There are only six women serving as rabbis in France today, including Delphine Horvilleur—the third woman in the country to be ordained. “Reformed,” a French series currently streaming on Max, follows the fictional Rabbi Léa Schmoll, a character inspired by Horvilleur’s groundbreaking work. Set in Strasbourg, the show highlights both the challenges and rewards of leading a small liberal congregation in contemporary France. Actress Elsa Guejdi’s portrayal of Léa earned her top honors at an international television competition.
The story opens with Léa returning to her hometown, fresh out of rabbinical school, to lead a liberal congregation. Across eight episodes, she grapples with personal dilemmas and draws on Jewish tradition to help her congregants navigate life’s milestones with meaning and joy.
Horvilleur, a graduate of Hebrew Union College in New York City (there were no seminaries in France who would ordain a woman), is a leader in France’s liberal Jewish movement and a public advocate of Muslim-Jewish dialogue. She is also the author of four books, among them the best-selling “Living with Our Dead: On Loss and Consolation,” on which “Reformed,” or as it’s called in French, “Le Sens Des Choses – The Meaning of Things,” is loosely based.
It may be tempting to think of “Reformed” as a dramedy. But it is trailblazing a wholly original category, distinctive for its intelligence, creativity and humanity. In the first episode, an intermarried couple disagree on whether their newborn son should be circumcised. The mother’s non-Jewish partner loves all things Jewish, including klezmer music, the sanctity of Yom Kippur and Larry David. The only tradition he cannot abide is circumcision, which he thinks is violent.
I won’t give away the ending, but Judaic principles are front and center, something we don’t see in a real way on the other popular rabbi series, Netflix’s “Nobody Wants This.” Unlike Adam Brody’s character, Léa is ever-present for brit milot, funerals, b’nei mitzvot and Jewish weddings. She connects deep meaning with ritual and text and builds her rabbinate on empathy. Nevertheless, it’s an ongoing struggle for Léa to be taken seriously as a rabbi and sometimes as a Jew.
One of Léa’s stumbling blocks is her own father, an avowed atheist who tells his daughter, “There was Auschwitz, [and] I thought we agreed God didn’t exist.” Among her doubts is her commitment to her faith and her purpose as a rabbi. At one point, she panics that, “People want answers and certainties, and those are two things that I am completely lacking.”
She reaches an inflection point posing in her tallit for publicity photographs. When asked by her synagogue’s executive director why she doesn’t wear a kippah, Léa simply answers that it is not her tradition. But she acquiesces for the sake of shalom bayit, a Jewish tenet prioritizing “peace in the home.” Despite the incident, Léa flourishes as her own woman. It becomes clear that her honesty and vulnerability contribute to her success as a rabbi.
One of the most moving episodes of “Reformed” explores the complexity of Jewish feminism, Judaism and women rabbis’ roles. A middle-aged man consults Léa about fulfilling his Jewish mother’s last wish to be cremated. Léa’s first reaction is to tell him that Jews are not allowed to cremate their dead. She understands the son’s dilemma but advises him that a mother’s last wish is sacred.
After giving the man’s situation more thought, she considers not officiating at the funeral. The moment passes and Léa offers her congregant a brilliant Talmudic-like answer. She advises him, “I believe you should bury your mother. Judaism tells us we should choose life, and, in this case, life is you.”
Léa and the son are the only people at the funeral, but they fill the chapel with memories and love. Like the traditional Mourner’s Kaddish, Léa’s eulogy does not overtly mention death. Instead, she reflects on the mother’s many pieces of quilting scattered throughout her apartment. The son has no idea what to do with these scraps. But Léa does. She constructs a midrash based on the Hebrew word dor, which means “generation,” and as she notes also connotes “weaving” in Hebrew. The mother’s weaving was symbolic of threading many generations of her family together. As a Holocaust survivor, she understood how history could tear apart a family’s weaving. Léa further describes how many Jewish graves are chiseled with the words, “May her soul be sewn into those of the living.” Although the mother stopped speaking in life, in the act of mending she found a way to express what she could not say aloud. With Léa’s guidance, the man chooses to bury his mother, thereby weaving her soul into future generations.
The first season of “Reformed” ends with a dysfunctional family seder, replete with awkward encounters as central as the seder plate. Like many domestic situations, the episode is mostly jaw-clenching, occasionally hilarious and recognizably universal. In that mix, Léa’s brother Joël echoes the show’s French title when he observes, “My sister has the art of understanding the meaning of things.”
What more can anyone ask of a rabbi?
“Reformed” is currently streaming on Max. Its second season premieres in February 2026.