Strange ways of fate
Other Voices
THE COVID-19 pandemic has forcefully grounded me in the house, along with millions of others in Kuwait and abroad.
“For corona, I surrender ... ” as the song goes; but the difference is that the singer surrendered for something good, while we surrendered to corona. May Almighty Allah lift it away from us soon. He has power over all things.
Paid television channels like ‘NETFLIX’ have helped us stay indoors. This is a new American channel that shows interesting films and series translated into Arabic for a small amount per month – about $14.
In the spirit of being entertained while indoors, my significant other suggested some interesting series to watch. The most recent that I watched – five episodes – is the very captivating miniseries titled, “Unorthodox.” It took me to horizons of knowledge and culture which were far from me.
The series is about the way of life in a Jewish university where the language used is ‘Yiddish’. As described in dictionaries, this language originated in the ninth century. Originally, it was a dialect historically spoken by Jews in Central and East Europe. It includes words from Hebrew and several modern languages like Aramaic, German, Italian and French.
The series tells about the life of this Jewish community living in the neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. This community is characterized by austerity, exaggerated sobriety and no contact with others.
Families gather on Saturday for lunch, during which men adorn themselves with black Jewish hats and long hair wrapped on both sides; while women wear wigs and woolen or cotton head cover.
The series narrates the story of the marriage of a 19-year-old orphan girl. Her father died and the sect excommunicated her mother, so she lived with her aunt.
One day, a proposal came from a young man from the same sect; asking for the girl’s hand in marriage. She turned him down, but her opinion did not matter because the marriage has already been arranged. There was nothing much she could do despite her refusal to get married to someone she has not seen before.
The marriage ceremony took place, along with the conservative rituals – women danced with other women, and men danced with other men.
The astonishing part is that the long blonde hair of this beautiful young bride was shaved off before the wedding. Then, she wore an ugly wig. This is one of the traditions of the sect, in which the women – young and old – have no long hair.
On her wedding night, her aunt explained to her that marriage is only for procreation, not for pleasure. This created a problem for her as she did not want her husband to come close to her on their separate beds as required by the sect’s tradition.
This sect, whose founders fled from the Nazi Holocaust in the 1940s until they reached Britain and then the United States, did not want to forget the torment their ancestors went through during the Holocaust. Therefore, they deprive themselves of worldly pleasures in a bid to feel and experience some of what their ancestors felt.
Nonetheless, the little heroine fled from the United States and went to Berlin to start a new life abroad.
She went to her mother, who was expelled from the sect. Eventually, her past caught up with her, as her husband attempted to bring her back home. The woman refused despite being discovered that she was pregnant, even though they only had sex once.
This miniseries presents the traditions of this sect, its customs and habits. It compels us to compare them with our fanatics and extremists in terms of how they portray themselves in their behaviors and how they judge others.
Also, we cannot help but compare them with our brothers who harm themselves under the pretext that the personalities whom they idolize suffered tremendously in their lives without any justification.
In this regard, all I can say to myself is that the world is very small. Fate works in weird ways ... and there is no might or power except with Almighty Allah.