I grew up in a Reform-atheist family where my H&H bagel slicing skills were considered far more important than learning the Torah portion of my Bar Mitzvah, which I didn’t want in the first place, nor did my parents ask me to do to pay the bills. Most of my knowledge of the Jewish faith and traditions was gathered not in temples but in front of the television.
I remember the first TV rabbi I saw was on Sex and the City, which had a lot of good stuff. I watched intently as Charlotte York attempted to convert to Judaism out of love for her bald, optimistic, very Jewish boyfriend Harry Goldenblatt, but was rejected three times before her local rabbi (which is apparently a real thing?) reluctantly invited her to join his family for Shabbos dinner. By Season 1 of This Is It…, twenty years later, Charlotte York-Goldenblatt has become a fully-fledged Jewish mother, and Harry Neff is her family’s rabbi. (Quite an upgrade!)
Watching Neff (a Jewish actress who got her start as a trans woman in Weimar Germany on Transparent ) perform a joyous, ultra-chic “bar mitzvah” for Charlotte’s nonbinary child, Locke, felt like the ultimate symbol of us as a faith evolving from the stereotypical Fiddler on the Roof portrayals of Jewish spiritual leaders on screen to a more live-based rabbi era.
Sure, there were some fascinating guys along the way: Mandy Patinkin as Yentl, the yeshiva student dragged into bed; but now, a few years after Kathryn Hahn played the beautiful, kind-hearted Rabbi Raquel in Transparent who is dating a guy (inspiring me to wear skirts for Halloween and modest clothing for Tallit), we have Adam Brody playing a rabbi in the new movie. Seeing The O.C.’s Seth Cohen (one of TV’s first true crush-worthy, non-assimilated nice Jewish boys) playing perhaps the most sublime character in the Jewish spiritual world made me think: b) it’s great to see La Than entering the cool, practical, romantic realm.
Given that, as noted, I’m hardly an expert on anything related to Jewish liturgy (I eat pork! I’ve been known to blog about Shabbat! I have over a dozen tattoos, many of which I actively deny the existence of to my own massive family tribute!
“The interesting thing about the history of Judaism is that it’s not afraid of sex,” said Diane Offenberg-Rose, a Jewish Universalist rabbi and cantor serving in the Los Angeles area. “Obviously, in the ultra-Orthodox world, there are certain rules that everyone must follow, but generally speaking, if you’re a great rabbi, you have a wife and a bunch of kids; you’re having sex, and you’re even having lessons about good sex and your responsibilities to your wife, so it’s never been taboo. I know people fall in love with the idea of the “sexy pastor,” but there’s no reason to think that your Jewish pastor can be that great in bed.
With the arrival of Brody’s character in Nobody, perhaps we’re finally moving away from the notion that TV or movie rabbis need to be any one thing. Brody can be sexy; Neff’s Rabbi Jane is immaculately dressed; Offenberg-Ross calls her her favorite on-screen rabbi because “she shows that all clergy are human, that despite the pressure to appear like everyone else, you can be romantically harassed. You weren’t invited to my bar mitzvah at all, Rebecca B.’s reply may be silly, these individual representatives don’t have to bear the burden of perfectly representing the whole of Judaism; after all, there are all kinds of rabbis out there in real life — rabbis who marry LGBTQ+ couples, rabbis who teach Torah on sneakers, and rabbis who oppose Israel’s war in Gaza — so why shouldn’t such diversity of sex be reflected on screen?
