The show that changed my mind about the Charedim

WALKING THROUGH any of the world’s truly Orthodox Jewish neighbourhoods, one question always lingers in my head: why do these people live in this way?

Why do the denizens of Mea Shearim, Stamford Hill, Williamsburg and Broughton Park treat 2019 as though it were 1719? Why do they have kosher mobile phones, shun secular newspapers and seal themselves off from the surrounding world? Why do they dress as though they are still living in Lublin?

It’s difficult to answer these questions, because the Jewish people are starkly divided into two cultures, frum and not, two tribes barely on nodding terms, each viewing the other with a mixture of pity and disdain.

Most of us only truly experience Charedi life through art, films, documentaries, books. Yet depictions of the Strictly Orthodox in popular culture usually serve only to feed our preconceptions.

Much of it comes in the form of excommunication art, such as One Of Us, a documentary that depicted the horrors of trying to leave a Chasidic

They scheme, »PQ] laugh and cry just like all of us