By Coren Feldman and Talia Lakritz
My Unorthodox Life is a Netflix reality TV show following Julia Haart, a formerly ultra-Orthodox woman from Monsey turned fashion CEO and mogul, and her four kids. Haart is in the midst of launching a fashion brand and writing a memoir as her children Batsheva, Shlomo, Miriam, and Aron navigate their own lives, careers, and relationships to Judaism. Also, they’re ridiculously wealthy.
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| Despite what this poster would have you think, most of the show doesn't take place on the Hudson |
A reality show about a mostly unknown family would usually not make much of a splash, but the Haarts’ past and relationship to Judaism created a tremendous amount of controversy within the religious Jewish community. Joining me to talk about it is Talia Lakritz, senior reporter at Insider and coincidentally also my partner.
TL: There’s a lot to unpack here.
CF: Absolutely. I’m honestly having a hard time knowing where to start. I think right at the top it’s worth mentioning that yeah, this is a kind of trashy reality show and that’s the world it lives in.
TL: I think a lot of people are using the show’s genre as an excuse to dismiss its critiques of fundamentalism and ultra-Orthodoxy as exaggerated or patently false. But having gone through the Bais Yaakov system myself, I don’t think anything that Julia Haart says about her experience as a woman in a yeshivish community is untrue.
CF: We also have interesting viewpoints approaching this because I grew up Orthodox and am “OTD” (Off the derech - not religious) and you’re religious but no longer identify as Orthodox. But I agree. While the show has a lot of weird stuff in it, like displays of extravagant wealth and manufactured drama, I don’t think anyone can really refute that fundamentalist communities (of any religion, really) are not great spaces for women.
TL: I definitely saw some of my own religious journey reflected in Julia Haart’s children. When Batsheva decides she wants to try wearing pants instead of just skirts and dresses. When Shlomo keeps Shabbos but is entering the non-religious (and maybe non-Jewish?) dating world. When Miriam talks about how awful it felt to not be able to sing publicly, and how uncomfortable shells (tight shirts layered under clothes to make them modest) are.
CF: Same! I think what’s so interesting about this show, if you can look past all of the “realityness” of it, is that everyone has different relationships with religion. Miriam reminded me a lot of when I first stopped being religious and wanted to distance myself from it. I think Shlomo keeping Shabbos despite not knowing where he is religiously, exactly, is also something that’s reflective of a lot of Jews’ experiences. Sometimes people’s belief fades but they still care about the community or the traditions.
TL: I want to talk about Julia for a second, since she’s the star of the show.
CF: I’ll allow it.
TL: A lot of criticisms I’m seeing of the show say that she hates Orthodoxy and constantly talks about how awful it is. I didn’t get that impression at all! If you actually watch the show, you’ll see that she often clarifies that she has no problem with people keeping Shabbos or kosher or being Orthodox. What she does criticize is fundamentalism, and fundamentalist communities where women’s bodies and lives are not their own.
CF: The series — which she produces — also makes a point to show that every meal she serves her kids is either entirely kosher or there’s one non-kosher dish she tells the kosher-keeping kids to avoid.
TL: That’s what I find so fascinating! She left Orthodoxy behind and doesn’t believe in any of it anymore, but members of her family still do. So she’s still connected whether she wants to be or not, but opts to accommodate their religious practice and eat meals in a sukkah on Sukkot and wish her kids “good Shabbos” and things like that. Just because someone chooses not to be religious anymore because they were unhappy doesn’t mean they unequivocally hate Judaism. I think it may come off that way for people who think it has to be Orthodoxy or nothing.
CF: The single biggest thing I’ve seen that people hate her for is her conversation with her youngest son, Aron, who came back from a religious camp and suddenly decided that he won’t talk to girls (based on a very sexist Talmud passage) or watch TV. When she finds out she becomes upset and cries, asking him to reconsider. I can see why religious people see this as an attack on his beliefs, but she can see him slipping into the fundamentalism that she escaped, and that’s understandably terrifying. And I’ll go to bat for her here — not talking to the opposite gender is unnecessary, objectifying, cruel, and frankly, bullshit.
