This Israeli mini-series will keep you chained to your screen
Every episode of Unchained begins with a stark but detailed summary of the plight of agunot (chained women in Hebrew), the term for women in the Orthodox Jewish tradition who are trapped in marriage by husbands who refuse to give them a divorce.
After this sobering eye-opener, creators Joseph Madmoni, Tamar Kay and David Ofek tell a complex tale that might well tempt you to binge watch. Eventually. Unchained is something of a slow burner, following the work of Rabbi Yossef Mourad (Aviv Alush), an Orthodox rabbi whose mission as an agent for agunot is to persuade – even force – their husbands to grant them divorce.
Absorbing, often simultaneously shocking and fascinating, the series has much to set up and share. Yossef's work necessarily involves turning detective and using the labyrinthine strictures of Jewish law in his quest to bring closure to his clients. An early plotline has him following a lead to prove that the caterer at a chained wife’s wedding mixed milk and meat, thus making both the wedding breakfast and the marriage unkosher. So it’s not surprising that in calling out absent, neglectful or violent husbands Yossef becomes the close confidant – even hero – of the agunot who come to rely on him, sometimes to the point of infatuation.
Yossef's work/life balance is complicated. His boss is also his magisterial father-in-law, Rabbi Aharon Shapiro (Nathan Dattler), whose daughter Hana (Avigail Kovary) has to constantly control her diabetes, just one of the challenges this apparently devoted couple must face. Perhaps there is more to Hana’s distant and at times erratic behaviour than the shared preoccupation and underlying sorrow of their unsuccessful attempts to conceive over four years of marriage.
The second half-dozen episodes are pacier, with intricate subplots. Yossef’s pregnant sister takes refuge with her brother, not from an abusive husband, but from vicious gangsters threatening the family, because her feckless husband cannot repay money borrowed from the local Mr Big. Family means ‘extended family’, as Yossef and Hana soon discover to their cost.
There are two particularly rewarding digressions, involving trips overseas. The first sees Yossef in Ukraine, bent on proving that a recalcitrant husband’s mother might not have been Jewish – which would mean he isn’t either, as Judaism is a matrilinear religion. The landscapes, the language, a whole new set of customs and lifestyles, make for a sometimes uncomfortable voyage of discovery for Yossef and the viewer, so yarmulkas off to the filmmakers for their chutzpah!
Later, when Hana accompanies Yossef to Tallin on a trip where he intends to bring a cruelly vindictive husband to heel by any means, including violence, she enters a Russian Orthodox Church out of curiosity and experiences a life-changing epiphany. To reveal any of Hana’s secrets would be a betrayal of confidence in these surefooted storytellers. Suffice it to say the insightful plotlines continue to fascinate.
Scenes of rabbinical court procedure involved in two successful gets (the document effectuating divorce) that bookend the series – depicting the choreography, where the aguna literally takes steps and grasps the document – are a triumph. I won’t reveal the identity of the triumphant new ex-wife, but I'm pretty sure you’ll keep watching to discover this and so much more about the richness and complexity of strictly Orthodox community life.
By Judi Herman
Unchained is available to stream on UKJF On Demand for £12.99 (first three episodes free) until Friday 31 July (with 30 days to watch once rented).
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