"Trembling Before G-d" at TAC Event
by Simi Lampert
December 21, 2009
This is not the first Yeshiva University newspaper article to be written about homosexuality within the Orthodox Jewish community. Harking back to at least 2003, the Torah approach to homosexuality has been discussed as it relates to American politics, art, National Coming Out Day and even the movie "Borat."
Ever since the first article written by an anonymous gay Yeshiva College student was published in "Kol Hamevaser"-and answered with a flood of replies, including another anonymous piece, numerous letters to the editor and pages of online comments-there has been a cry for an official Yeshiva University response. Perhaps it is for this reason that Stern College for Women's student-run Torah Activities Council (TAC) recently decided to screen the movie "Trembling Before G-d" at their Marvelous TAC Videos (MTV) night. Introducing the screening was Rabbi Dr. Aharon Fried, a professor of psychology at Stern, who held a question-answer session following the thought-provoking film.
"Trembling Before G-d" is a documentary by Sandi Simcha Dubowski that was released in 2001 and portrays a selection of Jewish men and women who identify themselves as both Orthodox and gay. Some of them are openly gay, while others remain "in the closet." All of them struggle to reconcile their sexual proclivity with their religious identity.
The aim of the film, according to Fried, and the purpose of showing it in a YU venue, is to "appeal to reason and allow for an open discussion of ideas." If the true purpose of the film is simply to humanize the issue by putting a face to the abstract debate, then it certainly succeeds. The audience cannot help but feel the pain of each person depicted.
The crowd of Stern and YC students who gathered to watch this screening responded with compassion, and, where appropriate, appreciation for the fleeting moments of humor. One philosophy major at Stern who attended the event spoke about her feelings afterward. "This movie really opened my eyes to a small but important section of our Jewish community, and what they have to deal with on a daily basis," she said.
"The issue of homosexuality is not of some individuals, but ours," Fried emphasized to the viewers. "They are ours."
Acknowledging all this, we must also be aware, according to Fried, that the film does have its "agendas." The creators of the film would like its audience to believe that homosexuality is immutable and definitively not a choice but an inborn trait.
Many figures in the Orthodox Jewish community have a similar problem with the one-sided angle of the exposition. In a response posted on the "Trembling Before G-d" website, Rabbi Avi Shafran stated that the "picture is both incomplete and distorted" as it "thoroughly portrays the challenges faced by its subjects; it simply does not allow Judaism to make its case."
Many critics point as well to the editing and cutting that went into making the film. Not only were certain people chosen to appear, perhaps for reasons such as having experienced particularly harsh reactions to their homosexuality from rabbinical or psychological authorities, it has also been suggested that the responses from the featured Orthodox rabbis were unfairly pruned. The movie calls for empathy yet, according to one rabbi who appeared in the movie, Rabbi Aharon Feldman, the final cut "makes us appear to be narrow and bigoted" instead of highlighting the compassion exhibited by many Orthodox rabbis. Absent is any mention of Orthodox outreach to homosexuals, such as the organization JONAH which, according to its website, "seeks to reunify families, to heal the wounds surrounding homosexuality, and to provide hope."
These are not the only limitations of the documentary. In an interview conducted on Wilf campus with an anonymous gay student who also attended the Thursday event, the YC student said that he believes the film "needs to be updated." Although it was released just eight years ago, it was in production for a full six years before that. This student, who for the sake of this article will be identified as "X," believes that the movie is slightly out of touch. "For the time that it came out, it was a pivotal stepping stone," he said, as it satisfied the need to portray the "emotional perspective;" but now time has passed. It is "upsetting that it's the only thing that exists" now, according to X, and we now need to deal with the fact that homosexual acts are very clearly "an aveira [sin]," X said. "It's in the Torah."
"Trembling Before G-d" does not claim to present a halakhic (Jewish legal) position on the question of homosexual acts. Nevertheless, "it alludes to flexibility within the Jewish Code," said Rabbi Dr. Aharon Fried, "and that is more debatable" than is implied. One of the individuals depicted in the film has drawn more censure than others: Rabbi Steven Greenberg, the man championed as "the first gay Orthodox rabbi," who does not apologize for what many see as his blatant disregard for one of the 613 mitzvoth.
