Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on April 13, 2020

Dont you just hate it when the word hate is tossed around to hide hatred?

The Washington Posts A Muslim activist, fearless in the face of hate (April 5 print edition) epitomized this double-speak. The word hate appears half-a-dozen times, including in the headline, in Ausma Zehanat Khans review of Linda Sarsours We Are Not Here to be Bystanders; A Memoir of Love and Resistance. It does so always as a diversion.

Sarsour is the photogenic Palestinian American co-organizer of the 2017 Womens March, a campaign surrogate for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in this years Democratic Party presidential primaries, supporter of sharia (Islamic law) and consistent anti-Zionist and antisemite. Evidence of her less-than-flattering attributes went missing in Khans apologia, prominently played in The Posts Book World pages.

Khan apparently believes and would have readers believe what Sarsour asserts about herself. This is that the memoirist fearlessly confronts Islamophobes and the xenophobic far right. Hate groups are said to besiege Sarsour because she is a woman of color, one daring unapologetically to occupy a platform as a Muslim woman and for being an outspoken advocate of Palestinian human rights.

Translation from Khans leftist clichs: Criticism of anything Sarsour says or does must be illegitimate since it can only come from groups who hate non-white women, Muslims and Palestinian Arabs.

Khan evasively says Sarsour was an organizer and a board member of the Womens March until she stepped down in 2019, along with Bob Bland [Mari Lynn Foulger] and Tamika Mallory, over tensions with others on the board. The three had been accused of antisemitism, charges they denied.

Tensions? Denials? Specifics, please.

Bland, Sarsour and Mallory have defended Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan, perhaps the United States leading antisemite. Online magazine Tablets exposed the antisemitism among Womens March leaders that pushed out Jewish co-organizers (Is the Womens March Melting Down? by Leah McSweeney and Jacob Siegel, Dec. 10, 2018). Khans review also erases criticism of Sarsour et. al.s March management, including handling of book-keeping, contract awarding and merchandizing.

Khan hides hostile statements about Jews and the Jewish state. One of Glamour magazines 2017 women of the year, celebrity activist Sarsour claimed nothing is creepier than Zionismthe Jewish national liberation movement that led to Israels founding.

And for Sarsour, Judaism itself is creepy. On the campaign trail for Sanders last November, she urged the annual conference of American Muslims for Palestine to ask them [progressive supporters of Israel] this, How can you be against white supremacy in America and the idea of being in a state based on race and class, but then you support a state like Israel that is based on supremacy, that is built on the idea that Jews are supreme to everyone else?

Sarsour inverted the Jewish concept of chosen people a concept of message, into messengerand tars it with Nazi-like racism, Marxist class exploitation, and Ku Klux Klan-like attitudes. Criticized, she offered a semi-apology.

Somehow, Palestinian Arabs, who claimed a national identity above clan and village and apart from greater Syria only in the 20th century, are entitled to one. But Jews, rooted historically and religiously in the land of Israel for more than 3,000 years, are not. Maybe nothing is creepier than Sarsours Palestinian supremacism.

The reviewer missed the fact that Sarsour outspoken advocacy of Palestinian human rights rarely if ever whispers about actual suppression of those rights. By Hamasa U.S.-designated terrorist movementin the Gaza Strip and the thuggish, corrupt Fatah in the West Bank, and by Syria, Lebanon and other Arab countries.

Khans heroine worship allows no journalistic scrutiny. But Sarsours woman of color status is a flag of convenience. In a Vox video the same month as the first Womens March, Sarsour acknowledged that when I wasnt wearing hijab [a head-scarf covering a womans hair in compliance with Islamic law or custom] I was just some ordinary white girl from New York City. Wearing hijab made you know that I was a Muslim.

In other words, clothes make the woman when ideology misaligns religion, race and gender to be able, Animal Farm-style, to make some more equal than others. In progressive terms, privileged.

Khan echoes Sarsours transparent attempt to insulate herself against charges of Jew-hatred by citing backers such as Sen. Sanders and Jewish Voice for Peace. Sanders voting record on U.S.-Israel issues is perhaps the worst in the U.S. Senate. He has parroted false allegations that the Israeli military has inflicted disproportionately high casualties on Palestinian civilians. He rarely mentioned his Jewishness before seeking the presidency.

As for Jewish Voice for Peace, Khan unknowingly hit the bulls-eye. The Anti-Defamation League says JVP in effect perpetuates classic anti-Jewish stereotypes. Its ongoing insistence that virtually all criticism of Israel cannot be antisemitic gives cover to antisemites who couch their malice toward Jews as mere anti-Zionism. Bingo!

Khan writes that Sarsours consciousness of Palestinians as a dispossessed, colonized people is key to her rise as an activist and to the hate she has endured. The myth of Palestinian Arab dispossession and colonization by imperialist, racist Zionists was long a staple of Soviet and Arab League propaganda.

Exposed by Arieh Avneri in The Claim of Dispossession, Jewish Land Settlement and the Arabs, 1878 1948 (1980 in Hebrew, 1982 in English) and Joan Peters best-selling From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict Over Palestine (1984), the myth, as the Palestinian narrative, survived Soviet collapse and Arab League irrelevance. Now embedded in much of academia and news media, it falsifies history by inversion. In fact, Arab migration into Jewish-developed areas and recurrent Arab anti-Jewish violence spurred British authorities to block Jews from Mandatory Palestineenvisioned as the restored Jewish national homelandbefore and during the Holocaust.

Khan is author of a series of crime novels, lawyer and former editor-in-chief of Muslim Girl magazine. What she is not, judging by this review, is a reliable literary critic. Just as The Washington Post is not a reliable source when it comes to antisemitism and anti-Zionism.

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Lies, Damned Lies and The Washington Post's Review of Linda Sarsour's Memoir - Jewish Policy Center

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Posted By admin on April 13, 2020

Photo Credit: Saul Jay Singer

During the 1940s, Benzion Netanyahuthe father of Israels current prime ministerserved as executive director of the American wing of the Revisionist Zionists, the movement founded by the Zionist leader Ze ev Jabotinsky. Netanyahu was also editor of its biweekly publication, Zionews.

At the same time, Netanyahu was completing his Ph.D. at Dropsie College in Philadelphia, writing a dissertation on the origins of the Spanish Inquisition. His unique perspective as a historian is reflected in the editorial below, which appeared in Zionews in April 1941, just before the Passover holiday.

Viewing his eras troubles through the prism of Jewish history, he expresses his conviction that the Jewish people ultimately will triumph over their adversaries, including Hitler and Mussolini [who] have started a march of extermination against us.

Netanyahus use of the term extermination is noteworthy, given the fact that the editorial was published two months before the Germans invaded the Soviet Union and began the systematic mass slaughter of European Jewry. It was not possible, in the spring of 1941, to foresee the extent of what would later be called the Holocaust.

