"trembling before g-d"

Trembling Before G-d is an unprecedented feature documentary that shatters assumptions about faith, sexuality, and religious fundamentalism. Built around intimately-told personal stories of Hasidic and Orthodox Jews who are gay or lesbian, the film portrays a group of people who face a profound dilemma - how to reconcile their passionate love of Judaism and the Divine with the drastic Biblical prohibitions that forbid homosexuality. As the film unfolds, we meet a range of complex individuals - some hidden, some out - from the world's first openly gay Orthodox rabbi to closeted, married Hasidic gays and lesbians to those abandoned by religious families to Orthodox lesbian high-school sweethearts.

Many have been tragically rejected and their pain is raw, yet with irony, humor, and resilience, they love, care, struggle, and debate with a thousands-year old tradition. Ultimately, they are forced to question how they can pursue truth and faith in their lives. Vividly shot with a courageous few over five years in Brooklyn, Jerusalem, Los Angeles, London, Miami, and San Francisco, Trembling Before G-d is an international project with global implications that strikes at the meaning of religious identity and tradition in a modern world. For the first time, this issue has become a live, public debate in Orthodox circles, and the film is both witness and catalyst to this historic moment. What emerges is a loving and fearless testament to faith and survival and the universal struggle to belong.

from trembling before g-d

this movie...holy fucking shit!

i was bapitized and raised catholic. went to catholic schools for my entire grade school education and at some point along that path realised it was all a lot of horse-shit. to me it was all a lot of horse shit. i have little respect for organized religion and even my belief in god waivers somewhere between non-existence and a faint wondering. i am not a religious person. my religious life consists of making jokes about religion and crassly calling people fundamentalists and going to see live music. if god exists anywhere it's there...but, that's a whole other thing...

the point of all of this is that my eyes were opened by this movie. it's not that i am somehow suddenly religious or clear about my beliefs but i feel as if i have been given a new perspective on organized religion and have a new found respect...or am on the verge of respect.

admitedly this film doesn't deal with christianity at all (which it shouldn't because it's about orthodox judaism) and it is with christianity that i have the majority of my issues. i have always had a lot of respect for judaism as both a faith and a cultural organization and i really think they have the right idea...that you can be a part of the secular life without the religious should you so desire.

or, maybe that isn't how it works? maybe i'm an idiot. i'm sure i'm an idiot but this movie is incredible. i think it speaks fairly from both sides of the argument and i cannot imagine how difficult it must have been for the people who came forward to discuss their sexuality within orthodoxy.

if this movie did nothing for me it reaffirmed my faith in people's faith and in what faith can do for people. religion was never a cop-out in this movie, to anyone, the way it so often appears to be with christianity.

anyhow, i am babbling but i want people to see this movie because it rocks!

xo m.