Netflix series ‘Unorthodox’: a tale of escape from religious lockdown

Now that everyone lives in a closed community it may be the ideal time to look at a Netflix series set in the hermetic world of the Hasidic Jews. Unorthodox takes us into the lives of the Satmars, a group founded in Hungary in 1905 by a visionary rabbi who, after escaping the Holocaust, brought his disciples to New York. Today there about 70,000 Satmars living in accordance with strict religious principles.

Unorthodox is based on a memoir by Deborah Feldman, who was born and raised in the Satmar community in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, but escaped to Germany where she lives today. I say “escaped” because the way children are brought up within the group is so rigid, so based on rules and ceremony, that it must seem like a prison sentence to anyone not in tune with the dominant beliefs.

Read the article by John McDonald in the Australian Financial Review.