![]() ![]() “Unorthodox” is loosely based on the best-selling 2012 memoir by Deborah Feldman, who left the Satmar sect of Hasidic Jews in Williamsburg and ultimately settled in Berlin (though, by the end of her book, she has only got as far as New York City’s suburbs). Her dip in the water feels like both a sacrilege and a baptism. ![]() When Esty finally walks into the water-still fully dressed-she strips away her synthetic locks, revealing a buzz-cut scalp beneath. Married Hasidic women are not supposed to show their hair in public they are not supposed to go swimming with men, either. Esty, by contrast, is still clothed in the frumpish turtleneck, calf-length black skirt, and heavy brown wig she wore as a new wife back in Williamsburg. It is a sunny summer day, and all around her young people frolic in their swimsuits. Played by Shira Haas, an elfin Israeli actress, Esty (short for Esther) Shapiro stands at the edge of the Großer Wannsee, a large, lapping lake in southwestern Berlin, the city to which she has fled. ![]() Midway through the first episode of “Unorthodox,” a new, four-part Netflix miniseries about a nineteen-year-old woman’s escape from her Hasidic community in Brooklyn, we see the protagonist’s real hair for the first time. ![]()
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