In the words of the great Stephen Sondheim, “Something familiar, Something peculiar, Something for everyone: A comedy tonight!”

There’s tragedy as well, but we’ve had enough of that.

There’s schlock and simple, stand up and rehashed, bawdy and erotic. But deep in the weeds there is a good deal of quality, if you know where to look for it. It’s my job to direct you in the right direction.
My Hollywood expert daughter connected me to something really wonderful that touched her very deeply, and insisted that I take a look. She’s right. It’s quality. This is not a comedy, though it has many scenes where the “Human comedy” seeps through.

It’s called “Unorthodox,” a four-part series which debuted on Netflix March 26 and is loosely based on writer Deborah Feldman’s best-selling memoir, “Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of my Hasidic Roots.”

The mini series was written by Anna Winger and Alexa Karolinski, directed by Maria Schrader, produced by Karolinski, and filmed in Berlin. Netflix released a 20-minute documentary, “Making Unorthodox,” that chronicles the creative process and filming.

The series opens suddenly with no explanation as to what you’re seeing.

Young Esty, in the bedroom of her apartment, is packing a single bag, shoving a packet of money and documents into her waistband, and then, leaving the bag behind her, she flees down the streets of her neighborhood.

Along the way, she nods with eyes lowered, to the greeting of passing men dressed in the long black coats and fur hats of the Hasidim world, and the women friends of her family.

We find her again in an apartment, where she meets with a woman who provides her with a passport. She pays the woman and embraces her.

When next we see Esty, she is on a plane, and then arriving in Berlin. This road, if you choose to follow it, will surely take hold of you and pull you into a world you probably never knew existed.
We learn that Esty is searching for her mother, a survivor of a bad marriage, who was forced out of her life by the sect, and who found love and comfort with a special woman in Berlin.

We see Esty, frail as a wind-blown leaf, with the frightened eyes of a fugitive, which, we will soon discover she is, arriving in Berlin.

Lonely and adrift, she sneaks into a concert for warmth and finds it with a friendly group of young conservatory music students from all over Europe, who invite her along on a bus ride to a beach.
As she watches them swim in the sunset-tinted ocean, something she has never done, Esty hypnotically walks into the water, doffs her Sheitel (wig) revealing her true chopped reddish hair. She immerses herself into the water in a symbolic baptism that returns herself to the real Esty, free at last.

Then the writers and director Schrader, based on Feldman’s memoir, shuffle us back to Esty’s life in the harsh, repressive world where she was taken by the hand and forced into an arranged marriage with the young “Yatzy” (A delightfully shy and stumbling Amit Rhava.)

We walk beside Esty as she endures all the rituals, the shaved head, the mikveh, (a ritual bath to achieve purity.)

Then the wedding itself plays out like an ancient Hasidic ballet, with one stunning, mystic ritual after another with men and women in separate rooms coming together under the marriage canopy. The authenticity will stun you. This is what “Fiddler on the Roof” skimped on.

It was this Netflix piece, titled “Unorthodox, “ that sent me wading into the mysterious waters of the Satmar community, a large Hasidic Jewish group in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

You don’t have to be Jewish to fall in love with “Unorthodox” or “Esty” (short for Esther, played by Shira Haas) the young Jewish girl in this neighborhood in Brooklyn, or her family and friends.
You just have to be human, with an open heart and with eyes that see love, and ears that hear the rhythm of that love in this strange and wonderful fairy tale of a world. In the end, you will feel a kinship with these characters and maybe, if you’re lucky, refreshed. Mazeltov.

 

J.P. Devine, of Waterville, is a former stage and screen actor.

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