Midway through the first episode of “Unorthodox,” a new, four-part Netflix miniseries about a nineteen-year-old woman’s escape from her Hasidic community in Brooklyn, we see the protagonist’s real hair for the first time. Played by Shira Haas, an elfin Israeli actress, Esty (short for Esther) Shapiro stands at the edge of the Großer Wannsee, a large, lapping lake in southwestern Berlin, the city to which she has fled. It is a sunny summer day, and all around her young people frolic in their swimsuits. Esty, by contrast, is still clothed in the frumpish turtleneck, calf-length black skirt, and heavy brown wig she wore as a new wife back in Williamsburg. Married Hasidic women are not supposed to show their hair in public; they are not supposed to go swimming with men, either. When Esty finally walks into the water—still fully dressed—she strips away her synthetic locks, revealing a buzz-cut scalp beneath. Her dip in the water feels like both a sacrilege and a baptism.

“Unorthodox” is loosely based on the best-selling 2012 memoir by Deborah Feldman, who left the Satmar sect of Hasidic Jews in Williamsburg and ultimately settled in Berlin (though, by the end of her book, she has only got as far as New York City’s suburbs). Feldman consulted with the show’s creators—Anna Winger, who wrote the Stasi-spy television drama “Deutschland 83,” and Alexa Karolinski, a documentary filmmaker—to insure that their depiction of the insular Hasidic community was as accurate as possible. Whether they fully succeeded is a matter of debate; Frieda Viezel, a former member of the Satmar sect, wrote an op-ed in the Forward complaining that the show makes Hasidic women look as humorless as “foreign Disney-witches in odd costumes.” But the scenes of “Unorthodox” that take place in Williamsburg—and largely in Yiddish—pay unhurried and compelling attention to the rituals of Hasidic life. In flashbacks to the night of Esty’s wedding, to the reserved and childish Yanky, we see a parade of men in fur shtreimel hats lead the groom, his eyes closed, and the opaque, tentlike veil that obscures the bride’s head throughout the ceremony under the chuppah. We see the men and women dancing separately, a pale curtain hanging between them, and the small room where the newlyweds spend their first minutes alone together. Later, Esty weeps as her aunt shaves off her long golden-brown hair. I live in North Brooklyn, just a twenty-minute walk from the Satmar enclave, but watching “Unorthodox” was the closest I’ve come to seeing what goes on behind the closed doors of my neighbors.

This quasi-documentary aspect of “Unorthodox” might feel gratuitous or gawking were it not key to the series’ delicately balanced tone. Watching Yanky davening—performing his Jewish prayers—or Esty’s grandfather presiding over Passover Seder, the viewer is made to appreciate how such traditions can bolster and sustain a historically persecuted community. But “Unorthodox” also depicts, in excruciating detail, the ways in which Esty’s life is monitored and restricted. As a young, fertile woman, she is valued within her community for little besides her ability to reproduce. When she visits a mikvah, or ritual bath, an attendant inspects her fingernails and skin for dirt before she can bathe—one of the ways to insure that a woman is “clean” for her husband. A busybody local sex therapist diagnoses Esty with vaginismus, a condition that makes intercourse painful, but urges her to push through with it anyway. Esty’s meddling mother-in-law drops by unannounced to lecture her on the need to make Yanky feel like a “king” in the bedroom. When Esty does become pregnant, after an agonizing sexual encounter, she realizes with some clarity that the baby, however much of a blessing, will also seal her fate.

Netflix is currently streaming a small trove of stories about Orthodox Judaism and its defectors—in addition to “Unorthodox” and an accompanying making-of documentary, there’s the dark Israeli comedy “Shtisel,” about a strict Orthodox patriarch and his dysfunctional family (Shira Haas also appears in that show, as the rebellious daughter of a devout couple), and “One of Us,” a 2017 documentary about three Hasidic people who leave their community behind. Of all these offerings, “Unorthodox” may be the most Hollywoodized narrative. Esty’s flight from Brooklyn has the feel of a thriller, complete with a cat-and-mouse chase as Yanky and his rascally cousin Moishe fly to Germany in pursuit. The city of Berlin is portrayed as a fantasy of secular, multicultural bohemianism, and by the end of the series Esty has assumed the look of a starlet, her pixie cut suddenly chic and paired with red lipstick. But Haas’s remarkable performance manages to convey the reserves of pain, both personal and communal, in Esty’s story. She at times looks jittery and spindly, like a baby gazelle set loose from its enclosure at the city zoo. At other times, she allows herself to be sensual and almost buoyant, belting an earthy wedding song or swaying beneath the blue lights at a Berlin night club. As Esty floats on her back in the Wannsee, you can feel what it’s like for her to be both fearful and free.

A previous version of this piece incorrectly described the song “Mi Bon Siach.”