Reply #32: Trembling Before G-d, a documentary about gay Orthodox Jews [View All]

I saw this very powerful and sad documentary on the Sundance Channel not long ago. Here is an article about what it means to be gay and Orthodox. Has anyone else here seen this, and would you care to share your thoughts?

Gay Orthodox Jews in the Movies

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Harriette Yahr

Trembling Before G-d. Dir. Sandi Simcha Dubowski, Prod. Sandi Simcha Dubowski & Marc Smolowitz. New Yorker Films, 2001.

For five years, filmmaker Sandi Simcha DuBowski traveled with his camera to places of pain in the Orthodox Jewish world. He emerged with Trembling Before G-d, an award-winning documentary film which reveals the struggles and dilemmas of gay and lesbian Jews as they attempt to live traditional Orthodox and Hasidic lives. Structured around interviews with Jews in Brooklyn, Jerusalem, Los Angeles, London, Miami, and San Francisco, Trembling Before G-d has received numerous awards and has garnered attention in media outlets from the BBC to the New York Times. The film broke a box-office record when it premiered in New York City last October, and it opens nationally January 30th in Los Angeles, with other cities to follow.

A gay Orthodox community has been strengthening over the past seven years. Witness the revival of the "Orthodykes" and HOD, the gay Orthodox organization, in Israel. Note the formation of the "Orthodykes" and the Gay and Lesbian Yeshiva Day School Alumni Association in New York City. Orthodox Rabbi Steve Greenberg, who wrote as a closeted gay man in Tikkun under the pseudonym Rabbi Jaakov Levado in 1993, is now openly gay.

Clearly, being gay and Orthodox no longer appears to be an oxymoron on a "private club" level in a few major cities. Still there's anonymity associated with the organizations that exist. Most Orthodox gays are closeted to their communities, at worse to themselves. The real dilemma is not about joining a private club anyway. It's about how Orthodox gays and lesbians can fully express their lives within a spiritual tradition that largely denounces their sexuality, and how they can thrive publicly within their communities. DuBowski's contribution to the consciousness of this cause is unprecedented: he bears witness to testimonies of these Jews in paradox. He etches into celluloid (and history) the collective voice and individual images of their struggle. His film provides a forum for ideas and feelings to be dialoged and experienced in community. The Jews up on the screen are hurting. For the most part, they are damaged, troubled, even self-hating, and it shows. The gay Orthodox reality is now public. It's hard to dismiss.

http://www.tikkun.org/magazine/index.cfm/action/tikkun/issue/tik0201/article/020153.html