If you’ve watched Fox’s “Doc,” then you know the medical drama has its very own Jewish McDreamy in the form of Jon-Michael Ecker’s Dr. Jake Heller, a very easy-on-the-eyes chief resident in the fictional Minneapolis Westside Hospital where the show is set.
Heller isn’t just a sweetheart with good bedside manners; he’s also proudly Jewish, wearing a very hard-to-miss chai — the two Hebrew letters that mean “alive” and are also equal to 18, an auspicious Jewish number — necklace with his scrubs.
In “Doc,” based on an Italian show with the same name and a similar premise, he plays the former love interest of Dr. Amy Larsen (Molly Parker), his superior at the hospital who loses all memories of their relationship and the past eight years of her life — including the divorce from her husband and a tragic personal loss — after suffering a traumatic injury in a car crash.
And in the latest episode of the beloved Fox show, Dr. Larsen, Dr. Heller and the rest of the staff at Westside Hospital all stand together in a Jewish cemetery and read out the Mourner’s Kaddish. The Mourner’s Kaddish is a Jewish prayer recited at the grave of a loved one on the day of their burial, on special occasions and on the yahrzeit (the anniversary of their deaths), and by mourning children for 11 months after a parent’s death.
The episode, titled “Kaddish,” is the show’s fall finale.
They are all at the grave of Dr. Heller’s father, Len, played by famous Jewish actor Peter Friedman, who we see in the opening of the episode wrapped in a tallit in a plain pine box. The detail match up with Jewish tradition; plain pine boxes are traditional, metal free coffins used by many Jews to make sure that they go back into the earth, but also to show how equal we all are in death.
As Dr. Heller walks up to the grave, Harry’s Chapin, “Cat’s In The Cradle” plays in the background.
His young daughter Mia asks him why the grave isn’t covered, and he tells her that after the ceremony, the mourners will gather and drop a little bit of dirt on the pine box with the back of their shovels, to slowly cover his father. “That’s our way of saying to Saba,” he says, using the Hebrew word for grandfather, “we’re burying you, but we’re going to go slowly because we don’t want to say goodbye yet.”
It’s a beautiful, age-appropriate explanation of the burial ritual. In Hebrew, a funeral is called a “levaya,” which comes from the word “to accompany.” It is our way of walking with the deceased in his final journey, of saying goodbye. Many of the men in the crowd wear a kippah to honor the deceased.
Part of that goodbye is also the Mourner’s Kaddish, recited in Aramaic by the entire crowd, who helpfully have sheets with the prayer and likely its translation in hand. They recite what is essentially an abbreviated version of the prayer, not something traditionally done, but something dictated by limited TV episode run times, most likely.
And while the episode is full to the brim with other drama and intrigue, including a nefarious plot by the children of a former patient of Dr. Larsen’s and flashbacks to the early days of Covid at Westside, it still brings us even more accurate depictions of Jewish mourning rituals.
After the funeral, the crowd goes to a shiva at the house of Dr. Heller’s ex-wife (and Mia’s mother) where Dr. Larsen brings him a platter of rugelach. The delicious Jewish pastry is traditionally brought to funerals and Dr. Larsen doesn’t know how to pronounce it — yet she does know that you don’t bring flowers to Jewish mourners. You bring food. Discerning viewers will also notice a black ribbon pinned to Dr. Heller’s lapel, and to his sister’s clothing, as well. It symbolizes the kriah, the Jewish ritual of tearing one’s clothes in mourning after the death of a loved one.
Both Dr. Heller and his father are shown to be such mensches in this episode and the previous one, “He Loved You;” Heller as someone who helped raise his sister after his mother died when he was young, Len as a working class man who didn’t particularly want his son to be a doctor (“I think you’re the only Jewish dad in America who’s disappointed his son became a doctor,” Dr. Heller tells his father in a flashback,) but who worked 14-hour days at the sporting goods store he owned to give his son everything he’d ever dreamed of. In the flashback scenes, Len also talks to Dr. Larsen about how he feels he’s failed as a parent, working too hard, not being there for his child; Dr. Larsen urges her then-boyfriend not to wait to tell his dad how he feels about him before it’s too late.
It’s so moving to see a show like “Doc” give us such a complex yet lovable Jewish protagonist, as well as careful and beautifully painted moments of Jewish life, death and mourning in “Kaddish.”
“Doc” is now streaming on Netflix and Hulu. Season two of the show returns to Fox on Jan. 6 and begins streaming on Hulu the following day.
