The Believer relates the disturbing and provocative story of a Jewish skinhead from Brooklyn. Screenwriter Henry Bean (Internal Affairs, Deep Cover) was inspired by an actual case to write an original script exploring issues close to his own Orthodox Judaism-and then to direct what became the winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. Everywhere The Believer has been shown it has provoked passionate debate about fundamental assumptions of faith, belief, and ethnic identity. The Believer: Confronting Jewish Self-Hatred is intended to provide a context for the discussion...

One day, eavesdropping on a phone call, Harold Raab, a writer with nothing to write, hears his roommate refer intriguingly to a woman Harold has never met. Curiosity leads to obsession and to an affair with the married Charlotte Cobin, all of which Harold faithfully records in the notebook that becomes his deeper obsession. As the relationship with Charlotte complicates and darkens, Harold’s poisons emerge. He’s discovered a subject he can write about, but now reveals himself as someone whose intelligence, wit, and sexual delirium mask a terror of human connection. Adrift in the ruins of...