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Midge Maisel, the central character of the Amazon original show The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, is an aspiring comedienne living in the Upper West Side of the late 1950s. The audience is quickly introduced to Midge’s family: her mother, Rose Weissman, trust-fund child of a family that found wealth in the oil industry; her father, Abe Weissman, a professor of mathematics at Columbia University and occasional dabbler in socialism. It is late in Season 1 by the time we meet Midge’s brother and sister-in-law, Noah and Astrid. From the moment she appears onscreen, it is clear that Astrid is something of an outsider: raised Christian, she converted to Judaism to marry Noah, and her enthusiasm for her adopted tribe is palpable. She arrives at a family dinner party bearing gifts from her eleventh trip to Israel: comically oversized mezuzot. When Midge points out that the decoration meant to be affixed to the doorpost of a Jewish home is “giant,” Astrid laments, “Oh, it is such a stupid gift. [...] Rose has a mezuzah. You have a mezuzah. It's not shoes, you can't just change them out every season.”
Astrid’s zeal for Judaism is gently tolerated by her in-laws, but at times it seems that the audience is meant to roll their eyes at this woman, this convert, so aggressively asserting her place in her newfound tribe. Gentiles may watch and wonder what the appeal of Judaism could possibly be to Astrid; Jews may chuckle or cringe at her intense devotion to all things Jewish: Israel, mezuzot, peppering awkward Yiddish into her casual conversations. But as a patrilineal Jew who technically had to convert (as Judaism is largely matrilineal), I find myself only feeling sympathy for and kinship with Astrid.
Coming to Judaism as an adult, as Astrid did, I have found myself describing this strange feeling of being somehow too much in my commitment to my ethnoreligion. Recently, after I spoke to a friend with two Jewish parents and a Bar Mitzvah and all the trimmings, he compared my experience to that of immigrants to the United States: “People born in America don't need to know the government the way immigrants do to gain citizenship, just like born Jews don’t have to go before a Beit Din to defend their Jewishness. Of course anyone who chooses a new country or a new religion is going to be enthusiastic about it, because they’ve never taken it for granted.”
It’s clear that Astrid’s devotion to Judaism is not feigned. She is among the most religious Jews on the show: when Rose joins Astrid in prayer for Tisha B'Av, Astrid alone has been fasting for the “saddest day in Jewish history,” and she has to remind Rose that the prayer books are in Hebrew and are read from right to left. When questioned about her fasting, a hungry Astrid snaps, “It's a day in remembrance of the destruction of the First and Second Temples, but I guess no one else gives a shit. [...] These were important fucking temples!” When Astrid’s enthusiasm is played for laughs, my heart aches for her. I am all too familiar with the sideways glances of born Jews when I am too loud or thrilled or passionate about my Judaism. I don’t think Astrid Weissman is a joke. I think she’s immediately recognizable as a woman finding her home and her tribe through adoption rather than birth.
Of the 613 mitzvot, or commandments of the Jewish religion, number 207 is this: “You must love the convert.” Astrid Weissman, like me, for all her earnest, eager, excessive energy, formally converted and entered the tribe of Judaism, and her commitment should be lauded, not derided. Long live the passionate Jew-by-choice. May she never feel guilty for buying oversized Judaica or awkward for her limited mastery of Yiddish. Wherever we will go, she will go. Our people will be her people and our God her God. Amen.
Marlee Abbott is a writer and actor from South Florida. She received her BA in Creative Writing from the University of Miami. You can read their published work in Prometheus Dreaming, The Write Launch, and Gravitas. She lives in Central Florida where you can find them onstage or making digital art. (they/she)