excerpted from roadrunner, which hates me and won't allow me to link to it:
Hasidic Soap Opera Hopes to Bridge Gap
By NEIL BAR-OR Associated Press Writer
published 01:55 PM - AUGUST 14, 2003 Eastern Time
It's got the power struggles, intrigue, love triangles and plot twists of any soap opera. But in the world's first Hasidic "telenovella", as soaps are known in Israel, there are no steamy love scenes and dialogue is peppered with "praise the Lord."
The first half-hour episode of "The Rebbe's Court" aired Thursday on Azure, a new Israeli cable channel focusing on Jewish issues. The show is set in a community of Hasidic Jews in Tel Aviv and portrays a world normally closed to outsiders.
Uri Orbach, the channel's program director, said the show's goal is to entertain, but narrowing Israel's religious-secular divide is a welcome byproduct. "You see the ultra-Orthodox as real people," he said.
Many Israelis believe the culture clash between Orthodox and secular Jews is one of the nation's most pressing problems. Each side feels its way of life is threatened by the other, and decades of animosity have left the two groups with little common language.
"The Rebbe's Court" opens to traditional music played to a rock beat. The main plot centers on Hanoch, the son-in-law of community leader Rabbi Azriel Rutenberg. Hanoch, who is married to the beautiful Zippora, is expelled from the community and reluctantly settles in the secular world after being falsely accused of gambling with $250,000 of the community's funds.
Zippora believes in Hanoch's innocence, and resists matchmakers' efforts to find her a new husband. Meanwhile, her younger sister Ruhi is plotting to snare Hanoch for herself, and that's just in the first of 26 episodes.
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Ironically, the subjects of the soap opera, Hasidic Jews, probably won't be watching: Their rabbis do not allow them to own television sets.
Orbach said he expects word-of-mouth to change that. "Maybe they'll find good neighbors to let them see the program," he said. "They will not be able to resist temptation."