Shtisel season 2 first 6 episodes

One thing I like about a family drama, of any kind, if portraying humans throughout the lifecycle. Not just the pretty hollywood types suffering their glamorous problems of insisting on more because they can. The spiritual life is highly valued, it is defined as study of the teachings.

Once we've gotten to know the characters, you can see the deeper problems interact with the culture that surrounds them.

SPOILERS: Imperfect summary up to episode 6, half way through the season:

With Giti, she is upset her husband Lippe sold the name of their child for money. He invested the money for his children, but she's not even given that information. He is the man and can make such choices. He wants the money back, but the investor says he would lose now, the markets go up and down, he has to keep the money in the market for a while. He gives in and insists on the male role. 

Giti's daughter Ruchama gets married. They study the Torah, and they know if he puts a ring on her finger with adult witnesses, then they are married. But families have not been contacted, they are informed. Giti doesn't even take it seriously. The father Lippe is outraged, but when he goes to do something about it, he sees them talking nicely together and goes.

Akiva is interested in his cousin Libbi, but they're not sure if it's Kosher. It isn't the genetic taboo risk the originally thought it was, that was more about siblings getting married, but there still is a modern taboo against it. Libbi thinks Akiva should be an artist, it's wrong to waste god's talents. His father thinks it's not a real thing. He gets caught up in a scheme where he paints for another person in the first season, and his painting of a failed connection is in the museum, but not under his name. Libbi sees him for who he is and accept him, but she doesn't think he's serious and she's serious. She goes back to Europe without getting a setup. Akiva reaches out to Libbi in Europe and is told to shut it down by her. 

The matchmaker dies, and everything is thrown into chaos. Akiva is labeled a "screw up" because he's 27 and still not married. The matchmaker's wife is more subtle, but she retains his verbiage, and maybe there isn't another phrase for someone who finds it difficult to marry in that culture where you are set up, and can just join someone seemily easily. 

And yet Ruchama joins easily with a fellow she sees studying through a window, and the family is shocked they were not in the loop. The fellow decides she's too much of a distraction and that he really just wants to study. They are so young, but they have to get divorced because they technically got married.

The father has women throwing themselves at him, but he has trouble moving on. Seems like a universal experience, difficulty of moving on from a good relationship that is over. But the matchmakers widow takes his plate away and he decides they should get married.

Poor Zvi Arye's wife won't offer her kidney for him, she fails the love test. There really isn't the expectation of love in these marriages, but somehow it creeps in on one side or the other. After a partner dies, people don't want to remarry, it's a burden more than a joy, and once it's done, people don't enter back into it lightly.

I have taken to kissing the Dharma book I read before I read it, when I pick it up. The reverence for the texts is something I could import into my routines.

I have tried to create more routine prayer. There is a street that when I walk down it, I recite the mantra Om Mani Padme Hum. The Jewel in the Lotus. 

When they say, "God willing", I think there is an effort to accept circumstances, that the world runs a certain way and you can't really step around it. I'm projecting of course, I take that lesson from Buddhism, that circumstances are circumstances, and only a fool tries to will the way they work into a different way. I like acceptance of reality, not distorting it with politics or personality or craziness.