“Nobody Wants This” Serves an Important Purpose

It's not what you think

Kristin Bell and Adam Brody in “Nobody Wants This”

“Nobody Wants This” is currently one of the top shows on Netflix. To be blunt, it’s not good—at all. I could go on an entire diatribe about why, but my fellow writer

Jason Crystal

has done so brilliantly already in a review that I cosign on every word of, which you can read here.

I found the show kind of tedious in general, and I can’t help but think that all of the goyim viewers are going to think that it’s an accurate representation of Jewish women in particular. Kristin Bell’s shiksa character is a problem for other reasons.

But I do not bring up the show simply to pan it. I’m going to take you, dear reader, to a scene at my own synagogue over this past Yom Kippur. We’ll come back to “Nobody Wants This” shortly.

During the marathon of Yom Kippur services, there’s an entire block of programming in the afternoon just as your annual Yom Kippur fasting migraine sets in. At my synagogue, it involves the following components: the Open Forum, the Martyrology, the Mincha, and the Neilah. The Mincha and Neilah are pretty standard services that I think most places do to close Yom Kippur, but the Martyrology and the Open Forum are somewhat unique to my own congregation. It’s the latter 2 that I’m taking you to.

The martyrology honors Jews killed during various persecutions, some doing heroic things right before they died. In the past, ours opened with a discussion of Rabbi Akiva, and then moved forward to different points in history, with the Holocaust being acknowledged for about half of the service. Before the afternoon program even got started this time, the ushers handed out paper printouts of the new martyrology service that we would be following, off-script from the regular prayerbook.

When I saw the outline for the new service, my eyes filled with tears. I guess I should have expected it beforehand, but I saw that the bulk of the prayers were tailored to the October 7th massacres. Obviously that update to the service was necessary; this was the first High Holiday season since the Black Sabbath. Up until this year, I participated under the belief that we were bringing up events that would never happen again. What upset me profoundly was the realization that for the first time, we would be acknowledging dead Jews of a pogrom that happened in my lifetime, and it was going to be a permanent part of the martyrology service on every Yom Kippur in the future.

So what does this have to do with “Nobody Wants This”? I’m getting there. Before the martyrology service starts, our congregation has this unique tradition, the Open Forum. We jokingly call it “Stump the Rabbi" because it’s basically an hour of Q&A during which anyone in the sanctuary can ask questions on any topic of their choice, and the rabbi has to answer. You can imagine what this looks like during an election year,¹ to say nothing of Israel being at war at the same time.

Naturally, the the first question posed to the rabbi was about Gaza—some variation of “are Israel’s actions there still justified?” The rabbi visibly tensed up and clearly didn’t want to answer, but he did so with what I perceived as a canned, “let’s not make waves” response that he probably rehearsed beforehand.

The next question inquired about the rabbi’s opinion of “Nobody Wants This.” As soon as the audience member brought it up, everyone started whispering to each other (“what streaming service is it on? Who stars in it? Is it about Jews?”). The rabbi began his answer by stating that he was halfway through the series, and when he started his own critique of it (i.e. that he believed it’s an accurate portrayal of rabbinical service), others from the audience started adding their own commentary (“I won’t give you any spoilers, rabbi, but that ending…”). Then others began to raise their hands to ask follow-up questions on the same topic. This discussion took up the rest of the hour.

Why does this matter? Because I realized as I left the sanctuary that evening that the rabbi and the congregants were clearly prolonging discussion of this Netflix series to avoid talking about the war and the election. As long as we could redirect our attention to a (bad) rom-com about a rabbi who dates a shiksa, we didn’t have to argue with each other over Trump and Bibi.

I originally watched “Nobody Wants This” thinking that it was bad for the Jews. And it might be, if its viewers walk away believing the stereotypes. But if the show inspired a sanctuary full of Jews to forget about our problems, even for an hour, maybe it’s not so bad after all.

1. I’m having a flashback to the year of the Charlottesville “there were very fine people on both sides” fiasco when someone asked the rabbi if he believed it was “cowardly” for the rabbi of Congregation Beth Israel to have escaped with his congregants through the back door as white supremacists surrounded the synagogue. When our rabbi responded that he would have done the same thing in such a dangerous situation, people started started yelling about what the Charlottesville rabbi “should have done differently” (i.e. confront the white supremacists instead of running away). Our rabbi ended the argument by shutting down the Q&A and moving on to the next scheduled service for the day.