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On a new Israeli TV show, the secret lives of Orthodox Jewish atheists
When we think about “off-the-derech” Jews, those who have left Orthodoxy behind, we tend to think of rebellious youths in their teens and 20s, those who party and do drugs to shed the religious yoke. But there’s another category of Jews who’ve left the fold, ones who’ve lost their faith and yet remain Haredi. First documented in “The Impostors Among Us,” a 2011 article published in Ami magazine by the pseudonymous Raphael Borges, this category of “duplicitous, heretical infiltrators” are now the subject of a new Israeli TV show from Kan, Behasture, which translates to “In Hiding.” The show’s English language title is Ambiguity.
Set during the height of the COVID pandemic, Behasture opens with Rochal’e intentionally catching the virus to gain access to a quarantine apartment. Accompanied by her mother, we see her enter a space for Haredi women dressed in full modesty garb. However, the moment her mother exits the compound, the transformation begins. The women remove their sheitels and frumpy dresses to reveal their hidden secular selves. Men emerge from adjoining rooms. They’re all secret heretics, and this compound is their Ir Miklat, their safe refuge.
While the article in Ami called these Jews “fifth columnists,” on their secret Internet blogs, they usually refer to themselves as “in the closet” or “orthoprax.” In Israel, they are called “anusim” (forced ones), inverting the term used for crypto-Jews, who believed in Judaism but were forced to act Christian. By staying in their Orthodox communities, the anusim become ghosts going through the motions of Haredi life; no one can truly see them, and no one knows their true thoughts. Secret apartments like the one featured in Behasture are the only places they can be themselves.
Although their belief in God has fallen away, they remain deeply culturally Haredi. They say traditional blessings before eating or drinking, and give dazzling Torah sermons while holding shrimp up to their mouths. As viewers, we get a voyeuristic peek into this liminal space which straddles the boundaries between Haredi and secular. There’s something surreal, uncanny even, about watching a character with a beard and curly peyos but without a yarmulka, or a woman in a tank top strumming her guitar to Hasidic niggunim.
The theme song that opens each episode, the Shabbos standard “Lecha Dodi,” sung soulfully to the tune of “The House of the Rising Sun,” represents this blend of secularism and holiness. Singing happens frequently at the compound where the men and women sing heartfelt Hasidic melodies, dance together and enjoy treyf, relishing in their small freedoms. At the head of this secret family are Yossi Zuchmir and Aviva, who serve as father and mother figures.
The story of Aviva, the matronly woman who plies everyone with delicious food and emotional support, is explored in just a handful of scenes. Zuchmir, however, plays a central role in each episode and is perhaps the show’s most intriguing character. He hasn’t believed for a long time, but he refuses to leave the Haredi world. Instead of dealing with the family issues at home that a life of secrets causes, he’s having an affair with another woman at the compound: Gitty, his Rebbe’s wife.
Zuchmir finds meaning in these in-between spaces and exults in his small community of anusim who treat him as their Hasidic Rebbe. He mourns the members of the compound who leave for the secular world, and fails to see the tragedy in a life full of secrecy and lies. When a fellow member’s teenage daughter wants to join the anusim, Zuchmir trills about the prospect of a “father-daughter” duo, even as the girl’s father warns her off this torturous path.
In Ayala Fader’s 2020 landmark study, Hidden Heretics, which explores the lives of these secret non-believers, the author identifies two areas that lead to doubt: social issues, and intellectual ones. While these categories sometimes intersect, they are usually split along gender lines. Men, who are socialized around Talmudic debate, usually tend to frame their doubt as a more intellectual, text-based journey. The doubts of women, who are barred from reading the Talmud, are often a reaction to the crushing burden placed on wives in the Haredi community, or sometimes to covered-up sexual crimes.
In Behasture too, the male characters’ doubts stem from intellectualizing; one character even references Spinoza. Their issues come only after they lose their faith. The women, on the other hand, face challenges in their patriarchal homes: Michal joins the compound to escape her abusive husband; Sarah is forced to admit to her husband that she’s both a secret atheist and a lesbian; Gitty’s arc accurately portrays the cover-up of sexual abuse in the Haredi community and the trauma that follows.
