Actor Joe Locke and Rabbi Alexandria Shuval-Weiner in a scene from Marvel’s Agatha All Along. Courtesy of Disney+

By Benyamin Cohen October 21, 2024

A lot of work goes into producing a Marvel series for Disney+: scripts, casting, budgets, locations, rewrites, costumes, special effects, you name it. Now something new to add to that list: choosing a Torah portion.

Disney’s Agatha All Along, about a witch working to regain her powers, opened its sixth episode with a bar mitzvah scene. The 77-second sequence shows the character William Kaplan, played by Emmy-nominated Joe Locke, nervously shuffling around the sanctuary while carrying the Torah and then reciting the blessing and reading from his bar mitzvah portion.

But which section of the Torah to read from? Though the episode debuted on Oct. 16, producers started pondering that question back in November 2020, when they sent a casting call to the Atlanta Rabbinical Association, which represents dozens of congregational leaders across denominations. (Since 2015, Marvel has filmed many of its movies and nearly all of its TV series in Georgia because of the state’s tax incentives, which have drawn enough productions to give it the nickname Hollywood of the South.) 

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As with most questions regarding Judaism, there was internal debate. “There were Chabad rabbis, Orthodox rabbis, Reform rabbis,” recalled Rabbi Alexandria Shuval-Weiner, the senior rabbi at Temple Beth Tikvah in the suburbs of Atlanta. The casting call was cryptic and offered little information beyond that the studio needed a rabbi for consultation and possible on-camera work. “We asked ourselves: Is this a good idea? Is this a bad idea?”

“It was during the pandemic and we were all alone,” said Shuval-Weiner, a mother of five — one of whom is a “huge” Marvel fan. “You’re doing services in an empty sanctuary on a television screen. And I thought, why not?” She sent in an audition tape, drawing from her experience dabbling in theater at her Los Angeles high school.

After a few auditions, she scored the gig. “Suddenly, I’m getting all these non-disclosure agreements to sign,” she said.

A biblical allegory for a Marvel show about witchcraft

Online bar mitzvah lessons went into high gear. The rabbi met over Zoom with Locke, who is not Jewish, on how to recite the blessing over the Torah. The producers, hoping to make the ceremony as authentic as possible, asked Shuval-Weiner to choose an appropriate Torah portion.

She eventually landed on Parshat Shemini (Leviticus 9:1–11:47) because it contained the story of Aaron’s sons, Nadav and Avihu, who brought an unsanctioned sacrifice to God and were immediately consumed by fire and died. “They were dabbling in stuff they shouldn’t have been dabbling in,” said Shuval-Weiner. It resonated for her with the themes of Agatha All Along which, airing in the weeks leading up to Halloween, is filled with witchcraft and the supernatural. “I just kept hearing in my head the Jewish concept of avodah zarah — worshipping a false idol.”

She and Locke practiced for months. “Joe was truly a mensch,” she said. “He’s a really nice young man and incredibly respectful. While we were shooting, he didn’t do anything without asking: ‘Is this OK? Is anyone going to be insulted by this?’”

Shuval-Weiner said the director, Gandja Monteiro, was also “intent on making sure not just that the scene was authentic, but that it was elevating and presenting Judaism in the right light, and not to make a mockery of it.”

Lights, camera … amen

Temple Beth Tikvah is one of many locations around Atlanta in a database of locations hosted by the Georgia Film Office. Before Agatha, Shuval-Weiner said, her office had been used in more than one Lifetime movie. But her synagogue’s sanctuary was lacking the stained glass windows the producers were looking for, so the bar mitzvah scene was shot instead at Temple Kol Emeth, in another Atlanta suburb.

It took two days of filming for the less-than-two-minutes that ended up on screen. “We spent an hour just doing the congregational response to barchu et adonai hamevorach,” she said of the Torah blessing. In the final cut, Shuval-Weiner and Locke are seen standing at the bimah, a proud rabbi and her pupil, as the camera zooms in on the scroll and the actual text of the Nadav and Avihu story.

Shuval-Weiner was busy preparing her Sukkot sermon when the episode first aired on Wednesday night, so she did not watch it. During services Thursday morning, in the midst of shaking the lulav in front of the congregation, she started getting text messages from friends. “Oh my gosh,” one read. She and her husband watched the show when they got home from synagogue.

Because of the long hours spent working on the project, Shuval-Weiner said she is now eligible to join the Screen Actors Guild, which could come in handy with all the movies and TV shows filming around town. But she has so far opted not to join.

“I think I’m busy enough trying to take care of my congregation,” she said. “But maybe being part of a Marvel series will increase enrollment in my confirmation class. They’re over the moon for my three seconds of fame.”

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