Nobody Wants This Season 2: Is Purim a real Jewish festival? Details from the event in Episode 6, explored

Netflix's Nobody Wants This Season 2 deepens its exploration of faith by immersing in a tapestry of Jewish traditions that shape the lives of its characters. While Joanne wrestles with the idea of conversion, she is surrounded by another round of Shabbat dinners, conversion rituals and Jewish festivals.

As the second season delves deeper into Joanne's conflicts about faith and identity, the narrative goes beyond surface-level representation. Instead, rituals and customs are used as meaningful storytelling devices that mirror the couple’s emotional journey.

Nobody Wants This Season 2 captures how these moments of ritual and reflection become both a source of connection and conflict for Joanne and she certainly felt the most conflicted during the Purim celebration in Episode 6. Purim is a real Jewish festival, celebrated to commemorate the saving of the Jewish people in ancient Persia.

More on this in our story.

Nobody Wants This Season 2: Exploring the Purim festival

Nobody Wants This Season 2 certainly went head-on with the Purim episode, where an entire episode was dedicated to the popular Jewish festival. Purim festival is celebrated to mark the saving of the Jewish people from the Achaemenid Empire's official Haman in ancient Persia. The story is recorded in the Book of Esther, where Haman is the main antagonist.

As told by Noah in Nobody Wants This Season 2, Purim is a festival of Jewish deliverance, where the community gathers together and feasts, often in silly costumes and masks. While the Netflix show featured a quite modern take on the costumes, where Rabbi Noah was dressed as a vampire himself, the costumes are typically aligned with traditions and people often dress up as characters from the Book of Esther.

As Noah tells Joanne, Esther always dresses up as the titular heroine of the book, but even she traded Esther's costumes for a cat.

The costume aspect of Purim often confuses it with the popular Celtic festival of Halloween, and Joanne's mother even called it 'Jewish Halloween'; however, the two are different. While the Celtic festival is a secular spooky celebration, connected with death and the supernatural, Jewish Purim is a day to celebrate revival and triumph. People celebrate the festival with feasts and often make donations and charities in the spirit of Purim.

What went down during the Purim celebration in Nobody Wants This Season 2?

The Purim festival was yet another occasion for Noah to show the advantages of being a Jew in Nobody Wants This Season 2. The title of the Purim episode (Episode 6) was 'Anything Can Happen', which created a lot of anticipation among fans. While Noah was waiting for Joanne to have an epiphany and convert to Judaism, he never expected his Purim story to have a profound effect on her mother.

When Noah narrates the story of Jewish consciousness to Joanne's mother, explaining how Jews believe that each soul was present on Mount Sinai for the giving of the Torah, she has an epiphany and decides to convert to Judaism. This stings an already upset Joanne, who was waiting for her moment of Jew epiphany.

While Nobody Wants This Season 2 Episode 6 was focused on Purim, it was used as an elaborate ploy to feature yet another celebration and gather all the characters under one roof. Thanks to Purim, Noah and Joanne's parents met for the first time here, where Joanne's father (out of all people) was dressed as Esther.

However, the shining moment of the show's Purim celebration was Dr. Andy's surprise proposal for Morgan, which left Joanne and her family in shock. While the episode eventually justified the title, it was nothing like what the audience was tricked into believing. Joanne's mother's conversion and Dr. Andy's proposal certainly took everyone by surprise.

Nobody Wants This Season 2 is streaming on Netflix.

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Also Read: Nobody Wants This: Decoding the Netflix show's honest take on interfaith romance

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