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Film Review: "The Return of Sarah's Daughters"** by filmmaker Marcia Jarmel
In "The Return of Sarah's Daughters", film maker Marcia Jarmel takes us on a feminist tour into the world of Orthodox Judaism where what we glimpse is at once part reflection, part history and part cultural memoir. Jarmel, writer, producer and director of the award winning film (1), inserts herself as our narrative guide along the life path of two women - Rus and Myriam - all three in search of their own identities as Jews, and as women grappling with the contradictions of feminism and Orthodoxy in the 1990's.
Across from Lowen's Bakery in the Orthodox shtetlthat is Crown Heights, countless Jewish men, women and children go about their daily ablutions and chores. What sets them apart from other Brooklynites, other Jews, is not only that prescribed garb of Orthodoxy - black suits for men that conceal the swaying fringe of the talis or the trademark tikl or sheitl that covers women's hair - but their beliefs as Lubavitch Hasidic Jews that each deed or mitzvah prepares the world for the Messiah. In the midst of this bustling and thriving community (we are told that the fastest growing Jewish communities in the U.S. are...