Unorthodox (Netflix, 2020)

Netflix’s limited series Unorthodox enjoys near-unanimous praise for its “cultural specificity” and fresh, thriller-esque take on the increasingly popular ex-Hasidic escape narrative. It loosely adapts Deborah Feldman’s 2012 memoir of the same name, which recounts the author’s fraught departure from the ultra-Orthodox Satmar community of Williamsburg. In keeping with thriller conventions, series heroine Esty Shapiro (Shira Haas) must at times literally outrun the Satmars who plot to wrest her from her new life in Berlin by any means necessary . 

Writers Anna Winger and Alexa Karolinski considered how they would portray such a conflict without vilifying Hasidic Judaism itself. According to the Anti-Defamation League, 2019 saw the highest number of anti-Semitic attacks since the organization began counting forty years ago. Winger and Karolinski did not want their work to lend credence to antii-Semitic stereotypes. Many scenes of Esty’s life in Williamsburg are lifted directly from Feldman’s memoir. The film crew also took research trips to Hasidic neighborhoods in Brooklyn and hired a cultural consultant to ensure that the Satmars' social etiquette and Yiddish dialogue felt authentic. To quote story editor Daniel Hendler, “When you’re showing . . .  communities on the margins, you want to get the details right.”i However, even their extensive research and attention to detail—including dozens of specially made faux-fur shtreimels—were not enough to avoid playing into dangerous stereotypes about the community depicted, demonstrating just how challenging accurate portrayal of marginalized religious communities in media really is.   

In her memoir, Feldman describes coming of age in Williamsburg knowing that she is different, feeling as though she does not quite belong. Yet her story is populated by many people who, in a variety of ways, fall out of line with Satmar ideals of piety. Her girlhood friend Mindy shares her transgressive love of secular books and the pair sneak off to watch a movie in Manhattan. Feldman and her husband, Eli, eventually leave Williamsburg for the small town of Airmont, where they meet many young Hasidic couples seeking respite from overbearing relatives. Nor is Feldman her family's only nonconformist: all three of her aunt's daughters ditch Williamsburg for a modern Orthodox neighborhood, her troubled cousin gets kicked out of yeshiva, and her brother-in-law causes a minor scandal by marrying a Sephardic woman. In other words, Feldman acknowledges that she is not the first Satmar Hasid to break with tradition.  

The memoir also explores the internal diversity of Orthodox Judaism. Brooklyn's Satmar Hasidim, a community founded shortly after World War II by Hungarian Holocaust survivors, complicate public assumptions about Jewish people. Feldman explains, for example, that American Hasidic Jews are passionately anti-Zionist. The book itself is rich with information that broadens the reader’s perspective and vocabulary regarding Orthodox Judaism. Satmar is but one Hasidic sect and Hasidism one type of ultra-Orthodoxy. Even among the Satmars, politics and social circles are split decisively over which of their rabbi’s sons should succeed him. Though Feldman calls her world "insular," its breadth asserts itself in her writing.  

In contrast, Winger and Karolinski's series offers little context for the Williamsburg community's history and internal politics. There is a logic to that decision. Unlike the memoir, the adaptation has no narrator and conveys exposition mostly through dialogue. The creative team attempted to address this limitation by focusing on the Satmars' material culture and language: costumers and set designers meticulously recreated clothing, home decor, and religious spaces. Eli Rosen, actor and cultural consultant, translated scripts, coached actors on their Yiddish, and took the role of Esty's rabbi. This choice to emphasize material and cultural details over community history nonetheless exacts a price. The non-Orthodox viewer lacks the frame of reference to interpret these visual details and idiomatic quirks, to identify their significance and to whom they belong, and thus their cultural specificity becomes moot. The attempt to show and not tell backfires, leaving huge gaps of information that those unfamiliar with Hasidism must fill in with their own assumptions.  

In streamlining its narrative, the series paves over the disparate beliefs and identities that inhabit its memoir counterpart.  It presents a relatively homogenous and unquestioning religious sect, particularly with its female characters. Esty, unlike Feldman, is completely alone in her struggles to be a model wife. She finds herself pregnant and on the brink of divorce, with an estranged mother in Berlin her only recourse. The Satmar rabbi, played by Rosen, warns Esty's relatives that she will "set a very dangerous precedent" if not retrieved from Germany. You would think that no one ever leaves Williamsburg, that only Esty (and her lesbian mother) has ever had cause to. Yet, even religious groups that are deemed insular contain people who question beliefs and challenge authority and practice their faith in creative ways. Removing that texture from the story implies that there is no place among Satmars, or other Hasidic Jews, for anyone who feels different or harbors doubts. Rather, they are aberrations who have no choice but to leave. Those viewers who share Esty's background and feelings of otherness might conclude that they, too, are alone.  

