Where Have All the Women Gone? (@theTable: “Unorthodox Media”)
By Shoshana Olidort.
As a young Lubavitch girl growing up in Crown Heights, my earliest encounters with people from the community who were questioning our way of life, and beginning to explore alternate paths, were all with men. This was right around the time of the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s death, which turned our little world on its head, and caused a lot of small fissures that had been building over the years to explode, leading to a kind of brain drain, one that was–or appeared to be–predominantly, if not exclusively male. I met many of these men in my own home, where, as I’ve written elsewhere, they’d sometimes come to “schmooze with my father, an expert on Chabad philosophy who was known in the community for his voracious, eclectic reading appetite.” I remember the sense of admiration tinged with sorrow that they seemed to inspire, as if they represented both the promise of a different kind of future and also a tragic loss; their struggles evoked empathy, even respect, and they were often described as being “too smart for their own good.”
I don’t know when it dawned on me to consider whether there weren’t also women in a similar predicament, and, if so, why I wasn’t seeing them, or hearing about their struggles. But I do recall that when I took the first baby steps in my own journey outward, I met a woman, let’s call her L, who was roughly the same age as the men I’d grown up admiring, and who, as it turned out, was part of their inner circle of friends. I wondered at first why I’d never met her before, why she’d never come to our home, then recalled that I had indeed heard her referred to–but derisively and with scorn: she’d betrayed her family, trampled on everything they and the community held sacred, and to what end? Somehow, these same questions were never directed at the men who left, as if their choices needed no justification. When a woman left, as I would come to understand much later, she was seen as self-centered, promiscuous, or worse.
None of this should come as a surprise when we consider that women are often judged more harshly than men—as parents, as students, as teachers, and employees. In an article about women who leave their children for extended periods—or even permanently—“for a dream, for a job, for a relationship,” research psychologist Peggy Drexler observes that “[f]athers forced to be away from their families for long periods elicit sympathy and even admiration for their sacrifice. For mothers in the same situation, the reactions are often more complex—extending to maternal choice and even fitness.” While leaving one’s own children is very different from leaving one’s family of origin as an adult, in ultra-Orthodox communities the latter is often seen as a betrayal. If, as Drexler argues, when women leave their children they are perceived as having “violate[d] some natural order,” women who leave their ultra-Orthodox families and communities of origin are seen as breaching the familial structures that are at the center of ultra-Orthodox life, and which rely, disproportionately, on the physical, mental, and emotional labor of women and girls. When I finally moved out of my parents’ home, at the age of 24, I was admonished for abandoning my family, accused of selfishly giving into my desire for freedom—a word uttered with contempt and associated, implicitly if not explicitly, with licentiousness and loose morals, even stupidity. In her review of Ayala Fader’s Hidden Heretics: Jewish Doubt in the Digital Age, Naomi Seidman notes that “religious skepticism in women, who are taught to defer to fathers, husbands, and teachers in the realm of belief and observance, is more typically read by the community as psychological disturbance or sexual threat.” Indeed, on the rare occasions when I heard about women who’d left Orthodoxy they were invariably described as morally lacking or simply unhinged, as driven not by a search for meaning or truth or even self-actualization but by foolishness, self-indulgence, or both.
Enter “My Unorthdox Life,” a reality show about Julia Haart (formerly Talia Hendler), which ostensibly relays one woman’s transformative journey out of Orthodoxy while feeding into the very stereotypes I chafed against when I began the process of leaving my community. Indeed, Haart comes across as utterly self-absorbed and lacking any regard for those whose lives may be harmed as a result of her own actions, and seems to be driven not by a philosophical or spiritual quest, but by a desire for freedom framed largely in sexual terms, as well as for fame and fortune. Shira Schwartz rightly notes that in portraying Haart’s seemingly effortless transformation from ultra-Orthodox wife and mother to successful CEO, the show elides the very real and painful struggles that most face when transitioning out of ultra-Orthodoxy. And Sam Shuman underscores that lack of struggle when he points out that “what is so striking” about this story “is not the rupture of Haart’s narrative … but rather its almost seamless continuity–how easily she could ‘re-invent’ herself as CEO and fashion designer.” But what’s missing from these critiques is a more pointed focus on the ways in which this show elides the struggles of women in particular.
Others have written about how Haart does a disservice to her fellow ex-Orthodox Jews when she plays fast and loose with the truth—by conflating her own yeshivish background with the far more insular Hasidic world, and by painting her former life as devoid of secular influence—and when she tries to exert undue influence on others, exacerbating ultra-Orthodox suspicions of those who exit the community. No less problematic, I’d argue, is the way this show affirms ultra-Orthodox perceptions specifically about women who leave, and in the process participates in the erasure of so many women and their stories. While no man or woman should be compelled to justify their decision to leave, and all should be free to leave for any reason, or for no reason at all, it’s deeply troubling—if not altogether surprising—that a Netflix show about leaving Orthodoxy would center around a woman who displays a disturbing lack of self-awareness, and whose ideas about freedom and success are unabashedly materialistic. In one particularly telling moment, Haart apologizes to her daughter for the hurt she caused when she abruptly walked away from a way of life she had raised her children to believe was true, chalking up her daughter’s pain to “rough spots,” before gesturing towards the family’s magnificent property in the Hamptons, saying, “but look where we are.” For those of us still struggling with the fallout of our own journeys out of Orthodoxy it’s hard to see Haart’s crude cost-benefit analysis here, and the show’s focus on such a narrative, as anything other than an affront.
As Seidman points out, the overrepresentation of women in the recent explosion of ex-Orthodox memoirs “has not entirely shifted the gendered assumptions that govern both Orthodox and secular discourses.” Too often, such narratives–whether captured in print or on the screen– serve to reinforce the notion that “men leave the traditional Jewish world on a philosophical journey while constraining girls and women to a departure that is widely understood, and … rendered … as a sexual passage.” In its depiction of a woman who equates freedom with sex, money, and fame, “My Unorthodox Life” contributes to the objectification of women both within Orthodoxy and beyond.
Shoshana Olidort is a writer, critic, and translator. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from Stanford University, and is the Web Editor for the Poetry Foundation.
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