“From the beginning,” says writer and executive producer Anna Winger, “we were interested in telling a deeply human story about the search for self-definition, freedom, community, about a young woman looking for her place in the world and struggling to find it.”
- Meredith Blake, "Netflix’s ‘Unorthodox’ went to remarkable lengths to get Hasidic Jewish customs right," Los Angeles Times, April 7, 2020
What defines us as individuals? What connects us to community?
During the approximately five years she spent preparing the exhibition, Muchawsky-Schnapper found dozens of Hasidim who acted as mediators and provided information. One such person who did not want to divulge his name fondly calls her "the rebbetzin of the museum."
According to him, "There has never been a representation of the Hasidic public that is both comprehensive and specific...Hasidim are connected to their clothing, the man explains: "It's part of a Hasid's selfhood. When I get dressed, I put the garment on from right to left, I wear the ritual fringes over my shirt - this is an inalienable part of me..."
- Tamar Rotem, from "Secrets of the Sects: A Peek Into Hasidic Homes and Closets"
(ד)... הִלֵּל אוֹמֵר, אַל תִּפְרֹשׁ מִן הַצִּבּוּר...
(4) ... Hillel says: Do not separate yourself from the congregation...
תניא אידך בזמן שהצבור שרוי בצער אל יאמר אדם אלך לביתי ואוכל ואשתה ושלום עליך נפשי... אלא יצער אדם עם הצבור שכן מצינו במשה רבינו שציער עצמו עם הצבור שנאמר (שמות יז, יב) וידי משה כבדים ויקחו אבן וישימו תחתיו וישב עליה וכי לא היה לו למשה כר אחת או כסת אחת לישב עליה אלא כך אמר משה הואיל וישראל שרויין בצער אף אני אהיה עמהם בצער וכל המצער עצמו עם הצבור זוכה ורואה בנחמת צבור.
A different teaching: At the time that the community is encompassed by trouble, a person should not say, "I will go to my own house and eat and drink and peace to you, my soul." ...Rather, a person should suffer with the community, as we find with Moses, our teacher, who caused himself to suffer with his congregation. As it says (Exodus 17:12): "But Moses' hands grew heavy, so they took a stone and put it under him and he sat on it..." And did Moses not have a single pillow or mattress to sit on?? Rather, this is what Moses said: Since the Israelites are suffering (at war), I will be with them in their suffering. And anyone who suffers with the community will merit to enjoy comforting times with the community in the future.
Ritualizing and Experiencing Transformation
What physical act could a person perform in order to symbolize a radical change of heart, a total commitment? Is there a sign so dramatic, dynamic, and all-encompassing that it could represent the radical change undergone by the convert to Judaism?
Jewish tradition prescribes a profound symbol. It instructs the conversion candidate to place himself or herself in a radically different physical environment–in water rather than air. This leaves the person floating–momentarily suspended without breathing–substituting the usual forward moving nature and purposeful stride that characterize his or her waking movements with an aimlessness, a weightlessness, a detachment from the former environment. Individuality, passion, ego–all are submerged in the metamorphosis from the larval state of the present to a new existence.
Ritual immersion is the total submersion of the body in a pool of water. This pool and its water are precisely prescribed by Jewish law. Immersion, tevillah, is the common core component of every [traditional] Jewish conversion process, for male and female, adult and child, ignoramus and scholar. It is sine qua non, and a conversion ceremony without immersion is unacceptable to the traditional religious community and simply not Jewish in character...
...Throughout Jewish history, unmarried women have immersed in the mikveh prior to their wedding; married women immerse at the end of seven days of stainless purity from the end of each monthly menstrual cycle, in preparation for the resumption of family relations in their most fertile days. A major function of immersion in the mikveh is for conversion to Judaism...
Submerging in a pool of water for the purpose not of using the water’s physical cleansing properties but expressly to symbolize a change-of-soul is a statement at once deeply spiritual and immensely compelling. No other symbolic act can so totally embrace a person as being submerged in water, which must touch and cover every lesion, every strand of hair, every birthmark. No other religious act is so freighted with meaning as this one which touches every aspect of life and proclaims a total commitment to a new idea and a new way of life as it swallows up the old and gives birth to the new.
- Rabbi Maurice Lamm, excerpts from Becoming a Jew
https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/why-immerse-in-the-mikveh/
1. How does Esty discover herself in Berlin? To what extent does she bring parts of her identity from Brooklyn to Berlin, and what does she seem to leave behind? In what ways is she transformed through ritual, through her journey?
2. How does Moishe reveal and or hide parts of himself while he is in Germany? How does Esty? To what extent does clothing allow us to conceal or reveal?
3. This series juxtaposes the participation in traditional Jewish rituals with contemporary parallels (eg. ritual immersion in water, wedding blessings). In what ways are rituals necessary to Jewish identity, and to what extent is the traditional expression of ritual important?
4. How does this series portray community and one's sense of belonging? When can being part of a community deepen one's sense of belonging, and when can it become an obstacle? Based on the texts above, what obligation might we have to place the needs of the community above our own?
Ahad Ha'Am (Asher Ginsberg; b. 1856, Kiev; d. 1927, Tel Aviv. Father of Cultural Zionsim)
When the individual values the community as his own life and strives after its happiness as though it were his individual well-being, he finds satisfaction and no longer feels so keenly the bitterness of his individual existence, because he sees the end for which he lives and suffers.
Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, On Repentance, pp. 114-115
Judaism has always viewed man from this dual perspective. It sees every person as an independent individual and also as part of a community, a limb of the body of Israel. Jewish thinkers have conducted an ongoing dialectic on this subject throughout the ages. The pivotal question is: Does the individual stand above the community which should serve its needs, or should the individual subordinate himself to the community's needs? In Judaism this question has been asked in relation to the individual who serves as a community leader. Who, in our history, was a greater leader than Moses, redeemer of Israel, the great rabbi and teacher, about whom our Sages wrote that his worth was equivalent to that of six hundred thousand men, meaning the total number of the male community of his time? Nonetheless, when the children of Israel fashioned the Golden Calf, "God said to Moses, 'Go down - lower yourself down; for did I not grant you greatness only to benefit Israel? And now that Israel has sinned, what need have I of you?'" (Berakhot 32b). Even the greatness of an individual like Moses is dependent upon the community. It would seem that the community and the individual are placed in balance with each other and are interdependent. At times we find that the community must sacrifice itself on behalf of the individual ... And at times the individual must sacrifice himself for the good of the community.
Never is the individual's worth belittled when measured against the whole community; and never is the community undermined because of any individual or individuals. Each has its own position of strength.