The word extermination was used by Netanyahu and others at the time to refer to the economic ruin, expulsions, and starvation that Jewish communities in Europe already were beginning to experience.

The news reports reaching the United States from Europe during the two weeks before Netanyahu wrote his editorial offered ample evidence of the devastation suffered by Jews across the continent.

Fifty thousand Jews in Salonika had fallen into the hands of the German forces invading Greece. Twelve thousand Jews fled from Zagreb to escape the approaching Nazi forces in Yugoslavia, leaving behind almost all their possessions. Ghettoes had been set up for the Jews in the German-occupied Polish cities of Lublin, Krakow, Radom, and Kielce. Food rations for the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, which were already just half of those allotted to non-Jewish Poles, were slashed to only 700 calories per day.

In Holland, the Germans established a new government office for the ominous purpose of investigating racial Jewish problems. In France, the Nazis Vichy allies were expanding the denaturalization of foreign-born Jews in preparation for their deportation. Rumanias Labor Ministry announced the firing of a wide range of Jewish government employees. Slovak officials reportedly were creating slave labor camps for that countrys Jews. Hungarys new premier was planning new anti-Jewish legislation.

In the face of these mounting horrors, Netanyahu took the long view and composed this brief but stirring message of hope. Perhaps its echoes are relevant even for a generation that faces a very different type of adversary.

PESACH COMMENTS

For ages and generations we have assembled in our homes on the first and second evenings of Passover to commemorate the liberation of our forefathers from the slavery of Egypt. Thousands of years have passed since; new slavery, hatreds and persecutions followed our race into every corner of the world. We were uprooted from free and independent Judea to be slaves in the shadow of the Arc of Titus in Rome. We were burned on the fires of the Spanish Inquisition. The cossacks of Bogdan Chmelnitzky have beaten and killed us on the Ukraine. The Prussian antisemites have made fun of us in the German ghettos. The Russian pogromists have shed our blood like water. The Arab effendis have proclaimed a holy war on us. Hitler and Mussolini have started a march of extermination against us.

Still, through oceans of blood, our blood, through oceans of tears, our tears, hated, persecuted, beaten, wandering and homeless, we assemble at the Passover Seder to thank God for our liberation from Egypt, and to express once again the hope of the Hagada: Hashata avdei, leshana habaah bnei-chorin. This year we are still slavesnext year we shall be free men.

It is a great hope. It is a great spirit of a great nation. Only a nation of our spiritual calibre could come through the ages of unparalleled sufferings with its spirit unbroken; still alive; still striving for liberty.Next year we shall be free men.

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A Passover Message Of Hope From Benzion Netanyahu (Bibi's Father) - The Jewish Press - JewishPress.com

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Posted By admin on April 13, 2020

This obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic.

Rabbi Yaakov Perlow, who inherited the leadership of the Novominsker Hasidic dynasty that was founded in Poland by his grandfather and transplanted to Brooklyn a century ago, died on Tuesday at his home in the Borough Park section. He was 89.

The cause was the new coronavirus, according to Agudath Israel of America, the umbrella ultra-Orthodox organization.

The rabbi, known as a persuasive orator and respected scholar, had been president of the organization since 1998 and was chairman of its rabbinical Council of Torah Sages.

He straddled two worlds, defending Haredi, or strict Orthodox, tradition, but at times going outside the insular Hasidic community to opine on public policy. Most recently, he urged his followers to heed the advice of medical experts in the coronavirus pandemic and avoid the gatherings that are integral to religious rituals.

We are told that the Jewish law is that we must listen to doctors whether its about a sick person on Yom Kippur or a sick person that requires desecrating Shabbat and so on, he said. In contrast to the funerals of revered ultra-Orthodox figures, which often attract huge crowds, his service was limited to family only.

While he said students in religious schools should also be offered classes in secular subjects and called for greater dialogue with Reform and Conservative Jewish groups, he fiercely condemned the growing assimilation of American Jews and, in particular, the Open Orthodoxy movement that favored a greater role for women in rituals and liberalizing other strictures.

Addressing an Agudath Israel dinner in 2014, he said the Reform and Conservative movements have disintegrated themselves, become oblivious, fallen into an abyss of intermarriage and assimilation and would be relegated to the dustbins of Jewish history while the Open Orthodoxy movement was steeped in heresy.

Rabbi Perlow was born on Nov. 16, 1930, in Brooklyn to Nochum Mordechai Perlow, whose father, Yaakov, was the first rabbi of the Novominsk Hasidic sect, named for the city in central Poland (its name was changed from Novominsk to Minsk Mazowiecki in 1916). His mother, Beila Rochma Morgenstern, was the daughter of a founder of Agudath Israel in Poland.

He attended Yeshiva Toras Chaim and Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin in Brooklyn and Beth Medrash Govoha in Lakewood, N.J. He graduated with honors from Brooklyn College.

He taught at Hebrew Theological College in Skokie, Ill., and at a yeshiva in Washington Heights. After he succeeded his father as the Novominsker rabbi in 1976, he opened Yeshivas Novominsk-Kol Yehuda, in Borough Park, Brooklyn. He married Yehudis Eichenstein; she predeceased him.

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Rabbi Yaakov Perlow, Head of Hasidic Dynasty in Brooklyn, Dies at 89 - The New York Times

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Posted By admin on April 13, 2020

When my mom-friends and I were discussing where to do our Passover shopping last weekend, one sheepishly asked, Is it anti-Semitic for me not to want to go to the kosher supermarket because of coronavirus?

Yes, I immediately answered. While some Hasidic neighborhoods in Brooklyn and upstate New York and Israel! had been a bit slow to adopt social-distancing, it hardly seemed fair to boycott businesses over it. But others in our kaffeeklatsch insisted it was not only not discriminatory but smart to stay away, and shared the wisdom that a ShopRite in the neighboring town had historically had well-stocked Passover aisles.

What a difference a couple of months and, yes, a global pandemic make. As recently as January, 25,000 mostly non-Orthodox Jews had marched across the Brooklyn Bridge to protest the frightening rise in anti-Semitic violence in those very same Hasidic neighborhoods. It was an unprecedented show of solidarity with what we came to call the visibly Orthodox and it turned out it was a fleeting one.

The fear of being attacked because were Jewish has been overtaken by a different, more directly present set of fears. Now we are more interdependent than ever. This invisible, insidious enemy feeds on selfishness anyone who puts their individual desires over the collective responsibility to flatten the curve threatens to unleash the virus, to overtax the health systems, to make our long national nightmare even longer.

To many liberal/secular/mainstream Jews, thats what the ultra-Orthodoxs apparent lag in fully disbanding prayer and study groups looked like in part because we never really understood or respected the insular, seemingly obsessive religious way of life in those communities in the first place.

The day after the shopping conversation, I received an email from a self-described very discouraged Jewish doctor.

