‘Nobody Wants This’ amps laughs about intermarriage in Judaism but intended humour hurts

Netflix’s new rom-com Nobody Wants This debuted with great success: it occupied the No. 1 spot on Netflix’s Top 10 list for two weeks. It has been praised by a range of critics for its humour, “millennial magic” and pitch-perfect casting.

Nobody Wants This presents viewers with a mix of classic stereotypes of both Jewish women and men, and the contemporary issue of intermarriage — marriage of two partners who are members of different religions — in Jewish communities.

It revolves around a young, ambitious rabbi, Noah (Adam Brody), who falls in love with a non-Jewish woman, Joanne (Kristen Bell).

Joanne and her sister Morgan (Justine Lupe) produce a podcast that features frank, spontaneous talk about sex and relationships, a discursive foil for Rabbi Noah’s carefully composed and tame sermons.

The show is loosely inspired by creator Erin Foster’s own life as an agnostic woman who fell in love with her husband, Simon Tikhman, a Jewish man. Tikhman, although not a rabbi, wanted to marry a Jewish woman, leading Foster to convert to Judaism. Her conversion and involvement in her Jewish family led to the creation of Nobody Wants This.

Foster has said she wanted to shed positive light on Jewish culture and her experiences of being brought into it.

From my perspective as a scholar who has examined aspects of Jewish life and practice in North America, the problem is that Foster’s good intentions fall flat at best, and at worst, could hurt the very people Foster has joined.

Stereotypes of women

Quickly following the accolades, criticism of the show has particularly focused on its problematic stereotypes of Jewish women. Jessica Radloff wrote in Glamour that after watching two episodes she called her mom and said (speaking of Jewish women), “we come off as controlling, marriage-hungry women who want to plan dinner parties and alienate anyone who doesn’t share those same dreams.” Jessica Grose in the New York Times argues that nearly all the Jewish women in Nobody Wants This are “manipulative, spoiled and selfish.”

Nobody Wants This reflects long-standing and popular Jewish stereotypes consistently featured in American films – the meddling matriarch, pampered princess and neurotic nebbish – stereotypes that have proven to be widely appealing and thus quite profitable.

Rabbi Noah’s mother, Bina, is not only the meddling matriarch extreme version, but also a hypocrite who refuses to accept Joanne’s hostess gift when they first meet — a lovely charcuterie tray — because it contains pork (prosciutto). Joanne later discovers Bina secretly stuffing the prosciutto into her mouth.

Noah’s ex-girlfriend, sister-in-law and their friends seem the epitome of pampered princesses, or JAPs (Jewish American Princesses) — one-dimensional characters who exclude Joanne from their social circle, often appearing overly concerned with jewelry or solely focused on husbands, children and social lives.

The rabbi

Foster has said the character of a weed-smoking Rabbi Noah defies stereotypes of a rabbi, yet he can equally be seen to echo the neurotic nebbish, an American Jewish man who is “emasculated, insecure, passive, … romantically obsessed with Gentile women.”

While Rabbi Noah might be called “hot rabbi” at his Jewish summer camp by teen girls, he works to appease his mother’s demands, he can’t (really) play basketball and he won’t commit to his long-term Jewish girlfriend (who eventually finds his hidden engagement ring and gives it to herself).

Foster has said these characters are “not, in my opinion, Jewish stereotypes. They’re comedic points of view,” and has also pointed to the show’s sensitive female characters, such as a female rabbi who welcomes Joanne. Present in the writer’s room, Foster noted, were Jewish women, including converts, as well as men with a variety of Jewish backgrounds.

Rabbi Steve Leder, former senior rabbi of Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles was also a consultant on the show.

Perhaps there is some room for comedy here, but the timing is less than ideal. Antisemitism is at a new level of ferocity in the United States and around the world.

Stereotypes, however potentially humorous, can create, affirm or increase prejudice and distorted understandings of Jews and Jewish life.

Religious intermarriage

And what of intermarriage, the seemingly most pressing issue standing between Rabbi Noah and Joanne?

Is intermarriage so unimaginable, impractical and undesirable for rabbis and their congregants to navigate? There are rabbis who work within liberal streams of Judaism who are not only not opposed to intermarriage, but also in intermarriages themselves.

Rabbi Gershon Winkler, a formerly Orthodox rabbi who left Orthodoxy and now identifies as independent, points to Jewish precedent for such marriages: the Biblical and Talmudic figures of Moses, Eliezer the High Priest, Joshua, Boaz and Rabbi Akiva who were all married to non-Jews.

Intermarried rabbis exist within Humanist, Reform (Rabbi Noah’s most likely affiliation), Jewish Renewal and Reconstructionist Jewish movements, although not within Conservative and Orthodox streams.

Statistics about intermarriage in the U.S. demonstrate quite a varied portrait of Jewish life: overall, 42 per cent of American Jewish adults have a non-Jewish spouse; among those who married after 2010, intermarriage rates reach 61 per cent. Of non-Orthodox Jews, 72 per cent are intermarried, while 98 per cent of Orthodox Jews report their spouse is Jewish.

In real life, harmful stereotypes of Jews persist, while intermarriage in Jewish communities, lived by many couples and families in the U.S. and beyond, is a nuanced and rich reality reflecting many factors.

Nobody Wants This makes for a successful and profitable rom-com that hurts some while others laugh.