with people turning away or refusing the camera. Yiddish and Hebrew are far more common than English, even though the neighborhood sits in the middle of New York City. A non-Jewish crane operator who has worked in the community for fifteen years describes it as tight-knit, saying residents all stick together and help each other out.
Large Families and Public Benefits 9:00
Hasidic Jews follow the commandment to be fruitful and multiply, and their birth rates are high enough that the population nearly doubles every twenty years, standing at around 100,000 in this community today. One mother describes having a baby eight and a half months after marriage and another eleven months later, eventually asking a rabbi for permission to take a break, since decisions about family size are made together with a rabbi rather than independently. Official figures cited suggest a family of ten meeting the criteria could receive around 26,160 dollars in food assistance, 13,600 dollars through the child tax credit, and Medicaid coverage valued at roughly 75,000 dollars a year, adding up to more than 100,000 dollars annually in combined benefits, with data showing high reliance on government services in these zip codes.
Life Without Internet or Screens 11:30
Many residents say they have never logged onto the internet, watched television, or seen a movie, describing the internet as the most dangerous thing a person can have. Recognizable modern celebrities like Michael Jackson, Cristiano Ronaldo, Elon Musk, and Tom Cruise are unknown to several people interviewed. Phones used in the community are simple talk-only kosher phones with no texting or internet, and cameras available for purchase can only take still photos, not video, because community teaching holds that watching video draws a person in and becomes a habit that isn't considered kosher. Companies exist specifically to strip internet access from phones and computers or install filters, and one business owner declines to be interviewed because he doesn't want people finding his interview by drifting through an outside video channel.
A Phone-Based Social Network 15:00
The crew finds what functions as the community's own version of social media, a dial-up phone service where callers choose recorded stories, rabbi talks, or inspirational messages by pressing numbers, with advertisements for the service featuring only men. People who record the messages are compared to influencers, while callers are described as listeners.
Dress, Sidelocks, and Modesty Rules 16:30
Boys begin growing sidelocks, called payot, after age three and keep them into adulthood as a sign of Jewish identity, a practice with roots going back centuries. Men typically wear a long black overcoat called a kapata, a white shirt, a black hat, and a kippah underneath at all times, along with plain, nearly identical eyeglasses meant to reflect modesty and uniformity from age thirteen onward. The garment called tzitzit dates back over 3,300 years and its knots and strings total 613, corresponding to the number of commandments given by God.
Wigs and Hair Covering 18:00
Married women are commanded to cover their hair at all times, even alone with their husband at home, and some in the Satmar community shave their heads entirely, with one woman saying she did so for twenty years. Despite this, many women in the neighborhood appear to have styled hair, which turns out to be wigs; a wig maker explains that a high-quality wig made of virgin hair sourced from Brazil can cost 6,300 dollars, and a woman may spend an average of 65,000 dollars on wigs over her lifetime. The reasoning given is that hair is considered more likely than the body to draw a man's improper thoughts, so covering it is treated as a high priority, though the crew notes the irony that a beautiful, natural-looking wig seems to work against the stated goal of modesty.
Fear Used to Enforce Rules 19:00
A former community member recalls being taught from a young age that failing to follow rules, such as wearing skirts of the proper length, could bring misfortune like a car accident or illness, with rabbis sometimes framing such events as reasons for collective repentance.
Community Patrols and Private Services 21:27
The neighborhood runs its own private ambulance service, Hatzalah, which responds faster than 911 because members know the streets and residents personally, along with a roadside assistance group called Chaverim, meaning friends, for issues like flat tires or lockouts. A community patrol called Shmira, meaning to guard or protect, acts as a watch group that can perform citizen's arrests, coordinates with residents about suspicious activity, wears identifying shirts and hats, and is seeking permits to expand its security operations; some members may be permitted to carry firearms under New York state law. Internal disputes can also be brought before a religious court called a Beth Din, and rabbis have told residents to discuss issues with a rabbi before going to police, though some residents may feel pressure to comply given their standing in the community. At a nighttime fundraising gathering for families to be able to afford more children, more than 400,000 dollars was collected in fifteen minutes toward a goal of 1.2 million.
Local Business and Self-Contained Culture 24:30
On Lee Avenue in Williamsburg, trucks are sometimes blocked from view or altered to prevent residents from seeing inappropriate advertisements, and modesty patrol volunteers watch for community members not dressed appropriately in public, with rules against shirtless clothing, short or tank tops, and bare feet. Magazines and films sold locally never show women's faces, and the neighborhood has no chain restaurants or stores like McDonald's, Starbucks, or Toys R Us, with residents instead patronizing community-owned businesses such as a store called Toys for Us, reflecting a preference to support their own rather than outside chains. Even a small local diner has hosted major political interest, with one owner recalling that Donald Trump had planned to visit before it was cancelled the day the owner's father passed away.
