In my life as a rabbi, it’s quite common for me to hear Jews passionately expressing their dissatisfaction with the latest portrayal of Jews in the mass media: from the Netflix film “You People” to The New York Times coverage of Hasidic schools to Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s gleeful promotion of Jewish anti-LGBTQ influencer Chaya Raichik.
While representations of Jews do, indeed, vary, I believe the reason my community so often gets so fired up by these depictions is that we know most people watching, reading and scrolling won’t get to witness the actual nuances of Orthodox Judaism.
Having been a seeker all my life, I found myself long ago trying out the whole array of flavors of Jewish life, from living as a Religious Zionist in the West Bank to ultra-Orthodox in a black hat community, ultimately landing, when I was 25 years old, as modern Orthodox. I was seeking a deep and divinely commanded commitment to religious practice, yet at the same time, I required a high degree of openness to the non-Jewish world. I was looking not for seclusion but for the opportunity to learn from and contribute to society at large. And yet, due to Orthodox Judaism remaining a relatively small world, I still find myself frequently hearing the concerns of people across the wide spectrum of congregations.
