The Netflix series Unorthodox offered a glimpse inside the repressive and insular ultraorthodox Jewish community. But Melbourne mum Dassi Erlich has her own story of repression and escape from a community that’s a world apart from ours.
Top rating Netflix series Unorthodox has captured viewers’ attention around the world for its compelling portrayal of 19-year-old ultraorthodox Jewish girl Etsy, who bravely escapes the confines of her closeted community in Brooklyn in the hope of finding a freer life.
The four-part miniseries, which reached No. 1 and has sat in the Netflix top 10 for months, is based on the true story of Deborah Feldman, who was raised in the ultraconservative Satmar sect and escaped when she was pregnant with her first child.
It’s a rare insight into a society that lives by strictly enforced rituals and laws.
There are an estimated 200,000 people around the world who practise this extreme interpretation of Jewish law, and approximately 2000 of them live in Melbourne as part of the Satmar and Adass communities.
Dassi Erlich was one of them until she transitioned out of the Melbourne community she was raised in at the age of 25 in 2012.
“A lot of my experiences were very much mirrored in that show. I’ve had friends who have called me up after watching Unorthodox and they say, ‘Dassi, you’ve told us that’s the community you grew up in but we never really understood until we saw that’,” she says.
Read the article by Kim Wilson in the Herald Sun.