Published: 4 March 2019
Last updated: 5 March 2024
ON A RECENT SHABBAT afternoon walk through Ripponlea, the heart of Melbourne’s Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Adass community, my husband and I saw a group of young boys flocking round some gorgeously souped-up vintage cars parked across from the Adass synagogue.
The boys had distinctive Haredi clothes, hairstyle and headwear. But like any other boys their age would be, they were wide-eyed and animated at the sight of these cars. We heard them talking about how close they could get, clearly concerned about the prohibition against even touching a car on Shabbat. Interestingly, some boys stood well back and others got much closer for a good look – because on this practice as in all things, even Haredim differ.
A tendency to see Haredim as homogenous in views and practice is unfortunate, as is the related phenomenon that people who are otherwise firm advocates of religious freedom and pluralism, often find it difficult to respect the rights of Haredim to live as they do.
So it’s both interesting and a bit thrilling see the popularity of the Israeli TV series Shtisel, currently airing on Netflix, about a Haredi community set in Geula, in Jerusalem. Netflix doesn’t publish its ratings but anecdotal evidence is that Shtisel has been hugely successful.
It’s easy to see why. The series does what good literature, TV and film do best - it takes us into other lives and gives us insight into and empathy with unfamiliar experiences.
The series centres on a family of a widowed patriarch, Rab Shulem Shtisel who appears to be a pillar of ultra-Orthodoxy, a principal of a Talmud Torah (religious school) for boys, and father of grown children also living traditional lives.
Close up, of course, things are much more complex. One of his daughters is estranged after marrying a Chabadnik ba’al teshuva (someone not born into ultra-Orthodoxy) and now lives far from Jerusalem in a community which does not meet his approval.
His son Akive, doesn’t quite fit into ultra-Orthodox life despite his clear love of tradition and practice. Kive’s artistic talent and sensibilities make aspects of Haredi life challenging in ways his father struggles to understand. Another daughter, Giti, struggles in secret to hide that her marriage is deeply and shamefully troubled. Her husband Lippe is not a scholar and the limited life options afforded by his education and communal attitudes combine with his impulsive nature to produce severe consequences.
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An interesting feature of the series is how it plays with language - the fictional community depicted speaks both Yiddish and Hebrew, mirroring several real-life Haredi communities in Israel, and giving a new generation of Israelis unprecedented exposure to Yiddish as a spoken language.
In a wonderful article, American writer Shayna Weiss explains that almost 20% of the dialogue in the second season is in Yiddish, much more than any other television show in Israeli history. She writes of changed attitudes to Yiddish in Israel, and that the historical disdain for Yiddish as inferior is absent in the series so that the dimension of bilingualism and all that it carries can be received openly by viewers as a natural part of the family saga.
Language aside, a strength of the series is how sensitively it universalises the lives of its characters beyond the particulars of their religious observance. Shtisel deftly portrays how most people living ultra-Orthodox lives don’t live each day as a statement of faith, but live as they do because that’s just who they are. We relate to the characters precisely because they aren’t on soap boxes. The tensions in their lives are internalised and inter-personal – like the push and pull between the familial, cultural and temperamental forces at play in all of our lives.
This has a particular punch for people who come to the show with pre-formed and hostile views about Haredim, often connected to politics.
In Israel there is widespread resentment that Haredi politicking frequently bleeds into religious coercion and lobbying for entitlements not available to non-Haredi families.
In the US, Haredi involvement in local politics has been contentious, with an egregious example being the assumption of control by a group of Haredi men of the East Ramapo school board, in New York, with no intention of sending their children to the any of its schools.
.It’s great that Shtisel has opened Haredi lives to greater understanding, but it’s troubling when identification with fictional Haredim on our screens doesn’t translate into respect for real people.
The board has been subject to legal action for abusing its power to direct school board funding designated for public schools to private ultra-orthodox schools, and for selling public assets under its control to private Hareidi schools, further depleting a poorly funded public school system, and causing real conflict with the families of the mostly Latina and immigrant students who attend the schools.
Elsewhere, Haredi institutions have been implicated in aiding evasion of the law. In Melbourne, leaders of the Adass school facilitated the departure from Australia of alleged sex offender and former school principal Malka Leifer before she could be interviewed by police, leading to a frustrating and lengthy battle to ensure her extradition to Australia. And now there are allegations that a Haredi government minister in Israel has been complicit in obstructing the extradition.
Add to this the tangible concerns about the lives chosen by many in such communities - the lack of vocational training and high levels of poverty, the status of women and especially physical and mental health issues for women who have many more children than modern norms, and that there is simply no place for queer Jews to live openly in these communities - and it isn’t surprising that anti-Haredi sentiment easily finds expression.
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But treating all Haredim as tainted by the actions of their leaders is a deep prejudice, not least because Haredim are often the first victims of rabbinical corruption and an authoritarian leadership culture.
And while it is legitimate to critique the content of Haredi (or any religious) practice, principles of religious freedom require us to uphold in a meaningful way the rights of people to live as they please, regardless of how we feel about those choices. Contempt for Haredim may feel virtuous but it reflects a noxious prejudice, adding to the prejudice experienced by diaspora Haredim who are more likely to be the target of anti-Semitic acts because they are so visibly Jewish.
It’s great that Shtisel has opened Haredi lives to greater understanding, but it’s troubling when identification with fictional Haredim on our screens doesn’t translate into respect for real people.
The series offers the opportunity for more than voyeuristic pleasure; it could help us understand that the faith, community and practice at the core of Haredi life are as integral to its adherents as skin colour or sexual identity, and that intolerance towards faith and practice are as troubling as other bigotries.
Shtisel certainly provides edgy entertainment about a fascinating world, but for me a real question is whether it can also lead us to listen before we judge, and to separate political grievances and specific concerns from prejudice against entire communities.
