Why I Will NOT Watch Unorthodox

As tempting as it sounds to use this lockdown time for quietly watching episode after episode of the recently released series of Unorthodox on Netflix, after watching the ´Making Off´, I decided that not only I am not the aimed audience of this movie, but also for me, personally, such a production does not have any relevance at all.

Unorthodox series are produced by a team based in Berlin and are inspired by the memoir published by Deborah Feldman, an ex-Satmer women who decided to leave the fold and eventually relocated to Berlin where she is living for a couple of years. Personally, I admire her for everything she achieved: she is labelled a public intellectual and often invited to media debates where she is lecturing the intellectual German audience about the opressive world of ultra-Orthodox Jews (most of the time). Fully in sync with the intellectual interests - sometimes blunt obsessions - of the secular German intellectual realm, who wants to hear about the primitive assets of religious observance in order to have reasons to feel nauseated and outraged. It operates similarly when they hear/see Muslim head covering or hear about the restrictions of kosher or women modesty.

Talking about the religious practice is not easy and if you really assume the role of public intellectual, abhorrent attitudes and eyes rolled when you hear about mikveh and the ´unclean days´ doesn´t make you more interesting. If you are not familiar with a certain practice, the first time when you are shared the details might be a moment of shock. Normally, the more information you have, the more familiar you are with the topic and you can advance in building an intellectual representation, not only an emotional reaction. However, when it comes to religious matters, Jewish religious matters in Germany, this rarely happens.

Unorthodox, smartly promoted in the big English-speaking media and through social media, is moulded to answer those ´intellectual´ expectations. How can you not be happy with the story of a girl that grew up in an insular community, speaking Yiddish (sounds a bit like German, isn´t it) who leaves everything behind and is becoming a modern, emancipated woman in Berlin? Does it sound realistic? Of course, as there is not only Deborah Feldman the ex-Satmer living in Berlin, but a couple of more Jews with a very observant past who moved here. Not all of them are selling so well their story though.

For me, this story does not have any intellectual appeal. The same stereotypes, the fine irony of the non-religious towards the funny customs of the observant, the feminist scream of liberating the women. Thank Gd there are so many of them left within the community so when they leave, they can maybe give other interpretations of the same story. My time, my choices.

As for for, Unorthodox does not have any appeal and my time is way too precious to waste it watching an intellectually-dry production following an obvious thesis. 

Exploring Contemporary Halachic Issues with Rabbi Ari N. Enkin

`Dalet amot´ literally means ´4 cubits of Halacha´ and this is what we were left with after the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. In over 100 articles approaching diverse topics such as women&family, medical issues or inter-personal relationships, Rabbi Ari N. Enkin offers a consistent review of more or less known issues pertaining to the everyday Jewish practice.

The level of knowledge required is basic to inter-mediate, but personally I think that every person, regardless the level of Torah education, either you are a layman, scholar or observant Jew, everyone has something new to learn and think about after reading this book. Remember the answee to the question: who is a wise man?

Despite the diversity of topics, many of them - for example, the issue of adoption - I would definitely want to study later in a more systematic and in-depth way, there is something else I highly appreciated about Dalet Amot. Halachic Perspectives by Rabbi Ari N. Enkin: the generous way in which it includes different perspectives and approaches, without taking a definite stance. After all, in the author´s own words: `If Gd is infinite, then there must be an infinite number of legitimate ways to serve Him`. It is nothing wrong in following a certain path that you´ve been observed in your home, but this does not exclude the recognition of many other similar choices and possibilities, given than the halachic matrix is respected.

The author acknowledge the fact that we must ensure that women learn halacha, and there are aspects pertaining to women practice approaches in the book, for example kol isha, modesty and mikveh - the topic of building a mikveh and the various points of view is another topic I will be very interested to approach into more technical detail one day - one may not find any dispute or controversial statements on this issue, the neutral - halachically/legal - perspective being rather followed.

Personally, I´ve found the book very useful as a refreshment of some halachic topics and for the discovery of new problems that hopefully will keep me busy in the next weeks and months.

For anyone looking for a bit of Torah learning and a larger peace of mind in confused times, Dalet Amot. Halachic Perspectives by Rabbi Ari N. Enkin may offer solace, inspiration and eventually reasons to consider an even higher level of Torah learning and halachic observance.

