Religious Jew Explains Why ＂MY UNORTHODOX LIFE＂ Is Hateful PROPAGANDA
Episode Stats
Words per minute
185.87769
Harmful content
Misogyny
24
sentences flagged
Toxicity
17
sentences flagged
Hate speech
29
sentences flagged
Summary
My Unorthodox Life is a reality show produced by Netflix about a woman leaving the religious Jewish community, and it s a problem. Today I want to break down why this show is a problem, why it s dangerous for Orthodox Jews, and why it's not even true.
Transcript
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Hello, Classic Crew, and welcome to my channel, where we talk about political and cultural
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topics of the day in an in-depth and relatable way.
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Today we're going to be talking about My Unorthodox Life.
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If you haven't heard of it, it's a reality show produced by Netflix about a woman leaving
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the religious Jewish community, and it's a problem.
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Today I want to break down why this show is a problem, why it's dangerous for Orthodox
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Before we get into today's video, make sure that you're subscribed to my channel and
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ring that notification bell, and if you haven't already subscribed to my Substack newsletter
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My Unorthodox Life is the story of Julia Hart, originally Talia Leboff.
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Julia Hart was born in Russia, moved to Muncie, and then moved to Atlanta.
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Although the way that she tells it, at least in the first episode of My Unorthodox Life,
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is that she spent her entire Jewish life in the city of Muncie.
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She decided that she wanted to leave the Jewish community in order to start a shoe brand,
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then a lingerie brand, and she is now a girl boss at Elite World Group, which is a modeling
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She and three of her four children have now left the Orthodox Jewish community in Muncie,
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and one of her children spends half of his time with his father in Muncie and half of
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Now, the way she makes it sound is that she decided that she needed to leave the Jewish
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She was feeling very overwhelmed, suicidal, when she felt that her daughter, her youngest
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daughter, Miriam, wasn't being allowed to express herself, aka that she was a bisexual.
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So she left her husband and brought her daughter with her and went to start her own shoe company.
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When she started her own shoe company, with what she says is little to no education, she
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was able to get enough prestige that she was able to run La Perla, which is a lingerie company,
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something that made her very happy, because when she left the Jewish community, she wanted
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So she slept with as many people as she could.
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But she wanted to dress in as inappropriate a way as possible.
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She met an Italian man named Silvio that she married.
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He took her last name, Hart, which she had changed her name to Hart when she left the Jewish
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community, because Liebhoff in Yiddish is Hart in English.
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So that's a little bit of background on Julia Hart.
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She calls religious Judaism fundamentalism, and she is as secular as they come.
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She wants to talk about sex with her kids.
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This is a woman who has left behind everything that Judaism means.
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She really just wants to be able to use Judaism for its cultural, fun traditions.
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Everything that Judaism actually stands for, all of the actual practices, she wants to leave
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Now, something that I want to say is that going on a religious journey, I have no issue
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I personally, if you've watched my channel before, you know that I have gone on a religious
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I believed in God, and there were certain things that I still practiced.
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And I am now currently on my way back to my faith.
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So the show follows her transition from the religious Jewish community into the very secular
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Manhattan world that she's now a part of, and her rejection of normal morality.
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tried it yourself, and thanks again to Simple for sponsoring this portion of today's video.
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So before we get into the way the show lies about Judaism, and the way that Julia Hart
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lies about her experience with Judaism and Judaism itself, we have to understand how
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Hart actually lives, and what she thinks liberation looks like.
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It's actually very telling that this is the kind of person who thinks that religious
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Julia Hart is a 50-year-old woman who defines her freedom in sexual mores and immodesty.
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She thinks that the acme of life is sex, and that the way for her to express her personal
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freedom is by wearing as little clothing as possible.
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So to me, every low-cut top, every miniskirt is an emblem of freedom.
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So in the first episode, we see her encouraging her bisexual daughter to go out and hook up
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We see her encouraging her son, who's a virgin and was waiting until marriage to have sex,
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to kiss girls, hook up, have sex with who he wants to.
