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February 05, 2008

Hasidic Jews get a fair shake on House

Tonight's episode of House, the misanthropic doctor portrayed by Hugh Laurie, featured a storyline about a woman who becomes gravely ill at her wedding reception.

Nothing out of the ordinary, that; it could have been an episode of Marcus Welby, M.D. from the 1960s.

What made it different was the bride and her husband were Orthodox Jews, members of the Hasidic movement, and the portrayal of their faith, their customs and practices, was respectful and pretty accurate.

The doctors were skeptical about the woman's mid-life conversion to Orthodox Judaism, attributing her leaving a career as a heroin-using record producer for a life of religious observance as a symptom of mental illness, or perhaps a manifestation of a genetic defect.

Despite the initially mocking tone of the doctor's comments, there soon developed an appreciation for the couple's dedication to their faith -- and to each other.

In one scene, the husband was agitated at seeing his wife nearly naked as she was undergoing a series of tests, telling the doctors that he and his wife had hoped that the first time they saw each other like this would be when they celebrated their marriage together on their wedding night.

The female doctor tells him that he shouldn't be so upset: it's "sweet" that he's there for his wife and yet somehow manages to be embarrassed at the thought of seeing her nearly nude, considering the circumstances.

The husband turns on her and says, "Don't say that." You see, he doesn't think it's "sweet"; the modesty with which they live their lives is based on respect -- he loves and respects his wife, and there's nothing "sweet" or cute about wanting to preserve her dignity, her modesty, and have that first moment of intimacy together, the one they had so wanted to share under very different circumstances. It's difficult to convey the emotional intensity of the moment, but I found it arresting.

Later on in the show, when it looks like the wife will die unless she has surgery post haste, she says she wants to celebrate her first Shabbat with her husband before going under the knife, even if the delay kills her.

There's something about the lighting of the Shabbat candles, the prayers, the way the doctor and her husband helped hold her hands up to her eyes and gathered the light, that I found deeply moving, and when she thought she was dying and began to say the Shema, the holiest prayer in Judaism, I got chills.

This was simply the most sympathetic portrayal of Orthodox Judaism I've ever seen in a dramatic TV series, and I applaud the producers for their efforts.

Posted by Mike Lief at February 5, 2008 10:16 PM | TrackBack

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