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Unorthodox

Fighting for Freedom:

Unorthodox and Freedom

by Burak Çayır and Benan Bakkur

 

Still

Unorthodox, a Netflix mini-series directed by Maria Schrader, is a German-American drama television mini-series that debuted in 2020. The story usually revolves around the main character Esty. Esty is a 19-year-old Jewish girl from Williamsburg, and she leads an unhappy marriage, which is an arranged marriage. She lives in the ultra-Orthodox community. We get to witness from the outset that Esty flees to Berlin, where her abandoned mother lives, and she tries to comprehend the life outside of her community and begins to question the values of her community. However, after learning Esty’s pregnancy, Yanky rushes to Berlin with his cousin on the orders of their rabbi, hoping to find her and thus make her return to their community, where she “belongs.”

We observe throughout the whole series that marriage plays such an important role in Hasidic Judaism that Esty’s grandma refers to marriage as the “beginning of a new life.” Marriage may be the start of a new life, but Esty has no choice but to marry Yanky. Therefore, Esty has no freedom in that sense, and if she refuses to marry him, the culture in which she resides will most likely label her as defective and deviant. Awful though, after Yanky and Esty get married, we notice that Yanky has no idea who his wife is, even though he knows her name and her face, he doesn’t really “know” her. However, marriage is supposed to symbolise the coming together of two individuals who know each other well. The series gives us insight as to how marriage is deemed in Hasidic Judaism and how it restricts people’s lives.

It can also be observed throughout the episodes that Esty, or a wife in general, belongs literally to her husband in the community that she lives in. This is not, and should not be the case, because a human being is not an asset, and therefore it cannot “belong” to someone. Just because of the fact that they are legally together, in other words, married, does not necessarily mean that they literally “belong” to each other. Rules may be necessary for our societies to live in harmony, but accepting all of the rules without questioning them would be a mistake; After all, these rules are for individuals, for us, and there would be no harm in questioning or having different opinions on the rules. Her having fled is still her decision, so there has to be a crystal clear distinction in freedom of choice, and her decision shall be respected no matter what.

Still