I mention my origin and my religion because I dont want this to sound as an anti-Semitic rant, but the way some Orthodox Jewish groups are acting is right down criminal, the doctor wrote. He went on to call them fanatics, zealots, practitioners of religious apartheid and a special kind of dysfunctional individuals.

It was clear this was not just about the outbreak. I often think of them as them, never as us, the rest of the Jewish community, the doctor said. I think they want to show the rest of us that we are second-class Jews.

There has been a lot of anti-Semitism swirling around this pandemic, much of it echoing the blood libels of prior eras. Jews are accused of having created the novel coronavirus, of trying to profit off of it, of hoarding critical medical supplies. Zoombombing seems to have become the neo-Nazis latest hobby; the Anti-Defamation Leagues hate tracker chronicles numerous instances of synagogue programs being hacked.

But what if there are legitimate criticisms about a communitys behavior? After all, there were videos of people continuing to gather for weddings in Hasidic Williamsburg, Kiryas Joel and Bnei Brak long after public officials banned such congregating. And there are documented reports of higher rates of illness and death in those and other Orthodox areas which might be because they didnt adopt social-distancing fast enough, or because they are dense neighborhoods with high rates of poverty, like other New York virus hotspots.

Of course, there were also videos of hipsters lollygagging in Brooklyn parks and drunken idiots on Daytona Beach. But I didnt hear stories of people avoiding hipster grocery stores. The evangelical Liberty University was one of the last campuses to cancel classes, and has already reopened the campus. It didnt lead to widespread condemnation of evangelical Christians.

Haredi Jews are an especially easy scapegoat for bigotry and anti-Semitism because they are easily seen as other, even alien, the result of their dress, geographic segregation, private schools that sometimes shun math and science, and some even speaking Yiddish rather than English as a primary language.

Stressful times, of course, underscore our essential tribalism. Last fall and winter, when visibly Orthodox Jews were attacked viciously in Jersey City, N.J., Monsey, N.Y. and Crown Heights, Brooklyn, that tribalism was our Jewishness. Many liberal, secular and mainstream Jews felt guilty that the Orthodox seemed to be taking the hit for all of us because of their visibility; there was even a movement to make ourselves more visibly Jewish: People put on yarmulkes and pulled their Stars of David outside their shirts.

Now, in the era of social distancing, the commonality among us as Jews seems to be taking a back seat to the differences in the way we live our lives. This virus doesnt distinguish by religion or anything else, but lifestyle is essential to its spread, so we feel much more kinship with our non-Jewish suburban professional neighbors taking socially distant hikes and posting homemade signs on trees to thank first responders than we do with the black-hatters of Borough Park who dont respect our rabbis credentials.

I was troubled by the mean-spirited tone of the discouraged Jewish doctor, and when I asked whether he had any recent evidence of the Orthodox violating public-health guidelines, as opposed to examples from mid-March, he said he had not personally witnessed any, then referred to a colleague who never materialized for an interview. And yet, part of what he said resonated: I do feel that many Haredim disparage us as second-class Jews because we do not observe the way they do, and thats at least part of why we sometimes struggle to show them empathy.

On my walk last Sunday I ended up in the back yard of the friend I went with to the no hate, no fear march in January, sitting six feet away from her, her husband, their sons and his mother. She said she was feeling disgust and shame about the Haredi refusal to follow all the public-health restrictions. I reminded her of the solidarity moment wed shared, and she admitted, I feel like I was play-acting back then, I was doing what I felt was the right thing for Jews across the board.

That was actually part of why I shopped at the kosher supermarket last weekend, even though my Passover kashrut doesnt require everything to have a label. In my efforts to support local businesses during this shutdown, I wanted to support the Jewish one. (I also felt more confident theyd have brisket, plus if I was going to make my mothers matzah balls, I needed chicken fat.)

The store was not crowded, and most everyone was wearing masks and keeping distant. They had everything I needed except cake meal, plus lots of crackery snacks and that Passover cereal that tastes like chocolate cardboard. Done and done.

As I walked out, I got a call from the friend whod gut-checked her own anti-Semitism the day before. The line at ShopRite was snaking around the parking lot, she said, so she wanted to know how it was over at Seasons.

Jodi Rudoren is the editor-in-chief of the Forward.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Forward.

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Coronavirus is deepening the divide between Orthodox and liberal Jews - Forward

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Posted By admin on April 13, 2020

Updated April 09, 2020 09:14:21

If you've had a moment to collect your thoughts and breathe after bingeing the truly wild documentary series Tiger King, you might've noticed another Netflix series that has been trending this week that's also based on a true story.

Unorthodox is a four-part German-American miniseries and Netflix's first offering to be told primarily in Yiddish.

It might not have big cats and a throuple marriage, but it does take place in a world that at times feels as foreign and unknowable as Joe Exotic's.

Unorthodox tells the story of Esty Shapiro (Israeli actor Shira Haas), a 19-year-old newly married woman who was born and raised in the Satmar Hasidic Jewish community in Williamsburg, New York.

But as Esty says, "Williamsburg is not America".

The people in Esty's community are ultra-Orthodox adherents to the Jewish faith Yiddish-speakers and descendants of Holocaust survivors who are determined to maintain their culture, community and beliefs and protect themselves from another Holocaust.

They have their own schools, medical service and police. There are strict rules and conventions, based on interpretations of the Torah, that govern this community and dictate the way people live their lives from the way they dress to how they marry.

At the beginning of Unorthodox, Esty flees this community and her arranged marriage to Berlin, the home of her estranged mother.

There she falls in with a group of classical music students from across the globe, as she begins to explore the secular world and her freedom.

But under the orders of their Rabbi, her young husband Yanky (Israeli actor Amit Rahav) is trailing her, desperate to bring her home, with the help of his no-good cousin Moishe (German-Israeli actor Jeff Wilbusch) who has recently returned to the fold.

In flashbacks to Esty's life in Brooklyn, we see just how cloistered and difficult her life has been.

There are heartbreaking scenes where we see Esty learn about the existence of her vagina for the first time on the eve of her wedding, visit the mikvah that will render her ready for intercourse, and witness her pain (physical and emotional) as the couple tries to consummate their marriage and conceive a child.

The series is based on Deborah Feldman's 2012 bestselling memoir Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots.

Feldman grew up in Williamsburg's Satmar Hasidic community, and by age 17 she was married to a Talmudic scholar.

In The Guardian, Feldman wrote that "as a woman in the Hasidic community, my singular contribution to society had rested on my ability to marry and have children. My role was special and holy, but it was certainly the only role I could play. Housewife. Mother. For everything else I could depend on my husband".

The flashback scenes in the series are all based on her memoir, including her paltry "sex education" and how she had to shave her head and begin wearing a wig once she was married.

Feldman left the community in her early 20s, taking her young child with her.