One scene in particular highlights the intense intellectual socialization men receive in yeshiva. When Gitty’s husband discovers she’s having an affair with Zuchmir, his reaction isn’t one of heartbreak, but of legalistic contextualization. According to Halacha (Jewish law), a woman who cheats is forbidden to her husband. He quotes rabbinic texts to prove that halachically, she isn’t believed to have had an affair, even though there are pictures of her and Yossi together. “You are still muttar (permitted) to me!” he insists desperately.
The show’s authenticity, and its deep understanding of anxieties over Jewish law, stems from its co-creators. Yossi Madmoni is a veteran of Haredi drama, while Avi Tfilinski lived as a secret atheist himself for 12 years even as he remained an esteemed rabbi and head of a yeshiva. After he left, he faced the very consequences all anusim fear: He lost contact with his children for seven years, before eventually reconnecting.
These severe social consequences — losing your entire social circle and even your relationship with your children — are the primary reasons Hidden Heretics identified for why anusim stay in the community. Economic dependence is another strong factor, as Haredi schooling doesn’t offer secular education and graduates rely on jobs they couldn’t find outside the Haredi community. Finally, the cultural attachment to the separate insular community can be too strong. Leaving for the secular world can be as jarring as moving to a new country.
Perhaps because of the story of Avi Tfilinski’s own tragic exit, there are no uplifting stories of escape where a shining secular world embraces the poor anusim. Instead, we see the vast cultural gulf between the two communities. In one episode, we meet Henry who leaves his wife and child to make a new life for himself in Tel Aviv. There, however, he stumbles on the societal expectations and cultural norms of the secular world. Yossi Zuchmir berates him for attempting to leave, saying, “Idiot, our girls are a thousand times better than theirs.”
The show demonstrates the extremes some will go to stay in the community and keep their family. Shmuel Eizner, the scion of a Hasidic dynasty who goes by the name “Donald Trump” to protect his identity, is caught by his father, the famed Admor of Yashi. His father then reveals that he too once had doubts. He calls it a family curse and explains his moments of disbelief as psychotic episodes, for which he takes Zyprexa. In a horrifying scene, he convinces “Donald” to take these same anti-psychotics.
If the cast of characters in Behasture can feel overwhelming, that’s because each episode focuses on a new character in the compound, and in 45 minutes, there’s isn’t enough time to give everyone’s stories the space they deserve. The showrunners try to solve this issue by grafting on two continuous plotlines throughout.
One plotline involves Yossi Zuchmir, who funds the compound and various anusim events using loans from the criminal underworld. Yehuda, an especially harsh loan shark, beats him up and threatens to expose his secret life to the other Haredim. Guns and violence, however, feel quite out of place in the anusim’s quieter world of shame, secrets and identity shifts. Although there’s a certain lack of courage in shying away from portraying quieter, less melodramatic stories, this plotline does demonstrate the inability of an uneducated Haredi man to make money outside approved channels.
The second plotline is clumsier and involves a romance between Rochal’e and “Donald Trump.” Throughout the show, we’re often pulled away from stories exploring the deep psychology of a character to watch a scene of Rochal’e and “Donald” awkwardly failing to flirt. One wonders why so much time is spent on this contrived story of young love instead of the much more fiery affair between Zuchmir and Gitty, his Rebbe’s wife.
There are other flaws too. While the main characters look like authentic Haredim, costumed with meticulous accuracy, many of the side characters look like caricatures with obvious fake beards and ill-fitting hats. The show also attempts to neatly resolve the characters’ troubles with a deus ex machina finale that feels both contrived and unearned.
Even so, Behasture does an incredible job at highlighting a hidden community on the edges of the Haredi world. Given the popularity of Haredi TV shows like Shtisel and Shababnikim, we can expect to see this show gracing our American screens with English subtitles soon.
