//Literary & Arts//
Spring 2020
Spring 2020
Fetishization and Failure:
The Awakening of Motti Wolknebruch and the depiction of Hasidic Jewry in television and film
Daniel Meadvin

The film, television, and literary worlds have developed a fetish for Orthodox Jews, especially Hasidic Jews. It makes sense. Rigid, eccentric community and family structures are a convenient backdrop for intense character drama, and Hasidic communities certainly fit that bill.
In this burgeoning genre, television series like Shtisel, and a slew of books like Shulem Deen’s All Who Go Do Not Return and Chaim Potok’s The Chosen (although not quite contemporary) have encouraged us to approach Hassidic culture as any culture deserves to be approached, with nuance. Orthodox Jewish stories, we’ve come to expect, can be entertaining without sacrificing depth of content.
The Awakening of Motti Wolkenbruch, a recent film from this growing class, defied these expectations. Not pleasantly so.
The film, whose original Swiss-German title was Wolkenbruch’s Wondrous Journey Into the Arms of a Shiksa before being adapted for American audiences, was actually Switzerland’s foreign-film submission for the 2020 Oscars. It delves into the eponymous Motti’s exodus from ultra-Orthodox Jewish religious life in Zurich. But in contrast to some of its predecessors in the genre, the film doesn’t delve into the struggles of leaving Orthodoxy so much as timidly floats around them.
Motti’s departure comes quickly and unexpectedly. His issues with his religion and community aren’t the result of some theological or cultural crisis. In fact, his family and friends are goofy caricatures of the culture they’re meant to portray. He merely jettisons it all as a consequence of falling for Laura, the cute, non-Jewish girl from his college. In the film, that’s about all she is; her entire character is essentially two traits: she’s attractive, and she’s not Jewish. Motti’s interest in her is decidedly not based on her personality, her intellect, or anything else. He explains his affections to the audience in a fourth-wall break: Jewish girls, he notes, just don’t look like Laura. So great, it seems, is his infatuation with her, that he starts himself on a journey away from his upbringing. He shaves his beard, buys less Jewish glasses (which I didn’t realize was even a thing), and has drinks with this girl, a non-Jew with whom his strict practice of Judaism forbids him from engaging. Within days, maybe weeks, of speaking to Laura, he’s lost most traces of his former culture. This plot fails to do justice to the complexity of someone like Motti’s transition, broadly categorizing all things Jewish as boring or oppressive and all things non-Jewish as attractive but insubstantial.
Unlike other media--classic and contemporary--that describe leaving Orthodox Judaism, The Awakening of Motti Wolkenbruch offers us little genuine engagement with the forms of life and psychology of the characters. These other tales, fiction and memoir alike, intimately address the pain, confusion, and sometimes regret associated with leaving the community that has been one’s family. Even the Netflix documentary One of Us, which was criticized by some for harboring an anti-Hasidic bias in its retelling of three ex-Hasidic stories, admits that one loses a network of support and care when they leave such a tight-knit community.
What does Motti Wolkenbruch lose when he leaves? Jewish food, which the movie riffs on for being bland. Jewish style that’s depicted as awkward and ugly. Social and religious guidelines presented as quirkily annoying if not overbearing. What seems to upset him the most is actually that his non-Jewish girlfriend, for whom he left the fold, tells him they’re moving too fast and distances herself from him.
The film approaches richer content in one scene when Motti, crying, unpacks in his hotel room after he’s been expelled from his family home. He throws his new, secular clothes on the floor in a fit of anger. We get a brief taste of what the movie could be: an emotional account of whether secular pleasures are worth abandoning the assurances of one’s home and community. Motti dons his yarmulke once again and recites the shema, a brief comfort, before pulling it back off and crying himself to sleep. A conversation with his father the following morning evokes strong emotion as well. The scene suggests Motti’s contentious relationship with his roots. We get a glimpse of a real story, a human story.
