Or that she isn’t entitled to criticize a community she and others see as blinkered or misogynistic. That is not to suggest that Haart is being deceptive about the limitations she felt as a woman expected to marry young and devote herself first and foremost to her children and husband. Haart’s husband attended the Wharton School. My colleague Shira Hanau points out that before leaving Orthodoxy, Haart and her first husband were part of an Orthodox community better described as “yeshivish” – somewhat “less insular” than the Hasidic or haredi communities depicted in previous Netflix shows like “Unorthodox” and the documentary “One of Us.” “Yeshivish” people speak English as a first language and some attend college and graduate school. (Haredi Jews are usually indifferent to or antagonistic to Zionism, which is a different story altogether.) Yiddish is often the first language and, as a big political battle in New York has revealed, children are largely if not exclusively taught religious subjects in school. The show’s official site refers to Haart as “a former member of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community.” For those in the know, that implies the strictly insular Hasidic and haredi worlds where secular culture is kept at bay, adult men devote themselves to full-time Torah study and women are expected to marry young, have many children and work close to home. I was struck by the close readings of the show by people familiar with the Orthodox community – and especially the fine distinctions being noted among “haredi” Orthodoxy (what the secular media tend to call “ultra-Orthodoxy”), Modern Orthodoxy and “yeshivish” (we’ll get to that). So I won’t weigh in on the debate over how it depicts the Orthodox community from which Haart fled, and whether it promotes unfair stereotypes about observant Jews. I admit I haven’t seen an episode of “My Unorthodox Life,” the Netflix reality series about fashion mogul Julia Haart.
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