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What the new season of ‘Nobody Wants This’ gets right — and very wrong — about Judaism
Despite the name, apparently everybody wanted a new season of Nobody Wants This; the first season of the comedy instantly became one of Netflix’s most-watched shows. Adam Brody charmed as Noah, a young, hot, menschy rabbi. Kristen Bell brought spunk and controversy as Joanne, his blonde, non-Jewish girlfriend. The pair had great onscreen chemistry. The writing was witty. The half-hour episodes made for an easy binge-watch.
Jews, however — myself included — had some sharper criticisms of season one, which we hoped season two might address. The Jewish women in the show were either vapid or harpies, and underdeveloped as characters to boot. And the depiction of Judaism itself wasn’t particularly enticing. Noah may have been a cool, young rabbi who smoked weed and had sex, but the show made it clear that he was the exception to the rule.
(For the record, I know many rabbis who smoke weed. Actually, the stereotype should go the other way; a recent study on psychedelics and spirituality that gave psilocybin to spiritual leaders couldn’t source enough rabbis who had not already tried a hallucinogen.)
Many — again, myself included — wondered whether the second season would take some of these complaints to heart and add some depth to the conversations around interfaith relationships, conversion, Jewish women and Judaism in general. And in a promising move, two Jews — Jenni Konner and Bruce Eric Kaplan, both of Girls fame — took over the showrunner role from its original creator, Erin Foster.
On the surface, the new season is a carbon copy of the first. Again, it is framed around the question of conversion. Noah, who has lost his promotion to senior rabbi because Joanne isn’t Jewish, admits that their relationship probably can’t progress if Joanne doesn’t convert. Joanne, who thought that the question had been put to bed — as many of us did, after the final episode of the last season in which she declared rather clearly that she would not convert for Noah — is taken aback, but decides to see if she can find a reason to fall in love with Judaism. And so we’re off to the races, with a baby naming, a Purim party, a Shabbat dinner, a conversion class.
This gives the show numerous chances to offer nuggets of Jewish learning. In the Purim episode, Noah goes beyond the usual “Purim is about getting drunk” tagline and gives a nice spiel, explaining that the holiday is a time when expectations are turned upside down. True! Another time, he points out that Judaism is about “analyzing things from every direction,” not just following rigid rules — a concept that deeply appeals to Joanne. (“A religion that encourages you to argue? Love that,” she says.)
The Jewish women are also better this year. The word “shiksa,” a pejorative that season one deployed very, very liberally, always in the mouths of Jewish women, has been erased. And Esther, Noah’s sister-in-law, has some actual plotline — we dive into her marriage to Sasha and her dreams for the future. And her snark feels more like fond ribbing than cruel jabs this season.
The show is still far from perfect — Bina, Noah’s stereotypically overbearing Jewish mother — remains a miserable, meanspirited hag. And the show’s popularity has also led to several clunky product placements and ads for Netflix. (At one point we vicariously watch a whole scene of Love Is Blind, one of the streaming platform’s reality shows, on Joanne’s laptop.)
Perhaps the show’s strongest answer to criticism of last season comes in the form of Temple Ahava, a new, very open-minded synagogue that hires Noah and immediately shows itself to be more focused on vibes than Judaism. It’s a clever, inside-baseball kind of joke; most Jews know this kind of synagogue, where ritual and text is downplayed in favor of broad, easy-to-swallow messaging. Last season, Judaism was portrayed as close-minded and rigid, unwilling to accept Joanne. Ahava is open-minded, sure — but it has lost its depth as a result.
The head rabbi — played by Seth Rogen — encourages Noah to take off his kippah. (“I’m raw-dogging the world!” he says.) Teens are encouraged to skip Shabbat in favor of movie premieres. The synagogue speedruns their conversion classes, offering a six-month version because no one wanted to sign up for a full year. Noah is skeptical; isn’t Judaism supposed to require learning and commitment? He keeps his kippah on.
It’s a powerful lesson about what makes Judaism truly meaningful. But the show undoes this exact lesson in its final scene. Joanne has been waiting all season to feel like she wants to convert. And even though she loves Shabbat and she’s picked up Jewish expressions, she doesn’t.
But Esther thinks she’s focusing on the wrong things. “I feel like you have this idea of being Jewish that’s so much more complicated than it actually is. I mean, you feel Jewish to me. You’re warm and cozy, you always want to chat about everything,” she tells Joanne. “You’re funny — that’s Jewish. You love to overshare. No matter how much I resisted, you literally forced me to be friends with you — forced. You’re a true kibbitzer. You’re always getting in everyone’s business. Ever heard of a yente, Joanne? You’re a yente.”
Joanne, she concludes, is already Jewish.
