One of the liberating experiences of college was an introduction to "cultural anthropology" in which life in cultures so different than my own suburban American upbringing stretched my mind to its narrow limits.
We studied New Guinea tribesmen who made eternal ritual war with their neighbors ("Dead Birds") and tribes in Samoa and Indonesian village life.
We puzzled over nature vs nurture, read Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead.
Since then, I've been a sucker for any glimpse into alien cultures: "Dances with Wolves," as John Dunbar tries to figure out what drives the Lakota Indians and their nomadic life following the buffalo; "Last of the Mohicans" and "Little Big Man" as the heroes move between Indian and Anglo cultures, endlessly fascinating.
But now I've been directed to "Shtisel" set in Israel among the ultra orthodox Jews of the Haredi. Having watched "Unorthodox" set in a similar cult in Brooklyn, I was prepared I thought to understood something of the beliefs and practices, but this time the view is more sympathetic, or at least less fraught and in some ways more desolate.
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| Object of Desire |
Only 3 episodes in, and there are fewer glimpses into the belief system, but already the idea of what love between people ought to be or can be has taken front stage.
For the father of the protagonist, love meant his wife took out the butter from the refrigerator and placed it on the kitchen table so when he got home from the temple it would be soft. Romantic love was simply not a thing, but as you look into his memories of his wife, as you see him sit by her bedside as she dies of some unnamed malignancy, as you see him replay conversations in his mind, you realize the love he felt for his wife is not all that different from any American couple married for many decades. However the American marriage began, over the years the shape it takes is likely not all that different from the marriage of these very alien looking people.
The representation of the Haredi here shows little conflict among the men with the strictures their culture as placed. They do not challenge the wisdom or judgments of the rabbis and seem to accept the basic tenets of faith, that life is about living within the rules laid down for human behavior by God, and the main problem is figuring out what God's rules actually are in terms of every day life.
This means the protagonist, a handsome young rabbi, Akiva, is powerfully attracted (as is the viewer) to a young widow, the mother of one of his students, but he has no tools or vocabulary or concept about what a man and a woman should do with each other.
The widow, Elisheva, is playful, funny and more clever than he is, and she is aware that he is but a "child" who has no clue what men and women might actually mean to one another. The widow, despite her broader view of the world and of the possibilities of human relationships, is still caught in the tight web into which she is woven by the Haredi.
She can see what Akiva cannot, that a marriage to him would spell disaster for both of them. And yet, he is so clearly a beautiful soul, she is drawn to him and cannot quite let go.
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| Elisheva |
Elisheva carries the first 3 episodes, but she has substantial help from Akiva and his older sister, who has been abandoned by her husband.
Akiva is so clueless you want to throw something at the TV but there is one thing about him which hooks you so deeply you cannot give up on him: He is terminally kind. He proposes to a young woman simply because he feels sorry for her and is unable to crush her dreams and in another scene, a scene masterfully set up, he is faced with a young student who he has been told he must slap into obedience, but he cannot do it and instead hands the boy a candy bar.
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| Shiksha |
By the end of the third episode, you are rooting for him to throw off the shackles of his family, his father, his culture and run away with the widow who he clearly loves, in so far as he is capable of loving any woman, but you know that would bring his world crashing down around him. Romeo's family was but an inconvenient obstacle compared with the family which entwines Akiva, a culture which provides him with his vocabulary, every value and which embraces him in a tight web of obligation.
He can only see through the lenses the Haredi have placed over his eyes, much as he tries to shake them off to reach that glittering woman beyond his reach.
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| Terry Rodgers |
The Haredi live with the unstated fear that their young men will be seduced and drawn away by some unseen golden shiksha (gentile woman)--when Avika's sister's husband disappears he is said to have been stole by a shiksha.
But for Avika it is not a shiksha, not even a secular Jewess who threatens his world and the world which has suckled him--it's a woman from within the Haredi. This woman, who may be 30 and has been widowed twice is an untouchable. She is not young enough to provide Avika with a dozen children, not docile enough to be expected to be happy spending her life at home in the kitchen--she works in a bank.
But she is the window to a larger, more exciting and happier world, and she is the most dangerous person in this claustrophobic, fearful, oppressive world.