Series creators Anna Winger (creator of German TV dramas Deutschland 83 and Deutschland 86) and Alexa Karolinski (director of German documentary Oma & Bella) worked with many members and ex-members of the Hasidic community in the making of the show.

Some have disputed the accuracy of the depictions of the Satmar community, but Dassi Erlich, who grew up in Melbourne's Adass Israel Hasidic community, told Australian Jewish online newspaper Plus61J: "It's very rare to see the life that I lived depicted on screen so accurately and so well. It's very rare to see it in mainstream media."

Erlich, who is a survivor of sexual abuse from within the Adass Israel community, also described the series as both "validating" and "triggering".

Where the series departs from Feldman's memoir is in the present-day story that takes place in Berlin.

Explaining this decision in Making Unorthodox, Karolinski says: "Anna [Winger] and I wanted to make a show in which we could work through a lot of the topics we discuss a lot, especially about being Jewish in Germany."

New York Times television critic James Poniewozik recommended the show, describing it as "a story of personal discovery with the intensity of a spy thriller".

Jen Chaney in Vulture writes that Unorthodox "feels right for this moment" and that "Esty is undergoing an incremental rebirth after being shut away from the wider world for a very long time. Right now, in particular, it is a gratifying, beautiful thing to witness".

My two cents: While the Hasidic world is portrayed with a suffocating richness, the secular world of Esty's new friends and new life feels, at times, a little hollow.

There is also a heavy-handed approach to the way the series deals with the reverberations of the Holocaust.

In an early scene, one of the music students suggests that the group shows Esty something nice in Berlin, and Israeli music student Yael (Tamar Amit-Joseph) jokingly replies: "Like what? Hitler's bunker? Or we can take selfies at the memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe?"

But Haas' Esty does redeem these missteps.

Haas is a petite actor who delivers a huge performance her expressive face swiftly and evocatively darts from hope to betrayal, fear and uncertainty which holds the series together, and I quickly found myself hooked, invested and rooting for her.

And the hunched and cowed way both Haas and Rahav play the newlyweds in the flashbacks, dwarfed by their family and community expectations, is utterly compelling.

Besides Deborah Feldman's book, there are many true stories including from the ABC and the New York Times of people who have left Orthodox Jewish communities.

At times, Unorthodox feels restrained in comparison to these. For example, the 2017 Netflix documentary One of Us, which is about three people who are trying to leave their Hasidic communities, includes the story of one woman Etty a victim of physical and emotional abuse who must choose between her children and her freedom.

There's also a masterfully told two-part episode of the podcast Reply All about a Hasidic man using the internet for the first time.

In terms of other fictional accounts of life in an Orthodox community, Haas made her name on the two-season Israeli family drama Shtisel (also available on Netflix).

In Shtisel, the otherness of the Haredi life is superseded by the universality of their struggles yes they live a life far from our secular world and far from our reckoning, but actually what Shulem Shtisel (Dov Glickman) is struggling with is something we can all understand: how to love and how to be.

Unorthodox is now available to stream on Netflix

Topics:arts-and-entertainment,television,religion-and-beliefs,judaism,australia,united-states,germany

First posted April 09, 2020 05:59:31

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Netflix series Unorthodox is bringing the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community into the mainstream - ABC News

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Posted By admin on April 13, 2020

by Nicole Aboodi | 4/13/20 3:00am

Have you ever been invited into a space that feels so uniquely intimate and fragile that you observe it as carefully as possible, hoping to not miss a moment? Thats what watching Netflixs Unorthodox feels like.

Inspired by Deborah Feldmans 2012 memoir, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of my Hasidic Roots, the series welcomes you into Esther Esty Shapiro (Shira Haas)s life just as shes trying to escape from it. The show offers the viewer a very personal look through the experience of one young woman into a notoriously private community.

Ill admit that before I dove into the series, I was concerned that a show like this could breed even more anti-Semitism. I was worried that a tale of a woman escaping what she felt was a confining lifestyle could villainize religious communities and shine a negative light on the Hasidic community. On the contrary, Unorthodox constructs a complex narrative with multi-dimensional characters that communicates the conflict between Hasidic tradition and a young womans longing for freedom.

When 19-year-old Esty flees the Satmar Hasidic community, her husband Yanky Shapiro (Amit Rahav), and his family strategize how to find her and bring her back to Williamsburg, New York. The four-episode series follows Esty on her voyage in Berlin an interesting choice for her refuge, considering that the city incessantly forces her to confront the atrocities committed against the Jewish people during the Holocaust. Still, Esty falls in love with her freedom, even as she struggles to live with no money or contacts in Berlin. Meanwhile Yanky, along with his prodigal cousin Moische (Jeff Wilbusch), trails Esty. Viewers also see the early stages of Esty and Yankys relationship and their first year of marriage interwoven with the present timeline.

Unorthodox beautifully demonstrates Estys difficult predicament, exhibiting both her close bonds within the Satmar community and the heavy pressure weighing on her to be the exemplary Satmar wife. In the opening scene, Esty rushes to collect the necessary belongings for her journey: an envelope of American dollars tucked beneath her underwear, toiletries hidden in a drawer and Euros stuffed inside her wig stand. She forlornly gazes at a picture of an elderly woman, who the viewer later discovers is her bubbe, or grandmother, before deciding to take that too. Even as Esty prepares to abandon her community, she leaves behind a toothbrush to bring the photo of her bubbe the theme of close emotional connection paired with a desire to leave is established from the outset.

Unorthodox, through flashbacks to Esty and Yankys marriage, captures the intense pressure that many women like her feel as wives in the Satmar community. In personal sequences that display the awkward tension between a husband and wife who hardly know each other, the viewer watches as the couple tries to consummate their marriage, but every time, Esty yelps in pain. The creeping fear that she wont be able to produce children as quickly as the community deems normal polarizes the couple, transforming them from strangers to partners to adversaries. But you dont even blame Yanky, because the pressure that Esty feels isnt directly from him, its from her community and family, whose opinions pervade their relationship. Watching it myself, I grew infuriated at Estys circumstance, but not at Yanky. I felt that the shows depiction of the pressure Esty felt to have children at 19 provides viewers with a taste of the community-induced burden that cemented her need to escape.

As a modern viewer, I cant help but support Esty and criticize the innate sexism embedded in the Satmar culture and the systemic shame those repressive principles impose on a young person. However, rather than shaming a religious community or painting all Satmar people as villains, Unorthodox sees others as human. Though it focuses on Esty, the show also provides insight into Yanky, a shy, confused child of a man who was raised to believe he was to be treated like a king. Instead of demonizing Yanky as a religious, overbearing husband, the show portrays him empathetically.

