Although I’m not usually interested in shows about religious Jews becoming secular, My Unorthodox Life seemed more tempting. Every outfit this fashionista family wears is eye candy, with a sprinkle of fabulous interiors (a motorised rotating closet of couture) and glamorous locations (14th century chateau in Paris for Sukkot anyone?).
On the whole, this show is most similar to the other Netflix shows Selling Sunset and Bling Empire. There is one major difference — this one is obsessed with the past.
It’s about Julia Haart, who makes much of her former life as part of the Charedi community of Monsey. She’s moved on… but hasn’t really.
Every episode in My Unorthodox Life seems intent to portray Jewish Orthodoxy as “fundamentalist”, and the stars trot out some things that are hard to believe, and many things which seem to have occurred to someone else in another place; such as Deborah Feldman, whose account of life in the Chasidic Satmar sect in Williamsburg inspired that other Netflix hit, Unorthodox. Even the title My Unorthodox Life is a direct nod to Feldman’s story.
My mother is from Monsey and I spent every summer and Passover there in my youth. I know the place and the people pretty well. I loved riding bikes down College Road, getting slurpies and Archie comics from 7/11, and going into the city for day trips with my mum and her friends. The Monsey girls knew the latest Avril Lavigne songs and had watched all the Sandra Bullock movies. Fundamentalist? I don’t think so.
According to my sources in Monsey, Julia Haart and her parents moved there from Texas when she was 11 and her parents become Orthodox and had seven more siblings. After Julia got married, she and her husband relocated to the Modern Orthodox community of Atlanta for a few years. Several years later, I’m told they moved back to Monsey and Julia started her shoe business there.
The Orthodox community worldwide has responded to the programme in droves with #myorthodoxlife showcasing the educated, successful and unrestricted lives that they lead alongside being Orthodox, which is a choice in and of itself.
The narrative Haart has chosen to champion is that she “escaped” what she saw as an “oppressed” community. This is ironic as she has now joined the most notoriously pressurising community in the world — the fashion industry.
It reminds me of Meghan and Harry, who traded the “imprisonment” of royal family life for the glitzy, high-pressure celebrity world of LA. Both families have traded one form of what they perceived to be oppression, for another, with immense financial reward and fame.
What Julia’s children have fallen for is not the freedom of being unorthodox, but the freedom of having money, and what that money can buy. Would they have followed her and taken her new name without the money, the glamour and the fame?
Julia repeatedly insists that she is all for Modern Orthodoxy - just against fundamentalism. Yet throughout the season, we constantly see her gently pushing others to move their boundaries according to her whims.
She takes her skirt-wearing Modern Orthodox sister shopping and coaxes her into trying on a pair of jeans. When getting dressed to visit Monsey, Miriam wants to be respectful and dress modestly, but Julia talks her daughter out of it. She reports that her son Shlomo coming shopping on Shabbos but not carrying the credit cards is “illogical”.
To Julia, Judaism appears to be an all-or-nothing criteria with parameters she cannot define.
Ironically, Julia’s life would have been intriguing without all that. With no formal background in fashion, she started her own shoe business, became creative director of La Perla and then CEO of Elite World Group within the span of nine years — great television.
Co-parenting her youngest child with her ex, helping her other kids develop their careers and navigating a healthy work-life balance — great television.
Her endearing friendship with her COO Robert where she tries to shed his insecurities, introduces him to a matchmaker and supports him as he reaches out to his birth mother — great television.
My Unorthodox Life has so many other ingredients, that it could have stood very strongly without so much emphasis on religion in its content and title.
This TV show was only part one — Julia Haart has a tell-all book coming out in March 2022. Let’s brace ourselves.
