Playing Hasidic Woman in ‘Felix and Meira’ — Again

While “Fill the Void” is something of a valentine to Hasidism, “Felix and Meira” explores Meira’s dissatisfaction with her insular community and her narrow role as mother and wife. Audiences –– undoubtedly a majority secular –– will view the baby steps Meira takes away from her cloistered world as “progress,” but Yaron was slow to see it that way. “At first I noticed this automatic objection rising in me,” she says. “I felt the story was judging Hasidic life and as I had just come from a very specific and profound point of view; it was difficult for me to realize that in a way I had become a bit closed-minded.” To undo her preconceptions, Yaron spoke to Hasidic women leading double lives; she also listened to the stories of her costar Luzer Twersky, who grew up religious in Brooklyn but became secular in his early twenties.