Ice Picks and Tornadoes
The film begins with a strange scene between a husband and wife, and a potentially dead man. And the movie ends with a tornado threatening to head towards Danny and his classmates. These two scenes set us up to understand that a theme of this film is that there are many times in life when outcomes we don't expect to occur happen. And we don't have much control over them, all we can do is do our best to respond to them.
Divorce
Judith asks Larry for a get (a divorce document that must be presented from the husband to the wife in order to finalize a divorce). In the midst of getting the get, we watch as Larry must come to an understanding that he doesn't know what's going on. And in the midst of him figuring it out he's pushed by his wife and her lover, Sy to move out of their home in order to decrease the tension for the kids. We see that divorce is messy no matter what side it comes from, and how it has a realistic effect (Sy writes false letters to the tenure board to make them skeptical of giving Larry tenure), and unseen ones that are both positive and difficult.
Counsel
Throughout Larry's difficulty with his wife wanting a divorce he seeks the counsel of his rabbis at his synagogue. The irony of this is that he wants to meet with the main Rabbi (Rabbi Marshak), but he isn't able to do so until the end of the film. Instead he meets with a Junior Rabbi who doesn't quite understand what he'd going through and another Rabbi who isn't as helpful as he thinks. Larry believes that if he can just meet with Rabbi Marshek he can get the help he needs. Turns out the Rabbi only quotes Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody to Love" and tells Larry to be a good boy. The theme of counsel reveals that where we hope and expect to get it from may not end up being our best place to receive it.