The difference between memoir and adaptation is especially stark regarding the subject of sexual trauma. Unorthodox the memoir is Feldman's call to action against the exploitation of women and children in Hasidic communities.ii Themes of sexual abuse and trauma unify the individual experiences she recounts, revealing a culture of silence that protects abusers. When, for example, it comes to light that a bar mitzvah teacher molested his student for months, he remains free while the boy is expelled from yeshiva. The culture of silence shapes Feldman's life as early as adolescence, shielding her older cousin from consequences when he assaults her. She finds no sanctuary within her marriage to Eli, a young man from a respectable Satmar family, and faces immense social pressure to consummate the relationship despite a medical condition that makes the act excruciating.  

The series limits depictions of sexual trauma to Esty's relationship with husband Yanky (played by Amit Rahav), who ignores her painful medical condition and proceeds with heedless enthusiasm. The writers deserve credit for narrowing the scope in this regard; presumably, they understood the dangers of declaring a vulnerable minority religious community a safe haven for pedophiles and abusers, regardless of source material. Even so, the plotline's execution itself lacks foresight in crucial ways. While Yanky is generally kinder than his memoir counterpart, he dismisses his wife's suffering during intercourse all the same. In all other contexts, the story presents Yanky as naive, sincere, and eager to please those around him, particularly his parents. He browbeats Esty into performing her conjugal duties, because he has been raised to believe that is his right. Eli Spitzer argues in The Forward that Esty and Yanky's sexual relationship is not just disturbing but willfully inaccurate. That is, Hasidic Jews "do not have a custom of doing it with their clothes on," as Esty and Yanky do, with shots lingering on the pair getting dressed before bed. Regardless of intent, this plot point harks back to the the long-standing myth that Orthodox Jews have sex "through a hole in the sheet." To Spitzer, the clothes cannot be an innocent mistake for a crew so committed to their culturally accurate details. Instead, the couple's clothed relations contribute to the overall message that Hasidim are "sexually aberrant." The series reduces sex within these communities to a perfunctory duty, the only end of which is procreation.  

Perhaps the most significant difference between source and adaptation is the latter's decision to move the story from New York to Berlin. At the end of the memoir, Feldman begins her new life in Manhattan, but a train ride over the East River would be neither aspirational nor romantic for the viewer. Instead, in the series Esty flees to Berlin, whose vibrant, cosmopolitan atmosphere throws Hasidic Williamsburg's muted palettes and suffocating interiors into sharp relief. Within days, she finds steadfast friends (and even a love interest) in a group of multinational conservatory students, and lands an audition for a scholarship to their music program. Berlin offers Esty bodily autonomy--though she turns it down, Esty has the option to terminate her pregnancy--and sexual self-determination. It has already transformed her mother's life, allowing her to live openly as a lesbian. With Berlin as its counterpoint, Esty's ultra-Orthodox community becomes the series' antagonist: her rabbi gives Yanky and his parlous cousin the orders to bring Esty back by force. The polarity between Williamsburg and Berlin, threat and safety, heightens the series' stakes. Esty cannot get caught by the Satmars; just look at what she stands to lose. 

The cat-and-mouse game might make for good television, but casting Esty's sect as the single, brutal obstacle to her self-actualization is a questionable creative decision. (One should note that no Hasids attempt to capture Feldman when she leaves Williamsburg in the memoir.) The heavy-handed contrast between Satmar Brooklyn and secular Berlin undermines all the meticulous research put into the Hasidim of Unorthodox. While the series offers token nods to the German capital's legacy of violence against Jews--Esty spots a man with an ominous "Deutschland" tattoo across his back--Berlin never holds the potential for danger. Esty finds unconditional acceptance and freedom. The viewer would never know that German anti-Semitism is on the rise. Even sex is easy when it comes time for Esty to share a tryst with her handsome, sensitive German friend, Robert. There is no inherent harm in changing major story elements for adaptation. What matter are the choices that come of that artistic license. Wagner and Karonlinski might have shored up their research into Hasidic culture with thoughtful decisions about the contrast between Williamsburg and Berlin. They had significant creative control over the Berlin storyline, but the choices they made in many ways hindered their own efforts to avoid anti-Semitic tropes in the series.  

Unorthodox is but one entry in a growing catalogue of film and television about defectors from Orthodox Jewish communities. Though a compelling drama, the series ultimately presents a missed opportunity to challenge bigoted views about Hasidim: that they are sexually deviant, hidebound by dogma, or possessed of a group mind. The writing and direction, however well-intentioned, play into timeworn anti-Semitic narratives that exacerbate the mounting violence against Jewish people.  

Research on its own is not enough. The writers, crew, and cast, including many scores of extras, committed themselves to recreating Satmar on the small screen. But their attention to cultural details proved insufficient to meet the goal of representing a minority religious group--including its flaws--without inadvertently reinforcing negative stereotypes. To achieve that goal, the Unorthodox team needed to pay more attention to existing prejudices against Hasidic communities and the power dynamics that keep those prejudices alive. Had they done so, they might have made different choices.