A description of sandi Simcha DuBowski's documentary Trembling Before G-d sounds like the start of a bad ethnic joke: Did you hear the one about the gay Orthodox Jew? The film, however, is no joke at all, as it focuses on the dire plight of religiously devout Jewish homosexuals.
Shot in ghoulish yellow shades, the movie is also no great shakes at thestylistic level. Both visually and verbally, in fact, it's remarkablyugly--informed, it seems, by the no-frills aesthetic, or anti-aesthetic, thatcharacterizes much of contemporary Orthodox life. Many of DuBowski's subjectsappear uneasy in their bodies. The women, in particular, tend to be overweight ordraped in huge, tentlike outfits. And most of the people interviewed speak theingrown, unrefined language of the modern Ashkenazi ghetto. DuBowski relies onthe usual parade of talking heads and on a series of rather sentimental shots ofJerusalem at sunset and other illustrative sequences showing "typical" religiousscenes in silhouette. The hiddenness of the figures here is clearly meant to besymbolic--by the end of the film, we grasp the deeper logic of thistechnique--yet for the most part, it registers as a kitsch effect, a strainedattempt perhaps to echo the traditional Jewish folk art of paper cutouts.
But none of this really matters. The unblinking honesty of those interviewedand the director's willingness to probe with wide-ranging sympathy thistremendously complex and difficult subject amply compensate for the film's formalcrudeness. Trembling is a potent, painful document--and one that's fascinating for the way that it poses explicitly Jewish questions as it also reckons with more universal and heartrending concerns.
On the parochial front, there is something undeniably, almost paradigmaticallyJewish about the nature of the Solomonic conundrum at the core of the film.Homosexuality is, needless to say, forbidden in the Bible. The movie begins witha somber black screen on which we read the Levitical injunction regarding "a manwho lies with a man as one lies with a woman" and the blunt declaration that"they shall be put to death, their blood is on them." Though the Mosaic deathpenalty is no longer handed down in religious Jewish circles (nor are thelashings prescribed in the Shulchan Aruch, the sixteenth-century rabbinic code,for "women who rub against each other"), one married ultra-Orthodox lesbianfeatured in the film is terrified to come out for fear that her children will betaken from her. This, too, is a death sentence of sorts.
The history of Judaism, though, is loud with the voices of competing (andsometimes conflicting) interpretations of the Law. In this way, the questionsposed by the subjects of Trembling come directly out of a long tradition of rabbinic sifting, parsing, and weighing of priorities. Is it--a slender, handsome, and very religious thirty-something gay named David asks--more important not to lie with a man or not to be alone? As one of the other interviewees, a rabbi, points out, God arranges for Adam to have Eve's company before He gets around to doing much else in the Bible.
David's case is especially poignant. One of the most self-aware figures in thefilm, he knows exactly who and what he is, yet he still hasn't arrived at anysatisfactory conclusions about how best to live as a homosexual and a practicingJew. The film follows him through his agonized attempts to strike a reasonablebalance between these apparently clashing sides of his personality, both of whichhe is absolutely committed to. For all his suffering, he comes across as aknowing young man with a sharp sense of humor and a fairly wrenching ability toarticulate the inner turmoil he's experiencing as he's experiencing it.
He is able, for instance, to describe for the camera his enormously mixedfeelings toward the rabbis and psychologists who advised him for years to try and"cure" himself of his gayness by eating figs, reciting psalms, and practicing apreposterous sort of behavior-modification therapy that entailed flicking arubber band on his wrist or biting his tongue every time he saw an attractiveman. Not surprisingly, David says with a rueful little laugh, soon "my wrist washurting." But when he returns in the course of the film to confront one of theserabbis with the failure of the treatment, he still seems hungry for hisprofessional advice. "Must I," he wonders aloud, as much to himself as to therabbi, "live a celibate existence, by myself? Is that my lot? Is that what I'msupposed to have in this life?"
A certain masochism may attend David's return to the rabbi, whose dubious ifwell-meaning counsel was the source of much of his misery; but David's need tolearn to live amicably with himself and his warring impulses is so great that heseems willing to put aside his own obvious bitterness and continue to ask. And itis in this very act of asking that he and the others featured in DuBowski's filmare engaged in the most Jewish of acts: attempting to read the real world and itsmyriad complications and paradoxes through the lens of these ancient precepts.David is not looking for a loophole or a route around the Law. He believes inJudaism's vision and cannot accept the idea that it would reject such a centralpart of him. Convinced of its inherent humanism, he longs for the text itself tosave him.
