The Jews have a lot to say about 'Nobody Wants This'

Who would have thought?

I’m just a girl standing in front of culture makers asking them to retire the Jewish mom as a closed-minded villain trope

Happy 5785 everyone. As we’ve entered this new Jewish year, it seems like the biggest Jewish TV story is still the hot rabbi show, aka Netflix’s “Nobody Wants This,” which is #1 on the streaming platform right now.

Non-Jewish viewers — at least, the ones who have watched “Fleabag,” which I think at this point might be less popular than “Nobody Wants This” — are all “move aside hot priest, here comes hot rabbi!” They love the chemistry between Joanne (Kristen Bell) and Rabbi Noah (Adam Brody), the classic rom-com thrills that the show gives us, the humor, and the fact that it focuses on two somewhat older adults (Brody and Bell are both 44 and are still very young and good-looking, to be fair).

Jewish viewers, though? We have some things to say — so many things, in fact, that we felt it was appropriate to have one more newsletter about this show before we move on to other pressing TV matters here at Jewish TV Club.

The most discussed issue appears to be the show’s depiction of Jewish women — from Noah’s ex-girlfriend Rebecca, played by Emily Arlook, who goes through his stuff and starts wearing the engagement ring he had ready for her, to his sister-in-law Esther, played by Jackie Tohn, who we meet when she angrily yells at her funny stoner husband Sasha, to Noah’s mom, Bina, the legendary Tovah Feldshuh, a fairly stereotypical uptight and controlling Jewish mom who doesn’t want Noah to date a shiksa, to the group of Jewish partners of Noah’s basketball team, who all appear to be uptight, rich and ridiculous.

In a piece for TIME, Esther Zuckerman wrote that “what should be a show about a woman's entrance into and embrace of Jewish culture,” created by Erin Foster, herself a Jewish convert and based on her own relationship with a Nice Jewish Boy who she ended up marrying, “instead perpetuates the worst ideas about Jewish women. I wanted to fall in love. Instead, I just felt targeted.”

The fabulous Jessica Grose over at the New York Times made some very salient points about the pitting of “the shiksa” against Jewish women in the show — how Joanne is painted as blonde and fun and every Jewish woman is painted as tedious and overbearing — and how it’s a trope that makes everyone lose. Way back when, Fran Drescher talked about the trope perfectly in a very creepy interview with Bill Shatner, saying that very early on she realized that “the blonde-hair blue-eyed shiksa… was going to be the nemesis for all of my career.”

Over at our sister publication Hey Alma, Elizabeth Karpen recalled that in her interview with show creator Erin Foster, who does genuinely seem to love her new religion, the podcaster, designer and writer told her that the depiction of Jewish women wasn’t “really something I was thinking about too much.” And to Karpen and many other viewers, it really, really showed.

While defending herself further against accusations about the stereotypical depictions of Jewish women, Foster shared the following confounding response with the LA Times:

I think we need positive Jewish stories right now. I think it’s interesting when people focus on, “Oh, this is a stereotype of Jewish people,” when you have a rabbi as the lead. A hot, cool, young rabbi who smokes weed. That’s the antithesis of how people view a Jewish rabbi, right? If I made the Jewish parents, like, two granola hippies on a farm, then someone would write, “I’ve never met a Jewish person like that before. You clearly don’t know how to write Jewish people, you don’t know what you’re doing, and that doesn’t represent us well.”

The granola hippies on the farm comment absolutely haunts me because I think I follow at least two Jewish granola farm hippies on Instagram alone, and would wager that a disproportionate amount of granola hippies on a farm ARE Jewish. Also, saying “I gave you a hot rabbi, stop complaining” shows such a lack of understanding of who we are as a people. THE STEREOTYPE ABOUT US LIKING TO COMPLAIN IS TRUE. But in all seriousness — it’s not a good answer, or really an answer at all.

