#Authentic man program criticism series

The show, which was created by two men with intimate knowledge of the Haredi community, mines drama from the restrictions of ultra-Orthodox life but doesnРІР‚в„ўt suggest that its central characters want or need to escape.

#Authentic man program criticism series

Not, that is, until I watched РІР‚СљShtisel,РІР‚Сњ an Israeli series now streaming on Netflix, about four generations of an ultra-Orthodox family living in Jerusalem.

The degree to which superficiality and conjecture had informed my view of an entire community hadnРІР‚в„ўt occurred to me. I thought I was getting an authentic glimpse of how РІР‚СљtheyРІР‚Сњ-the Haredim-lived, but what I was really watching, IРІР‚в„ўve since realized, was an elevated soap opera whose implicit message was that romantic love can only be attained by overcoming religious strictures. In 2007, like many Israelis, I was glued to a hit television series, РІР‚СљA Touch Away,РІР‚Сњ about an ultra-Orthodox teen-age girl in the Haredi city of Bnei Brak who falls in love with a secular Russian Р“В©migrР“В©. We purport to want to learn about parallel ways of living when, really, a stronger impulse is to figure out how different they are from our own. The stranger, the more stifling, the world depicted, the more the contours of ours no longer chafe.Р”Р„ voyeuristic urge takes over when it comes to isolated, self-sufficient societies. Reared on certain freedoms, I found it impossible to view non-freedom with anything less than casual judgment.

The film РІР‚СљKadosh,РІР‚Сњ from 1999, by the (nonreligious) Israeli director Amos Gitai, seemed to reaffirm my bias: telling the story of two Haredi sisters-one whose husband is advised to leave her because they canРІР‚в„ўt conceive and the other forced into a loveless marriage-the film portrayed Haredi women as enslaved, yearning to break free. Under the unsparing Israeli sun, they wore scrimlike tights, wool sweaters, and heavy-looking wigs. I observed not the Haredi children but their older sisters and harried young mothers, often hidden behind a two-seat stroller. Over the years, that envy morphed into something I can only call pity. I grew up in a Jerusalem neighborhood a short car ride away from their most insular enclave, in Mea Shearim, and on trips that required passing through that part of town-to the dentist, to a friendРІР‚в„ўs fatherРІР‚в„ўs house-I used to watch their large families with envy: packs of children running side by side on cobbled streets, the girls in velvety dresses that appeared to have been cut from a single fabric, in what struck me then as an elaborate show of sisterhood.

IРІР‚в„ўve been fascinated by the Haredi, or ultra-Orthodox, community in Israel for as long as I can remember.