But that’s not true. Noah was right that six months is too fast for a conversion, because there’s more to Judaism than a list of facts or rules; it’s a millennia-old tradition of rich thought, text and discourse. Joanne may align with cultural stereotypes of Jews, but those are considered stereotypes for a reason — they’re shallow and incomplete. Being neurotic or anxious does not make someone a Jew anymore than being funny does.
This ending shouldn’t be surprising, however. The show’s creator, Erin Foster — who herself converted to marry her husband — rejected the critiques of the first season’s stereotypes.
“With the heaviness of what’s going on in the world around the Jewish faith,” she said in an interview with Vanity Fair about the new season, “to have a lighthearted, sweet, happy show that reminds people how beautiful Judaism is — don’t find something wrong with it! Take the win, you know?”
In response to any criticism about its reliance on Jewish tropes, the new season seems to answer that those tropes are actually core to Jewishness. Sure, season two of Nobody Wants This gets rid of the term shiksa and has a few nice Jewish moments. But it comes to the same conclusion as the first: Judaism is about vibes, not ritual or learning or commitment. It’s the same message Ahava offers — and like Noah realized, it’s not satisfying.
In many ways, this ending is a carbon-copy of the first season’s; in fact, the closing scenes are almost shot-to-shot identical. Last season, Joanne decided she couldn’t convert and Noah decided it didn’t matter — if Judaism was limiting them, then he’d reject Judaism. In this ending, Joanne embraces Judaism, but only because she’s decided it doesn’t actually mean that much.
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Israel becomes first country to recognize Somaliland, drawing condemnation from Egypt, Turkey and Somalia
Israel became the first country to formally recognize Somaliland, a self-declared sovereign state in the Horn of Africa, in a decision that was immediately condemned by Somalia and other nations.
“The Prime Minister announced today the official recognition of the Republic of Somaliland as an independent and sovereign state,” wrote Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office in a post on X. “The State of Israel plans to immediately expand its relations with the Republic of Somaliland through extensive cooperation in the fields of agriculture, health, technology, and economy.”
Somaliland’s president welcomed the announcement from Netanyahu in a post on X, adding that he affirmed the region’s “readiness to join the Abraham Accords,” the normalization agreements between Israel and a handful of Arab states that was brokered during President Donald Trump’s first term.
Somaliland proclaimed independence from Somalia in 1991 during the country’s civil war, but has failed to receive recognition from the international community in part due to Somalia’s opposition to its secession. Somalia officially rejects ties with Israel, and has consistently refused to recognize the state of Israel since 1960. Somalia and Somaliland are overwhelmingly Muslim.
“The ministers affirmed their total rejection and condemnation of Israel’s recognition of the Somaliland region, stressing their full support for the unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Somalia,” Egypt’s foreign ministry said in a statement following a phone call between Egypt’s foreign minister and his Somali, Turkish and Djiboutian counterparts, according to Reuters.
In November, the Israeli think tank Institute for National Security Studies argued in a report that recognizing Somaliland could be in Israel’s strategic interest.
“Somaliland’s territory could serve as a forward base for multiple missions: intelligence monitoring of the Houthis and their armament efforts; logistical support for Yemen’s legitimate government in its war against them; and a platform for direct operations against the Houthis,” the report read.
It is unclear if the United States will follow suit. In August, Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz wrote to Trump urging him to recognize Somaliland.
“Somaliland has emerged as a critical security and diplomatic partner for the United States, helping America advance our national security interests in the Horn of Africa and beyond,” wrote Cruz.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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‘Jesus is a Palestinian,’ claims a Times Square billboard. Um, not quite
“Merry Christmas,” proclaims a billboard in Times Square: “Jesus is Palestinian.”
Countless people will walk by the display or see it on social media, and many will believe it.
So, let’s go through why that statement is such a mistake, once again.
Jesus was a Jew. He was born to Jewish parents, was circumcised under Jewish law — traditionally, on Jan. 1, which is how that day became known as the Feast of the Circumcision — and lived as a Jew. He taught from the Hebrew Scriptures. He worshiped in the Jerusalem Temple. He observed Jewish festivals. He debated Jewish law with other Jews using Jewish modes of argument.
Go back to the Gospels in the New Testament — specifically Luke 4:16: “He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom.” Or, John 4:9, in which a Samaritan woman asks Jesus: “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?”
Cross-reference other ancient sources. Josephus, a first-century Jewish historian, refers to Jesus as a Jewish figure executed in Judea. No serious historical study of Jesus elides this basic truth: Jesus was a Jew.
Yet many efforts through history have sought to sever Jesus from his Judaism — often, if not always, in an attempt to denigrate Jews.
In the second century, the theologian Marcion sought to completely sever Christianity from Judaism. For him, the God of Israel was inferior and the God of the Christians was morally superior. Jesus, therefore, belonged to a different moral universe. The early Church condemned Marcionism precisely because it erased Jesus’s Jewish roots, and ultimately dismissed the idea as a heresy that needed to be rejected.
