The Irreconcilables.

Ellenzweig, Allen

Trembling Before G-d

Directed by Sandi Simcha DuBowski Simcha Leib Productions and Turbulent Arts

Joe Lieberman, recent candidate for Vice President, looked like an affable American, a condition that was never undercut by the momentous fact that he was a practicing Orthodox Jew, though he sported neither an Old Testament beard nor a pair of horns. Judaism has many shades of observance and orthodoxy, as well as sects within sects. Reconstructionist and Reform Jews are the most tolerant on the matter of homosexuality, especially with respect to committed relationships. Rabbis in the Conservative and Orthodox camps run the gamut from nose-holding neutrality to outright opposition. At the furthest extreme, Hasidic Jewry is tainted by an unforgiving Talmudic fundamentalism analogous to evangelical Christianity. In the eyes of the Hasids, to be gay or lesbian is to engage in practices condemned by Leviticus and by Jewish Halakhic laws. Vilification is the order of the day.

A new documentary film by Sandi Simcha DuBowski reveals the complex set of tensions felt by gay men and lesbians raised in an Orthodox and/or Hasidic context. Trembling Before G-d profiles several individuals of varying age in their daily attempt to resolve the conflict between religious observance and their homosexuality. Shot on location in Brooklyn, Jerusalem, San Francisco, London, Los Angeles, and Miami, the film is a modest but deeply felt appraisal of the pain involved in reconciling these opposites.

In tightly jigsawed segments, DuBowski's subjects present themselves to the viewer. We meet Mark, the son of an ultra-Orthodox rabbi in London, who was shipped off to Israel on the belief that there was no homosexuality in the Land of Return. Big mistake, he says. It was there that he came out in full bloom. Michelle, raised in Boro Park, Brooklyn, a dense Hasidic enclave, walks through the neighborhood from which she now feels estranged, engaging in a civil but ironic chat with an uncle whose path she accidentally crosses. David, from Chicago but now living in L.A., recounts the absurd therapies to which he was reduced on the advice of a San Francisco Lubavicher rabbi who was his first confidant. We trail David as he returns twenty years later to a renewal of contact with his old and beloved rebbe-counselor, only to see how he remains trapped in the need for a "permission" that will never come.

The oldest subject, Israel, now in his late fifties, has cut himself off from his nonagenarian Orthodox father for over twenty years while remaining connected to the world of his youth as a leader of walking tours of Boro Park and Williamsburg. Still fully conversant in the rituals of his forebears and full of the self-mocking, ironic wit of a Yiddishkeit wunderkind, Israel confesses to the camera his deep yearning for the sweet comforting lullabies of his papa. Israel is the spellbinding star of the documentary, declaring his pain, vulnerability, and rancor, all in a one-man chorus of personal hellfire and brimstone.

Perhaps most touching are Miami-based Malka and Leah, who've been together for ten years but have only announced their lesbian relationship to Malka's father, a Brooklyn rabbi, within the last year. We view them at home as Malka prepares a beautifully braided Challah and takes an emergency call from another lesbian friend who's trapped in a loveless marriage (with children). Later the tables are turned, as we hear Malka on the phone with her own father, cordially but quickly wishing him a "Good Shabbos." Afterward she collapses in sadness and tears with the realization that her father's call is just a duty, lacking all sincerity. Interspersed with these segments are a number of expert witnesses, mostly rabbis and psychotherapists. All are sensitive to the Hobson's choice faced by Orthodox Jews who are gay, but none prognosticates a rosy future. There is even one openly gay Orthodox rabbi, Steven Greenberg, among them.

Trembling Before G-d has the strengths and weaknesses of its narrow focus. That there may indeed be alternate avenues is never explored, as DuBowski has chosen not to interview Jews who find community primarily in the gay world while practicing Judaism in a multi-denominational congregation. Given the narrower world he chose to focus on, his treatment is constrained by the relatively small number of "out" subjects who were willing to participate. It is a measure of the distance queer Orthodox Jews have yet to travel that several of his subjects are interviewed in the shadows and shown enacting rituals in silhouette.

Perhaps DuBowski's most important accomplishment is to have made this film at all--budgetary constraints notwithstanding--and to have done it so artfully. The evocative musical scoring by John Zorm, hinting at a traditional klezmer clarinet, tempers the film and creates the warmth of the world of our fathers, in frying Howe's phrase. This is the undeniably patriarchal world from which many of these outcasts have been exiled--the hearth at which they hope some day to be welcome. Perhaps the very existence of Trembling Before G-d will help get some of them home.

Allen Ellenzweig is the author of The Homoerotic Photograph and a frequent contributor to this journal.