MY EXPERIENCE WITH PETER SANTENELLO IN THE HASIDIC JEWISH WORLD (Behind The Scenes)

hi guys okay so i'm in a big rush i have a flight to catch in a few minutes i'm going to try to tell you about how i met peter santonello and how this whole thing came about so basically um on september 11 2020 i saw an instagram story from peter santaniello i've been following him online for a long time and he said something about coming to new york he was looking for stories to share in new york city so i sent them a dm on instagram and i just wrote you know i'd love to show you the city community let me know if you're interested and a short while later was maybe two hours later he replied to me and he said yeah let's do it i'm really excited about it so we started talking we set a date for early october on october 5th i believe it was he came to brooklyn for the first time i showed him around i showed him three different communities and he was planning to make one video it wasn't supposed to be a big thing i didn't think i'd even be in any of the videos but it turns out that he had so much good content that he decided to make three separate episodes from this whole thing and um they really took off the first one got about five or six million views between youtube and facebook and it did very well something i want to address here are some of the difficulties that went into making this thing possible you need to understand that the hasidic community is very private and most people did not want to be on camera or have you know have anything to do with what's perceived as media even though peter is not really the media but people are very shy from outsiders and it was very difficult to find people who would be willing to talk on camera to peter at least in the beginning once the videos took off and we started seeing that people were enjoying what was going on in the community felt they were represented properly that's when we got much more openness and people were more willing to you know to open their hearts and their homes to peter and to show him around after the success of the first three episodes i contacted peter i said you know this is doing really well maybe you should come back and we'll do a couple more so in the beginning he wasn't very interested but as the idea grew on him he realized that the hasidic community has so many more stories to tell and he agreed to come back so he flew in a few weeks later for a full week and he was busy every single day filming non-stop to bring you all these episodes good morning it still is morning almost afternoon but it is morning from manhattan new york i am here today with myself but i'm going to be picking up peter santaniello and we're going to be filming in hasidic community today in brooklyn so please come along for the journey and we hope you have a good time and there he comes up i locked him out good morning what are you gonna do to me how's it going good morning brother how are you good slept really well that's good we got turned back to uh peter got back to the hotel last night probably about 1am 1am yeah probably wow bed by two okay good seven hours of sleep we're heading to brooklyn now and we're gonna film some more can see them are you excited this is this is this is the day i've been looking forward to because we're talking with a acidic woman yeah so i think that's uh look his the hasidic religion is something nobody really has any clue about outside of it it's quite mysterious and especially the female side so i think it's it's going to be an interesting story however it works out yeah you're going to get to see uh something that most people usually don't get to see or somebody people usually don't get to talk to so that's exciting let's get right into the city okay so i just dropped peter off to meet with a hasidic woman malki weingarten she is a filmmaker um and we're gonna go take a look and see how they're doing they're walking the streets together so we are back where it all began full circle we're back in mendelssohn's pizza in borough park by uncle heshi and uh peter went to meet with the secretary of women today it was supposed to take about an hour how long did it take peter maybe three four four hours yeah was it good you had a good time amazing amazing eye-opening experience to do something for another person because of their race or whatever that's that's one of those family fathers were very smart yeah they said inalienable rights given by god so your opinion doesn't count i'm hearing a lot about what this series accomplished people are saying it made the community look very good i see it differently i see it as it made the community look human and most humans are good so it brought out the fact that we're not just them we're not just those people we are us we are actually a group of people with feelings and opinions and we're colorful and i think that's one of the i think that is that is the biggest thing that this whole series accomplished that it humanized the hasidic community there are many people who left the hustle community and they have shared their stories their stories deserve to be heard but i don't feel that they should be the ones talking for the entire hasidic community because they consider themselves no longer a part of the community so one of the things that i did was try to bring out stories of the people who are inside and still inside the community and it really broke down a ton of barriers between us and the outside world working with peter was an amazing experience peter's a really smart guy he's really fun to hang out with he gets into any situation and right away he has this instinct he just gravitates to the right people and he really really really is amazing at what he does and i'm proud to call him a friend we talk every single day and i'm sure this is not the end of the road for peter and i i've been getting thousands and i mean literally thousands of messages from all over the world um complimenting us on the work that we did and so much inspiration so many nice people are reaching out just to tell me that they enjoyed it and that they really now have a much better understanding of the city community than they ever had before and this is something that really warms my heart and makes it feel like everything was worth it it certainly was worth it and uh i really appreciate every one of you who wrote to me it's going to be impossible to respond to all the messages but i am trying my best another thing i should mention is that literally on a daily basis i get between 30 and 50 suggestions through email facebook twitter people are calling me people want peter to do an episode about their business or about this organization or about a certain special person and at this point we are done with the series so that means that as of now this will not continue i really do appreciate all the suggestions but as i said the series is done for now so that's the end of that additionally people are asking about the future what's coming in the future i really don't know peter is done with the hasidic community for now he's going to move on to other things and i don't think he ever spent as much time in any community as he did with ours i am looking to see how i can possibly take this further and give voices to the community in the future i don't know what's going to be but i'm going to try my best thank you so much for watching have a wonderful day god bless you all and we'll see you later