For most non-Jewish or non-Orthodox viewers, it is naturally much harder to understand why a man like David would remain in the fold at all. Why not just embrace his gayness openly, cut loose, and turn his back on the entire punishing,pious package? In answer to this, the film presents another figure: Israel--acaustic, tortured, and wonderfully vital middle-aged man who long ago leftOrthodoxy "in order to maintain my sanity and my selfhood" but who remains asflamboyantly Jewish as he is flamboyantly queer (his own adjective of choice).
Israel appears to have found a kind of peace. He both lives with his boyfriendof 25 years and runs an outfit called Big Knish tours, which brings groups onguided trips through the ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods of his Brooklyn childhood.Yet it's startling to hear how he segues from a rant about his excruciatingyouth, attempted suicide, hospitalization, and forced electroshock therapy to atender, almost whispered confession that all he really wants is for hisfather--with whom he hasn't spoken in more than two decades--to sing him aSabbath song about the angels. He admits this wish with perfectself-consciousness, understanding full well its infantile nature: "I'm 58 yearsold, and I still want my daddy."
Besides David and Israel, the movie introduces us to a varied cast ofcharacters, each canny or moving in her or his way, and each of whom walks dailyacross a private minefield of guilt and grief. One young lesbian couple met intheir ultra-Orthodox girls' high school and now live a traditional religious lifetogether. As a pair, they seem happy as could be. Their agony comes from theoutside--from one of the women's parents, who simply cannot come to terms withthe fact that she's gay and whose impromptu phone call in the middle of filmingprompts a torrent of tears.
Mark, meanwhile, is the HIV-positive son of a London rabbi; he was sent toIsrael by his religious teachers, who believed he'd be safe there since, ofcourse, no gays live in the Holy Land. "Big mistake," says Mark, grinning as heexplains that he came out just as soon as he touched down--encouraged by theopenness (and, presumably, the defiance) of the gay community there.
Much of the force of DuBowski's film creeps up on us as the realization of acruel irony: that these gays and lesbians--whose very existence as sexualcreatures damns them in the eyes of the religious establishment and, in manycases, of their own families--are in fact so much purer in their devotion andpractice than many "normative" observant Jews, who perform the commandments asrobots on a spiritual assembly line. Even Israel, who years ago gave up thestrict behavioral patterns of Orthodox life, insists with total conviction: "Iknow I live in my faith." We believe him.
But beyond its sectarian relevance, the movie suggests a startling range ofother implications that reach far beyond the specific question of homosexualityand its relationship to Orthodox Judaism. The film is really posing a muchsteeper question about the place of traditional religious practice in thepost-postmodern twenty-first century. Though neither gay nor Orthodox myself, Ifelt, watching the film, a bedrock sort of empathy for--no, identificationwith--the people featured in Trembling Before G-d. Their uneasy exile from the conventional forms of organized religion seems extremely familiar.
And in some sense, their exile is not only religious; it's also tribal. Assuch, they represent all alienated people with deep collective yearnings: peoplefor whom standard (or exclusive) institutionalized belonging is not the answer,yet for whom the impulse toward some broader and more nourishing connection--beit social, spiritual, linguistic, or cultural--remains intense. (Events sinceSeptember 11 have only underscored the fact that the vast majority of Americansfit into this category.)
The poise with which these Orthodox gays assert their intricate, hybrididentities makes them models for the rest of us, many of whom are also defined byelaborate webs of affiliation. As people who live in two psychic lands at once,they possess the ability to translate or make human each of these realms for theother. Perhaps this is what Israel means when he announces that he "feels ...part of a community ... [that] has something to teach the world." While at firsthe sounds as though he's describing being part of the Jewish community (aputative light unto the nations), it turns out that he means being gay and Jewish. For him, the two do not contradict each other but belong on the same continuum: both set him apart; both are inherent to his being; both require of him a constant and acute awareness of his place in society. The emotional--even prophetic--thrust of his words informs the whole of this strange and powerful movie.