How I See It...

It´s like one day, Gd had again suddently enough of how bad humans started to behave against each other and against His work and released this time a powerful invisible virus that put the entire world on lockdown, giving the chance to humans to reestablish that genuine bond of kindness and simple humanity.

Personally, I am watching the world unfolding and I am so curious what it will bring next. Very curious...

Exile: Portraits of the Jewish Diaspora

What makes us stay Jewish despite all the persecution and hate and forced conversions? Why people still not move en masse in Israel after the creation of the state in 1948 - although many acknowledge the safety net that it offers as the only place where eventually a Jew should be when things are getting ´really bad´ the diaspora?

Annika Hernroth-Rothstein, which defines herself as ´a Jew in the diaspora, a survivor among survivors, and a link in a vast chain that spans across the world´, a journalist and activist living in Sweden globetrotted the world to discover those links that helped us to not break in front of vicissitudes.

Her collection of accounts gathered in Exile: Portraits of the Jewish Diaspora adds up knowledge, information and introduce to the readers Jews from remote, unknown or out of reach places from around the world: Iran, Tunisia, Morocco, Uzbekistan, Cuba, Finland, Turkey, Venezuela or Siberia, among others. Obviously, many places can be openly visited, like in her local Sweden or Finland but it takes time, the good research and the proper connections to really know the people.

I really loved how the author have found the proper voice and background for each of the community stories: in some cases more history was needed, in other cases, the reader was offered a well-deserved introduction into the human network besides the institutional structures (my favorite so far are the stories from the Island of Cohanim - descendant of the High Priest in Jerusalem -, in Djerba, Tunisia and about the challenges encountered by the Jews in Venezuela). 

There are also interesting observations about the life of Jews in Iran ´one of the most elusive Jewish community in the world´, a country that used to save Jews during WWII while nowadays preaching Holocaust denial at its highest levels. According to her account based on her 2-week stay, the Jews of Iran ´are living in a gilded cage with freedoms and rights that can be taken away at the behest of their master with neither notice nor reason´. The forced isolation imposed by the life under sharia law allows the preservation of identity in the most ´Orthodox way´: inter-mariages are impossible (although conversions to Islam are a completely different story), there is plenty of kosher food available and physically aggressive anti-Semitism is absent, with no need of special protection of houses of prayers and Jewish institutions (in comparison with the situation in the liberal Sweden, for instance). 

There are also situations accounted that remind of the eternal diaspora situation, as the dispute in Uzbekistan between Askenazim (Jews of European descent) and Bukharian Jews (or Jews of the mountains as the Jews from this part of the former Soviet Union are called).

I was relatively disappointed about the part dedicated to Siberia: maybe too much discussion about the Russian/Putin connection and not too much about the diverse origin of the Jews that reached this cold remote province. Among others, there were for instance many Jews displaced by the Soviets during the WWII and the anti-Semitic persecutions from other Soviet republics like Moldova and Ukraine, known for their high-percentage of Jewish populations at the time.

My personal wish is that Annika will continue to travel the world and reveal more interesting Jewish stories. We all need to be reminded about those fine and multiple ties that connect all of us.

Rating: 4 stars

Another Testimony About Israeli Experiences in Germany

The experiences of Shahak Shapira as a Jew/Israeli in Germany adds another testimony to the hardships and challenges of Jewish life in this country. As he landed in Laucha, in Saxony a province whose far-right sympathies are finally acknowledged on a wider scale, together with his younger brother and his mother, he only had the experience of the settlement of Oranit where he grew up.

However, through his family stories he was relatively aware of what to expect: his grandfather on his father side, Amitzur Shapira, was a victim of the terrorism attack during the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. 

With a tone full of humour and sarcasm, Shapira accounts about his encounters with the 'brown' guys. Encounters not always innocents, as his brother will get to the court against one of them. Shahak himself is attacked by antisemites in Berlin this time on 2015 New Years' Eve. 

Unfortunately this is a reality for way too long: antisemitism in schools, extreme right as a reality of the everyday life in some parts of Germany, attacks against Jews. If the situation as such cannot be changed ovenight, at least documenting it will offer a proof that not everyone stayed idle and did nothing at all.