The show demonstrates many of the observations about this community that Ami exposed 15 years ago and that Fader made in Hidden Heretics. In one interview, the co-director Tfilinski estimates that there are 30,000 anusim currently living this double life. Let’s hope that those 30,000 in the closet feel seen by Behasture and empowered in their difficult decision to leave or remain in those secret gray areas.
The post On a new Israeli TV show, the secret lives of Orthodox Jewish atheists appeared first on The Forward.
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Trump urges Iran to make a deal after Iran fires missiles at Israel for first time in 2 months
(JTA) — Iran fired multiple barrages of missiles toward northern Israel on Sunday night local time, in the first direct fire from Iran on Israel since early April.
No one was immediately reported injured in the barrages, according to Israeli media, and the Israeli military said it shot down all the missiles aimed at the country on Sunday night.
The attack came hours after a stabbing attack by an Israeli Arab on Jews in central Israel killed one person and left several others injured.
The Iran salvo added to the turmoil for Israelis living in the north, who have been under constant fire from Iran’s proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon, and upsetting an uneasy quiet in the rest of the country. Schools across Israel will be closed on Monday.
Iranian officials said the barrage was a response to Israel’s strike earlier Sunday on a Hezbollah installation in the suburbs of Beirut, which the Israeli army said targeted a command center used to direct attacks on its troops.
Hezbollah last week rejected a U.S.-brokered ceasefire deal that would have halted Israeli strikes in Beirut, saying that it could not abide by terms that would have required it to exit southern Lebanon.
During a five-week war that Israel and the United States initiated against Iran on Feb. 28, at least two dozen Israelis were killed when Iran fired hundreds of missiles at the country in near-daily barrages. Active hostilities involving Israel ended when U.S. President Donald Trump initiated a ceasefire on April 8. He and Iran have not yet agreed to terms that would permanently end the war.
Trump said he was “not happy about” Israel’s strike in Beirut and signaled that he did not see Iranian barrage as an impediment to a future deal.
“It’s certainly not going to help negotiations,” he told Fox News. “We’re very close. I would say an agreement would be signed on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday of this coming week. And now this takes place.”
Addressing Iran directly, Trump said, “You’ve shot your missiles, that’s enough. Get back to the table and make a deal.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not immediately respond publicly to the Iranian attack on Israel.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Maine Democrats are poised to nominate Graham Platner, as Jewish Democrats withhold support
Maine Democrats are poised to nominate Graham Platner on Tuesday to challenge incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins in one of the most important Senate races this year. But a series of recent domestic violence allegations and controversies surrounding Platner could become a major political problem for the party in its effort to regain control of the Senate.
The controversy extends beyond questions about electability. Jewish Democratic organizations have withheld support from Platner over his past Nazi-linked tattoo, criticism of Israel and rhetoric that some Jewish leaders view as troubling, even as top national Democrats rally behind his candidacy.
The primary was effectively decided weeks ago when former Gov. Janet Mills suspended her campaign after lagging in polls and struggling to raise money. Mills never formally withdrew from the ballot, leaving open the possibility that some Democrats will use Tuesday’s primary as a protest vote against Platner
The dilemma facing Democrats is unusually stark.
Maine, considered a purple state, is widely viewed as one of the party’s clearest opportunities to flip a Republican-held Senate seat. Collins, 73, is running for a sixth term, though critics argue her image as a political moderate has diminished in recent years. In her last reelection campaign in 2020, Collins defeated her Democratic challenger 51-42. Sara Gideon, who is married to a Jewish lawyer, ran a competitive race and drew support from Maine’s estimated 15,000 Jewish voters and outside Jewish Democratic groups.
The 41-year-old Platner, an oyster farmer and former Marine, appeared to be the kind of insurgent candidate Democrats dream about. He led Mills by a significant margin and consistently ran ahead of Collins in public polling.
But the past two weeks have left Democrats struggling with his candidacy.
Reports about explicit messages sent to women while married and allegations from former partners describing threatening and troubling behavior, along with scrutiny of past online posts, put the Platner campaign on defense.
