In the French comedy Reformed (“Le Sens Des Choses,”) newly ordained rabbi Léa (Elsa Guedj) grapples with doubt and self confidence, wanting to be of service to her Strasbourg community, while searching for meaning in her own life.
The series is loosely based on the book, “Living With Our Dead: On Loss and Consolation,” by Rabbi Delphine Horvilleur, leader of the Liberal Jewish Movement, in France.
“The producers had acquired the rights to Delphine’s book,” says co-writer Noé Debré who worked on the series with Benjamin Charbit. “We had both read it already and liked it very much. We were also curious to meet and work with Delphine.”
While Horvilleur’s book (published in French in 2021 and English in 2024) detailed many of funerals she has conducted, the writers say they sought to make the Max series about the daily life of a rabbi lighter and funnier.
“We thought if we followed the book’s construction, with a burial in each episode, it might feel a bit repetitive,” says Debré. “And also, mainly, a great (2001) television series already exists with this concept: Six Feet Under. So it was less about adapting the book than about engaging in a dialogue with Delphine and drawing inspiration from her,” says Debré, adding that they had initially thought along the lines of Curb Your Enthusiasm with a rabbi. “But then we were caught by the gravity of the material, I guess.”
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Elsa Guedj plays the young rabbi[Missing Credit]
Throughout, Horvilleur guided them through the life cycle events – a bris, a bar mitzvah, a wedding, a funeral, a shiva – that structure the episodes. “We asked what she would do in such and such situation,” says Charbit.
There was also inspiration from Isaac Bashevis Singer’s My Father’s Court. "It tells the story of how his rabbi father tried to solve the daily problems of his community. In our sitcom, in each episode, characters approach the rabbi to discuss a very specific problem. The result is a dialogue between fiction and documentation.”
In the series, Léa helps a father with his decision over his son's circumcision; a teenager who is hesitant about his bar mitzvah; an older man whose mother recently passed away, and a man afraid of his upcoming wedding. But Debré says the biggest challenge was making sure that the doubt that stalks the rabbi – she is new to and nervous about her job – is also the sitcom’s message.
“We were worried about making a show that could be perceived as proselytising. We didn’t want the show to sound like Judaism has all the answers. That’s why we were eager to introduce characters that would question Léa’s faith.”
Her therapist father André, (Éric Elmosnino) is one of them. "There was Galileo, there was Freud, there was Auschwitz,” he says. “I thought we’d figured it out. God doesn’t exist.”
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Éric Elmosnino plays the rabbi's therapist father, André[Missing Credit]
Léa is a Reform rabbi, but Orthodox Judaism also received exposure in the series, via her relationship with Arie (Lionel Dray), an Orthodox rabbi and her erstwhile teacher. They both think the other one has got Judaism wrong. Debré’s Jewish background helped, here.
“I grew up in Strasbourg, in a traditional community,” he says.
The eighth and final episode of Reformed airs today. As yet, there is no word if Reformed is getting a second season, but Debré is hoping for good news.
“I guess the pleasure and joy of a series is that you get to understand what the series is as you’re making it. As opposed to a movie where it’s all over after you’ve completed it. Now that we know what the series is we can try to dig even deeper.”
