Trembling Before G-D: An Interview With the Director
Steven I. Weiss
December 11, 2001
The Commentator's Steven I. Weiss sat down for an interview with Trembling Before G-d director Simcha Dubowski. A portion of that interview is printed here. You can view the full-length interview as a web-only feature at The Commentator's homepage, www.yucommentator.com.
SIW: How has your perception of the film and its impact changed as you've seen the Orthodox community's response?
SSD: I think it surprised me, because only when the film went into theatrical release in New York did I even begin to experience the impact on the Orthodox world. When you go to festivals, often Orthodox people aren't necessarily attending, but once we went into the theaters, it became a much different experience.
I went to this CLAL [National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership] Rabbinic retreat, and they have Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform rabbis there, and Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld, of HIR, [after a screening] said 'this is Orthodox bashing.' And a woman stood up, who is a Conservative rabbi, and she said, 'I am a Conservative rabbi and my Shul does not know that I'm a lesbian.' And she said 'all I want to be is shlaimut,' all I want to be is whole, and she started to cry.
And Rabbi Herzfeld, I think, with the rest of us, was completely taken aback and by the end of the evening, he had invited us to screen the film at HIR. He wound up writing a dvar torah that he delivered at shul on Shabbat, saying that, 'we need to embrace - event if it's a chok and we don't know why it's a prohibition - we still need to embrace people in the community and make sure that the gay people don't feel rejected by the Orthodox community.'
So, that was kind of the first real kind of change that I felt. I was thinking 'wow, we've been invited to give a screening at an Orthodox shul - that's amazing.' And then I've had four invitations since. So what I had though at first would possibly be an isolated incident has become a mini-phenomenon. It's really amazing; it's so exciting. We've been in theatrical release for only just over four weeks.
I also put together this whole evening, a special community-wide Orthodox discussion after one of the screenings, on November fourth, and one by one, every Manhattan Orthodox shul stepped on board. Eventually, we had eight Orthodox shuls participating. These are really kind of the mainstream Orthodox shuls in New York - [and they are] modern Orthodox. It gives [people an incredible sense of hope that they don't have to do one of the two common things that most gay people do, which is get married and lie to their spouses or leave the community because there's no place for them.
And I think for Jews, who want to live a life of torah and mitzvoth, who love Judaism - and that's how they want to be, they want to be in the Jewish world. That's how they've grown up and they've gone to yeshiva, including YU...it's the world they want to be in. I think for them it's just like a revelation. People have written me e-mails, jokingly asking me, y'know, "is moshiach coming?" And I think it really honors all the rabbis who are taking that courageous step, and even when it's still complicated to deal halachically with the issue, on a human level, they're compassionate people, they're opening doors, and at least saying 'it's an issue, we can deal with it, we can understand it, we're going to meet it head-on,' which is amazing, because that isn't what has been done until now. Everything's been very private. So I think that this the first time that they publicly acknowledged the reality, and you should have seen the room for the Orthodox discussion, which was filled, and every positive word, every positive gesture was important.
SIW: Flowing from that, those shuls are Modern Orthodox, and it's interesting that in the film, you focus primarily on right-wing Orthodox people...do you think that sends a specific type of message, that it's predominantly right-wing people that you're profiling?
SSD: No. I think that the message that people get from watching the film is that this is a problem whether you're Modern Orthodox or charedi. I tried to balance it well, where David's story acts as a kind of backbone for the film. But a lot of it has to do with who came forward to be interviewed.
Even Modern Orthodox people who I thought could be interviewed ended up worrying about the repercussions that it might have for their families. One woman who I interviewed, she went to Ramaz, and she grew up in the KJ crowd, and I thought, 'wow, even her parents are pretty accepting,' and I thought 'wow, she could probably do the film.' I tried to see if her family could deal with it, and they couldn't do it. I was always trying to find people who are still Orthodox, and lesbian or gay, who would be interviewed.
I found another Modern Orthodox woman; her daughter got kicked out of yeshiva once the rabbi found out she was a lesbian, and then her daughter got blacklisted at every yeshiva in LA. The problem was that she was a convert, and had grown up as a Puerto Rican Catholic. And I was really trying to find people who grew up frum...so, you know, I had a very limited pool to deal with. There were just very, very, very few people willing to go on camera. It was much easier to find people to do a silhouette, and even that was still hard.
