Unorthodox is perfect fare at this time

ANTHONY CHAIT

Released last weekend, this new miniseries in English and Yiddish is based on the autobiography of Deborah Feldman. She tells her story of being raised in the Chassidic Satmar community of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. She abandons this life as newly married and pregnant woman for a new beginning in Berlin, Germany, to pursue a career in music.

Her autobiography, titled “Unorthodox The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots” is rated as a New York Times bestseller.

The main character is Esther Shapiro or Esty, played by the diminutive Israeli actress Shira Haas (who was in Shtisel). She has difficulty accepting what she believes is her place in life, which is simply for procreation. With the customary pre-wedding coaching, failed wedding night, and interventions from both her husband’s mother and his sister, huge tensions emerge as the community’s spotlight falls on Esty and Yanky (her husband) who are childless after a year of marriage.

Yakov Shapiro (Yanky) is played by English-born Israeli actor Amit Rahav. He describes his depiction of the role as naïve and innocent to the point that Yanky may be said to be feeble.

Rahav is well known for playing the first gay character on Israel’s Kids’ TV Channel’s Flashback, in which he portrayed Aviv. The production was noted in the 27-year history of the channel as the first time a guy had come out in front of his whole class.

In the role of Yanky’s friend, Moishe Lefkovitch, is Jeff Wilbusch, born in Israel in 1987. Raised in Jerusalem and now living in Berlin, Wilbusch told American television viewers that he thought twice about going out on the streets (of Berlin) wearing a kippah, a Jewish skullcap. “It’s literally dangerous,” he says, referring to the far-right Alternative to Germany movement.

When television writer Anna Winger read the memoire, National Public Radio reports that she knew she wanted to tell that story, but with one crucial difference. In her version, Esty not only leaves her family, she heads to Germany, the country that nearly destroyed the Jewish people.

Winger is a Jewish American and has lived in Berlin for two decades. “As a metaphor, we wanted her to go directly to the source of the trauma and find herself,” Winger explains. “Living in Germany has made me think about Jewishness, certainly about the Holocaust, about the legacy of violence and trauma, in a way I never thought about it in America,” she says.

Reminders of the city’s violent past are everywhere in the series. While completely true to Winger’s metaphor and the hidden comparison she refers to, there’s nothing in the story about the Holocaust.

Yet, for me, the stark reminder was there, but in a beautiful way. In one of the scenes, Esty walks through the Brandenburg Gates. She moves effortlessly between the east and the west of the once divided city.

It’s only a memory that lingers, and only for some who recall the 18th century architecture built at the behest of Prussian Frederick William II, but two centuries later was adorned with Nazi regalia. Lest we forget.

Most of the TV series was filmed in Berlin with a studio set up to produce some of the Brooklyn scenes particularly of the traditional Chasidic Satmar wedding, complete with bedeken (veiling), chuppah, and yichud (seclusion) room.

All the shtreimels (fur hats) used in the film are made from fake fur which together with the velcro payot were painstakingly cared for by the wig mistress on the set.

When Esty escapes, she is pursued by her husband, Yanky, who is led by his friend Moishe. In its online review, Penske Media’s IndieWire relates that the series indulges in the dark comic exploits of the men on her tail. Moishe, a chain-smoking gambling addict with nothing to lose, hauls the reticent Yanky on a globe-trotting journey that forces him to confront his own discomfort with his ideological lifestyle.

With Wilbusch as Moishe embodying the role of carefree bounty hunter, and Yanky as his quasi-virginal disciple, Moishe speaks of what he calls “a different Torah”.

Moishe, who is clearly a bully, arranges for the soft-spined Yanky to visit the red-light district of Berlin, which he finds tormenting.

Flashbacks are skilfully used to tell the story as Esty embraces her new-found life while constantly haunted by the past from which she is desperately trying to escape.

Much like the current New York stage production of Fiddler afn Dak (Fiddler on the Roof), it is incredibly gratifying to see how the language of my father and grandparents – Yiddish – is being kept alive today in such a vibrant cultural form, much like it was spoken on the streets of Lithuania and elsewhere exactly 100 years ago and earlier.

The miniseries Unorthodox is enthralling, and during the lockdown can be tackled as I did on a binge basis. That’s all four of the one-hour episodes in one sitting. It’s simply like a good book that one can’t put down.

You will enjoy the Yiddish. It’s easy to understand and if you can’t, there are subtitles.

It’s best viewed when the children are asleep as it’s exclusively for adult-only audiences. It contains scenes of nudity, and the marital relations between the doomed couple are extremely explicit. So, too, are the explanations of the concept of a Jewish married woman emerging from her niddah state and the rules relating to family purity. It includes a mikvah scene with nothing left to the imagination.

Unorthodox reminds us that life is a constant search, that happiness isn’t always the end goal, and that sometimes you just have to work through tough times to come through the other side. How apt for this time in the world.