posted 20th May 2024
Take two films, from that well-known sub-genre Dramas About Young Women Called Esty Rebelling Against Their Orthodox Jewish Upbringing. The first is Unorthodox, a Netflix miniseries released in 2020; the second is Disobedience, a 2017 film based on the novel of the same name by Naomi Alderman.
In Unorthodox, the main character, Esty, walks out of her marriage one day. This means leaving not just her husband, but a whole community - the tight knit Orthodox Jewish community in New York where she has lived all her life. She takes a plane to Berlin, where her mother, who cut herself off from her Orthodox Jewish heritage many years before, now lives. Important men from her community are dispatched to Germany to bring her back. Will they succeed?
In Disobedience, Ronit has also rejected her Orthodox Jewish upbringing. She left London for New York in disgrace after the discovery that she was in a relationship with Esty, a woman from her community. Her shame was compounded by her being the only child of the community’s rabbi. Then she hears that her father has died. She returns to London, to find that Esty is now married to Dovid, their childhood friend. Ronit and Esty rekindle their romance. Esty respects and admires her husband, but she does not love him. Should she follow her heart and run away to New York with Ronit, or stay loyal to her faith, which teaches her that homosexuality is a sin?
Unorthodox is a closed story; Disobedience is an open story. What do I mean by that?
Unorthodox is a gripping, exciting film, with lots of dramatic tension. We really care about whether or not Esty manages to make good her escape from her claustrophobic community, and we can’t be sure she’ll succeed. But it doesn’t make you think. There is no debate about whose side we are meant to be on. Esty is never anything but brave and principled, it is always obvious that she has done the right thing by running away from her upbringing, and the men sent to fetch her back are quickly revealed to be brutish hypocrites, sliding into drinking and womanising as soon as they are away from home.
In Disobedience, on the other hand, there is a proper debate going on. Esty’s love for Ronit is profound, beautiful, and utterly convincing. But so too is her love for God. Her faith, and the community that represents it, are both presented with deep respect. She really, really wants to be with Ronit; but at the same time she really, really doesn’t want to do something that, she believes, God doesn’t want her to do. And it’s not obvious what is the right choice for her. The majority of people in the UK in 2024 (including many religious believers, from all faiths) don’t believe that same-sex relationships are a sin. But some do. You may think they’re wrong. But they’re not all stupid and / or evil. It is the great achievement of Disobedience to make us see both sides of Esty’s internal debate, and to be forced to weigh them equally.
A good debate is a kind of open story. As you listen to a good debate, or even better take part in one, you go back and forth between the two sides of the story, first sympathising with one, then with the other. If it’s a well matched debate, with strong speakers on both sides, then at the end of it you will not have made up your mind, because it will not be obvious which side is right. That will be because both sides are right, just in different ways.
Too many debates in today’s world are closed stories. They set up one side as right and the other side as wrong. There may be some excitement in seeing the ‘right’ side triumph, just as there is excitement in watching Unorthodox’s Esty trying to evade her evil pursuers, but there is very little enlightenment. You will have your prejudices confirmed if you are on the ‘right’ side, and you will feel outraged if you are on the ‘wrong’ side. But you won’t learn much. When, on the other hand, you listen to a debate which is an open story, where both sides are treated with equal respect, as the competing demands of Esty’s love for Ronit and her love for God are in Disobedience, you will have a very different experience. You may have to work harder - thinking is more difficult than swinging between smugness and anger - but you will learn much, much more. And you will find yourself understanding other people more. If we had more open stories in our culture, more proper debates, there would be less hatred and more empathy; less ignorance and more understanding. There would be more chance of us working together to solve our shared problems. Now wouldn’t that be a good thing?
I’m not going to tell you what Esty decides to do at the end of Disobedience. Watch it for yourself, and see if you think she makes the right choice. And keep an open mind, this day and always
