Watching “Unorthodox” on Netflix

The series brought back memories of my childhood growing up in an Orthodox home.

I watched the new Netflix series “Unorthodox” which focused on the Satmar Hasidic community in Brooklyn, which adhere to the Hungarian ultra-Orthodox school of thought. It brought back memories of my childhood growing up in an Orthodox home. Most of the dialogue in the series was in Yiddish and it reminded me of the the conversations I used to have with my mother and father, in my first language.

The series made me think about how religion has played a pivotal role in my family throughout the years. Growing up in an Orthodox home was the norm in the community in which I grew up, which consisted predominantly of Holocaust survivors. My mother had survived the war, incarcerated in three different concentration camps, with not one single member of her family of eight children. However, she would often talk about how Judaism sustained her during the Holocaust and, despite her enormous loss, she never wavered in her steadfast faith. My dad who survived with two brothers and two sisters, was also very devout.

After the war, when my parents met in a displacement camp, they appreciated how much their religious backgrounds intersected and got married in 1947. As with many couples who went through the Holocaust and were eager to marry and start families, I have always believed that their faith, before, during and after the war was the cohesive element that brought and kept them together.

My sister and I were brought up in an Orthodox environment except for the fact that my dad worked on Saturdays. He owned a tailor shop with his brother and it was the only way to ensure they could pay their bills. Not only did they have to open the store on Saturdays but they only left work by 9:00 pm on Thursdays and Fridays.

My mother would light the Sabbath candles every Friday and wait at the window until 10:00 pm for my father to come home and sit down at the kitchen table to enjoy the elaborate meal she had prepared. There was always wine in the kiddish cup next to the bronze salt and pepper shakers which my dad brought over from Poland.

My father was on call every morning for the synagogue. He was available to run over before work, if they needed him, so that there would always be the requisite 10 men to pray, particularly when someone was marking the anniversary of a family member’s death. After the synagogue was sold because there was a drop off of membership from families who had moved away, my parents hosted the remaining families in their home and invited the rabbi and his eight children to stay with them during the High Holy Days. My mom would remind me that they did that to honor the memory of their parents.

My sister married a boy who came from a traditional family but as the years went by, he became antagonistic to religion. He embraced it again after some Chabad members knocked on his door and debated him on the fine points of Judaism. Soon after, he and my sister moved to Israel and became Lubavitch, which focuses on observing and practicing the Torah­-true way of life. When they eventually came back to Toronto, my sister began to understand that religion could not curb her husband’s physical and mental abuse. My sister finally left him 23 years and 6 children later. She was able to walk away from her marriage but not her religion. She had a deep appreciation of how Judaism was a positive force in her life, particularly in strengthening her bond to her children.

I have often struggled with religion having been bookended by an Orthodox childhood and the effect my sister’s religious transformation had on my parents and me. My mother and father were delighted that my sister’s six children honored their parents’ legacy and were thrilled their grandson was studying to be a Rabbi. I always considered myself the black sheep of the family because I had chosen not to rise to the levels of their pious lives.

My sister and I live in different worlds but over the years have come to respect each other’s values and commitments to Judaism. Watching “Unorthodox” reminded me of the weddings I have attended of four of Ruth’s six children, who met their intended betrothed less than six weeks earlier. I watched her first daughter get married at the age of seventeen and I danced with the women, who were partitioned from the men, and respected all the traditions that enriched their lives.

To this day, I still have two sets of dishes and cutlery, one for dairy and one for meat. I try to appreciate the pivotal role religion played in the lives of my mother and father and honor them, as they did with their parents. I am borrowing a page from my mother and father now, to help me through this current crisis of biblical proportions so as to ensure that I come through this with my faith restored.