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We see her talking about how important vibrators are, and openly talking about this with her
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We see her get angry at her son-in-law for having any standards about modesty when it
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And she talks about sexuality like it's just the most important thing.
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That's really the big takeaway from the first episode.
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So this is what takes the place of religion in Hart's life, is just sexuality and immodesty,
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and really living for the senses and the present, and not taking into account anything that
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It's also really important to understand that even though Hart grew up in the religious
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Jewish community, it doesn't seem like she understands what the religious Jewish community
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is all about, and many of the laws that she talks about.
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She doesn't really understand where they come from.
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She talks about them in a very vague way from an outside perspective.
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Literally, she talks about the things that she supposedly practiced from the view of someone
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who never actually practiced it, from an outside eye.
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A good example of Julia Hart's limited knowledge of Judaism is that L'chaim does not mean to
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And it doesn't prove to me that she ever understood what the purpose of any of these
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When she talks about modesty, she talks about it like it's an oppressive system only meant
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to stop men from getting turned on by women's bodies.
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And if you want to know more about my thoughts about modesty, I will link something up here
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in the i and down below in the description box, because I've done many videos on why
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It comes from a place of treating ourselves like princesses.
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In another scene, her assistant asks her if there are rules for sex, and she says, of course
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There's rules about which shoe you're supposed to tie first, just to give you an idea.
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Does she know why we're supposed to tie one shoe before the other?
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We are told to tie the left shoe before the right because the left side represents mercy,
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And we are supposed to have more mercy than we're supposed to have judgment.
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The show wants you to believe that Hart's story is a compelling narrative of a woman
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leaving her community because she was oppressed and finding freedom and liberation in the modern
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A woman wrote an open letter to Hart because she grew up in the same community and her sister
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And she alleges that much of what Julia Hart has to say about her time in Muncie is just
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Apparently, Hart used to dance at their high school.
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She was known for dressing really well in the community.
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No one got upset at her for expressing herself in a modest way.
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Hart accuses Basiakov, her high school, of not giving her an education and not teaching
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This woman says that she got great scores on her regents, attended the college of her
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choice, and some of her classes even gave her college credit.
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She talks about the fact that in her community, many women have jobs, including her, and that
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you're not only allowed to be a wife and mother.
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She also talks about the fact that at the time, people watched movies, people read magazines.
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Julia Hart talks about it as if none of that was allowed.
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She never watched a show until she was in her 30s.
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It seems that Hart has rewritten the past in order to make her narrative even more intense.
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And the fact of the matter is, Jewish women don't appreciate it.
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To me, it seems that Hart never really made an effort to understand the Judaism she grew
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She wants to talk about it like an expert because she lived among Jews for much of her
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But if you don't understand why you're doing what you're doing, and then you go out and
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purport to be an expert, that's a real problem.
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And it's not reflective of what religious Judaism is all about.
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The show wants us to believe that this is a liberation story of an oppressed woman who
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left a backwards religion so that she could join modern feminism and find fulfillment personally,
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professionally, and sexually in a way that she never could have accomplished had she stayed
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What we see instead is a woman who cares only about herself, who's cynical, who doesn't
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want the best for her family, or what she thinks is the best for her family is definitely
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And that she has lied, misrepresented, or misunderstood everything that she was from in order to make
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And that might be fine if it was just about her.
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It might be fine for her story to be just her story.
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But she's throwing an entire religious community under the bus.
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The problem with shows like My Unorthodox Life and Unorthodox is that, to the average person,
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this is a true representation of the religious Jewish community.
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And how many people are going to know that this isn't correct?
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A religious Jew will watch a show like this and immediately be able to pick out all of
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But the fact of the matter is, the average person who's watching it thinks this is a
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And if the religious community is represented as patriarchal, hateful of women, insular,
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backwards, then why wouldn't they judge that community?
