Un-Unorthodoxing

In the last decade, a vast repertoire of books, movies and public appearances were associated with the phenomenon of religious Jews deciding to leave the fold. Either they lost completely their faith, or were unhappy with the strict rules of their community, for gender-related reasons or simply because they wanted to pursue their academic dreams. Some of their testimonies, like the memoir of Leah Vincent (by far, one of my favorite literary work in this respect), are a dramatic account of the struggles many of those who are leaving their close-knitted communities are going through. Movies like One of Us are featuring the family drama affecting not only the parents who are breaking up with their religious past, but especially their children. Those days, it is so popular to mention Unorthodox as a reference for the isolated ´Hasidic life´ within the Satmar.

However, there is only one half of the glass. Most precisely, this half of the glass is what the wide - often non-Jewish, especially in Germany - expects to read about religious Jews: that their life is sad, mechanical, aimed at producing children and opressing women, who are forced to shave their hair after getting married and prevented from getting and education.

This article published in the Jewish Chronicle this week reminds that there is a large category of people unrepresented in the cultural and literary renditions on religious life: people that returned to religion, the so-called ba´alei tshuva or chozer b´tshuva. Of course, there is Shtisel on Netflix about a religious family from the Geula neighbourhood of Jerusalem. There is the movie Ushpizin about the Breslov couple who returned to religion. But outside the religious circles, memoirs and media stories and testimonies about this phenomenon, who is affecting a lot of Jewish families, in Israel and America particularly, there is not too much to be told. Indeed, Unorthodox is featuring the adventures of the liberated Esty in Berlin, but in the same city of Berlin, there are so many young religious families, whose members, many originary from the former Soviet Union, are people that grew up without any religious background. There are people with high academic training that are also practicant Jews. 

For the sake of diversity, I would love to read, hear and see more of those stories too.