Movie Review: Trembling Before G-d
By Steven I. Weiss
December 11, 2001
"Even when you're sinning, you're sinning with G-d."
Trembling Before G-d's opening line is a tough concept to get one's mind around. It does not seem to advocate sinning, but does not seem to wholly condemn such actions either. As a preview of what is to come, this ambiguous opening line focuses the movie's message.
Tracing the stories of various Jewish homosexuals who grew up Orthodox, Trembling enters into territory that is, for the most part, uncharted. The director, Sandi Simcha Dubowski, is a gay Jew who has recently begun adhering to many mitzvos.
David is a man in his thirties who grew up in a Modern Orthodox household. The only Modern Orthodox subject in the film, his story is also given the most interesting plot-twist, when he confronts the rabbi who first advised him on how to deal with his homosexuality two decades earlier. The Rabbi advises him to seek counseling, recomending a therapist who sought to "cure" David's homosexuality by instituting a regimen that included eating figs and snapping a rubber ban against his wrist after every homosexual thought.
This is an interesting part of the movie that reveals an essential truth about the film: it does not preach. There are conntless ways that this scene could have been contrasted with psychiatric opinion to make these recommendations seem more hilarious than they really are. But Dubowski lets the inanity of the situation speak for itself, and audience laughter every mention of a therapeutic measure taken to "cure" David.
In many ways, David's example indicates precisely how distant Orthodoxy has pushed homosexuals from its culture, to the point where a consultant that utilizes witch-doctor methods is seen as a realistic option by concerned rabbis. And, as the movie goes on, another startling realization comes to mind: in contrast with the other subjects that Dubowski profiled, David's situation is probably the one in which the Orthodox response was most responsible.
When David does confront the rabbi in the film, and recounts his story of the past twenty years, the rabbi becomes obviously exasperated, and has no advise to offer David.
"Miriam" and "Leah" are a lesbian couple who, as luck would have it, met as students at a Bais Yakov in Brooklyn. They have determined to set a primary goal of advising Orthodox Jews struggling with the friction between their sexual orientation and their culture's recomended mores.
Make no mistake about it: Trembling is an honest portrayal of a serious issue that Orthodoxy refuses to acknowledge in a serious manner. For evidence of how significantly the issue of homosexuality is stuffed under the rug in the Orthodox world, one can point to Yeshiva's troubles when, two years ago, a student council election was adjusted so that a rumored homosexual could not win the president's seat, and an attempt to bring Rabbi Shlomo Greenberg, the first openly-gay Orthodox rabbi and a RIETS musmach, to an off-campus apartment elicited heated criticism from various members of the Yeshiva community.
To get the perspective of Orthodox leaders, Dubowski goes straight to the source. Rabbis Aharon Feldman and Shlomo Riskin and interviewed, as is Greenberg. It is telling that the only Rabbi to propose a solution - albeit a seemingly untenable one - is Greenberg.
Of course, what is a solution? That's a question the Orthodox community will have to wrestle with for some time...after it acknowledges the reality of homosexuals' mistreatment within our culture. With Trembling, so long as people see it, that mistreatment is a reality that can no longer be denied. One should not expect Trembling to provide answers, and those who attempt to find them in the movie are polluting its essential message. When Israel, an older man who was forced out of his family as a teen, wonders why he cannot have a father/son relationship, it is our duty to wonder with him.
It is for this reason that Trembling becomes that rarest of things, a must-see movie. Orthodoxy has long made a practice of bucking conventional culture. Here our quirk becomes a positive: take you $9.50, skip Harry Potter, and see Trembling.
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