SIW: Your film has faced some interesting criticism, from Adam Jessel in his movie review in The Jerusalem Post, and a public letter from the Agudah, who posit that you didn't accurately portray what they see as the possibility for homosexuals to "convert" to heterosexuality.
SSD: It's funny that you ask, because I just finished a response to that letter. But, for ne the problem with those responses is that they treat homosexuality as an illness that can be cured. And they don't take into account how that kind of advice and reparative therapy has, a) been discredited by the American Psychological Association, and, b) has really led people astray.
The promise that they give of people being cured, has, unfortunately, when it doesn't work - and it doesn't work for a lot of people, including David in the film - it leads to depression and suicide attempts, or marriages in which they can betray their husband or wife. So they [Jessel and the Agudah] are not willing to necessarily pick up the pieces, and just want to propose this idea that sexuality can be cured.
I'm sure there are people who are successfully in control of their desires, and, that means managing a lifelong condition, just like with diabetes, and if you can do that it doesn't mean that you're cured, it means that you have these desires and they don't go away, you just have to suppress them.
I certainly tried to find people who'd tried to change...I interviewed one guy who got married; the way that he kind of redirected his orientation was through sexual surrogacy. So for six weeks, he had sex with a woman, who he then processed his sex with. It's a very controversial technique, and I just didn't feel like it was right to put it in the film...it was all told in silhouette and then he got married, and unfortunately he got separated from his wife.
That's the other thing: Jessel and the Agudah will point to all these success stories. Well, Devora [a married lesbian who is documented in the film], heard, in Jerusalem of this success story of this woman who used to be a lesbian. [Her fried was telling her] 'and she became very religious, and she's married and she's active and she's doing well and she's a rebbetzin.' And [Devora] said 'wow, I really want to meet this person.' So [her friend] called another person...eventually she finally got to the source, and the [source] looked at [Devora] and laughed and said 'do you know who this person is?' and she said 'what do you mean?' and the person said, 'it's you.'
Meanwhile, on the inside, she was taking anti-depressants to make sure that she could go on with her marriage - she was hiding the fact that she was collapsing. Often the success stories to people like Jessel, they happen but problems may erupt in five years, or ten years, and because there are no longitudinal studies that prove the efficacy of these conversion therapies, there's really no hard data.
You really have to look at this as a life-long process, You have to interview not just the person, asking 'can he have intercourse?' but you have to look at his life and see 'is this person's wife happy?' Is she in love? Is this the marriage that she had hoped for? Does her husband want to touch her?
You know, it's sad. I interviewed this couple where they have remained together, they're an Orthodox couple, they've got many children and they live in Jerusalem. And the husband came out to her a few years ago, and they decided that they would stick it out, that they would stick out the marriage. And she isn't exactly doing well, she's very depressed and she tries to funnel all of her energy into her job. That's the kind of back-story that these conversion therapists don't take into account. And they can wind up being really damaging. When Jessel and all these people are willing to sacrifice their daughters to men who claim that they've changed, then I'll know that they're serious, but they'd rather damage other people's families, and not hurt their own.
SIW: Had you considered focusing on gay community at Yeshiva?
SSD: No one would be interviewed. I think now people who graduated wished they'd been interviewed. But there's people like Rabbi Greenberg who is a graduate of YU, so there's graduates [in the film], but there's not necessarily people at YU.
I hope the film can be a comfort and a support for people at YU. I can't emphasize enough how hard it was to find people. People are so scared, and people just have to be really courageous, because they're not sure that they're going to be backed-up or protected in any way. The more rabbis who are supportive - the more therapists, the more families - the more people will be comfortable and not try to engage in self-destructive behavior. But I didn't make it necessarily my focus to film at YU...I also didn't want to get into the politicization of it, where you're dealing with the power structure and hierarchy. And I really wanted to focus on the human stories - people's stories, so if someone at YU were willing to be open and share their life with the camera and the public, I would've definitely considered them for the film.
(All rights belong to The Commentator)
No comments:
Post a Comment