{"id":789,"date":"2008-07-31T21:55:50","date_gmt":"2008-07-31T19:55:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/?p=789"},"modified":"2009-12-28T21:56:48","modified_gmt":"2009-12-28T19:56:48","slug":"new-tv-show-attempts-to-bridge-the-religious-secular-divide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/2008\/07\/new-tv-show-attempts-to-bridge-the-religious-secular-divide\/","title":{"rendered":"New TV Show Attempts to Bridge the Religious Secular Divide"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>A new TV show that debuted earlier this month on the Israeli satellite company YES<\/a> is the talk of the town across certain sectors of southern Jerusalem. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Srugim\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (in English: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153knitted kippas\u00e2\u20ac\u009d) is an extraordinarily accurate depiction of the religious singles scene in Jerusalem.<\/p>\n

Set in our own neighborhood (Katamon and the German Colony in particular), the show chronicles the trials and tribulations of trying to find one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s place in the grueling \u00e2\u20ac\u0153swamp\u00e2\u20ac\u009d that represents the modern Orthodox world in Jerusalem.<\/p>\n

Though the show is about Israel singles, Anglos in the city will easily recognize their own lives, between coffee dates at local cafes, shul hopping and the ubiquitous plastic bags containing quiches, humus and drinks that singles carry around on Shabbat as they head to a group meal with other like minded young people.<\/p>\n

Srugim is peppered with location shots of local hangouts. And the dumpy apartments with their tiny kitchens will be uncomfortably familiar to anyone who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ever been single in Jerusalem.<\/p>\n

The show has caught on not just with religious residents of the capital. The Muqata blog reports that the series has received rave reviews<\/a> from publications across the religious\/secular divide including Achbar Ha’ir, Maariv, NRG, and others.<\/p>\n

That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s because the acting and writing is uniformly excellent. While the show is essentially a soap opera, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s certainly not as trashy as hop in and out of bed programs such as the infamous Ramat Aviv Gimel<\/a>. Imagine Melrose Place<\/a>\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6with yarmulkes.<\/p>\n

Director Laizey Shapiro has gone to great lengths to make sure even the finest details are reliable. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Every time religious people are presented on the screen, the kippa is in the wrong angle or the text doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t make sense,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Shapira told the Yediot Ahronot newspaper<\/a>. All the more important given that all of the actors in the show are secular.<\/p>\n

Shapira is a 32-year-old religious bachelor. He attended the Ma’ale School of Television, Film and the Arts<\/a>, the only religious film program in the country. The series was originally titled \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Sex and the Holy City\u00e2\u20ac\u009d because, as Shapira says, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t ignore the sex issue because I would be ignoring reality. (Nevertheless) there is something pretty special in the fact that you can see such things in a series on religious people.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

So far the show has focused more on dates than sex. Srugim revolves around five main characters. Hodaya and Yifat are roommates. Yifat has a crush on Nati, the cute 30-something but immature doctor who keeps standing her up. Amir likes Re\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ut but she wants to keep it as just friends. Hodaya is going out with a non-religious professor at Hebrew University.<\/p>\n

Some of the best situations concern the clash between tradition and modernity. In perhaps the show\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s most infamous scene to date, Hodaya brings a date home after midnight. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s drunk and he lives out of the city, so he sleeps in her room (we assume nothing else happened).<\/p>\n

In the morning when he crawls out of bed (to Yifat\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s horror \u00e2\u20ac\u201c \u00e2\u20ac\u0153we have rules here, Hodaya\u00e2\u20ac\u009d), he asks the roommates if they have a pair of tefillin. They don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t but they knock on the door of their next-door neighbor, a heavily accented American woman who offers her tefillin to him. Hodaya\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s date rejects the offer dismissively. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not about to use a “Reform lesbian\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s tefillin,” he huffs, his religious sleep over hypocrisy notwithstanding.<\/p>\n

Nati is asked to join a minha minyan at the hospital where he works. He bristles at the request \u00e2\u20ac\u201c he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d prefer to spend his free time napping. However, when he notices that the kashrut license for the lobby sandwich vendor\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s kiosk is suspicious, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not so meek. He reports it to the Rabbinate, which quickly results in the kiosk proprietor\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sacking.<\/p>\n

Yifat meets a cute guy with a kippa and asks him out. He tells her he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not for her \u00e2\u20ac\u201c he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not religious. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Do you keep Shabbat,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she asks. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Yes,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he responds. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Do you keep kashrut?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Yes. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153So how are you not religious?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153In ways you wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t like.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d As he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s leaving, he tries to give Yifat a peck on the cheek. She recoils. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Now you get it,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he says.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the most conflicted of the bunch is Hodaya who starts dating a non-religious professor. She can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t bring herself to tell him she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s religious. He asks her out to a movie on Friday night. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Shabbat?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she asks, then adds hastily that she has \u00e2\u20ac\u0153other plans,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d not that she doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t go to movies on Friday night. In a later scene, her beau cooks her up a plate of his special spaghetti with meatballs. He sprinkles cheese on top and urges her to try it. Will she eat it or not? We found ourselves screaming at the screen \u00e2\u20ac\u201c “don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do it, Hodaya!” She takes a tiny bite and promptly runs to the bathroom to retch.<\/p>\n

Director Shapira was asked in his Yediot interview about his own personal dating do\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s and don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ts as a religious single. He responds honestly. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153With us everything is much more dissolvable in terms of keeping a distance. It also looks very ridiculous \u00e2\u20ac\u201c even though this is Jewish law. People are beginning to cut corners. Many more people are saying out loud that they cannot go out with a girl and not touch her. I’m not talking about sex, although there are those who go there as well. Several years ago I would say this is absolutely impossible, but things change.”<\/p>\n

If you missed an episode, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not in Israel or you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have YES, you can catch Srugim online: http:\/\/yes.walla.co.il\/srugim<\/a> (the show is in Hebrew, no English subtitles).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new TV show that debuted earlier this month on the Israeli satellite company YES is the talk of the town across certain sectors of southern Jerusalem. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Srugim\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (in English: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153knitted kippas\u00e2\u20ac\u009d) is an extraordinarily accurate depiction of the religious singles scene in Jerusalem. Set in our own neighborhood (Katamon and the German Colony in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=789"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":791,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789\/revisions\/791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}