In ‘Nobody Wants This,’ rom-com gets century-old tropes with a new twist – the cute rabbi

Adam Brody and Kristen Bell attend a fan screening for Netflix’s ‘Nobody Wants This’ in New York City. Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for Netflix

Twenty years ago, the television show “The O.C.” invented the word “Chrismukkah.” Main character Seth Cohen, played by Adam Brody, described his interfaith family’s December tradition of “eight days of presents followed by one day of lots of presents.”

Today Brody is back, starring in a new Netflix show. But this time, instead of playing the child of an interfaith marriage, he is a rabbi dating a woman “without a Jewish bone in her body” – one who, at times, seems unfamiliar with the basics of American Jewish culture.

“Nobody Wants This” is the story of a romance between Rabbi Noah and Joanne, played by Kristen Bell: a blond, non-Jewish woman who hosts a podcast about her dating disasters. The show uses the word “shiksa” to describe Joanne, which means a non-Jewish woman. Many consider it so rude, though, that I feel certain that my mother will materialize in my apartment to wash my mouth out with soap for even typing it.

Joanne and Noah meet at a party, where he flirts with her. Quickly, they agree that the religious gulf between them means that they cannot date.

But of course, they do.

In 2024, the largest Jewish movement in the United States, Reform Judaism, decided to allow students with non-Jewish partners into rabbinical school – as do several smaller liberal Jewish movements, including Renewal, secular humanists and Reconstructionists. Conservative and Orthodox rabbis are not permitted to marry a non-Jewish spouse, and as recently as 2023, the Conservative movement reiterated that its rabbis cannot perform interfaith marriages.

While some rabbis have only recently been able to have a non-Jewish partner, the basic plot of Jewish men dating and marrying a non-Jewish women has been a trope of stage and screen for 100 years. As a scholar of American Judaism, I write about these depictions of interfaith couples in my book “Beyond Chrismukkah: The Christian-Jewish Interfaith Family in the United States.”

Becoming ‘real’ Americans

In 1922, “Abie’s Irish Rose” premiered on Broadway, where it was a commercial hit for five years. The comedy features a romance between Abie, an American Jewish soldier, and Rose, his Irish American nurse during World War I.

Rose and Abie’s courtship is beset with disapproval from their fathers, who are portrayed as symbols of the old world, dangerously concerned with preserving their outdated worldviews. Meanwhile, the young couple’s love underscores their willingness to move past their identities as Catholic and Jew – both of which were considered “outsider” religions in the 1920s – to become “real” Americans.

The rabbi and priest who attend their wedding are veterans, too, deepening the play’s message that patriotism comes first. Abie and Rose’s marriage is presented as an idealized, romanticized version of the American melting pot.

‘Abie’s Irish Rose’ depicts the happy couple as a symbol of America.
University of Washington via Wikimedia Commons

The play was just as successful on tour as it was on Broadway, though many critics loathed it. It was revived on Broadway twice and made into two films. Multiple knockoffs were made, including a movie called “The Cohens and the Kellys.”

In the 1940s, “Abie’s Irish Rose” became a radio spinoff, but times had changed. The over-the-top ethnic caricatures were no longer considered acceptable, and after a few seasons, the show was canceled.

‘Bridget Loves Bernie’

In the early 1970s, CBS created a sitcom based on the premise of a Jewish man – in this case, a cabbie whose parents own a New York deli – falling in love with a Catholic teacher who comes from a wealthy family. As in “Abie’s Irish Rose,” the younger generation in “Bridget Loves Bernie” supports the marriage, including the bride’s brother, who is a priest.

The objections all come from members of the older generation, who are depicted as tropes – irrational and stuck in their ways. The television show suggests it is old-fashioned and not really acceptable to oppose interfaith marriage.

Meredith Baxter and David Birney starred in the one-season series ‘Bridget Loves Bernie.’
eBay via Wikimedia Commons

“Bridget Loves Bernie” received vociferous protests and was canceled at the end of the first season. Many Jewish viewers objected to the suggestion that interfaith marriage was acceptable and even hip.

The show was likely particularly unnerving to the Jewish community because the interfaith marriage rate was rising at unprecedented rates in the 1970s, creating fear in the community that Jewish assimilation to wider American culture would prove too successful. The worry was that interfaith couples would not raise their children as Jewish, shrinking the Jewish community into nonexistence. In addition, Judaism has traditionally considered a child Jewish only if the mother is also Jewish – though that has changed in liberal movements.

As I write in my book, one critic, writing to The New York Times, suggested that a situation comedy about interfaith marriage was as tasteless as one about “the merry adventures of a Jewish family on their way to the gas chambers.”

While CBS denied that the show was canceled because of the protests, it remains the highest-rated show to be canceled by network television.

The theme of Jewish interfaith marriage as American, and opposition to interfaith marriage being outmoded, echoes through films, as well – most notably, the original “Heartbreak Kid” and “Annie Hall.”

Though no one ever mentions religion in the decade-long show “Mad About You,” it two features a Jewish man married to a non-Jewish woman – and much of its humor stems from their cultural differences.

New series, same stereotype

Both notions are also present to some degree in “Nobody Want This” – which includes another, uglier theme from the interfaith marriage archives, as well.

In his opening scene, Noah breaks up with his Jewish girlfriend, Rebecca – a woman so desperate for a proposal that she searches his locked desk, finds an engagement ring, puts it on without him knowing and then tries to convince him that despite his doubts, they should marry. This ex-girlfriend and her best friend, Noah’s sister-in-law, appear repeatedly throughout the series, demonstrating a range of negative stereotypes about Jewish women as wives and lovers. Noah’s mother, who speaks with an old-world accent, claims to know all his friends, and she reminds her son: “No one can take a rabbi seriously who is dating a shiksa, never mind marrying one. I do not mind looking like an overprotective mother.”

These characters reflect negative stereotypes that American Jewish men and women have long held about each other, as historian Riv-Ellen Prell has written: “the ghetto girl” – a Jewish women who is too greedy, pushy and grasping; and men who are essentially mama’s boys. Joyce Antler, also a historian of American Judaism, has written specifically about stereotypes of Jewish mothers as meddlesome, interfering, overbearing and over-involved.

Like generations of non-Jewish leading ladies before her, Joanne is what one of my interviewees used to call a “shiksa goddess.” She is blonde, she is easygoing, she is everything that Jewish women are supposedly not. She is appealing in her contrast.

In some ways, “Nobody Wants This” demonstrates something new: Not only can one make a show about interfaith dating, but the Jewish dater can also be a rabbi! But in other ways, it is old as the hills, or at least as the silver screen – serving up stories, tropes and misogynistic stereotypes in sparkling new packaging.

Samira Mehta receives funding from the Henry Luce Foundation.