In Nobody wants that, Tovah Feldshuh plays Bina, the strong-willed Jewish mother of “sexy Rabbi” Noah, played by Adam Brody.
Ahead of the release of the now-streaming third season of the hit Netflix romance series, Brody made headlines when, in an interview with GQthe actor said of the war in Gaza, “demeans me by thinking it’s genocide. Demeans me by wanting a free Palestine.” He added: “It’s horrible that it took so much death and misery, but I feel like we’re reaching a breaking point that should have been reached some time ago.”
Brody – whose other Jewish on-screen characters include Seth Cohen from The CO and Seth Morris in Fleishman is in trouble – once stated that he “barely received the bar mitzvah and took nothing away from it.” (Jews are both a religious and ethnic group.) Nobody wants thatBrody’s Noah falls in love with non-Jewish Joanne (Kristen Bell). They then overcome obstacles – religious and otherwise – in their relationship, leading to a significant update for the couple at the end of the third season.
Asked about Brody’s comments, Feldshuh, who is a Jewish Broadway veteran, television and film actress, said The New York Post that “accusing the Jewish people of genocide is wild. It’s straight out of Hitler’s playbook. You take the victim and you make the victim the perpetrator.”
Feldshuh added that comments like Brody’s are even worse when they come from Jews with large platforms. “(It) makes a difference to the (Jewish) community,” she said. “I believe that the perseverance of the State of Israel is crucial to the well-being of the democratic world and the free world. Of course, Israel needs the United States, (but) the United States needs Israel, believe me.”
Still, she told the outlet that there were no political disagreements on set.
“My job, as Bina but also as Tovah, is to love the people on set in my workplace, to be kind,” she said. “In the context of global anti-Semitism. I’m thrilled to have been cast as a Jewish matriarch. Thrilled and proud, and that will never change.”
Nobody wants that creator Erin Foster also weighed in on Brody’s comments while promoting season three, stating on the Not skinny but not fat podcast that “it’s complicated”.
“Our work environment, our work environment is very similar to dinner tables around the world where people debate and discuss and disagree,” she said. “As much as I like Adam, I don’t agree with him either, and that’s okay.”
She added that as the creator of the show, “all I can say is I want our Jewish fans to know that I see you and I hear you and I understand how you feel. And the show has always been and always will be a love letter to Judaism. That’s why I made this show. It’s because of the beauty of the experience that I had becoming Jewish and as a Jewish person, and sitting here in this moment in the world where there’s almost no positive representation of Jewish people, I think it’s so important to have that.
“That being said, everyone is entitled to a different opinion than mine. I can just tell you why I created this show, what the intention of the show is,” Foster concluded.
Rabbi Steve Leder — the former senior rabbi of the Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles (the synagogue where Foster converted to Judaism) and who was the technical advisor during the show’s first season — also condemned Brody’s comments, saying, “You, by your own admission, are a relatively ignorant Jew, and your ignorance really showed itself the other day. Here’s some technical advice: If you don’t know anything about something, you shouldn’t say anything about it.”
During the first season, Leder consulted with the cast and crew to ensure that the Jewish portrayal, including Brody’s portrayal of a rabbi, seemed authentic. “There is no genocide in Gaza, there are genocides in other countries, but you did not mention any of them,” Leder added in his response. “If you’re going to use a word like genocide, you better know what that means. And by the way, being so flippant about a word like genocide – ‘hey, put me down for genocide,’ as if you were asking for a table for two at (Los Angeles hotspot) Craig’s – is disgusting.”
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