Unorthodox: Insular Insight

Back in March when everyone (including me) was obsessed with Tiger King, another Netflix show was quietly getting some praise but not as much notoriety. It took me a while but I finally got around to watching Unorthodox, and wow. Talk about a gut punch of a show. Despite the majority of the show taking place in Williamsburg, just a few miles away from where I live now, I was introduced to a whole new world. If you're a New Yorker, you've definitely see Hasidic men and women walking around the city. When I was a medical student, I even had some Hasidic patients, and would routinely curse the Sabbath elevator every Friday evening when I accidentally got on it and had to get off when I realized it was going to stop on every single floor. But that was the extent of my knowledge of this community. This show took me deep into the underbelly, revealing how they live their lives, the rules and regulations that bind them, and the bizarre ways that such ancient, patriarchal traditions persist in our modern age. 

Loosely based on the memoir by Deborah Feldman, the series tells the story of Esther "Esty" Shapiro (played by the formidable Shira Haas), a 19-year-old woman who has grown up in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Williamsburg. Like other women in the community, there is no expectation that she will get an education and a career. Instead, her marriage is arranged to Yanky (the wonderful Amit Rahav, who manages to make this impossibly irritating character strangely compelling), and the expectation is that they will embark on their life's work to have many children to replace the millions of lives lost during the Holocaust. However, Esty gradually realizes that she cannot live like this. When she was a child, her mother fled this oppressive community and moved to Berlin, and now Esty, who has harshly judged her mother all her life, discovers that she is fated to follow in her mother's footsteps.

I won't say anything further - this is a tense drama that moves back and forth between Esty's current dilemma of fleeing from Williamsburg and learning how to live in the real world, and the events that led her to this point. The majority of the show is in Yiddish, shifting to German when the action moves to Berlin, and at one point someone remarks on how Esty doesn't even sound like a New Yorker despite growing up in Brooklyn all her life. It is indeed remarkable how she could have grown up in one of the most liberal cities on the planet and yet be subjected to such an incredibly insular and restricted life. Thinking back on the series, I am somewhat flabbergasted that it is only four episodes long, because so much that happens within those four hours. It is a rich, dense, and complicated story and it is unlike anything you will have seen before.

Directed by Maria Schrader, Unorthodox is an unflinching portrayal of how we continue to treat women in our society today and the many ways in which religion can serve as an excuse to limit people's rights. The series is elegantly shot, features a beautiful soundtrack that will sink into your bones, and every actor is a revelation. The focus is understandably on Esty and her harrowing journey, but it does also occasionally offer up Yanky's perspective and showcases how this man has also been so screwed up by his upbringing. Of course, he will never suffer as much as Esty, and his options and freedoms are nowhere near as curtailed as hers, but it serves as a reminder that a society that doesn't value women is a society that fails every member. This is a powerful, wonderful, and brilliant series, and I need to read Feldman's memoir ASAP so I can spend even more time wallowing in this world.