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. 

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. 

Short note about Unorthodox

It is not the first time when I promise myself to control my temptation to purchase immediately any book which is too much discussed in the media. I did the same with the 'famous' Unorthodox and purchased it shortly after the release. I have finished the book in two days and since then I am still wondering why this book is so popular.

I saw recently a TV show dedicated to the book and I realised that, besides the good PR of the edition house, it is the topic of intimate relationships that attracts so much the non-Jewish media. Indirectly, Feldman advertises a lot the Satmars, as not few media reports are tempted to identify this sect with Hasidism, which is not true and with core Judaism, which is even less true. But, apparently, the truth is not the strong point of this book introduced as a memoir, where some lectures - as Romance Reader by Pearl Abraham - were a  more powerful source of inspiration than the daily reality, or the account of a possible hidden crime in 21st century America was introduced as a sure fact. Many would say that she has a lot of imagination, maybe too much for pretending to write a memoir.

According to many of her media appearances, the author promises to come back with new literary works and I really hope that the next will be real good writing pieces. Unorthodox failed to be one, in my opinion, and when I saw a lady at a TV show moved to tears about the exceptional qualities of the book I thought something could be wrong with the reading standards in this world. I am not a snobbish reader and I do not displace the topic. But, compared with the good writing from Hush, for example, this book is centuries behind.

As for the story in itself, it could be an interesting story, but is not presented as a personal account. The lack of measure and balance gives the impression that all Jewish families are hard with their children (''All my aunts and uncles are hard on their children, it seems to me. They berate them, embarass them, and yell at them". p. 37) or many Jewish children are left because their mothers discover that they want to stop being married to a man with psychological problems and discover their love for the same sex (the special case of Deborah Feldman's family). In comparison with most Satmar children, the rest of the Jewish children do not lear distorted stories about Zionism and the state of Israel and many girls and women are able to study and read books. We do have mothers and fathers that love us and we do not meet our shidduch in a supermarket. Sometimes I felt that Deborah Feldmans' book is in fact an example of a Satmar way of thinking, trying to suggest to the reader - not always very much informed - that it is no other true that what she is telling us. Obviously, wrong. Another example is given by the account of her first marital problems, including the practice of the mikveh, when clearly she was the victim of the lack of proper guidance. I am sure she did not have a hard life and the guidance of a rabbi and a healthy family environment was lacking, but this is only the problem, not the solution. 

Hopefully, the Jewish world is more diverse than viewed through the lenses of an ex-Satmar.