MONTREAL — Montreal filmmaker Eric Scott has lifted the veil on the taboo subject of chassidic/haredi apostasy in his new documentary Leaving the Fold, which made its première at the Montreal World Film Festival.

Brothers Hudi, left, and Levi Riven tell their stories in the documentary film Leaving the Fold, directed by Eric Scott.

Scott was able to find five Jewish young people from Montreal, New York and Israel who have left the insular faiths they were raised in and, in at least one case, broken with their families.

All chafed under what they saw as the repressive lifestyle of fervent Orthodoxy, and a sense of not fitting in. They are now  trying to find their way in secular society, with varying degree of success, without abandoning their Jewish identities.

They tell their stories with surprising frankness. While the overall message is that it took extraordinary courage to leave these extremely tight-knit communities, often facing shame and ostracism, Scott is respectful of a way of life that may seem bizarre to outsiders.

His subjects include the Montreal brothers, Levi and Hudi Riven, two of eight children of Lubavitch parents, who we are introduced to clean-shaven (almost), bare-headed and wearing the casual clothes typical of their generation.

Levi is studying psychology at Concordia University and the younger Hudi wants to be a chef. Theirs is probably the happiest story in the film.

While their father, Pinchus, prays every day for their return to the “fold,” he still loves them and maintains cordial relations.

He wonders where he failed and reasons they are suffering from a “spiritual sickness.”

The films shows the boys helping their father build a sukkah, and inside it the three engage in a frank, but good-natured, discussion of their differing views about life and what it means to be a Jew.

Levi and Hudi admit that music, movies, going to bars and having girlfriends were a motive for dropping out, but had had doubts about their religious upbringing long before puberty. They were fed up with a religion that had a rule for every moment from the time they woke up until they went to bed. They felt “brainwashed.”

For the elder Riven, who is evidently a ba’al tshuvah, Lubavitch Chassidism provides the “truth,” and he feels his sons are throwing away their birthright. All those rules that they chafed under are intended to remind Jews of their higher nature and to make them and, ultimately, the world better.

The brothers’ sense of Jewishness remains strong – Levi admits he broke off a relationship with a non-Jewish girl because he ultimately can’t see himself marrying outside Judaism.

Not so at peace with himself is an Israeli, identified only as “X”. He is the scion of a rabbinic dynasty, who felt that he would either have to leave the insular sect he grew up in in New York or commit suicide. He has abandoned not only his birth family, but also his wife and two young children, whom he hasn’t seen in about a year.

He is clearly struggling with the choice he has made. He still thinks of himself as haredi but could no longer abide the control over every aspect of his life that came with it. In particular, X could not accept his arranged marriage to a woman he had only met briefly twice before. Consummating that union felt like “rape,” he said.

“I felt like I was on a train and some one else was driving it,” he says.

He found a haven at Hillel Open Gates, an organization in Jerusalem that assists young ex-haredim making the transition to the mainstream (not associated with the Jewish students society).

Here we meet Sara Lock, who has left an extremist sect in Jerusalem’s Mea Shearim. She has no regrets and, in fact, describes herself as elated with her new life.

She grew up in a home with no electricity and no phone, let alone access to the outside world. When her dissident older sister was seen wearing pants, her neighbours beat her severely, and the family was forced to leave the enclave and their house set on fire.

The fifth interviewee is Basya Schechter, who grew up in Boro Park, N.Y. She traces her disaffection from Chassidim to when she was scolded, at age nine, for moving to music at her all-girls camp.  She was told it was “prost,” Yiddish for vulgar, to dance.

Today, she is a singer-songwriter and the founder of the band Pharaoh’s Daughter. Her music is influenced by the  chassidic sounds she still loves. Schechter also wrote the musical score for Leaving the Fold.

Part of her still “feels close to the ideals” of fervent Orthodoxy, but she knows she could never fit in, says Schechter, dressed in a spaghetti-strap top that would surely shock her old world.

What all five have in common is the intoxicating feeling of being their own person and not having to feel guilty all the time.

Their testimonies are counter-balanced by Snir Bitton, a young Lubavitch rabbi and musician who reaches out to young Jews who are flirting with rejecting their faith. He can speak to them at their level, because not long ago, he had enjoyed every worldly temptation – cars, girls, money – but ultimately found it an empty existence and turned to his spiritual roots.

He sees these as special young people who are exploring, but will find their way back.

The 52-minute film gives no indication of how prevalent the exodus from chassidic communities is. Scott said in an interview that it is a growing phenomenon, especially in Israel, where those who defect can move into a society that is Jewish with less concern about assimilation than those in the Diaspora.

Finding young people who were willing to tell their stories on film was a long and exasperating search for Scott. And then he had to whittle down the pool he found to those who were engaging before the camera, and also met the demand from Société Radio-Canada, which commissioned the film, for Quebec content.

As a Jewish filmmaker and in the wake of the Bouchard-Taylor commission hearings, where some unpleasant things were said about Chassidim, Scott felt a responsibility to not leave an unmitigated negative impression of observant Jews.

Through the personable and articulate Bitton and elder Riven, as well as warm scenes of chassidic families or joyous street celebrations, Scott tried to convey why their beliefs are so deeply held and that Chassidim/haredim are not a monolith.

He tested Leaving the Fold this summer before a private audience of chassidic women in Melbourne, Australia.

“Beforehand, they were quite apprehensive, but when they saw the film their reaction was sympathetic. They saw it as possibly helping the community respond to those who walk out,”  he said.

Above all, Scott was trying to make a film that had universal meaning. “This is a story about parents and children, and what happens when the children do not want what their parents believe is best for them.”

Leaving the Fold is to be aired by Radio-Canada sometime this season. The film had its theatrical debut at Cinéma du Parc this month, and is scheduled to have runs in selected venues in Toronto, Vancouver and New York this fall.