Toys and Children's Culture 25:30
Toys sold in local stores reflect Hasidic values almost exclusively, with no Barbie dolls and images of girls' faces sometimes covered on packaging. Storybooks carry titles like Escape from Iran and Saddam Game Over, and religious Lego-style sets, including a popular Holy Temple set representing a nearly 3,000-year-old symbol of Jewish history, are used to familiarize children with community traditions from a young age, alongside smaller sets themed around bedtime prayer and the Sabbath.
Toys and gender roles 26:01
The toys sold in the community mirror the way people live, with sets showing bride and groom figures rather than professions like scientist, artist, or athlete. Parents avoid toys from the secular world, such as certain dolls, because they worry those items could influence children at a young age. Even cousins of opposite sexes are kept from playing together once they reach a certain age, and boys and girls are raised with very separate expectations from early childhood.
Matchmaking and marriage 27:00
Dating as outsiders know it does not really happen here. A matchmaker typically suggests a pairing, and the couple meets briefly at the parents house before deciding to marry. The reasoning given is drawn from the Bible story of Rebecca and Isaac, who married first and loved each other afterward, so people are taught that love follows marriage rather than preceding it. Staying single by choice is not treated as a real option in this community.
Marital intimacy rules 27:30
Beatrice describes strict rules governing marriage, including keeping the lights off during intimacy. After a woman's period she is considered impure for about two weeks, during which couples sleep in separate beds and avoid touching or even handing objects to each other directly, using a crib as a go-between for the baby. Pregnant women were also told to avoid zoos, since looking at non-kosher animals was thought to risk making the baby impure.
Homes built around religious law 29:01
Balconies on every building connect to Sukkot, the weeklong holiday when families sleep under the open sky to recall how their ancestors wandered the desert after leaving Egypt. Windows are covered in protective fencing because the Torah commands building a guardrail around a home to prevent danger. Inside Rabbi Schlommo's house, the kitchen has two of nearly everything, separate stoves, microwaves, dishwashers, plates, and cutlery, one set for dairy and one for meat, since the two must never mix and a utensil that touches the wrong food hot can become unusable.
Shabbat and its restrictions 30:30
Shabbat is a day of total rest recalling how God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh. Before it begins, families set lights and appliances the way they want them to stay, since nothing electrical can be turned on or off once Shabbat starts, and some rely on timers instead. A special Shabbat lamp lets people block light without switching it off, and ovens have a Sabbath setting that keeps food warm without counting as cooking. Beatrice recalls a frightening case when her husband delayed calling an ambulance for her premature baby because it was Shabbat, a decision she says was flatly wrong and put the baby at risk.
The eruv boundary 33:31
Because carrying items between private and public space is forbidden on Shabbat, some New York communities rely on an eruv, a wire strung between utility poles that legally extends private space outward so people can carry keys, medicine, or use walkers. One eruv stretches about twenty miles around Manhattan and another roughly fifty five miles across Brooklyn, and the Manhattan eruv alone reportedly costs about two hundred thousand dollars a year to inspect and maintain.
Inside the synagogue gathering 35:30
At the main gathering, men of all ages pray together, binding small boxes called tefillin to their arm and head as a mitzvah expressing love for God and constant thought of him, following instructions from the Bible to wear one between the eyes. They sway while praying, sing together, and follow the lead rabbi closely. Along with prayers for Israel's wellbeing, they sing for their holy temple to be rebuilt on a site that also holds Al Aqsa, one of Islam's holiest places, located in East Jerusalem, land the United Nations considers Palestinian territory.
Coming of age and a hidden passage 37:41
A boy reaching thirteen moves from colorful shirts into a full black suit and white shirt, puts on tefillin for the first time, and stops academic study entirely as he takes on adult responsibility. Behind the synagogue's wooden panels, a passage nearly sixty five feet long was found in 2024, containing mattresses, clothes, and boxes, and some people refused to leave when authorities came to inspect it. Rabbi Friedman describes it as a simple unauthorized wall opening between two buildings rather than a tunnel, though authorities took it seriously enough to discipline those involved.
Beatrice's departure 38:28
Beatrice once held a prominent place in the community as a rabbi's wife but eventually left, and she describes her family trying to take her children away and a deep sense of betrayal in the process. She says she does not regret leaving.