Trembling Before G-d. (Roundtable).

TREMBLING BEFORE G-D IS AN UNPRECEDENTED feature documentary that shatters assumptions about faith, sexuality and religious fundamentalism. Built around intimately-told personal stories of Hasidic and Orthodox Jews who are gay or lesbian, the film portrays a group of people who face a profound dilemma--how to reconcile their passionate love of Judaism and the Divine with the drastic biblical prohibitions that forbid homosexuality. As the film unfolds, we meet a range of complex individuals--some hidden, some out--from the world's first openly gay Orthodox rabbi to closeted, married Hasidic gays and lesbians to those abandoned by religious families to Orthodox lesbian high-school sweethearts. Many have been tragically rejected and their pain is raw, yet with irony, humor and resilience, they love, care, struggle and debate with a thousands-year-old tradition. Ultimately, they are forced to question how they can pursue truth and faith in their lives.

When I first told people about the film, they laughed. Isn't Orthodox and gay an oxymoron? Do those people exist? Then ... why would they want to be part of a group of people that hates them?

We have had widely divergent experiences in the Orthodox world as we toured from Israel to Poland, Brazil to the UK, Los Angeles to Brooklyn. But it is Baltimore, Maryland, with the highest percentage of ultra-Orthodox Jews of any Jewish community in the US that has been particularly hot. It is no surprise that Orthodox Jews and Evangelical Christians protested Trembling Before G-d when we opened at the Charles Theater. (We always do interfaith work wherever we go!) They sited the Agudath Israel, the ultra-Orthodox organization, for their attack, "Dissembling Before G-d," which criticizes the film because it does not treat homosexuality as a mental sickness that can be cured. One of the city's leading rabbis, who is in the film, spoke out against the movie and many rabbis forbade their congregants from attending.

Yet, a scattering of Baltimore Orthodox married couples attended to send a message: "we came in support of you and they on the street do not represent us." One year later, we returned to Baltimore with one of the city's modern Orthodox synagogues, Congregation Beth Tfiloh, screening the film, one of 15 Orthodox synagogues worldwide that has now invited the film to screen. The local Jewish paper interviewed Rabbi Jonathan Aryeh Seidemann who said, "I'm certainly appalled, anguished and aghast that Beth Tfiloh is showing this."

Even when presented with the possibilities that a young Orthodox person struggling with homosexuality may consider suicide, Rabbi Seidemann said he could not advocate tolerance." Rabbi Chaitovsky, the synagogue's rabbi asked, "What other venue should it be shown in than one that is boundaried by Torah and Torah sensibilities? To show it in a movie theater is not the same." He introduced the program and hosted a post-screening discussion, did not have any easy answers to Leviticus and tried to reconcile his compassion for the suffering of the people in the film with the stark clarity he felt in Leviticus. His position was like that of Rabbi Asher Lopatin in Chicago who wrote a letter to his Orthodox synagogue: "The most moving part of Trembling Before G-d was realizing that the characters were on a holy journey to bring Torah into their lives, in the best way they could. We were shown how difficult it is for them. Never again can we make a sweeping statement about people's lives: we must love them as Jews, love the spark of God inherent in everyone, and first and foremost respect their private struggles, which we can never understand. As an Orthodox rabbi who wants to help everyone bring halacha [Jewish law] into their lives, I learned from this film humility and sensitivity, which themselves are crucial to making any halachic decision."

I made this film because I have to believe that every community is capable of change. To not believe that is to demonize and dehumanize a community. I began the film with the biblical prohibition from Leviticus: "A man lies with another man in the way of lying with a woman--it is an abomination. The two of them shall be put to death--their blood is on them." This is the verse which every Orthodox Jew, every rabbi, every priest and minister can quote and say this is the answer, black and white, no discussion, case closed. But I end the film with a blessing, "G-d is knower of secrets." The film arcs from answer to question, from prohibition to blessing, through the mystery of the divine and the mystery of sexuality that gets revealed by the human story of the lives of gay and lesbian faithful, committed Jews who struggle with the biblical verse every day of their lives. I want Orthodox Jews to look at Leviticus and not see homosexuality in the abstract, but to see the faces of David, Malka, Mark, Michelle. Most religious people have never had a name or face to attach to this issue. I want religious leaders to believe that the case is not closed.

SANDI SIMCHA DUBOWSKI is the director of Trembling Before G-d. He is a filmmaker and writer based in New York. The film has been the recipient of multiple awards including the Teddy Award for Best Documentary at the Berlin Film Festival and the Mayor's Prize for the Jewish Experience at the Jerusalem Film Festival. For more information, visit www.tremblingbeforeg-d.com.