Module 5 Paper: Cultural Immersion Experience

Jessica E. Wangia

Organizational Leadership Project Management, Arizona State University

ORG 350: Diversity and Organizations

19-Apr-2020
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Module 5 Paper: Cultural Immersion Experience

Because of the state-mandated Shelter-In-Place orders that were put in place in Pennsylvania due
to the COVID-19 pandemic, I was unable to attend a cultural event in person, so I chose to watch
the four-part Netflix series, Unorthodox, based on the book, Unorthodox: The Scandalous
Rejection of My Hasidic Roots, by Deborah Feldman.

I chose this cultural experience because I love all things Jewish and Israeli. Many of my closest
friends and my sister-in-law are Jewish. When I moved from my parent's home at 21 years old, I
moved in with a Jewish family and attended their Shabbat services with them every Friday
evening. I have been invited to and participated in Rosh Hashanah celebrations, Hanukkah
parties, Passover seders, weddings, my friend’s son’s bris, and his bar mitzvah. I also have
friends that live in Tel Aviv, Israel. I have experienced a lot of Jewish culture in my life, but as I
watched this series, I realized that Hasidic Jews are a very unique culture in and of themselves.

The movie portrays Ester “Esty” Shapiro, a 19-year-old Jewish girl who was raised in the
ultra-orthodox Satmar community in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York. “Satmar is a Hasidic
group originating from the city of...Satu Mare, Romania, where it was founded in 1905 by Rabbi
Joel Teitelbaum. Following World War II, it was re-established in New York, becoming one of
the largest Hasidic movements in the world” (Wikipedia, 2020, Satmar Hasidic Dynasty). The
beginning of the movie is filled with flashbacks of Esty’s life. I was able to witness how she
grew up in the Williamsburg community, and see the tension and hurt caused by her mother
when her mother left New York to return to German. How her father’s alcoholism brought shame
to her family, but that he allowed her to secretly take piano lessons from one of his tenants. You
witness the closeness she has with her grandmother, Bubbe, and the love of music that they
share. You learn of the intricate workings of how her marriage was arranged by the community,
the religious rituals, and the purification rituals that went into her getting married, including the
shaving of her head and the wearing of the sheitel, a traditional wig worn by some Orthodox
Jewish married women (PBS, n.d). You see her getting bullied by her mother-in-law and at
times, even by her own aunt and the fear and pain of intimacy within her marriage. Being that I
am married and know the joys and delight that can exist between a husband and wife when there
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is patience, sensitivity, and understanding, the scene where Yanky forces himself inside Etsy, as
she weeps and cringes in pain, was horrific to watch and I wept with her. Soon after this scene,
Esty learns that she conceived that night and to my surprise, Esty was thrilled by this news and
could not wait to share the news with Yanky. Just as she is about to tell him, he says that since it
has been a year since they married and she still has not gotten pregnant, he wants a divorce. This
is the turning point, where the cruelty and pressures of life within the Williamsburg community
push her over the edge. It was at that moment that she decided to leave and flee to Berlin,
Germany with nothing but her passport, cash, and a photograph of her Bubbe, in order to find her
mother and ultimately herself.

Once Esty arrives in Berlin, she discovers her mother is living with her lesbian partner and
decides not to reach out to her for help. While in a coffee shop, she meets a young German
musician who introduces her to a group of college students studying at a prestigious music
university. She starts to build friendships with these students who comprise of a biracial
homosexual couple, a German orphan, a secular Israeli, a young Muslim man, and a young
Hindu woman, who ends up becoming her closest friend. It was the first time that her eyes were
open to see that people from very diverse backgrounds can build meaningful, genuine
relationships. She finds safety to explore her newfound secular freedom. Meanwhile, in New
York, her husband, Yanky learns that she has run away and is pregnant with their child. He seeks
help from the community and the rabbi orders Yanky’s cousin, Moishe, who had recently
returned to the community after running away himself, to go to Berlin to try and find Esty and
bring her and the baby back to Williamsburg. When Yanky prepares to go to Berlin, the only
thing he packs in his shtreimel, is the fur hat worn by many married Hasidic Jewish men on
Shabbat (PBS, n.d).