For Jewish voters, Platner’s rise and the party’s embrace of him were already hard to swallow. Platner faced backlash last year after acknowledging that a black skull-and-crossbones tattoo on his chest resembled a Nazi symbol. He has since covered it up. In past posts on Reddit, Platner defended a man with a Nazi SS lightning bolt tattoo who impersonated a federal officer at a Black Lives Matter protest in Las Vegas in 2020.
A New York Times story last week cited an ex-girlfriend who said Platner knew for years that the tattoo on his chest was associated with Nazi imagery, an allegation he has forcefully denied.
Also troubling to Jewish Democrats, Platner has accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza and suggested the U.S. should cut off all aid to Israel. Last week, Platner accused Collins of taking money from AIPAC and being “bought and paid for by Benjamin Netanyahu, and she votes accordingly.”
Halie Soifer, head of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, said in an April interview that her group was not prepared to back Platner. JDCA had endorsed Mills in the primary before she suspended her campaign. On Sunday, Soifer said the group continues to stand by its endorsement of Mills, signaling that voters who remain uneasy about Platner still have the option of casting a vote for the former governor, whose name remains on the ballot.
“If he were running in Jersey, he’d either be thrown off the ballot or buried under the Meadowlands,” Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a Jewish Democrat from New Jersey, said on Friday.
Top Democratic strategists told Politico that Platner could face pressure to drop out of the race if Mills receives a significant amount of votes.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the highest ranking Jewish elected official in the U.S., has so far continued to show support for Platner. After meeting with Platner last week in Washington, D.C., Schumer told reporters that defeating Collins remains a top priority for Democrats seeking to reclaim power in the Senate.
The likely result is a question Democrats increasingly cannot avoid: If Platner wins Tuesday as expected, how much longer can national Democrats continue treating him as their standard-bearer and excuse conduct they would condemn in a Republican candidate? Jewish Democratic organizations, having already distanced themselves from Platner, will also have to decide how to respond if he becomes the party’s nominee, as other nominees are also coming under scrutiny for past remarks and associations with antisemitic influencers.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, in an interview Sunday on Fox News, was asked whether he’s concerned that his party “has an antisemitism problem,” citing Platner’s rhetoric and that of other Democratic candidates.
Platner is “going to have to speak for himself, and that’s what any candidate, particularly in a high-profile race, is going to be called upon to do,” Jeffries said. He added that the effort to crush antisemitism is an “American issue” and shouldn’t be a partisan issue. “It can’t be a red or blue issue. It’s a red, white, and blue issue.”
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Some Jewish Republicans say Tucker Carlson is no longer a threat. Others worry he’ll run for president.
(JTA) — At the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual gala last November, much of the discussion centered around right-wing antisemitism. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz warned that there was “an existential crisis in our party” as figures such as Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes built their online audiences, while right-wing firebrand Rep. Randy Fine of Florida slammed Carlson as an antisemite.
At the RJC’s “America 250” gala six months later, the mood was cheerier, and the cautionary words gave way to declarations that emerging antisemitism on the right was being dealt with properly.
Fine reminded the audience at the RJC event held in Manhattan on Sunday that in his speech to the RJC in November, he’d called Carlson “the most dangerous antisemite in America.” Now, he said, “I don’t know that that’s true anymore.”
Fine and other Republicans at the RJC gala told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that enough Republicans had spoken out against Carlson – most significantly, President Donald Trump – and his ilk to damage their image and dampen the threat they might pose. They also pointed to major GOP critics of Israel who had lost their seats in recent months.
But others have warned that it’s a mistake to celebrate too soon, or think Carlson’s star has really faded, especially amid speculation that he might launch a presidential run as a Republican.
Fine told JTA in a text that he now believes the country’s “most dangerous antisemite” is Zohran Mamdani, New York City’s anti-Zionist mayor. In contrast, he said, Carlson’s impact had only plummeted in the past half-year.
“I think that brand has been destroyed [in] the last six months,” he wrote, attributing the change to politicians like himself calling Carlson out, as well as “the damage he has done to himself.”