In the final episode, Yanky begs Esty to stay with him, promising to be better to her and to provide her with the more modern life that she wants. In a harrowing juxtaposition to Estys empowered removal of her sheitel a traditional Hasidic wig earlier in the show, Yanky sobs as he chops off his peyot the long curls at the front of his face and a sign of his devotion to his beliefs and community. While the audience understands Esty and her desire for freedom, symbolized by her removing her sheitel, the show validates Yankys position as well by showing how much his religion means to him, and how the thing that Esty runs from is more complicated than it might appear.

The beauty of Unorthodox lies in its ability to illustrate Estys plight, while also giving the audience a glimpse of life from the perspective of the Satmar community. The show invites the audience in, depicting the different lives that Satmar people choose for themselves. The various customs that ultra-orthodox Jews even if slightly tinged with judgement by the show abide by will still fascinate the viewer. Ultimately, the real glory that Unorthodox achieves is its nuanced look at a private community and the individuals who grapple with the way its tradition shapes their lives.

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Unorthodox: A young woman's escape from her suffocating community - The Dartmouth

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Posted By admin on April 13, 2020

Haredi society has been struck uniquely hard by the coronavirus pandemic. Estimates at some Israeli hospitals say over half the coronavirus patients are Haredi, even though the group makes up scarcely a tenth of Israels population.

While clear figures for the viruss spread are hard to come by, theres no doubt of the pandemics enormous psychological toll on the community. Beloved rabbis have already succumbed, and stories of children mourning their parents at funerals in Brooklyn were shared far and wide on Haredi websites and WhatsApp groups over the past three weeks. Its hard not to sympathize with the community as it faces quarantine, isolation and the looming specter of widespread illness.

But it is also hard not to sympathize with that societys critics over the past few weeks.

Israelis were told to begin significant social distancing in early March. It took two critical weeks for Haredi rabbis to acknowledge the validity of the government order, two weeks during which major Haredi leaders insisted that communal prayer and learning was a better response. It took a long time, too, for Haredi leaders to acknowledge that this behavior, and the viruss fast spread through their communities in Israel, New York and elsewhere as a result, has had direct and painful consequences for everyone else.

Police officers close synagogues and hand out fines to Haredi Jews in Jerusalems Bukharim neighborhood, following government restrictions imposed as part of the effort to contain the spread of the coronavirus, April 6, 2020. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

The anger Haredim have faced from the rest of Israeli society is palpable, and, unpleasant as it may sound, understandable. It is not bigotry to suggest that Haredi leaders initial disregard for the orders of medical authorities, and their communitys seemingly blind adherence to those leaders, have undermined the painful efforts of everyone else to stem the spread of the virus.

Haredi insularity, Haredi disregard for health authorities during a pandemic, Haredi poverty and population density all the factors that render them especially vulnerable to the virus, and through them everyone else are ultimately a choice. There are no external or environmental factors forcing Haredim into their isolation and poverty, only their own cultural and religious commitments. They are therefore not only victims of their current circumstances, but also perpetrators, in the full light of day and of scientific warning.

Haredi society is not anti-scientific (whatever its detractors may say), especially when it comes to the medical sciences. Haredi rescue services, medical charities, physicians and even entire hospitals abound throughout the country. They know about viruses and they have as much trust and faith in the medical professions as other Israelis

It is important to be blunt about such things. The anger at the Haredim has sometimes veered into bigotry, but most of it remains in the realm of specific and substantive criticism for which Haredi society, for all its cries of anti-Semitism, has no satisfying answer.

And yet neither sympathy nor anger are sufficient. Before judging, we need an explanation. Something deeply perplexing just happened to Haredi society.

A small group of family and friends mourn at the funeral of Rabbi Ben-Zion Cooperstock, who died of complications of a coronavirus infection, at the Shamgar Funeral Home in Jerusalem on April 5, 2020. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

As Aharon Rose, a Jerusalem-based researcher of Haredi society who grew up in the Belz Hasidic community, put it, they screwed up so badly that it requires a theory.

Why were Haredim caught so flat-footed by the virus? Haredi society is not anti-scientific (whatever its detractors may say), especially when it comes to the medical sciences. Haredi rescue services, medical charities, physicians and even entire hospitals abound throughout the country. They know about viruses and they have as much trust and faith in the medical professions as other Israelis.

And why did so many different kinds of Haredim seem to share in the failure to adhere to social distancing guidelines? Haredi society is large and diverse. From Hasidic rebbes and their retinues to large and studious Lithuanian yeshivas to small Sephardi street-corner synagogues, from high-tech workers to yeshiva dropouts to devout heder teachers across a huge diversity of lifestyles, social strata and religious and intellectual commitments, the failure appears to have been nearly universal.

The [media] coverage falls on [Rabbi Chaim] Kanievsky, who ordered educational institutions to remain open at the start of the crisis, noted Rose. But the Hasidim, Satmar and so on, dont really listen to Kanievsky, and they failed too. And Haredim all over the world failed.

IDF Home Front Command soldiers distribute food packages to elderly residents obliged to stay home due the coronavirus pandemic ahead of the Jewish holiday of Passover, in a Haredi neighborhood in Jerusalem, April 7, 2020. (Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90)

The crisis has sparked a deluge of speculation about the future of Haredi society. Would the rabbis manifest and almost wall-to-wall failure to grasp the new situation lead to new skepticism and individualism in the community? Would some question their faith? Would it drive more Haredim to secular education and the job market?

Religion survives because it is an especially adept vocabulary for producing narratives of meaning and socialization, for building communities and sharing social expectations and understandings across those communities. By that measure, Haredi religious culture delivers in spades

Much of this is wishful thinking on the part of critics who believe their case against the Haredi worldview has just been validated by impartial natural forces. But if that was how religion worked, then as Sigmund Freud once erroneously predicted, there would now scarcely be a religion left on Earth.

Religion is not really about dogmatic myths, magic, priestly privilege or other favorite targets of activist atheists. It survives because it is an especially adept vocabulary for producing narratives of meaning and socialization, for building communities and sharing social expectations and understandings across those communities.

By that measure, Haredi religious culture delivers in spades. In the Haredi community, a spiritual and meaningful life does not lie within the bounds of the individual but is granted by communal ties, by shared ritual and ceremony and loyalty. Those ties are constantly buttressed against centrifugal and invasive forces, for example by a distinctive dress that raises the cost of stepping outside the ingroup, thus affirming and demonstrating ones loyalty and commitment to the ingroup and its principles.

Police officers close synagogues and hand out fines to Haredi Jews in the Mea Shearim neighborhood of Jerusalem, following government restrictions imposed as part of the effort to contain the spread of the coronavirus, April 6, 2020. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

This is not a principle of Haredi life, its the principle. To outsiders the term Haredi is usually a religious category, but one is hard-pressed to find a specific and agreed-upon theological idea that unites and distinguishes the Haredim. What they share, what defines their society as a distinct subgroup in a broader Israeli and Jewish culture, is a sociological idea. Boundaries upon boundaries, achieving socialization and loyalty and from them lives of belonging and meaning by the construction of a tight-knit group and clear separation from the outside.

