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Tablet Magazine

Google Glass Film Spotlights Crown Heights

On a Sunday evening earlier this month, the Mister Rogers restaurant in Crown Heights played host to the neighborhood’s primary residents—West Indian Blacks with waist-length dreads and baggy jeans, and Hasidic Jews in black hats and sheitels.

They mingled while huddling over tables stocked with fresh bread smothered in hummus and cups full of Jamaican-style coconut and pastrami soup. Photos of Crown Heights lined the restaurant’s walls, alternating between depictions of Yeshiva boys on a school bus with Rastafarians playing basketball in Sterling Park.

In the corner of the room sat the first available beta version of Google Glass, given to 10,000 chosen ones in late August as part of the Glass Explorer program. The futuristic device is small and somewhat obscure, but it’s the reason we’re all here: the premiere of Project 2×1, the first-ever Google Glass documentary, which explores the lives of the Hasidic and West Indian communities living side-by-side in the Brooklyn, N.Y. neighborhood of Crown Heights.

The film isn’t shot solely with Glass, but the device is definitely the star. “It’s given us incredible access,” said Hannah Roodman, the film’s director. “I could not go up to the alter and film the preacher, and I definitely couldn’t do it from where he’s standing with the Bible.” The technology has created a new point-of-view angle: first person extreme.

“It’s the best way to connect people, cultivate more understanding and really show them your world through your own eyes,” Roodman explained. “To be able to weave together a portrait of our neighborhood through so many different perspectives makes it a much more intimate experience.”

Sharing perspectives and experiences has become increasingly important in the weeks leading up to Project 2×1’s release. Over the past month, more than 10 so-called “knockout” attacks have taken place in predominantly Jewish neighborhoods of Brooklyn, targeting identifiably Jewish victims. Although the film wasn’t made with these attacks in mind—it was filmed long before “knockout” was anything more than a basketball game to New Yorkers—it embraces Rev. Al Sharpton’s advice that Jews and non-Jews “unite in creating advanced educational opportunities.” Grassroots projects like the film depict a non-violent reality of diverse communities in Brooklyn and promote mutual understanding.

“It’s one thing to have a community, but it’s another to bring two communities together. It’s an empire,” Freddy Harris, a steel pan drummer, explained in the film. “That’s what we’re creating out here in Crown Heights.”

Project 2×1—both the movie and interactive website, which will be continuously updated with shorter clips—takes viewers inside the daily lives of the West Indian and Hasidic communities, unveiling some striking parallels along the way. While many married Hasidic women cover their hair in public, for example, Rastafarian women wrap up their dreads because the hair is “too beautiful to be seen.” And the West Indian Day Parade, we learn, is a celebration as grand as a Simchat Beit Hashoeivah, if a bit more colorful.

It’s much easier to say, ‘Walk a mile in someone’s shoes before you judge their journey’ than to actually borrow a pair of shoes. But with Google Glass, the shoe always fits, and Project 2×1 gives everyone the chance to take the tour.

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11 Comments

  • Wrong Place

    You should have grown up in Pittsburgh. Over there we know our neighbors mighty well. And I’m a proud Lubavitcher.
    I’m sorry Mendy, you have the vanehi veineinu kachagovim outlook.

  • We are alike

    True: Our Nefesh Habehamis has human desires just as lihavdil Goyim but as Jews we learn and know that we are supposed to direct our lives towards Hashem and Goyim do not need to do that nor do they have the same internal drive to do that. Their goal is to be decent human beings whereas our purpose is to be G-dly beings. To sanctify the physical not to celebrate it.

    Also our Nefesh Habehamis by its nature is compassionate and altruistic. We should care for all of G-ds creation but we should not equate ourselvs with them for that leads to dropping our own uniqueness and becoming like everyone else.

  • ?so now its ok to intermingle?

    Mendy, I feel sorry for you and your misguided approach. I live in an extremely tolerant world. I work with blacks side by side and although one may think it is harmonious the second the chance arose for the black to belittle a frum person they do, and that is after years of taking care of their family and helping them. Although I am not Lubavitch, in the words of the Rebbe (about israel) if u give them a finger, they will take a hand. First it is mingling next it is marriage, I dont want a shagetz for a nephew or neice. May Hashem Bentch you with saychelto help u realize your grave mistake.

  • We already have a directive from the rebbe on how bridge communities

    When the Rebbe spoke about Sheva Mitzvos Bnei Noach, he emphasized that this will lead to inter community harmony. When the non-Jews see that we are not just interested in our community welfare and that we are looking to better their lives as well, this will give them a whole new appreciation of the Jewish community.

    • Citizen Berel

      Right on.

      The only way to relate to this community is as teachers.

      That need truth far more than they need to be understood.

      A true 7 miztvos campaign is the solution.

      The challenge is for the right to people to step up and do it right.

      Who those people are — I have no idea. But they need to be really good, because the undertaking is sensitive and difficult.