Trembling Before God
The hidden lives of gay and lesbian
Orthodox and Hasidic Jews
April 7, 2003
UMass Amherst
"Trembling Before God" is a documentary film about gay and lesbian Orthodox Jews and the dilemma they face reconciling their love of Judaism with the Biblical prohibition against homosexuality.
This powerful film by director Sandi Simcha Dubowski shatters assumptions about faith, sexuality, and religious fundamentalism, through its intimate portrayals of Orthodox and Hasidic Jews who are gay or lesbian.
As the film unfolds, we meet the world's first openly gay Orthodox rabbi; closeted, married Hasidic gays and lesbians; Orthodox lesbian high-school sweethearts; and other people, all with complex stories.
Many have been tragically rejected by their communities, yet with irony, humor, and resilience, they love, care, struggle, and debate with a tradition that is thousands of years old. What emerges is a loving and fearless testament to faith and survival and the universal struggle to belong.
Photographed over five years in Brooklyn, Jerusalem, Los Angeles, London, Miami, and San Francisco, "Trembling Before God" is an international project with global implications that strikes at the meaning of religious identity and tradition in a modern world. The film is both witness and catalyst to a historic debate about this issue in Orthodox circles.
The film was followed by a discussion with Rabbi Julie Greenberg, a Reconstructionist rabbi who serves Congregation Leyv Ha-Ir-Heart in Philadelphia.
The program was sponsored by the Office of Jewish Affairs and the Stonewall Center.
For more information, visit Trembling Before God
