"I don't want to be a less-than-Jew because I'm gay," claims one of the many interviewees in Sandi Simcha DuBowski's fascinating documentary about the problems of being a gay, orthodox Jew.
It's a heartfelt plea for tolerance that few in the orthodox community are able to deal with, since the Torah treats homosexuality as an abomination punishable by death through God (the title's use of "G-d" is out of respect for the Hebrew tradition of not writing the word).
Advocating psychiatric treatment, drugs, conditioning, and aversion therapy, the vast majority of the rabbis interviewed by DuBowski display a truly terrifying degree of intolerance. It's a fact that forces the vast majority of gay Jews to either turn their back on their faith, or hide their sexuality.
The human costs of such a decision are all too plain. The most affecting sequence involves 58-year-old Israel, a gay New Yorker whose rebellious attitude masks a man who desperately wants to be reconciled with his father, but can't because he is, in his own words, "a faggot, a fairy, a queer."
Other interviewees include David, a thirtysomething Los Angeles resident forced into celibacy, and Brooklyn-based Michele, who once believed she must be the only Hasidic lesbian in the world.
With many interviewees hiding in the shadows, their faces blanked out for the camera, "Trembling Before G-d" offers only a few glimmers of hope. The best of these is Steve Greenberg, the first openly gay orthodox rabbi, who proposes finding different, more inclusive ways of reading the Torah.
Skipping from America to Israel and back again, this insightful documentary simmers with a fury that's passionate enough not to need spelling out.
By the end of the film, it's obvious that the vast majority of the orthodox Jewish community are trembling before their earthly peers, not G-d.
Trembling Before G-d (2003)
