Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on July 30, 2021

Over the past several years, shows portraying ultra-Orthodox Jewish life and some peoples desire to flee it have become increasingly popular. Following the success of one such show, Unorthodox,Netflix has recently released a new reality docuseries,My Unorthodox Life.

The show follows the adventures of its formerly Orthodox protagonist, Julia Haart, along with those of her children and new husband. As Julias nearly total reinvention of herself shows, if you find yourself on a path thats not taking you where you want to go, its never too late to forge a new one.

My Unorthodox Lifebears some striking resemblances to another recent popular Netflix show, Unorthodox,which was based on a memoir by Deborah Feldman. A formerly Hasidic Jew, Feldman fled her religious community and family in Brooklyn in 2006 and never went back.

In the case of My Unorthodox Life,the star of the show is Julia Haart, who also left her first husband and the strictness of her old way of life in 2013, eventually building a new life as the chief executive of modeling conglomerate Elite World Group.

A significant difference between Unorthodox and My Unorthodox Life is that the latter is primarily a reality series. Its star, Haart, makes for a typical protagonist of such a show. As Time notes:

Now a remarkably young 50, Julia is doing everything she didnt get to do in her 20s: wearing leather catsuits, talking constantly and graphically about sex, radiating big girlboss energy.

And shes doing much of this alongside the other important cast members of the show, her second husband, Italian businessman Silvio Scaglia Haart, and her four children.

What makes the dynamics onMy Unorthodox Lifeparticularly interesting are the different approaches that Haarts four children demonstrate toward both life and religion. Haarts oldest daughter, Batsheva, was raised entirely in Haarts former Orthodox enclave in Monsey. Now married, shes pursuing a more modern way of life as a TikTok influencer and struggling with her husband Ben over when to start a family.

Batshevas next-oldest sibling is her brother Shlomo. Shlomo recently graduated from Columbia and is shown dipping a toe in the dating world while hoping eventually to pursue a law degree. As Bustle reports, hes been trying to balance his Orthodox religion with other aspects of modern life. For example, while he still observes Shabbat, he recently stopped wearing the traditional Jewish yarmulke.

Miriam Haart is Julias other daughter and the most irreverent of the kids. Womens Health recently caught up with Miriam at Stanford, where shes now a student who is fundraising for her first marathon, in the hopes of raising money for the group Girl Up. An avid feminist, Miriam is also proudly bisexual, andMy Unorthodox Lifetakes viewers along as her dating life unfolds.

Finally, Haarts youngest child is Aron Hendler, a teen who lives with his father back in the community that Haart fled. Aron is by far the most Orthodox of the bunch, which at times creates tension with his mother on the show.

Certainly the most well-known of Haarts other family members is her current husband, Silvio Scaglia Haart, an Italian business mogul who built his fortune as the founder of the technology company FastWeb. Womens Health explains that the two met when Julia was working as creative director at the Italian lingerie company La Perla, where Scaglia was CEO. Though the two butted heads at first, a romance eventually bloomed, and they married in 2019.

Rounding out the list of Haarts family members on the show is Benn Weinstein, Batshevas husband. A New York real estate broker, Weinstein has slowly been distancing himself from his formerly ultra-Orthodox lifestyle while focusing on building his business success.

Finally, though not a family member, a fan favorite on the show is Robert Brotherton, COO of Elite World Group and Haarts right-hand man. As Esquire explains, one of the more touching subplots onMy Imperfect Lifeinvolves Brothertons quest to find his birth mother and concern about possibly disappointing his adoptive family. Suffice it to say that My Imperfect Lifegets the audience thinking about all sorts of family dynamics, not just those of the ultra-rich.

RELATED: The Stars of Netflixs Unorthodox Had the Cutest Reaction to the Shows Emmy Nomination

See original here:

'My Unorthodox Life': Meet the Cast Members of the New Netflix Series - Showbiz Cheat Sheet

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