A number of speakers at the RJC who lauded Republicans’ response to antisemitism in the party also pointed to the recent primary defeat of outspoken Israel critic Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie. Brooks said to loud applause that the group spent $5 million in that race, and called the effort “a fight worth having and a victory worth celebrating.”
Speakers also recounted the resignation from Congress of Marjorie Taylor Greene in January, maintaining that the Republican Party is squashing its anti-Israel voices, while the Democratic Party is electing them.
“Being anti-Israel in today’s Republican Party is not — unlike the Democratic Party — a path to success,” said RJC CEO Matt Brooks during his remarks. Brooks later told JTA that Carlson, Owens and Fuentes’ “influence and credibility is less than it’s ever been” and that “they don’t represent” the mainstream of the MAGA movement.
But the Anti-Defamation League warned that it would be a mistake not to see the audience and impact of Carlson in particular as worthy of continued concern.
Oren Segal, the ADL’s vice president of counterextremism and intelligence, said in an interview with JTA that his organization’s biggest worry regarding Carlson is “not merely his relationship with any conservative or elected officials” but also the “normalization” of his views.
Segal pointed to the accusation that an Israeli attack on an American spy ship during the 1967 Six-Day War was intentional — used by conspiracy theorists as proof that the Jewish state cannot be trusted — despite U.S. investigations determining that it was a mistake.
“No one’s been a bigger boon to the USS Liberty Conspiracy of late than Tucker Carlson,” he said.
Segal added that it would be “absurd” to count out anyone as a potential presidential contender, while several political observers have speculated that Carlson may be weighing a run.
New York University professor Scott Galloway recently said on his New York Magazine podcast “Pivot” that the former Fox News host could be a serious contender. There is an “enormous lane,” he assessed, for a candidate who, like Carlson, has “very conservative values, an enormous media platform, an enormous army of acolytes that he could weaponize right away, and is anti-Trump and anti-the war on Iran.”
Some of Carlson’s allies are gunning for a campaign. Speaking Thursday on Russian state television during a trip to St. Petersburg, Owens said she personally did not plan to run for office but said Carlson would be a great candidate for president.
“I would love for him to run,” she said, adding, “I would gratefully get behind someone like Tucker Carlson.”
Back in March, TV host Piers Morgan asked Carlson whether he has White House ambitions. Carlson said that politics is “not what I do,” adding, “The whole idea of, ‘I’ve been a successful cable news host, I should be president!’ — that whole way of thinking is disgusting to me.”
Asked about the possibility of Carlson running for president, Brooks told JTA in a statement that the RJC would continue to push back against Carlson and similar anti-Israel figures.
“There is only one party where American Jews can be proudly pro-Israel, and it is the Republican Party — and those who imperil that will have to come through the RJC first,” Brooks said.
Others who attended Sunday’s RJC gathering felt the possibility of a Carlson candidacy was overblown. Shabbos Kestenbaum, a prominent Jewish conservative activist who sued Harvard University over alleged antisemitism, dismissed concerns that Carlson could be a serious presidential candidate.
In an interview, he pointed out that Carlson’s support of Massie and Ohio gubernatorial candidate Casey Putsch did not yield electoral success. Putsch, who has a history of dog whistling to neo-Nazis, received 17.5% of the vote in Ohio’s Republican gubernatorial primary. Unlike Massie, Carlson did not issue an endorsement for Putsch, but he did host Putsch on his podcast last year.
“His endorsements mean absolutely nothing, and outside of the ‘Podcastistan’ universe, his words carry very little weight,” Kestenbaum said of Carlson.
Brooks said in an interview with JTA that he feels “very pleased” with how the party has responded to voices like Carlson’s. President Donald Trump has publicly cast Carlson aside since his former ally sharpened his objections to the administration’s war in Iran.
“It’s been marginalized,” Brooks said of the party’s anti-Israel wing. “They tried to hijack the term MAGA. Groups like ours, but equally important, the president, has made it clear they are not MAGA.”
Asked about Vice President JD Vance, who has not offered a condemnation of Carlson to some Jewish Republicans’ chagrin, Brooks said, “When you have the president speaking, that’s the voice that matters right now.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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