But all good things must end. This scene which verges on real depth is followed by a visit to Frau Silberzweig, Motti’s wealthy, dying client--his family has an insurance business--with an unexplained affinity for Tarot cards. She asks Motti what has ended since his last visit and he responds, “everything.” Her cliched answer, “good... Now you have room for everything,” hits like an adage you’d find on the back of a tea box: one door closes and another opens. The minimization of Motti’s loss in this penultimate scene kills any hope that the film’s final minutes will genuinely wrestle with his mixed emotions. Unsurprisingly, in the last scene, a depressed Motti sitting in a park (a cliched symbol of new growth, perhaps?) receives a call from the beautiful Laura and lets a smile onto his face; he wears no yarmulke. Like something out of an absurdist’s dream, we end where we began: confused by Motti’s unrelenting commitment to Laura, and without any justification for it.
I don’t care about the story’s conclusion. Motti could marry Laura or delete her number and go back home for all it matters to me. My complaint: there was no thoughtful or nuanced engagement with the complexity of Motti’s experience.
The Awakening of Motti Wolkenbruch defied expectations, but not in a gratifying way. This film whose title and genre promised some tangible depth gave me an hour and a half of jocular tension, one or two poignant moments, and not very much else.
Fans of Netflix’s Unorthodox, another recent addition to the Ultra-Orthodox genre, may have noticed a similar lack of profundity in that show. The miniseries, which is only vaguely related to the memoir it’s based on, forgoes any effort of bilateralism in favor of what I can only assume was the broadest brush the producers could find. Just as there are no non-comedic Orthodox characters in The Awakening of Motti Wolkenbruch, in which a yarmulke may as well be a Jester’s cap, there are no sympathetic ones in Unorthodox. Except, of course, Esther; she is allowed to be Orthodox and sympathetic, because she becomes disillusioned. The series enjoyed rave reviews. What for?
That this genre, still in its infancy, has such a reductive trend concerns me. This past year we’ve witnessed violent assaults against Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn and Rockland County, for the past decade New York City and State have been moving to upheave traditional Hasidic schools, and even now Hasidic Jews in New York City are being unfairly singled out as surreptitious spreaders of Covid-19. Increasing people’s familiarity with Ultra-Orthodox Jews is a good thing; theirs is a culture foreign to most, but with many worthwhile ideals and values. In the expanding portrayal of the ‘very’ Orthodox in writing and on screen, that exact depth is something these mediums should strive to emphasize or simply include, certainly not dismiss.
//DANIEL MEADVIN is a first year in Columbia College. He can be reached at [email protected].
Image courtesy of Isidore Kauffman ‘Young Rabbi from N’ circa 1910 courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
In this burgeoning genre, television series like Shtisel, and a slew of books like Shulem Deen’s All Who Go Do Not Return and Chaim Potok’s The Chosen (although not quite contemporary) have encouraged us to approach Hassidic culture as any culture deserves to be approached, with nuance. Orthodox Jewish stories, we’ve come to expect, can be entertaining without sacrificing depth of content.
The Awakening of Motti Wolkenbruch, a recent film from this growing class, defied these expectations. Not pleasantly so.
The film, whose original Swiss-German title was Wolkenbruch’s Wondrous Journey Into the Arms of a Shiksa before being adapted for American audiences, was actually Switzerland’s foreign-film submission for the 2020 Oscars. It delves into the eponymous Motti’s exodus from ultra-Orthodox Jewish religious life in Zurich. But in contrast to some of its predecessors in the genre, the film doesn’t delve into the struggles of leaving Orthodoxy so much as timidly floats around them.
Motti’s departure comes quickly and unexpectedly. His issues with his religion and community aren’t the result of some theological or cultural crisis. In fact, his family and friends are goofy caricatures of the culture they’re meant to portray. He merely jettisons it all as a consequence of falling for Laura, the cute, non-Jewish girl from his college. In the film, that’s about all she is; her entire character is essentially two traits: she’s attractive, and she’s not Jewish. Motti’s interest in her is decidedly not based on her personality, her intellect, or anything else. He explains his affections to the audience in a fourth-wall break: Jewish girls, he notes, just don’t look like Laura. So great, it seems, is his infatuation with her, that he starts himself on a journey away from his upbringing. He shaves his beard, buys less Jewish glasses (which I didn’t realize was even a thing), and has drinks with this girl, a non-Jew with whom his strict practice of Judaism forbids him from engaging. Within days, maybe weeks, of speaking to Laura, he’s lost most traces of his former culture. This plot fails to do justice to the complexity of someone like Motti’s transition, broadly categorizing all things Jewish as boring or oppressive and all things non-Jewish as attractive but insubstantial.
