The women of “Srugim”

Recently I watched the first two seasons of “Srugim” the surprise hit Israeli tv drama that follows the lives of five thirty-something single men and women in the modern orthodox community of Katamon in Jerusalem. Sometimes referred to as the Israeli “Friends”, it’s been popular among secular folk in Israel and has a following in the states (it’s available on DVD with subtitles).

Although the creators of the show are men, the most interesting and compelling characters are the 3 female central characters; a woman whose high-powered financial services job scares off some men, the daughter of a rabbi who struggles with her religious identity, and a warm-hearted graphic artist who is stuck on a commitment-phobic surgeon. Though the plot in the first season centers on heterosexual relationships, the show passes the Bechdel test.

In Season 1, the female characters in Srugim face more conflict and character development than the men, who are rather passive and unadventurous; the sexism of religious society pushes the women to evolve. In Season 2, the gay male character also faces social pressure; the show has not yet shown whether and how the character will change.

But I get the impression that the the creators of the show are torn in portraying the tensions generated by female power. On the one hand, they are sympathetic to the struggles of women making their own way. On the other hand, images of bossy or neurotic women are played somewhat unflatteringly; and yet back on the other hand, the show handles narcissism and neurosis as equal-gender-opportunity character flaws.

The finance professional dumps a fiance when he proposes only after getting a raise that makes his salary closer to hers, and with persistence negotiates her way into getting lessons in reading torah for a women’s minyan. Her character has some traits in common with the weaselly Pete Campbell of Mad Men; she can scheme and manipulate to get what she wants; she has a yiddish sharp tongue and can be a bully. Does she choose the sweet yeshiva student over the fellow professional because she experiences the unfamiliar with him; or because she can boss him around, or both; does she eventually dump him because she was never serious or realizes she doesn’t love him or both?

Toward the end of the first season the character makes some choices that seem to show increasing honesty and tact; a bit of growing up? In Season 2, she shows more ethical compass by standing up for her gay sweetie; but is her attraction to a gay man a sign in the show creators’ minds of the inability to relate to more macho “normal” heterosexual men? I dislike the scheming but like her assertiveness, negotiation skills, motorcycle, torah-reading, and the sharp tongue that gets her into trouble, but does the filmmaker?

An even more exaggerated and unattractive picture of the manipulative bossy woman is the wealthy girlfriend of the narcissistic surgery intern. She schemes to have him invited to a party thrown by her father who is a major donor of the hospital, and arranges to have her beau offered a prestigious residency at Mount Sinai hospital in NYC. She can even get her boyfriend’s absentee landlord to fix a broken sink. When her boyfriend gets upset with her assertive ways, she fakes terror of cockroaches to make him feel confident in his manhood, but smashes bugs with her high-heeled shoes when he isn’t looking. Her boyfriend doesn’t appreciate her controlling ways, but he also doesn’t appreciate the loving companionship of his long-suffering female best buddy who’s in love with him; or for that matter neither does he show consideration for anybody else in Season 1.

The bible grad student, the daughter of a rabbi, doubts her religious identity, but keeps her dilemmas a secret in Season 1. She doesn’t tell the witty and solicitous archaeology professor that she is religious though they are falling in love with each other; she doesn’t tell her friends she’s dating a secular guy. At one point she fails to stop her elderly grandmother who has wandered away from the senior center because she will be seen wearing pants; then repents and goes looking for her through the streets of Jerusalem (the grandmother is found safe).

The show makes clear why the character would be so cagey; her friends talk openly about how they dump friends who become secular; one of the male characters discovers that people on the street don’t say hello to him when he accidentally loses his kippah. The community polices boundaries, and making a choice is (or seems) definitive. Once upon a time I was like that character; I was similarly confused and in the closet about religious struggles; and caused some similar havoc. Interestingly, the show parallels the closet experiences of characters struggling with religious identity and characters struggling with sexual identity. In both cases, characters who are outside the community norms feel the need to keep secrets, struggle with disclosing their identity, and face the risk of social ostracism.

Interestingly, with the struggling religious characters in Srugim the issue is explicitly and primarily about g-d and faith. Is this different from American Judaism, where Jews talk about holidays and halachah and concepts of good and evil, and less about g-d? Personally, I’ve been pretty humanist about religion since bat mitzvah age; for me the choices about religious afflliation were more about human authority and sociology that about belief or unbelief; but the social boundaries and identity dilemmas were very similar.

The warm-hearted and emotional graphic designer is the least conflicted of the three major female characters in Season 1. She is competent at her craft without being ambitious, she is a great cook, she is sincerely religious. At the beginning of the season she is something of a doormat, and develops more of a spine as she learns from experience. Her religiosity is portrayed as somewhat of a flaw when she focuses on rules over people, but her good heart overcomes her initial impulse to rigidity.

Hers is a kind of character that I tend to loathe on the printed page, but the script and the actress redeem the character for me in Season 1; she is shown as intelligently and actively empathetic, and grows by making her own decisions. Is her fundamental meekness and domesticity seen by the filmmakers as superior womanhood? Or is she, like the good-hearted, somewhat passive and geeky fellow she eventually connects with, something of a shlemiel. In Season 2, she turns to developing her career when she is disappointed by the inability to quickly get pregnant, her emotionality turns into volatility, and overrides her sense of compassion. Where are the film-makers with this evolution? Is assertiveness and professional development being cast once again as the opposite of femininity? Or do the show’s creators also see the rift between the character and her husband as a lack of courage and honesty on both their parts, where neither can communicate about the pain of infertility and the tensions between personal and day to day tradeoffs between professional and family priorities?

I know what I think – I always liked the adventurous women characters better, in works where a male author favored the good women. I’m not sure where the show’s creators come down. I suspect they are empathetic with the character and struggles of the female characters; and not quite comfortable with female power; and able to depict flaws of selfishness, dishonesty, and cowardice in both genders.

One thing that’s interesting to me is the way the show depicts the characters moral struggles about how to interact with other people, including making mistakes, repenting and forgiving each other. Every once in a while there is a parable; the surgeon reports the hospital’s cafe kiosk for having a forged kashrut certificate and then is chagrined when the kindly kiosk employee loses his job when the contractor is replaced; and it is a bit surprising that the self-involved surgeon shows a glimmer of moral awareness and compassion. Most of the time the choices are more subtle than that parable. Religious observance, belief, and sex are red herrings, the important thing is how to treat others and oneself. The show is sociologically interesting in the way it portrays the various segments of Israeli Jewish society; but this moral psychology may be the most Jewish aspect of the show.

What do you think? I would love to bounce ideas and questions off others who watched the show.

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