NEW YORK – Throughout the nine-episode series, Netflix’s new hit My Unorthodox Life is packed with the superficial trappings of a soapy reality show: stiletto designer heels, helicopters to the Hamptons and a trip to Paris Fashion Week.
But its release has also sparked complicated conversations in the Orthodox world, as the show’s protagonist deeply criticizes the customs she grew up with – leaving critics especially unnerved during a time of increasing antisemitism. The Jewish Twitterverse, blogosphere and op-ed pages have been full of pundits calling the show the worst – or best – thing they’ve ever seen. No matter what the view, it seems like everyone has an opinion about Julia Haart, the show’s centerpiece who grew up in ultra-Orthodox Monsey, New York, studied at Bais Yaakov schools, married at age 19 within the community, and had four children before deciding in her 40s that the lifestyle was stifling and decamping to Manhattan where she leaves her husband for an Italian entrepreneur and becomes a shoe designer, creative director of a lingerie brand and eventually CEO and co-owner of the modeling agency Elite World Group. She does all of this while dressed in cleavage-baring tops and skintight leggings while trying to encourage her children to follow suit – some of whom would prefer to remain religious.
“I never felt oppressed the way Julia Haart says Orthodox women are,” Sarah Ickovitz told The Jerusalem Post. “Everybody has their own experiences, but I went to Bais Yaakov, too, and I can say [Haart’s] claims that women aren’t free to become whatever they want are just not true.
“I went to college and there was never a feeling that I couldn’t do something because I’m an Orthodox woman,” Ickovitz, 35, a mother of three in Brooklyn continued. “I love the way religion guides us. I love that I am a princess and dress that way.”
To showcase a flip side of Haart’s story, Alexandra Fleksher, co-host of the “Normal Frum Women” podcast and columnist for Mishpacha magazine, started a #MyOrthodoxLife hashtag on social media that blew up overnight. Orthodox women are posting stories on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook about how they’re out and about in the world, leading powerful careers and not subdued in the slightest.
Ickovitz said she was eager to participate in the social media trend, noting that she chose to join the very same world that Haart fled.
“At the age of nine my neighbors took in a foster child. She was 12, and we quickly became friends. She started to invite me over for Shabbat meals and we would spend the whole Shabbat playing. After a short time I realized that something was missing and that I wanted to be Orthodox too. It was so beautiful. It was the way I wanted to live. Luckily, my parents were insane enough to listen to a nine-year-old. My mom and I stopped wearing pants. We made our entire kitchen kosher and we started keeping Shabbat,” she recalled in a Facebook post, which has received nearly 500 likes.
Devorah Kigel, a Manhattan-based Orthodox educator on the role of women in Judaism also shared her story with the hashtag, but told the Post she is boycotting the show.
“I watched the trailer and that was enough damage to my soul,” Kigel said. “I’ve heard enough from people who have watched the whole thing to get a grasp of it.”
Kigel expressed fear that perpetuating damaging stereotypes about the Orthodox community could lead to Jews being harmed or feeling unsafe.
“For the average American, secular Jew or non-Jew, they don’t have much exposure to what Orthodox life is like,” she said. “If you live in New York City, it’s a little different, my doorman knows the laws of keeping Shabbos. But more broadly, the average American is only getting information about us from the media and for some reason Hollywood is obsessed with us,” she continued. “This show in particular is very fabricated, and what frustrates me most is that she wasn’t honest about her experiences growing up.
“People leave the derech all the time and that’s their business, not mine. I have compassion for them and we don’t know what goes on behind closed doors. But the fact that she deliberately fabricated her life and the details, in a huge Netflix series, that’s the problem. I know the Monsey community quite well, and it’s simply lies that she couldn’t have a secular education. My daughters went to Bais Yaakov, too, and took AP classes,” Kigel continued.
“If she just told her true story, I would support it. But Netflix makes money the more crazy, outrageous and provocative it is. She went the Keeping up with the Kardashians route, and it’s just not tasteful.”
Kigel said that Tisha Be’av, the saddest day on the Jewish calendar, which was observed last week and commemorates the destruction of both Temples, gave her a day to reflect on the show.
“It’s a day of mourning the fact that God and the Jewish people aren’t as close anymore because we don’t have a Temple, and I felt that more than ever this year because of this whole controversy – that this woman is taking to national television and besmirching God and the Torah to such a degree that I don’t think has ever happened before. It’s fine to leave your way of life, but not when you take down an entire community with you.”
Other Orthodox Jews are open to watching the show, but still echo Kigel’s claim that many details are manufactured.
Rabbi Shlomo Buxbaum, founder and director of the Jewish learning non-profit LEV Experience and former director of Aish of Greater Washington, DC, had just finished the second episode when he spoke with the Post.
“I’m going to finish the series. I’m looking for the pros and the cons. I think it can have both,” he said.
“It has potential to be hurtful to the Orthodox community. Things are exaggerated, a lot. She describes the community she came from as extreme Orthodox, which is simply not true. The community she came from was likely more similar to my upbringing, which was more mainstream Orthodoxy,” Buxbaum continued.
Buxbaum said he’s less intrigued by the show itself than he is from the response that it’s sparked.
“The dialogue coming out of it is very powerful. It’s gorgeous to see all of these posts about the beauty of Orthodox life,” he said.
“But on the other hand, I have friends who left the community, they had bad experiences at home or in yeshiva. Sometimes they come back. There can be so many struggles within mainstream Orthodoxy, but there is usually a place for them to find themselves without having to completely leave an observant lifestyle,” Buxbaum continued. “Why aren’t those stories told? We should be questioning these shows, not just taking everything as fact.
“Then again,” he said, “How many people are going to watch a show and suddenly check out of the Orthodox community? And if you already don’t like Orthodox Jews, then you’ll love this but you already didn’t like Orthodox Jews anyhow. How much will this really change people? It’s not clear.”