The virus was like nothing that came before, more treacherous and shocking precisely because its path into the Haredi community traveled over the very cords and sinews binding Haredi life together

The coronavirus crisis was not a crisis of leadership or dogmatism. It did not disprove Haredi religious belief. The initial response of Haredi leaders wasnt a rejection of science, but something less coherent a stunned refusal, an instinctive rejection of the enormity of what was being asked of it. It was a crisis of sociology.

The virus was like nothing that came before, more treacherous and shocking precisely because its path into the Haredi community traveled over the very cords and sinews binding Haredi life together. All that was good and happy about Haredi society, the socialization and close-knit communal life, the shared prayer and sacralization of study all these served as the viruss route of attack.

The Haredi character is problematic in a plague, according to Prof. Benny Brown, a scholar of Orthodox Jewish ideology, law and history at Hebrew Universitys Department of Jewish Thought. Haredism is very communal. Its hard to abandon the minyan [prayer quorum] and tish [Hasidic gathering at the rebbes table], but thats even true at the level of daily contact in the street. They cultivate large families: three rooms with 11 souls is a very hard situation in which to isolate or protect yourself from a plague.

Haredi Jews burn leavened items in a final ritual preparation before the Passover holiday in the Mea Shearim neighborhood in Jerusalem, April 8, 2020. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Discussion of Haredi society among outsiders tends to focus on criticism leveled at it from within and without, but one cannot ignore the many studies (for example, see life satisfaction findings on p. 71 here) that have found that intensive Haredi communalism is a source of real and sustained happiness.

Its a lifestyle with benefits and costs. The benefits are precious. It almost always works. It only stops working in extremely anomalous circumstances, said Brown. So its not fair to say [to Haredi society] that your lifestyle is the cause of evil when the vast majority of the time its a source for happiness.

All last month, Haredi society faced a challenge more basic than a crisis of faith, a discrediting of its leadership, or even simply a medical crisis. It was what Rose called an intense intrusion of a foreign reality to which its most fundamental social institutions had no response.

At least at first.

Haredi men wearing face masks walk past Health Ministry posters warning against large Passover holiday gatherings amid the coronavirus pandemic, in Jerusalem on April 5, 2020. (Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90)

Once the mental switch was made, however belatedly, Israeli Haredi society had no trouble obeying the new social distancing rules. Jewish law sanctifies saving lives above all ritual requirements, so the religious rationale for suspending communal life was already present. By the end of March, small handfuls of extremists essentially conspiracy theorists who see threats to Haredi boundary-making everywhere and always still resisted, but the million-strong Israeli Haredi culture as a whole, and the entire edifice of rabbinic authority, powerful media organizations and Haredi medical and social service organizations, all lined up in support of social distancing.

In a sense, very little has happened. True, Haredi spiritual leadership was revealed as detached and inadequate to the demands of worldly events, but only an outsider would believe Haredim dont already know that about their leaders.

When I was a kid in Bnei Brak there was a famous joke, Rose said. There were two Chaims, two nephews and students of the Hazon Ish [the famed Haredi spiritual leader Rabbi Avrohom Yeshaya Karelitz], who didnt have his own children. One Chaim [you went to] for a blessing, the other for success and Heaven protect you if you confuse the two.

The latter Chaim was Rabbi Chaim Greineman, who passed away in 2015 at the age of 91. He was known for having his feet on the ground, for his knowledge of medicine he penned many religious legal rulings on medical matters for his business [acumen], for his connections to politicians, Rose noted. He was the Chaim of worldly success.

Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky at his home in Bnei Brak on April 15, 2018. (Yaakov Naumi/Flash90)

The other Chaim, the holy man who dispensed blessings, was Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, now 92, the man who couldnt bring himself to shutter the schools and seminaries and synagogues of Haredi society at the beginning of March. He is known for being detached. He learns 18 hours a day, writes masterpieces, but is disconnected from reality.

The two Chaims are a shorthand for a duality fundamental to Haredi life both a detachment from materialism and modernity and a deep reliance on them. And the jokes warning about confusing the two realms is no laughing matter in the Haredi view. One should go to the holy man for spiritual sustenance and blessing, but to seek worldly success at his feet is a fast track to failure.

Haredim are disconnected on one hand, but their feet are always firmly planted on the ground, said Brown. Their very poverty means they have to worry about real life and work and the economy.

They can forgive their rabbis a great many failures if those failures are rooted in that gap between quotidian life and detached holiness.

Rabbi Chaim Greineman (Wikipedia/CC BY-SA/)

Kanievsky, who would later reverse his position and explain that he hadnt yet heard about the pandemic when he refused to close the schools, showed his weakness as a leader, said Brown. But that weakness also reflects his holiness and grandeur, his total investment in the Torah.

In the end, Haredi culture is likely to prove skeptical enough, Haredi discourse diverse enough, and Haredi humor self-effacing enough to weather the storm. The challenge represented in the failure of Haredi leadership to pivot quickly from intensive communalism to social distancing is not, in itself, insurmountable.

As the virus takes its toll, that failure will create some confusion and cracks in the short term, yes, said Brown. But in the long term, the Haredi world has all the intellectual and religious tools to deal with the challenge and to overcome it, including and especially its unique brand of freethinking obeisance toward its leaders.

Haredi culture is not the cartoon its critics imagine. Its failure in the face of the coronavirus crisis has nonetheless been profound. But it is also a culture primed for change. The viruss real effect may come piecemeal, over time and as part of a broader shift in Haredi culture. It is no earthquake, but could it be a tipping point?

There are too many variables we dont know, Brown said. We may discover that many more Haredim [than we believe] are quietly skeptical. The poverty that may come after the virus may send more people to work. It may be a crack that lets all the other changes internet penetration, growing skepticism, poverty turn into a dramatic shift.

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More basic than a crisis of faith: Will the virus upend ultra-Orthodox society? - The Times of Israel

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Posted By admin on April 13, 2020

SIBIU, Romania You can almost hear the children clamoring,their voices filling the room with amelngeof Hungarian, Romanian,Yiddish and Hebrew.You can almost see them, clutching notebooks and climbing the staircase, with its Star of David and menorah motifs, on their way to class. You can almost imagine their Sibiu, their Austria-Hungary, their Romania, their Europethatonce was.

But this former Jewish school, located next to the citys sole remaining synagogue, has largely been lost to history.Romanias communists nationalized this building in the 1960s, turning it into an apartment complex and stripping it of any meaningful religiosity. And now, with Sibius Jewish children and most of its Jewish adults gone, the stairways unique design is nothing more than an architectural oddity. The same can be said for the rusting menorah that adorns the entrance of the former school; for the nearby Hasidic synagogue that is now a plastics warehouse and for the homes now owned by Romanians, Hungarians or Germans, thatbelongedto Sibius rabbis their doorways still bearingmezuzahmarkings.

