It was only a matter of time before there was a reality show about a Jewish family.
I took interest upon hearing the Netflix series My Unorthodox Life was about a Monsey family. I grew up and currently live in the New York hamlet. As a journalist who has written for both Jewish and secular outlets for 20 years, I found it to be worthwhile and was flabbergasted to see some of the criticism lobbed at the show’s star, Julia Haart – as though she’d drank a Satan smoothie and spit it on people.
It’s befuddling that some of the harsh criticism is from people that haven’t seen a second of the show.
Let me be clear.
Haredi/hassidic Jews are the backbone of the Jewish body that proudly stands firm with religious traditions. Aside from the IDF, they are on the frontlines against those who opt for violent antisemitism because their clothes make them most easily identifiable. We owe both groups a huge debt.
Jenny Singer, in a weak article for Glamour magazine on July 14, needed only three paragraphs to discredit her own theory that the show could encourage antisemitic violence against Jews. She mentions the 2019 machete attack in Monsey when a number of hassidim were attacked and in which Josef Neumann, a 72-year-old rabbi, died from his wounds in March 2020. Guess what? There was no show then! People who hate Jews and want to kill Jews will do it because they are bad people. They’re not sitting in a rocking chair with a weapon holding back their antisemitism until they see a reality show.
Saying a Netflix series is going to inspire violent attacks is normalizing antisemitism.
There are points of criticism. The first 10 minutes are the weakest, showing a “salacious” discussion about sex between Haart (formerly Talia Hendler), her daughter Bat (Batsheva) and son-in-law Ben (Binyamin) in her palatial Tribeca penthouse, in which the protagonist goes into detail that would make most parents/children squirm. A bit later, there’s a scene where Haart appears to meddle in their marriage.
There’s also a scene where a haredi young woman who wants to leave the Monsey community reaches out to Haart for guidance (on Instagram). Rather than giving her a listening ear or referring her to an organization like Footsteps (a New York City nonprofit providing support to those who have left or want to leave an ultra-Orthodox American community), she sends a driver to shuttle the starry-eyed young woman into the city, unleashes a glam squad to make her over and gifts her with a vibrator.
In another moment, she makes the journey to her old stomping grounds in Monsey and shops at a kosher supermarket (fondly remembering their sugar-free coleslaw), wearing a one-piece shorts set that would clearly be considered immodest. People gawk slightly – maybe due to the presence of cameras – but everyone is polite.
But there is also a scene where she is okay with her 14-year-old son Aron, who lives with his father (her first husband, a Wharton business school graduate) in Monsey, being shomer negiah (abstaining from touching the opposite sex) but just wants him to talk to girls at the coed high school he will soon be switched to.
Her copious use of the term “fundamentalism” – also employed in the discussion with Aron, which brings her to tears in front of him – was bound to upset the ultra-Orthodox community, and I wouldn’t have used that term. But does that make her a horrible threat for telling her story? These are her feelings and impressions.
The show glosses over a bit how she divorced her Jewish husband, developed a shoe line and in cinema-like style, rose to be CEO of Elite World Group – along the way picking up her second husband, the adoring Silvio, a non-Jewish Italian who conveniently founded Freedom Holding, the company that controls the Elite World Group.
WHAT DOES Haart have to say? In a phone interview with the Magazine, she recounts her previous life as a respected lecturer on numerous Judaic subjects in Atlanta – widely considered to be an open, diverse Jewish community. Her book, to be released in early 2022 at more than 500 pages, includes more of her past while the show focuses on her present. She knew not everyone would be a fan of the show but didn’t expect people to try to discredit her.
“The funny thing is I thought the community would love it,” Haart tells me. “I put Aron in there with his black hat; there are examples of Modern Orthodox Jews and all different kinds of Jews who get along even if we don’t agree with each other. I love being Jewish. This has nothing to do with religion. These are fundamentalist laws that need to be eradicated.
“I expected people to yell at me and hate me but I never expected people to say I didn’t live through what I lived through. That’s what bothers me the most.”
She notes that many women are married off at 19 and don’t get a secular education past the sixth grade, and others receive one of a poor quality. There was a rule regarding one of the top schools she wanted two of her kids to go to, Haart says, that required her to sign a document swearing there was no TV in the house. She added that she attended the haredi Bais Yaakov in Monsey and people have accused her of lying about that. She says she has the yearbook and photo evidence to prove them wrong.
She also says she attended BJJ, Beth Jacob Jerusalem, a haredi seminary in Israel for females where they told her that “yes, we’re known for brainwashing, but whose brain doesn’t need a little washing some time.”
Obviously all reality shows have shock value. Her son Shlomo, in his 20s, is humorous as he navigates his first date; her younger daughter Miriam is a hell-raiser exploring her bisexuality (with the full support of Haart) who knows how to make apps she believes can help Elite. But asked why she gave a vibrator to the young woman seeking advice, and why she got involved in her older daughter’s marriage, Haart says the camera obviously focuses on those things.
“It’s a television show, so it might look one-sided,” Haart explains. “But I don’t involve myself in their marriage unless they ask me to. I’m not a nudgy woman... Women’s sexuality is so taboo. When Batsheva and Binyamin got married, after the first night they came to me and they asked me how to have sex because they didn’t know what went where. It’s so taboo there. To be promoting pleasure is not gonna please anybody in the community.”
Later, Haart is seen helping Ben when he faces a career crossroads, setting him up for mentoring at her company.