TL: In that conversation, she expresses that she wants him to have options beyond thinking that not talking to girls or watching TV is the only right way to be religious. And she says that there are Orthodox people who do those things and are still very religious. So again, making a distinction between something like modern Orthodoxy, which is more worldly, and fundamentalism. But honestly, I wish Orthodox people watching the show would approach it a little less defensively. As a religious person I understand frustrations with tired “unorthodox” cliches and storylines, but that doesn’t mean it’s okay to invalidate the experiences of ex-Orthodox people or dismiss the systemic problems that caused them to leave.
CF: And honestly? From my perspective this show actually does a service for religious Judaism. It doesn’t present it as a binary, where you have to be all in on everything. Not all characters are observant in the same way. And all of the religious characters, including her sister and ex-husband Yosef (who she co-parents with) are portrayed very positively. One of the last episodes even has Yosef talking to Aron about the same thing Julia is being criticized for, making an argument that you can be moderate and still authentically religious. I think there’s a double standard there.
TL: It was so cute when Aron asked his father “Do you have friends who are girls?” and he was like “Yeah, there are women I talk to, it’s okay.”
CF: Huge Yosef fan. He also knows his daughter is bisexual and is fine with it, and has a very warm relationship with Julia. In the last episode (spoilers) when he’s dating someone new and the kids are all freaking out it’s moving too fast, Julia invites him and his partner over for dinner with the whole family to show her support for the relationship.
TL: I might draw the line at saying that the show does a service for religious Judaism. I think we can both agree it’s not, like, quality storytelling, or a nuanced documentary. It’s a reality show, it’s entertainment. I rolled my eyes at a lot of the contrived conflict. But it does have surprisingly poignant moments that resonated every now and then.
CF: A service in that it makes a point to explain things like Shabbat, kosher, etc, and that it has depictions of religious Jews who are content with their identity and not all trying to get out like a drama would show. I think it normalizes religious Judaism for (maybe) a non-Jewish crowd that doesn’t have much context for it otherwise. But I’m coming at it from the perspective of someone who is no longer religious, so, *shrug emoji*
TL: The response from within the Orthodox community has been, quite frankly, appalling. Just these awful articles deadnaming Julia Haart (she changed her name after she left Orthodoxy), calling her crazy, accusing her of making up lies. It sparked this social media movement of #MyOrthodoxLife where predominantly modern Orthodox women shared how much they love being religious and how empowered they feel and how wonderful it all is. I found it infuriating. Like, if you grew up modern Orthodox, the show is not talking about you or your community. Also, how do you think your happy experience might change if you were, say, queer? Or trying to get a divorce in a rabbinic court that gives men all the power? There’s a real blindness to the privilege of the ability to feel safe and empowered and accepted in a religious community. Jewish studies scholar Shayna Weiss wrote that the criticisms of the show made her more sympathetic to it, and I agree.
CF: So. Would we recommend watching the show? I mean, I think no for me. I was mostly in it because of the controversy and I was curious to see religious Jews on a reality show but I mean most of it is like, them taking a helicopter to the Hamptons and her assistant getting some kind of weird butt muscle treatment.
TL: Oh man, we didn’t even talk about her assistant Robert Brotherton at all. That’s a whole other post.
CF: Robert Brotherton: A Deep Dive, coming up next.
TL: But for real, I think it’s worth watching if you’re someone who has ever questioned your religious identity or practice, or thought about upending your life in order to find true joy and liberation.
CF: Or if you ever broke your wife’s phone and choreographed a dance with her whole family to prove that you care about her TikTok influencer career.
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| Coren Feldman is the founder of CorenTV and author of the book, “If You Can Read This, I Somehow Got Published” |
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Talia Lakritz is a senior reporter at Insider. She’s very bad at writing fun facts about herself, which in itself is also not a fun fact. |