In fact,in one way or another, the same canbe said for the synagogues and cemeteries across Central and Eastern Europe which, without communities to care for them, have declined into various stages of disrepair or taken on profane identities. As the few remaining Jews of this region age, their religious spaces are increasingly without caretakers, leaving the history of Central and Eastern Europes Jewish world at risk of being forgotten.

Jewish Sibiu once included merchants and professionals, along with athletic and other organizations. Jews here, like all those who lived for over two millennia in Europe, built synagogues to serve as houses of worship and other public spaces symbolically marking the land as their own. But Sibius synagogue, a marvel in Hungarian-Italianesque architecture, has remained in solitary stasis for years, its pewslongstanding empty.Synagogues elsewhere are in demonstrably worse shape:Those inBelarus,Poland,Galicia, andSlovakiaand beyond lie decrepit and abandoned.Others either stolen years before, or simply lacking any Jews to frequent them have becomenightclubs, cafes, homes, funeral parlors, andlibraries.

Some Romanian Jewish communities, like those in Sibiu and Cluj, rent out their synagogues for events, using the proceeds to fund repairs; others have sold their houses of worship.Centuries-old Jewish cemeteries, meanwhile, have, among other things, been dug up, bodies included, to make way forparking lots.

Decimated community

It isthe regionsdiminishingnumber of Jews that enables this degeneration.In 1930, over 750,000 Jews called Romania home; the 2011 Romanian census recorded only 3,200 living here. Sibius Jewish community, which dates backcenturiesand grew steadily through the early 20th century, peaked at around 2,000 peoplein the late 1940s, despite Romania passing an array of anti-Semitic laws in the 1930s. (Still, for the most part, Romanian Jews were not deported to concentration camps, with Hungarian-occupied Transylvania and some parts of Moldova being the main exception.)

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Today, however, Sibiu comprises only a few dozen elderly Jews. There arefewchildrenand norecent marriages; the lastbrit milahandbar mitzvah both of 84-year-old community leader Otto Deutschs son were in 1969 and 1982, respectively.Religious ceremonies of this sort were effectively illegal during RomaniasLeninisthalf-century.

Nobody else did that for their children. I was the only one who took the chance, Deutsch said. Im not a religious person, but its my duty to pass it on.

Deutsch, a Bucharest native, fled Romanias capital in the early 1940s after a pogrom there, relocating with his family his parents and younger brother to his grandparents home in Kishinev, a Moldovan city now known as Chiinu and infamous for its1903 anti-Jewish pogrom. German and Romanian forces took over Kishinev in 1941 and soon after deported Jews including Deutsch and his immediate family to Transnistrias killing fields and concentration camps. These forces also sent Deutschs grandparents to their deaths at Auschwitz. Only Deutsch and his mother survived and returned to Bucharest, where he finished his studies before moving to Sibiu in 1961.

After working in a Romanian military factory, heassumed leadership of Sibius Jewish community in 1995 upon retirement. He doesnt recall when the city last had a rabbi or aminyan. The diminutive community celebrates holidays not in the grand synagogue, but in a small room adjacent to Deutschs office behind the building.

We spend all the Jewish holidays together, here, in this room, as a family, he explained. The synagogue used to be full now this room is full.

Much of Deutschs own family his children and grandchildren now live in the United States. Only he and his wife have stayed in Sibiu.

While the Holocaust decimated much of Central and Eastern European Jewry, reducing a community of overeight millionto fewer than400,000, it was the combination of communism and Israels founding that depleted Romanias Jews.

My own great-great-grandparents are buried herein Sibiu, having died in the early 1940s, when the city was the citadel for Romanian Nazism, asThe New York Timesreported. My great-grandfather fled forced Romanian conscription in 1921 for the U.S., but his siblings remained in parts of Austria-Hungary, including Sibiu, that would eventually become Romania. Those who survived Auschwitz and HungarianMunkaszolgalat laborcamps eventually emigrated to Israel.

Zionism here was not motivated by biblical promises of milk and honey, say Deutsch and others.But religion granted Jews access to an Israeli passport and escape from Nicolae Ceauescus vicious totalitarianism.

Beginning in 1952, Romania allowed 300,000 Jews to emigrate to Israel, demanding$100per soul.Following additional 1960s diplomacy, 120,000 more Romanian Jews of the remaining 150,000 made aliyah. Israel, in return,lined Ceauescus pocketbook. Fewer than 3,000 Jews remain in Romania today.

Nadia Batrus, a 70-year-old retired sociologist madealiyahonlysix weeks before the1989fall of Ceauescus regime.Israel fell short of her expectations. She recalls veteran Israelis, who had arrived only a generation earlier, taunting her with the slur Romaniganavim Romanian thieves. She returned to post-CeauescuRomania in1990.

I left Romania for an imaginary Israel, which didnt exist, she recalled. I came back to an imaginary Romania.

The 1989 revolution left Romania economically in tatters, while decades of communism left it with few Jews.

One family decided to go, and then other people joined, Deutsch said. It became a wave.

Deutschsmilitary knowledge of state secrets prevented him from emigrating Romania wouldnt let him leave.In any case,he saysthat Jews should also be somewhere else besides Israel.

800 neglected cemeteries

But the Romanian Jewish exodus to Israelleftbehindsome 80 increasingly empty synagogues and 800 neglected cemeteries. The main Jewish cemetery in Sibiu, where my family is buried, is without a full-time caretaker; graves have collapsed on visitors, even causing one serious injury, according to the non-Jewishpro-bonocustodian. The chapel, its cheerful peeling pink hues contrastingdisturbinglywith thebuildingsstate of disrepair, has not been restored since at least the 1960s.

People who visit the cemetery and have somebody buried there [are often] unhappy that its unkempt, Batrus saidwith near indignation.But who should maintain it?

The Christians have relatives around to maintain the graves, Deutsch noted. For the Jews, its a job for the few who are left behind.

Sibius tiny Jewish community comprises part of the minority who stayed behind and the minority of Eastern and Central Europes Jews who remained in their countries of birth. And as this regions community ages, increasingly filling theircrumblingcemeteries, they are more than ever in need of Jews to reciteKaddish, the mourners prayer. Even that is a luxury.

Theres a gentleman inBlaj, Deutsch said, referringto a city some 60 kilometers away. Hes the only one who knows how to say Kaddish. So hes goes everywhere.

Romanias Jewish decline, like that of Central and Eastern Europe generally, isundeniable and inevitable.The synagogue in nearby Mediais dilapidated, according to Anda Reuben, a 41-year-old Romanian Jew who teaches Hebrew and leadsJewish tours in Sibiu. TheAshkenazic Great Synagoguein Constana is abandoned, without a roof, and with trees growing inside and was recently the site of alingerie photoshoot. The Communists razed Constanas Sephardic synagogue in the late 1980s.