As for the term fundamentalist, she stands by it and says she chose that word because she didn’t want to use the word frum - widely used to denote those who are observant - and wanted it to be a universal story that would inspire all women around the world.
“The word ‘unorthodox’ bothered people,” Haart says. “The people who had the most visceral reaction never watched it. It’s because we use the word unorthodox, they assume it would be an attack on Judaism.”
One person who bashed the show without watching it is media personality Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, who said in a Facebook post, and in a column in the The Jerusalem Post, that Netflix was attacking Orthodox Jews and he claimed that Orthodox Jews have the best sex. I must have missed that in the recent Pew Survey (on how American Jews view Israel). Haart never claimed to represent all haredi people.
“There are 1,000 gradations of people,” Haart asserts. “This is my story. People are uncomfortable with change. But I find change beautiful.”
WOULD I like a show where people were not religious and became religious? Probably. But that is not this show. Shtisel, a very good scripted show on Netflix, presents the trials and travails of a haredi family in Jerusalem’s Geula neighborhood in a positive light.
Haart had the right to make her show, and her achievements are inspiring. She clearly loves her children. Some argue that a parent should never subject their children to grievances aired on a reality show. That might be your view. But did a camera crew come to your house and make you an offer?
Also, their beautiful penthouse worries those who feel it will make all Jews appear to be rich and spoiled. Check out any reality show and you’ll find that the people featured are rich. The rich, and their playthings, make interesting viewing.
The book Unorthodox by Deborah Feldman and the Netflix series of the same name received some pushback, as did One of Us, a documentary on three individuals leaving their hassidic communities. But the reaction was nothing compared to My Unorthodox Life, either in intensity or the number of people complaining.
Why? Because this show is so bad? No, it’s because it came out a time when Jews in the Diaspora who survived corona realize they can be attacked in broad daylight for being a Jew.
Understandably, there’s a lot of anger and fear, so what do you do with it? It’s easy to rip a show, which in many cases people have not even seen.
A huge number of Italians didn’t complain The Sopranos would make people think all Italians are mobsters. In Fauda most of the Arab characters are terrorists, yet I don’t think global viewers believe all Muslims are guerrillas.
It is natural that observant Jews would be dismayed when a Jewish woman marries someone who isn’t Jewish. But where were the complaints about Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm when he had a non-Jewish wife and Jerry Seinfeld, whose girlfriends in the seminal sitcom were almost never Jewish. Oh, those were comedies and didn’t portray any Orthodox life, so it’s fine. Why?
We are told to believe that every Jew is created in the image of God. One of Us drew some criticism. Luzer Twersky, 35, a fine actor who appeared in a real role in the documentary, decided not to be religious anymore and it resulted in divorce. He tells the Magazine that he hasn’t seen his father since. He hasn’t seen this show, he says, but isn’t surprised by the backlash.
“Nobody likes to feel criticized or misrepresented,” Twersky writes in an email. “The best way to avoid bad press is to stop doing objectionable things. That is a lesson I wish the community would learn by now.”
According to Twersky, the lack of a strong secular education is a serious problem among haredim.
Naftuli Moster said the show got better as he watched and felt some criticism was unfair. His organization Yaffed (Young Advocates For Fair Education) is aimed at making sure secular educational standards are met at yeshivas.
“My wife was showing me the first episode and like most people, I was watching and I was like, ‘Ah, this is disgusting, I’m not gonna bother,’” Moster says. “Many critics of Julia can’t tolerate any criticism of the community. I’m a strong critic of the community but I was almost convinced myself that this show must be terrible, and then I went ahead and saw the whole thing and I said it’s actually quite nice.
“Yes, she has her feelings she’s entitled to but she doesn’t disrespect the Orthodox people she knows.”
Haart’s ex-husband, meanwhile, is portrayed as a modern man who doesn’t object when daughter Miriam decides to change her last name from Hendler to Haart, which she says is more in keeping with who she is now as a person.
One ultra-Orthodox friend of mine was pained and wrote online she didn’t see the need “to broadcast our resumes to validate the sleeves that cover our elbows.” The hashtag #myorthodoxlife has taken flight as a social media campaign in reaction to the show, with observant women emphatically posting positive photos of their lifestyle in reaction to feeling slighted, even though many had not seen it. If Orthodox women are happy in their lives, that’s wonderful. I hope that every person of every religion or atheist is happy.
HAART’S BOOK, due in March, is titled Brazen: My Unorthodox Journey From Long Sleeves To Lingerie. The 50-year-old, who left the community at the age of 42, says making the show was fun - but now’s the hard part.
“You’re baring your soul to the world knowing that people will judge people,” she says.
Enough people hate Jews. We should not hate ourselves. Those who are religious or not religious should not be demonized.
It’s great Haart included her son Aron, even though she doesn’t have custody of him, and that her son-in-law Ben wears a kippa. The Amish allow their children the Rumspringa rite of passage to go out in the world when they reach their teens, confident they will return. The ultra-Orthodox should have the same confidence.
A tradition and faith that survived the Inquisition and Nazis should not fear a Netflix show will take it down. Open your eyes. The enemies are through the gates. We can focus on those who want to kill us or instead focus on vibrators, sex talk and oysters.
Give this show a chance. Is it the best I’ve seen? No. Is it terrible? No. It’s an inspiring story of a woman who loves her family and reinvented herself.
Take a gander and Netflix and chill – but this time, chill means you relax!
Erica Schachne contributed to this article.