Kesher Talk

New York culture alert. Trembling Before G-d by Sandi Simcha DuBowski, has re-opened in New York for a One-Year Anniversary! After showing at the Brooklyn Academy of Music for one week, it will be at the Screening Room in Tribeca for one week beginning 11/1. There will be a Q+A at the Screening Room on 11/2 - call for show times. The film is eligible this year for the Academy Award for Best Documentary.

I saw TBG at its single screening in Austin TX last year and was very moved for several reasons. I was pleased that it shows the lives of gay observant Jews, because there is a certain amount of understandable disdain for traditional religion in the gay world (as Andrew Sullivan can attest to), and because I am a strong advocate for complete inclusion of all Jews in our rituals and communities. I respect Orthodox commitment to halacha, (although I don't share their stringency or some interpretations) and I think there is a way to work this out within the strictures of Jewish law. (Lubovich Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, for example, has a refreshingly accepting approach.)

However, I was most pleased that the film shows Jews who love not only being Jewish but "doing" Jewish. Jews on TV and in the movies are usually presented as an ethnic identity distanced from a specific practice and belief. Although many Jews are like this, the entertainment media have not kept up with the burgeoning interest in Jewish practice and spirituality of the last 20 years. (I chuckle when I see dire demographic predictions for the Jewish future - these predictions have been appearing like clockwork for most of the 20th century, meanwhile study groups, day schools, and converson classes are oversubscribed, Jewish ritual, culture and theology are enjoying a burst of creativity, and people with Jewish heritage are returning to their roots all over Eastern Europe.This is also why I can't take those pedantic "convert the Jews" types seriously.)

TBG is as much about "doing Jewish" as about bigotry. Not just the warmth of Shabbas meals, the singing and davening, but the way the Jewish community (in the person of the rabbis confronted) collectively thinks through how to deal with new information and relate it to existing community norms. The secret of our survival is in that combination of reverence for ancient wisdom, flexible thinking about the future, and human compassion. Why do these Jews who have been so badly treated by their community insist on staying Jewish? Because this ancient wisdom, this spiritual complexity, and these beautiful rituals are their birthright and they will simply not allow it to be torn from their hands.

So I recommend this film, not only if gay rights matter to you, not only as as a tender glimpse into a Jewish world, but because it's an inspiring demonstration of laying claim to what you care about.

PS Some sites for Gay Arabs.

posted by Judith @ 10/27/2002 08:24:39 PM