In the twentieth century, Nazi theologians attempted to portray Jesus as Aryan and anti-Jewish, which Susannah Heschel documents in her book The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany.
But it’s not just because of his religion that Jesus shouldn’t be considered Palestinian.
“Why not?” you might ask. “Didn’t he live in Palestine?”
The short answer is: Not yet.
When Jesus lived, the land of Israel was called Judea. It was under Roman rule, and it fell under several administrative districts: Judea, Galilee, and Samaria.
So, what is the source of the name “Palestine” for that area? It comes from the ancient people known as the Philistines, a perennial enemy of the Israelites. After the Romans crushed Jewish independence, they deliberately renamed the province in an effort to sever Jewish historical ties to the land, as well as to humiliate them by naming the land after their ancient foes.
To call Jesus “Palestinian” is therefore anachronistic.
Yet even so, the idea of Jesus as Palestinian appears in some strands of Palestinian liberation theology. Those strands tend to envision the Palestinian people as Jesus on the cross — crucified by Israel and the Jews, in an image that recalls the longstanding and deeply misguided allegation that “the Jews killed Jesus.”
This language appears repeatedly in the writings and sermons of Naim Ateek, the influential founder of the Jerusalem-based Christian organization Sabeel. In his 2001 Easter message, he wrote “as we approach Holy Week and Easter, the suffering of Jesus Christ at the hands of evil political and religious powers two thousand years ago is lived out again in Palestine,” adding that “Jesus is the powerless Palestinian humiliated at a checkpoint, the woman trying to get through to the hospital for treatment, the young man whose dignity is trampled, the young student who cannot get to the university to study, the unemployed father who needs to find bread to feed his family; the list is tragically getting longer, and Jesus is there in their midst suffering with them.”
Yes, of course, Palestinians have suffered and continue to suffer. But illustrations of that suffering should not include the pretense that Jesus was Palestinian. It suggests that Palestinians need to be seen as akin to Jesus to deserve safety and dignity, when in fact they deserve safety and dignity simply because they are human. And casting Israel and the Jews as crucifiers only resurrects medieval theology and hatreds; it adds nothing to the hopes for justice for Palestinians.
Mainstream Christianity has rejected this foul mythology. We have recently celebrated the sixtieth anniversary of the Christian world’s most vociferous denial of that ancient hatred. In 1965, Vatican II’s Nostra Aetate explicitly rejected the charge that Jews are responsible for Jesus’s death. The World Council of Churches issued similar warnings about reviving Passion-based antisemitism — the revival of the ancient accusation that Jewish leaders were responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus, and that Jews bear that guilt eternally.
History matters. Theology matters. And words matter — especially when they carry two thousand years of blood-soaked memory.
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82 years after his plane was shot down in China, Jewish WWII pilot Morton Sher is laid to rest at home
An American Jewish fighter pilot whose plane was shot down in the Chinese theater during World War II was given a proper burial 82 years after his plane went down, according to the United States Department of Defense.
The remains of Lt. Morton Sher, identified earlier this year, were buried in Greenville, South Carolina on Dec. 14 — what would have been his 105th birthday.
Sher was a member of the pilot group known as the “Flying Tigers” — formed to protect China from Japanese invasion following the assault on Pearl Harbor in 1941. He was piloting a P-40 Warhawk when he was shot down by Japanese bombers on Aug. 9, 1943. His mother Celia received Sher’s Purple Heart that same year.
Sher’s squadron put up a memorial stone at the crash site in Xin Bai Village, and a postwar army review in 1947 concluded that his remains had been destroyed and were assumed to be unrecoverable.
The remains of Morton Sher were returned to Greenville, North Carolina and buried on Dec. 14, 2025. (Courtesy Department of Defense)
Two attempts were made to locate his remains in 2012 and 2019, but neither was successful. A breakthrough came in 2024 when a Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency excavated a crash site in the province where Sher’s plane fell, and then in April 2025, when DNA analysis was conducted. The match was confirmed in June.
Sher was born in Baltimore, Maryland on Dec. 14, 1920, and his family later moved to Greenville where they became members of the Conservative synagogue Congregation Beth Israel. In high school, he was a member of the aviation club and enrolled in ROTC. Sher was a founding member of B’nai B’rith Youth Organization’s Aleph Zadik Aleph chapter in Greenville, according to the funeral home that organized his burial.
“He dreamed of being a pilot,” Sher’s nephew, Steve “Morton” Traub told Greenville’s local NBC station. “This guy did a lot for his country. He was my hero.”
Traub, who never met his uncle, but heard stories and read his letters, was raised by Sher’s father, David.
“I wish I had known him, but if he had, I wouldn’t have been named after him. I feel like I knew Mason because I knew Papa,” Traub said.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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