Rabbi Greenberg is a YU and RIETS alumnus who is also openly gay and lives with his longtime partner. He has written a book as well as numerous articles on the topic of Orthodox Jewry and homosexuality; he strongly believes that halakha should, and will, "reconfigure" itself to accept homosexuality. In an interview with The Observer, he discussed the way halakha rose to meet innovations such as electricity and new understandings of the nature of a deaf-mute, and compared that to the idea of homosexuality. "[There is an] inevitability that people, and Orthodox rabbis, will recognize that this is a non-pathological minority variation of human sexuality," said Rabbi Greenberg." As that becomes clearer and clearer, halakha can respond to that. It may be ten years away, but it will happen."
Rabbi Greenberg's ideas of the changing nature of halakha, including amending outright prohibitions from the Torah, have caused many to question whether he can legitimately be considered Orthodox. "When people say I'm not Orthodox," Rabbi Greenberg explained, "I say, 'I understand why you might say that, let's have a conversation, let's see where we end up.'" At the very least, he said, "we must shape sexual ethics with the reality of gay and lesbian people and their lives."
The film is one that opens a Pandora's box of controversial debates and ideas. It is perhaps for this reason that, although it originally intended to sponsor the event, Yeshiva College's Student Organization of Yeshiva, one of the largest student-run groups on the Wilf Campus, backed out once it became aware of the content of the MTV film. Flyers advertising the film were taken down, and the bus from the Wilf Campus to the Beren Campus was canceled and later had to be arranged by TAC. In an email interview, Jason Jacobs, the president of SOY, discussed SOY's official stance. "I felt very strongly that I should rethink being involved with this," wrote Jacobs. "I felt that this was inappropriate for obvious reasons but more importantly I felt that this issue has gone out of control in YU (or at least on the Wilf Campus)." One of these "obvious reasons" was what Jacobs referred to as the "highly inappropriate" image on the flyers, copied from the film's cover, which depict two Jewish men embracing.
X said about SOY's decision to pull its support that, while it was "upsetting because they made a promise and backed out, which was unprofessional," he understood the reason completely.
"Specifically at Wilf Campus there has been so much discussion-in terms of articles, and [the upcoming] panel-it has become overkill," X opined. "They're beating the subject to death." Right now, says X, what the YU community needs is for its roshei yeshiva (yeshiva heads) and president to "come out with a public statement. Until that happens, the Orthodox community is just going to keep having these back and forth arguments."
However, X says that while the intolerance on campus could be "a lot worse, it is definitely still a problem." X feels that university leaders need to declare: "Be supportive."
The anonymous author of "The Gay Question," an article about being a gay YC student published in The Commentator's November issue, wrote that more needs to be done on campus to make students more aware "that regular, frum kids in our community really struggle with this issue and have nowhere to turn."
There are those who think that the recent amount of public discussion regarding this topic is not a positive development. "What are we accomplishing?" asked one Stern undergraduate majoring in political science. "The more we talk about an issue that opposes halakha, the less assur [forbidden] it seems. The shock value dies out. People become less upset that others are acting solely on desires, which starts a vicious cycle of legitimizing the actions." She thinks that "Trembling Before G-d," though it helps people understand the struggle of Orthodox gays and lesbians, is also dangerous. "[We could then] lose sight of what we need to sympathize with, and end up forgetting the practical problems" that arise when approaching homosexuality from the framework of Jewish law, she says.
The latest development in YU's dialogue about homosexuality was a December 22 panel discussion moderated by Rabbi Yosef Blau, Mashgiach Ruchani at Yeshiva College, entitled "Being Gay in the Orthodox World." The panel, organized by the YU Tolerance Club and the Wurzweiler School of Social Work, hosted gay undergraduates and recent graduates of Yeshiva University. The event, advertised as "an open discussion," was attended by hundreds of five hundred Yeshiva students and faculty packing every spare bit of chair and floorspace of Weissberg Commons, with more people turned away at the door due to fire hazard regulations.
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