“Unorthodox” arrived on Netflix on March 26, 2020, with four episodes, one season, and a language problem that turned out to be its greatest asset. The German drama miniseries was created and written by Anna Winger and Alexa Karolinski and directed by Maria Schrader. It is the first Netflix series to be primarily in Yiddish. It is also, in its quiet way, one of the most disciplined pieces of television the platform has released.
Trailer, via Stream Source Trailers.
Esty Shapiro Leaves Williamsburg
The premise is simple and sharp. Esty Shapiro, played by Shira Haas, is a 19-year-old Jewish woman living unhappily in an arranged marriage among the Satmar sect of the ultra-Orthodox community in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. She runs away to Berlin, where her estranged mother lives. There she tries to navigate a secular life, discovering the world outside her community and rejecting the beliefs she grew up with.
That is the engine of all four episodes, and it never stalls. Haas carries the series on her face and in her posture. Esty is a woman learning what she is allowed to want, and Haas plays that discovery without sentimentality.
A Husband Crosses the Map
The counterweight is Yakov Shapiro, played by Amit Rahav. He learns Esty is pregnant. By order of their rabbi, he travels to Berlin with his cousin Moische Lefkovitch, played by Jeff Wilbusch, to find her. That chase gives the series its structure. It also gives it its tension.
The cast around them is deep: Alex Reid as Leah Mandelbaum Schwartz, Delia Mayer as Miriam Shapiro, Ronit Asheri as Malka Schwarz, Aaron Altaras as Robert, Dina Doron as Babby, David Mandelbaum as Zeidy, Gera Sandler as Mordecai Schwartz, Lili Rosen as Rabbi, and Tamar Amit-Joseph as Yael Roubeni. Each gets a face, a room, a reason to be there.
Esty is taken in by a group of musicians. That detail matters more than it sounds. Music is the one thing in Berlin that asks nothing of her past. It is also the thing her past cannot follow.
Eight Emmy Nominations, One Historic Win
The series received eight Primetime Emmy Award nominations. They included Outstanding Limited Series, Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series for Shira Haas, and Outstanding Writing for a Limited Series for Anna Winger. It won for Outstanding Directing for a Limited Series for Maria Schrader. That was the first ever Primetime Emmy for a German production.
That last fact is the one to sit with. A German production, made largely in Yiddish, about a Hasidic woman in Brooklyn, won American television’s top directing prize. The industry did not see this show coming, and then it could not stop handing it things.
Inspired by Deborah Feldman’s 2012 autobiography, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots, it is the first Netflix series to be primarily in Yiddish.
What the Four Episodes Get Right
The choice to keep the series at four episodes is the choice that saves it. There is no padding here. No episode exists to stretch a story that has already been told. Winger and Karolinski write to the length they need, and Schrader directs with a restraint that keeps the camera from gawking at a community it is examining.
The show is inspired by Deborah Feldman’s 2012 autobiography, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots. It does not pretend to be a documentary, and it does not need to. It is a drama built on a real departure, and it holds that line.
The weakest material is the Berlin side. Esty’s new world is drawn with affection, but the musicians are thinner than the family she left. The show knows where its weight is. It just does not always trust the lighter half to carry a scene.
The Score
This is the rare series where the awards and the reviews agree with the thing itself. Metacritic put it at 85 out of 100, and the published critical score lands at 8.5 out of 10. That is fair. Not generous, not stingy.
What matters is what “Unorthodox” proved. A story told mostly in Yiddish, about a Satmar woman from Williamsburg, could hold a global audience for four episodes and walk away with an Emmy that no German production had ever won. The language was not a barrier. It was the reason the show worked. The series never explains its world to outsiders. It simply lives in it, and lets Haas make the leaving feel like something a person would actually do.
The chase across Berlin is the plot. Esty’s face is the show. That is the part worth watching, and it is the part that will last.
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