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The result is that people will form an opinion based on the story of a woman who doesn't
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understand Judaism and who thinks that sex is the most important thing in her life.
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So if Julia Hart is lying about Judaism, what is Judaism really like?
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I grew up in a modern Orthodox Jewish community.
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And the way that Julia Hart talks about the Jewish community doesn't add up.
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Yes, there were times that it was more difficult.
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And I'm grateful that I grew up in the religious Jewish community.
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And I'm grateful that I've had the opportunity to explore my faith more over time.
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Are women relegated to second-class citizens?
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In the most observant Jewish communities, you still have women working full-time jobs.
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You have women who are in powerful positions.
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But the role of women in the Jewish community is really important from a communal aspect.
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We respect women as mothers, as homemakers, and as the builders of community.
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Women have so much power in the community.
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We give them so much respect for having children and raising them to be good, strong members of society.
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Being a Jewish woman doesn't mean you can't have a career.
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It doesn't mean you can't work outside of the home.
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But it also means that being a wife and a mother and being a strong part of your community makes you important.
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And it doesn't make you less important than any man.
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Not only do we have the opportunity to work if we want to,
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but the role we have as mother, as community member, and as wife is so respected.
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where staying at home and being a mother is seen as less important.
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We're putting back the cause of women 100 years.
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I am so grateful that I am in a community that views motherhood as an incredible gift
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And if you're curious about marriage and if it's patriarchal in the Jewish community,
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go ahead and go back to my last video where I talked about if marriage is a patriarchal institution.
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Especially in the Jewish community, you'll find that that's definitely not the case.
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So shows like My Unorthodox Life are really dangerous for religious Jews.
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People will come away thinking that they know exactly what Judaism is like and why it's such a problem
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when they know nothing about religious Jews and nothing about Orthodox Judaism.
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This show is meant to reach people who don't know a lot about religious Judaism
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and present the opinions of one woman who left the Jewish community
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as an important reflection on the insular and backwards practices of religious Jews.
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Of course that gives people the impression that religious Judaism is insular and is oppressive.
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How often in real life are you going to either meet a religious Jew
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or even participate in a religious Jewish community?
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Unlike secular Jews, who are in the media all the time,
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religious Jews make up 10% of American Jews, which is 650,000 people.
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And religious Jews are focused on raising their families, being part of their communities,
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studying Torah, and the result is that the vast majority of people
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who learn something about religious Jews are learning it from someone who left it and hates it
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So when a woman who is living a degenerate life and is being bankrolled by Netflix
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is telling her story of leaving the oppressive Jewish community,
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There's already so much violence against Jews in America.
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This is only going to give people permission to do more.
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The violence comes from ignorant, racist people who believe conspiracy theories about Jews
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and who nurse old ethnic hatreds of Jews from years past.
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But now we're allowing those who might not act violently themselves to tolerate violence against Jews
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After the show aired, a group of religious Jewish women started the hashtag MyOrthodoxLife
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and why shows like this are not representative of their experience.
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They've chosen to be religious and they love being religious.
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They've chosen to dress modestly and they don't find dressing modestly to be oppressive.
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They've chosen to get married and have children and to make that their primary goal.
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My Unorthodox Life is a ridiculous, self-indulgent reality show
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about a woman who left Judaism and who seems to have had little to no understanding of it in the first place.
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She wanted fame and Netflix gave it to her.
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She wanted to live her hedonistic little life and Netflix is allowing her to do so in the public eye.
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All of this has been laundered by Netflix into a reality show that is harmful and bad for religious Jews.
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Let me know in the comments below if you've heard of this show, if you've watched this show.
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If you're not already subscribed to my YouTube channel, make sure that you are and ring that notification bell.
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And if you haven't already subscribed to my Substack newsletter, make sure to do so.
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If you'd like to follow me on social media, it's at Classically Abby Absolutely Everywhere.
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Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you guys in my next video.