We want to save these vulnerable synagogues and adapt them to serve contemporary purposes, said Michael Mail, the director of theFoundation for Jewish Heritage, a London-based non-profit dedicated to preserving Jewish cultural sites in Europe and beyond. We want to make buildings that had become meaningless meaningful again.

The foundation hasidentified3,300 of the17,000European synagogues that were in operation before the Holocaust. Only 718 are still used for religious purposes.

When people are gone, whats left are the walls they leave behind, said Reuben. When those walls also crumble, only the stories are keeping the memory alive.

But now, with these walls falling and the Holocaustreceding from memoryandanti-Semitism rising, some are concerned that the loss of these physical testaments to Jewish life will result inignorance of Jewish history in the future. One of the Jewish responsibilities is to know the stories, Batrus said.Indeed, without knowing the past, communities are prone to find themselves drifting towards the future rudderless.

ManyJewish communities in thispart of the worldare, however, aware of their decline and of Judaisms clustering in the United States and Israel and are readying for the demise ofCentral and Eastern Europes Jewish world.

Deutsch, Batrus, and Sibius Jews may be alive and active,celebrating holidays, working to preserve Jewish heritage, and engaging in Jewish politics part of my Jewish identity is to be concerned about what Netanyahu does, she proclaims, smiling mischievously but the two of them offer what amount to eulogies for Romanian, and ultimately Central and Eastern European, Jewish life.

For her part, Batrus doesnt believe theres a reason to mourn the loss of Jewish communal life here since, she notes, Jews are not native to Europe.Its nothing to cry about, she said. Whats alive sometimes dies.

Its sad, but thats just how it is, echoed Deutsch, a slight smile forcing its way across his well-worn face. We have an expression in Romania, the result of people leaving for so many years: The last person left turns off the light.

Charles Dunst is an associate at LSE IDEAS, the London School of Economics foreign policy think tank, and a journalist who has written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The Washington Post, among other publications. Twitter: @CharlesDunst

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The crumbling structures of Romanias Jewish past - Haaretz

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Posted By admin on April 13, 2020

Its quite the side-step from Tiger King, but everyones latest Netflix obsession after bingeing on the lives of Joe Exotic et al - is Unorthodox.

If youve not seen it yet, the four-part series is inspired by Deborah Feldmans book, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots. The Netlix show tells the story of a 19-year-old Jewish woman named Esty, who runs away from her marriage in a New York Ultra-Orthodox community to Berlin, where her estranged mother lives.

Its the first Netflix series to be primarily Yiddish and is a fascinating insight into a community that is rarely portrayed on screen. The show has hooked viewers to such an extent that the companion show, Making Unorthodox - about the creation of the show - has also garnered popularity on the streaming platform.

With that in mind, here we recommend five other shows and films you might enjoy.

Following the titular family, Israeli TV show, Shtisel tells the story of their lives in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighbourhood of Jerusalem as they reckon with love, loss and the doldrums of daily life. The show was originally a huge hit in its country of origin and has gained international popularity since airing on Netflix, where it can still be streamed. Friends co-creator Marta Kauffman bought the rights to the show, to create a version set in Brooklyn, called Emmis, with Amazon.

Available on Amazon Prime this film tells the story of a married Hasidic woman, who falls for an older, secular man in Montreal. The film, which was released in 2014, won Best Canadian Film at the Toronto International Film Festival that year.

Available tostream on Netflix, this documentary looks at the secretive side of the Hasidic community and follows three people who walked away and the ostracism, anxiety and danger they face.

The film, available to stream on Amazon Prime, focuses on a Haredi Jewish community in Tel Aviv and an 18-year-old girl who is pressured into marrying her older sisters husband when her sister dies in childbirth. Directed by Rama Burshtein, it became the first film, intended for wide distribution, directed by an Orthodox Jewish woman and received critical acclaim around the time of its release.

Starring Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams, Disobedience is based on the book of the same name by Naomi Alderman and tells the story of a woman returning to the strict Jewish community in North London that she left, when her father dies. The film is available to stream on Amazon Prime.

READ MORE: The Best Things To Watch On Netflix In April

READ MORE: Yes, That Is Celebrity Big Brother's Chantelle Houghton In Tiger King

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Five Things To Watch If You Loved Netflixs Unorthodox - Grazia

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Posted By admin on April 11, 2020

A colleague recently posed a very powerful question: How is your yetzer hara manifesting in new and different ways during this moment (of pandemic)?

Of course, that question requires some unpacking. The Hebrew term yetzer hara literally translates as the evil inclination.

Nonetheless, it is not so much an inner demon as that part of ourselves that is most distractible by the temptations of the moment, the part that focuses on the superficial and immediate gratification rather than on the deeper essence of what we know to be true.

Jewish tradition teaches that we all need a little yetzer hara its what drives us, say, to eat when were hungry. Theres even a fanciful story in the Talmud that says the ancient rabbis once captured the yetzer hara, and the world basically stopped functioning. So, the task is not to eradicate this urge, but to have it exist in balance. And times of great upheaval, times when we are scared, or stressed, are times when this urge can run wild.

My colleagues question could well be translated as, How are the psychospiritual patterns that generally keep you from being your best self-manifesting in new and different ways during this moment?

We all seek those distractions in different ways: For some, its hyper-consuming, everything from toilet paper to news. For others, hyper-productivity: bread baking, yard work, language study. Perhaps, for all of us, worrying about what might happen.

I know that since my work has become more remote, I have found myself feeling more frantic about work, not just about doing the job I legitimately need to do, but also in some ways desperate to prove myself useful and productive. It was only when my friend asked that question that I could even put my finger on what I was doing and realized that my turbocharged attitude towards work was less about what others need from me and more about distracting myself from the fear and vulnerability that so many of us are feeling.

As my colleague said, I see lots of people trying to fix their roofs, and no one just sitting on their porch.

I am by no means suggesting that we shouldnt do what needs to be done. I really do have to do my job. And sometimes our roofs need fixing. And sometimes we are out of toilet paper! I am suggesting the question What needs to be done right now? is a seductive one, and sometimes, the best thing we could do, for our long-term health and the well-being of those we love, is to stop. Stop and take a deep breath. Sit down for a few minutes.

So, if youve had a low hum of anxiety that youve sought to quiet by doing things, I invite you into the question with me: How are the psychospiritual patterns that generally keep you from being your best self-manifesting in new and different ways during this moment?

Take it in, with great compassion. And then consider if youd like to make some different choices.

Ruhi Sophia Motzkin Rubenstein is the rabbi of Temple Beth Israel in Eugene and writes a monthly column for The Register-Guard.

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In My Opinion: New manifestations of old stuff - The Register-Guard

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