NBC has pulled an episode of the medical drama Nurses after Jewish advocacy groups condemned it for peddling obviously anti-Semitic tropes and falsehoods.
The episode probably never should have aired as written, but NBC, which this week removed it from its streaming services and future airings, is at least moving in the right direction.
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Baby steps and all that.
The episode in question, “Achilles Heel,” features a patient, an Orthodox Jew named Israel, whose leg has been shattered. A doctor recommends a bone graft procedure, but Israel objects, arguing it’d be a violation of his religious convictions were he to defile his body with a “dead goyim leg.” Israel’s father, who insists that “the Creator” will simply heal his son, recoils in horror at the thought that his son’s potential donor may be a woman or, worse, an Arab.
The obvious issue here is that the presented religious and medical conflict has no basis in fact. There is no Jewish prohibition against cadaver usage in medical situations, even if it means accepting donations from non-Jews. Even if it means Arabs and women. The “ultra-religious” Israel, as the NBC episode description puts it, does not actually have to “put himself at peril to appease God,” though the show presents the scenario as a realistic and authentic conflict for the Jewish patient. This is a writers room fantasy.
As the show presents Orthodox Jews as aggressively regressive, it presents another character, nurse Ashley Collins, as the voice of reason. But there’s a twist! You see, she was once religious herself — until she “got gay.” She, therefore, has a unique perspective on those superstitious old Jews.
“So all of this shame,” the nurse confides to her religious mother during the episode, “this feeling that deep-down, no matter what I do, there is something wrong with me for who I love. … That’s your voice in my head, mom. It doesn’t belong to me.”
Here is an actual transcript of the scene where Israel is told that a bone graft is his only realistic option. Again, this is not made up:
Israel: He saved my leg. Thank you, Nurse.
Dr. McGowan: You had a compound comminuted fracture, so we repaired your artery and stabilized the break.
Israel’s Father: The Creator giving you a second chance.
Ashley: You know, God or the miracle of modern medicine. We’ll have you back on the court in no time.
Israel’s Father: You went to the basketball court instead of shul? Answer me please.
Israel: Yes. I know you warned me that basketball will–
Israel’s Father: Will take you away from your shiva, away from your studies, yes.
Ashley: You’ll have the next couple of months to hit the books hard. What with the physio and surgery.
Dr. McGowan: And a bone graft.
Israel: Uh, more surgery? The graft, where does it come from?
Dr. McGowan: It’s called an allobone graft; harvested from a deceased donor.
Israel: You want to put a dead leg inside of me?!
Israel’s Father: Dead goyim leg from anyone? An Arab? A woman?
Ashley: Or, God forbid, an Arab woman. Look, you can’t be lugging this metal cage around–
Israel: No. I don’t consent.
Dr. McGowan: Israel, without this next step, you will never walk properly again.
Ashley: Which means forget about basketball.
Israel: Which is obviously what He wants.
God almighty, who writes this stuff?
It’s as if the Nurses episode were written by a person with a Reddit atheist’s understanding of Judeo-Christian beliefs and practices.
Unsurprisingly, word of Nurses’ depiction of Orthodox Jews did not go over well with Jewish advocacy groups, including the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which released a statement this week condemning the program for peddling anti-Semitic clichés.
“The writers of this scene check all the boxes of ignorance and pernicious negative stereotypes, right down to the name of the patient, Israel—paiyous and all,” the group said. “In one scene, NBC has insulted and demonized religious Jews and Judaism.”
Their statement adds, “Orthodox Jews are targeted for violent hate crimes – in the city of New York, Jews are number one target of hate crimes in US; this is no slip of the tongue. It was a vile, cheap attack masquerading as TV drama. What’s NBC going to do about it?”
The Canadian studio that produces Nurses, for its part, released a statement this week saying, “It’s important that we address the recent feedback we’ve received related to the portrayal of Jewish beliefs in the ‘Achilles Heel’ episode of our series Nurses.”
It adds, “We take matters of this nature very seriously and deeply regret all inaccuracies related to religious beliefs as well as the negative portrayal of any religious community in our content, characters and storylines. We sincerely apologize to the Jewish community, our viewers and series fans, and are working to understand what transpired and ensure our research practices are exhaustive moving forward and lead only to well-informed storylines.”
Well, it’s a start. Going forward, the writers should first consultant someone who knows something about Judaism before, you know, writing about Judaism.
