Menachem Daum
2021Menachem Daum is a Holocaust survivor and a documentary film-maker. Born in displaced persons camp in Germany, to refugees from Poland. Being Jewish, many of his relatives perished in Nazi Germany's genocide. Professionally a gerontologist, he is based today in Borough Park, Brooklyn, New York.
He has created two documentary films, A Life Apart: Hasidism in America, (1997) on Hasidim in Brooklyn, and Hiding and Seeking, (2003) a film on Polish gentiles that sheltered Jews during World War II. Through his efforts, he secured the Yad Vashem award for the family that sheltered his wife's family. He partnered on the films with Oren Rudavsky. As of 2008, he was working on a film, Common Ground, which will address the work of non-Jews in working to maintain Jewish cemeteries in Poland.
His 2004 film, Hiding and Seeking, began as a search to reconnect with the Poles that sheltered his family. The Jewish Week wrote of Daum's work on this film, "The film speaks more deeply to how religious intolerance is insidious no matter who is practicing it, and upbraids Holocaust survivors who broke all ties with their rescuers, despite wartime promises to stay in touch forever.
"'I believe in the importance of self-criticism for all communities, Jewish, non-Jewish Islamic, Christian,' says Daum. 'We do ourselves a disservice when we can see faults in others but not see our own shortcomings".
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Hiding and Seeking
Oren Rudavsky, Menachem Daum
Akiva Daum, Menachem Daum
An Orthodox Jewish father tries to alert his adult sons to the dangers of creating impenetrable barriers between themselves and those outside their faith. He takes them on an emotional journey to Poland to track down the family who risked their lives to hide their grandfather for more than two years during World War II. Like many children of survivors, the sons feel that Poland is a country that is incurably anti-Semitic, but it is precisely here that they meet people who personify the highest levels of compassion
Hiding and Seeking
A Life Apart: Hasidism in America
Oren Rudavsky, Menachem Daum
Leonard Nimoy, Sarah Jessica Parker
A Life Apart: Hasidism in America, is the first in-depth documentary about a distinctive, traditional Eastern European religious community. In an historic migration after World War II, Hasidism found it's most vital center in America. Both challenging and embracing American values, Hasidim seek those things which many Americans find most precious: family, community, and a close relationship to God. Integrating critical and analytical scholarship with a portrait of the daily life, beliefs, and history of contemporary Hasidic Jews in New York City, the film focuses on the conflicts, burdens, and rewards of the Hasidic way of life.
A Life Apart: Hasidism in America
