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Overview | Synopsis | Gay Interest | Personal review | Quotes | Pictures | Buy |
| Title | Trembling before G-d aka Ils tremblent devant Dieu |
Year | 2003 | |||||||||
| Director | Sandi Simcha DuBowski | Writer | Documentary | |||||||||
| Country | Israel / France / USA | Language | English / Yiddish / Hebrew | |||||||||
| Cast | Shlomo Askinazy (psychotherapist), Rabbi Steve Greenberg | |||||||||||
| Movie links |
Official site |
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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.
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Profiles various Orthodox Jewish gay men and lesbians. |
A deeply moving, deeply painful film. The difficult, conflicted, often tragically sad lives of Orthodox Jewish gay men and lesbians are represented by several different interviewees/subjects, most of whom are identified by first name only, many of whom are seen only in silhouette.
A woman (her face hidden) confesses that she welcomes the onset of her menses, because Orthodox law prohibits her husband to touch her during her period.
A handsome young man complains bitterly of the lifelong celibacy (and loneliness) which seems to be the only choice of a homosexual man in Orthodox Judaism.
Another hopes "wanking" is a lesser sin than actual homosexual encounters, and wonders aloud if he should have fought harder against his homosexual urges - perhaps he wouldn't have AIDS now.
You cry, you clutch your heart, you care deeply for these people. You wait for the happy ending, hope the film can at least end on a positive note; alas, there seems to be no such happy ending for these particular Chosen People.
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Review by Larry Duplechan |
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