Speaking of Yiddish, you can hear it spoken on the television series Rough Diamonds, along with a host of other tongues—a detail explored by our language columnist Philologos. Emil Stern provides a more general revies of the show, which focuses on a family of ḥasidic diamond merchants in Antwerp, their wayward son, and the clan of Albanian mobsters he has married into:
Streaming has opened up a world of subcultures to our homes, and on the count of verisimilitude, Rough Diamonds is mostly convincing. The ḥasidic costumes, beards, and wigs are realistic, there are mezuzahs on every doorpost, and the shul scenes feel enjoyably heymish. . . . But the show’s surface authenticity rarely deepens into psychology. The Wolfsons spend entirely too much time looking tense in elegant doorways. And while the polyglot nature of the show feels realistic, the dialogue itself is often workmanlike rather than idiomatic.
To its credit, Rough Diamonds doesn’t depict its world as irredeemably oppressive, the way Unorthodox, a very different Netflix series about ḥasidic life, did. The Wolfsons’ high-ceilinged home feels gracious and warm, and the kids seem well cared for. The show succeeds when its characters work with what they have, like Eli, haplessly trying to maneuver a rival by tattling on his son’s non-kosher Internet habits (it doesn’t work).
Despite its charms, Stern concludes, the show never quite delivers.
Read more on Jewish Review of Books: https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/the-arts/14789/intrigues-and-tzuris/