Someone who was very thoughtful about this issue, though, is Jackie Tohn, who played Esther. We had the most amazing 45-minute conversation (she Zoomed with me from her therapist’s office) and Jackie did really care about making Esther a three-dimensional character: a good mom, a loving wife, a very, very loyal friend. And honestly, if your brother-in-law dumped your best friend and then moved on to a different woman in record time, you too would be PISSED. Jackie is, like Emily Arlook who plays Rebecca, someone with a lot of experience playing complex Jewish characters — I’ve loved her as Melrose in “GLOW” — and is also a total Yiddish maven (and her parents are my new favorite people I’ve never met — seriously, you have to read this interview).

There’s something to be said about playing strong, opinionated women who don’t take shit — that’s what Esther really is. Jackie is one, and a lot of us Jewish women are as well. But I think the show had a total blind spot when it came to the depiction of Jewish women: It showed them only as that — tough and antagonistic and less attractive and fun than their blonde, non-Jewish counterparts. And if there’s a season two, it needs to be a little bit more thoughtful.

The same can be said about interfaith relationships. We do see some truths about the resistance to intermarriage that exists within the Jewish community, but it's a very specific and selectively negative picture. As Rabbi Denise Handlarski, herself a rabbi in an interfaith marriage, wrote for Hey Alma, the “idea that rabbis like Noah must be perfect, and that part of being perfect is to marry to someone Jewish, is flawed in many ways.” There are plenty of rabbis in interfaith relationships and many Jews in happy, respectful ones. Why won’t this series show us a single one?! It seems unlikely that a Reform congregation in LA, if Noah’s is indeed one, would be so closed off to interfaith marriage. Is this a drama manufactured just for the show? A few opinion pieces I’ve read seem to argue that; what do you think?

Another review that makes some salient points comes from Vulture’s Fran Hoepfner, who argues that it actually might be mildly antisemitic: “What feels most antisemitic is the profound inflexibility of the show’s view of Judaism, that it’s a religion imbued with ors in lieu of ands.” Anyone with a deep connection and love and immersion in Judaism might feel that this show’s depiction of the religion is superficial, and only the two young rabbis in the show — Rabbi Shira and Rabbi Noah, seem to have a beautiful relationship to it. Every other Jewish character isn’t only painted in a negative light, but also doesn’t seem to have any real meaningful connection to Jewish tradition.

That having been said, over on the Israeli side of social media, Foster is getting a lot of love for her support of the Jewish state, and some even think that Sasha talking about hostage negotiation tactics is a secret wink-wink of solidarity to Israeli hostages (I doubt this but understand the desire to cling to any possible symbolism). The show’s title has been translated into “Rak Lo Ze,” meaning “Just Not That,” which I actually find to be quite adorable since it is a common expression used to describe the one thing you absolutely don’t want in Hebrew. One review called it “the most Jewish show since ‘Seinfeld’” (have they not watched “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel?!”) while joking that they thought that intermarriage was only a hot topic for the far right wing extremist org Lehava (ouch!). Another rightfully pointed out that there is nary a single Jewish stereotype the show misses, and yet they can forgive that for such a fun, comforting and very Jewish rom-com, a balm after a difficult year for Jews across the globe.

I’ve already written a lot about my own experience with the show, and will probably continue to. I’ve done a deep dive into the word “shiksa,” a word I really would love for us to retire. I had the most wonderful time discussing the show with five of my other colleagues on both Kveller and Hey Alma. And I wrote my own review where I grappled with whether Jews should want “Nobody Wants This.”

At the end of the day, I am one of those aforementioned people who enjoyed the show. I thought it was a good romance, a funny and witty and discerning show with a lot of characters that I genuinely cared about. And while it had a lot of problematic Jewish aspects, and I definitely rolled my eyes at some of the Jewish depictions, it did show a lot of Jewish beauty too (can Leslie Grossman’s Rabbi Shira get her own show, please?). I do actually want a second season of “Nobody Wants This,” something that seems very likely with its streaming success.

What do you think of the word “shiksa?” Is the interfaith drama in the show manufactured? Can you forgive the depiction of Jewish women in the show? Or do you even think there’s anything to forgive? Let me know in the comments.