Like Esty in Unorthodox, I left my Chasidic community. This is what the show doesn't tell you

In my twenties, I was one of an extended group of ex-Chasidic friends living in Los Angeles. Everyone had their own story, their own way of blending their Chasidic past with the drama of a twenty-something life in a sprawling metropolis, dealing with jobs, partners, and weekend road trips.

One Friday night, after Shabbat dinner at a friend’s house, everyone else had gone, leaving just me and Mosh, a friend I often playfully sparred with over Jewish thought. We sat on the lamplit couch in the living room trading the successes of our previous lives. Turns out we had both been top students, both delighted and frustrated our teachers with mischievous questions. We had even both won the same national competition — me for the girls, him for the boys.

We were boasting that night, but I knew what we were trying to communicate to each other: that we had ended up on that couch in Los Angeles, far from the lives we were meant to live, not because we had been traumatized or miserable, but through a series of choices that were messy, often selfish, maybe brave, sometimes lucky.

That messy process is what is often lost in the stories about people who leave their Chasidic communities. It’s usually portrayed as a binary and heroic choice to sacrifice comfort for liberation, as it is in the four-episode Netflix series Unorthodox. Unorthodox follows Esty, a timid Chasidic newlywed, who escapes her community for a better life in Berlin. The show is short on complexity and nuance, depicting her Chasidic life as oppressive and lonely with barely a single sympathetic character; in contrast, she is immediately embraced by those she finds in Berlin. Thus, it deprives viewers of the most compelling parts of the story: the why of leaving, and the how of making it in an entirely foreign universe.

The show does have its strong points, particularly the acting by Shira Haas, who plays the protagonist. Haas redeems it to a degree, managing to convey Esty’s mix of resolve and awkwardness, and lending a wounded and dignified humanity to a facile narrative.

The show is inspired by a memoir of the same name by Deborah Feldman, who left the Satmar community in Williamsburg at the age of 23, but is almost entirely fictional. It begins when Esty escapes Williamsburg one Shabbos afternoon with just an envelope of cash stuffed into her skirt and a ticket to Berlin, where her estranged mother lives. When she arrives in Berlin, she stumbles into a prestigious music school, meets a welcoming group of talented students, and auditions for a scholarship, while her hapless husband is dispatched to bring her home.

Her adventures in Berlin are spliced with the story of her life in the Satmar community she left behind: her engagement at the age of 18, her unhappy marriage, and her stymied musical dreams.

I grew up in a Chabad community, as did most of my friends. While still Chasidic, the Chabad community is significantly different, and more forgiving of difference, than Satmar. But there are many parallels.

Of course, as a fictional show, Unorthodox can’t convey the entire range of the ex-Chasidic experience, but it does feel like a missed opportunity to tell a more humanizing story — both in terms of what pushes her away, and what happens after the fateful decision to leave.

Early on, someone asks Esty why she left. “God,” she responds weightily, “expected too much of me.” It’s a good line, but as the story plays out, we never learn of Esty’s relationship with God, with religion, or herself. We never witness any of Esty’s inner conflict; the primary conflict is with the community around her, a cast of overbearing relatives and Rabbis who corral her into a marriage and then ignore her cries for help.

And once she leaves, Unorthodox moves too quickly to linger on the absurd, on the missteps, on the undramatic and comedic parts of ex-Chasidic life. There are scenes placed like milestones throughout the show: first ham sandwich, first club, first kiss. At one point, Esty is trying on her first pair of jeans in the dressing room. She pulls them on, zips them up, and admires her figure in the mirror. They look good. She walks confidently out onto the street.

My experience was slightly more frustrating. The first time I wore jeans I was 27, and they were actually jeggings from H&M. What had stopped me until that point was a mix of guilt and the fact that I could not figure out how the sizing worked. I’d stood in countless dressing rooms, eyeing the unfamiliar curves of my thighs, and had no idea how to gauge if I looked good in what I’d chosen. Then, when I finally mastered skinny jeans in roughly 2018, the styles had changed, and now I have to learn how to wear straight jeans, and boyfriend jeans, and wide-legged jeans, all of which remain a complete mystery to me.

The unrealistic jeans moment stood out when I watched Unorthodox because I was otherwise impressed by the way that Esty’s transformation is shown through dress. The scene where Haas, as Esty, wades into the water in her skirt and wig might have been cringe-worthy, but instead it is what it should be: awkward. As a viewer, you want to turn away; everything about Esty makes you uncomfortable, and she is not unaware of it. Watching her as she weighs her options to remain on the sidelines, or to embrace her new freedom in the trappings of her past, is breathtaking.

At that moment, the show has potential. When she discards her wig in the water, her predicament is clear: she is still the person she was, and always will be, only now she is unable to go back.

But, unfortunately, the show doesn’t linger there. It immediately returns to the false dichotomy of the before and after.