There were several underlying themes in the storyline that did not escape me. The first was the
items that Esty and Yanky packed for their trips to Berlin. They were metaphors, Yanky packs
the item that represents what is most important to him, the Hasidic traditions and laws. For Esty,
her family and freedom are the most important things. The second was that Berlin, the capital of
Germany, the home of the Nazis who murdered over 6 million Jews during the holocaust.
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Germany represented the “enemy”, it was the ultimate “non-Jewish”, as they referred to
everyone outside of their Hasidic community. Multiple times during the movie, characters
mention that they are “making up for the six million lost”, repopulation is one of the main
reasons for the Satmar community’s traditions (PBS, n.d). The internal reconciliation that needed
to happen within Esty in order for the place she had been taught was her enemy, to become the
place of her freedom was beautiful and redemptive. Threads of freedom and forgiveness were
woven into the whole story.

I also did not miss the hostility between the secular Israeli, Yael, and Esty. Yael was mean, rude,
critical, and prejudiced against Esty’s orthodox way of life, more than anyone else in the story. It
really got to me because you would think that since they were both Jewish and Zionist, they
would be closest, but what I realized is often we are most critical of those that are most like us
because we see the differences more clearly. The people who are most similar to us, who are a
part of our same demographic are the ones we tend to judge the most harshly and have the least
tolerance for, compared to those we would consider to be “the other” or know and understand
less about.

Having grown up in an Italian Roman Catholic family, another thing I noticed when I was
researching Hasidic Judaism, is that Satmar’s esteem of deceased rebbe, or rabbis in a way that is
equivalent to how Roman Catholics esteem and pray to the Saints. At one point in the series,
Yanky makes mention of having traveled to Europe, but that he didn't get to do any sightseeing
other than visiting the graves of famous rabbis. This is similar to how Catholics make
pilgrimages to visit the shrines of Saints. The rebbe is at the center of each of the Hasidic
communities, just as a priest is reversed as being the head and mediator between God and the
people within his parish.

I also found many similarities between The Hasidic Jewish sect and other orthodox faiths, in that
they operate as a strict patriarchal system and focus more on the dos and don'ts of how to live out
the laws in the day-to-day activities of life. Having grown up less than 40 mins from Lancaster
County, PA, the home of the Pennsylvania Dutch Amish communities, I would say that the
Hasidic Jewish seems more similar to the Amish than the other Jewish traditions I have
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experienced, such as the Reformed, Conservative and Messianic. I thought it was very interesting
that both the ultra-orthodox faiths in America, the Amish and Hasidic Jews, speak a Germanic
language. The Amish speak Pennsylvania German (Wikipedia, 2020), while the Hasidic Jews
speak Yiddish, a Germanic language that is written in the Hebrew alphabet (Wikipedia, 2020).
I learned that the ultra-orthodox Jewish sects focus more on the Talmud, which is not a part of
the Hebrew Holy Scriptures or Torah, but a collection of teachings and opinions of thousands of
rabbis on how to apply the scriptures to every area of life, such as religious law, ethics,
philosophy, customs, history, and folklore. The Talmud focuses more on how to apply the
Torah’s 613 commandments, rather than the actual mitzvot itself (BBC, 2009). I really enjoyed
this experience and learning more about the culture of Hasidic Jewish people, their culture is
filled with mysticism, and joy and is beautiful in its own unique way (PBS, n.d.).
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Works Cited

Winger, A. Karolinski, A.(Exe cutive Producers). (2020). Unorthodox [TV series]. Netflix.
https://www.netflix.com/title/81019069

Satmar ( Hasidic Dynasty). (2020, April 17). In Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satmar_(Hasidic_dynasty)

PBS. (n.d.) A Life Apart: Hasidism in America,Essays on Hasidism. (Accessed 2020, April 19)
https://www.pbs.org/alifeapart/res_essays.html

Pennsylvania German Language. (2020, APril 06). In Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_German_language

BBC (2009, August 13) Religions- Judaism: The Talmud

https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/judaism/texts/talmud.shtml