The world of reality shows exploded when the queen Kim Kardashian was thrown into our homes and our minds and carried a few million viewers daily into her home, her business life, her family life, her love life.
Thanks to her reality show, her family became one of the richest in America and the word “mama-ger” took on a whole new meaning when Kim’s mom, Kris Jenner, became the manager of five super-successful sisters and career women, including Kylie, Kim’s younger sister, who became the first billionaire under 25-years-old with her empire of a makeup line called Kylie.
Keeping Up with the Kardashians was the name of the show, and it represented trash TV in America. Nevertheless, a lot of people who you wouldn’t expect watched it, embarrassed to admit it.
Me too.
In all their trashy family drama and love affairs, there was something very traditional as if they had “values.” They showed a strong bond and how family always comes before all. The show ended this year and it received prizes and awards.
To my horror, though a new show was sent to my attention. I glanced at it right before I was getting ready to hear Eicha on Tisha Be’av, while sitting on the floor and thinking about the destruction of the Second Temple nearly 2000 years ago.
As I finished reflecting on the flames going up and burning down the magnificent temple and the horror of what our ancestors must have gone through at the hands of the Romans, I decided that after all that praying I was allowed to rest, and watch something to clear my mind so my thirst would not feel so terrible.
I had only 23 hours of fasting to go.
My Unorthodox Life flashed on my screen, another genius production of those sharp-minded people at Netflix, who have been selling dreams and feeding our brains especially since corona and lockdowns have come to the world.
As the first images were running on the screen, my heart started thumping, oh no, no please, don’t tell me, this is not what I think it is... no, oh Lord, not a show about a woman who left her Jewish religious world and becomes basically a... Kardashian!
Pictures of what used to be like a happy religious family living in New York’s religious enclave of Monsey – with its diverse levels of observance, from just a little yeshivish to ultra-Orthodox – feature a happy mom, wig-wearing and modestly dressed, flashing on the screen edited in a way as to make it look like a bad memory of what is now a successful businesswoman in super high heels, short hot pants and an extremely open to imagination expensive blouse.
My eyes are wide open and I stare in shock at what’s coming next.
No, it can’t be, come on, no way...
Names like Shlomo, Batsheva, Miriam have taken the place of Kim, Kylie, and Khloe of the Kardashian clan, although they had built their motto on flashing their booties, pouting their lips, and simply being real and trashy, that you couldn’t help but like them.
This new family show, though, led by their divorced mother Julia, once married to what seems like a super-nice, normal religious man and now remarried to an Italian non-Jew, Silvio, is building her fame and fortune while literally trashing her upbringing, her Torah, her world and her God.
Horrifying.
I start feeling the sense of the destruction of our holy temple more through watching this show than by crying over Eicha.
Every word she utters against her religion is a slap in my face.
Her thirst for fame and fortune is so acute that she sold her soul and her life for money and glory.
A woman full of energy, wit, brains, and charm boxed into a small body frame who runs the Elite model agency in New York, from an office with a gigantic red chair where she looks silly in it, for how big it is.
While we do not know exactly what led her to leave her husband and religion behind her, although her reflections on her past seem quite overdramatic, it is her present that disturbs me.
Her chutzpah in bringing down in her own selfish way millions of women who are religious, successful, happy, sexy, and in love with their husbands. She literally disrespects us (me included) every time she opens her big fake mouth with red lipstick, the beauty of our Torah, the role of the woman in Judaism, and the beauty and the gift we received as women and the laws bestowed upon us, to protect us like diamonds and preserve our dignity and royalty.
She takes the beauty of religion and Torah and squashes it under her expensive line of shoes she has started, as a finished cigarette, as if all she has now was achieved solely with her own powers.
She feels like a wonder woman when she sips wine and rests her feet on her adoring gay best friend and business adviser Robert in her expensive Tribeca penthouse.
God has nothing to do with her, His presence was felt enough in her past life when she was religious, now please don’t bother her.
Her non-Jewish husband happens to be the nicest character in the show, and her adoring kids, who have gone through their own personal journey within themselves, have decided to follow their mom in her ego trip to fame and fortune.
From what looked like a rather modest normal home in Monsey to a crazy rich Manhattan life, who wouldn’t?
That is what upsets me more, the brainwashing she puts her kids through is for the social workers to interfere, in my opinion.
The more messed up, daring, against the current, scandalous they will be the more she will be satisfied.
She pushes her daughter who just a few years ago was going to a Bais Yaakov school, to explore her sexual identity and her possible leaning toward being a lesbian. Her son Shlomo who now wears a big necklace and no yarmulka but who clearly is still attached to his religious roots admits embarrassingly to his mom of his first kiss with a girl as she clearly is not happy to hear it was only a kiss!
Her last son Aron is the only one who is still “frum” and plans to stay that way although she tries in all ways to snatch him away from that life of religious absurdity, as she calls it.
It is mind-blowing.
Just last week, I was honored to be the guest speaker at graduation night at my old school in London where I graduated almost 30 years ago.
I was so excited and touched to be speaking in front of all my teachers and headmaster when just a “few” years ago I was kicked out of their class.
What a surreal feeling.
My stomach ached when I saw their images flashing on my screen all sitting in silence waiting for me to speak.
“What do you want me to speak on, Rabbi Lew?” I had asked my headmaster when he invited me a few weeks ago. He answered me: “Show our girls what a nice religious wife and mother can do. Show them that they can be whatever they want if they keep to their Torah and God, and nothing will stop them.
“Show them what it is like to be you.”
As tears were running down my cheeks, I had to pinch myself that this conversation was really taking place and not only a dream.
I gave it all I had that night and spoke from my heart with tears in my eyes from how emotional I felt.
I wanted to hug each girl even though I could hardly see them, for it was all taking place on Zoom thanks to COVID.
I closed my speech by telling them that religion is one of the best gifts given; it clearly gave me balance, boundaries and direction.
Some of the most successful journalists and television hosts in Israel are religious women, wig-wearing, and mothers of big families, like Sivan Rahav-Meir and Eden Harel to name a few.
So maybe I don’t own a penthouse in Tribeca, or travel the world in a private jet, like Julia Haart, but I would never want to be in her expensive fancy shoes even for a second.
The disaster this woman is causing by vomiting her own personal views, feelings and conflicts she has with religion and making it come across to the millions of Netflix viewers as if this is the way our precious Torah is demanding us to be is a total lie, to the joy only of Netflix and their bank accounts.
Of course, this show is a big sensational hit.
Oh Kardashians, where art thou... you seem so “innocent” and “real” now next to this new show so “unorthodox” and full of lies.
Good luck Julia Haart, we will pray for your kids, when you will search for your God.
Remember.
He never left.
The writer is from Italy, lives in Jerusalem and heads HadassahChen Productions. A director and performer, she also heads the Keren Navah Ruth Foundation, in memory of her daughter, to assist families with sick children. hjm74@hotmail.com