Unlike other media--classic and contemporary--that describe leaving Orthodox Judaism, The Awakening of Motti Wolkenbruch offers us little genuine engagement with the forms of life and psychology of the characters. These other tales, fiction and memoir alike, intimately address the pain, confusion, and sometimes regret associated with leaving the community that has been one’s family. Even the Netflix documentary One of Us, which was criticized by some for harboring an anti-Hasidic bias in its retelling of three ex-Hasidic stories, admits that one loses a network of support and care when they leave such a tight-knit community.
What does Motti Wolkenbruch lose when he leaves? Jewish food, which the movie riffs on for being bland. Jewish style that’s depicted as awkward and ugly. Social and religious guidelines presented as quirkily annoying if not overbearing. What seems to upset him the most is actually that his non-Jewish girlfriend, for whom he left the fold, tells him they’re moving too fast and distances herself from him.
The film approaches richer content in one scene when Motti, crying, unpacks in his hotel room after he’s been expelled from his family home. He throws his new, secular clothes on the floor in a fit of anger. We get a brief taste of what the movie could be: an emotional account of whether secular pleasures are worth abandoning the assurances of one’s home and community. Motti dons his yarmulke once again and recites the shema, a brief comfort, before pulling it back off and crying himself to sleep. A conversation with his father the following morning evokes strong emotion as well. The scene suggests Motti’s contentious relationship with his roots. We get a glimpse of a real story, a human story.
But all good things must end. This scene which verges on real depth is followed by a visit to Frau Silberzweig, Motti’s wealthy, dying client--his family has an insurance business--with an unexplained affinity for Tarot cards. She asks Motti what has ended since his last visit and he responds, “everything.” Her cliched answer, “good... Now you have room for everything,” hits like an adage you’d find on the back of a tea box: one door closes and another opens. The minimization of Motti’s loss in this penultimate scene kills any hope that the film’s final minutes will genuinely wrestle with his mixed emotions. Unsurprisingly, in the last scene, a depressed Motti sitting in a park (a cliched symbol of new growth, perhaps?) receives a call from the beautiful Laura and lets a smile onto his face; he wears no yarmulke. Like something out of an absurdist’s dream, we end where we began: confused by Motti’s unrelenting commitment to Laura, and without any justification for it.
I don’t care about the story’s conclusion. Motti could marry Laura or delete her number and go back home for all it matters to me. My complaint: there was no thoughtful or nuanced engagement with the complexity of Motti’s experience.
The Awakening of Motti Wolkenbruch defied expectations, but not in a gratifying way. This film whose title and genre promised some tangible depth gave me an hour and a half of jocular tension, one or two poignant moments, and not very much else.
Fans of Netflix’s Unorthodox, another recent addition to the Ultra-Orthodox genre, may have noticed a similar lack of profundity in that show. The miniseries, which is only vaguely related to the memoir it’s based on, forgoes any effort of bilateralism in favor of what I can only assume was the broadest brush the producers could find. Just as there are no non-comedic Orthodox characters in The Awakening of Motti Wolkenbruch, in which a yarmulke may as well be a Jester’s cap, there are no sympathetic ones in Unorthodox. Except, of course, Esther; she is allowed to be Orthodox and sympathetic, because she becomes disillusioned. The series enjoyed rave reviews. What for?
That this genre, still in its infancy, has such a reductive trend concerns me. This past year we’ve witnessed violent assaults against Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn and Rockland County, for the past decade New York City and State have been moving to upheave traditional Hasidic schools, and even now Hasidic Jews in New York City are being unfairly singled out as surreptitious spreaders of Covid-19. Increasing people’s familiarity with Ultra-Orthodox Jews is a good thing; theirs is a culture foreign to most, but with many worthwhile ideals and values. In the expanding portrayal of the ‘very’ Orthodox in writing and on screen, that exact depth is something these mediums should strive to emphasize or simply include, certainly not dismiss.
//DANIEL MEADVIN is a first year in Columbia College. He can be reached at [email protected].
Image courtesy of Isidore Kauffman ‘Young Rabbi from N’ circa 1910 courtesy of Wikimedia Commons