Trembling Before God

Ladymol's Review

Orthodox Jews and their struggle to be accepted as gay.

I’m quite glad I didn’t pay for this film but got it through my rental site. I think it would appeal more to a religious person. To be honest, I found the Jewish stuff far weirder than the gay stuff, and I’m thinking God might agree with me. The whole thing is such an anachronism to my western secular life that I found it quite uncomfortable to watch.

It’s not a particularly stunning thesis: religious fanatics don’t like homosexuality.  I’ve always been curious why homosexuals don’t form their own religions, but I guess they’re having too much fun to bother.

To be honest, I’m totally unqualified to review this film as I think most religions are at best a waste of time and at worst dangerous. So, to see people torn up inside because the religions they want to follow won’t accept them leaves me a bit cold. Watching this was like watching someone whip themselves: you have to ask yourself… why?

If you are into gay studies or gay history or writing a paper on gay in society, then certainly this will give you food for thought. If you’re into the hobby mainly to see pretty men get it on with each other then I suggest you give it a miss. I’ll be burnt in hell for saying it, but to be honest, given the way most of these ultra-religious types look, no self-respecting gay man would want them anyway.


Cerisaye's Review

This documentary explores the conflict experienced by gay Orthodox Jews with a tradition that says they are an abomination before God, punishable by death.  Rejected by church and family, they are outsiders.  Which would be fine if they didn’t want  so badly to be inside.  I don’t pretend to understand their dilemma.  As an atheist it is incomprehensible to me that men and women want to belong to a faith that treats them so badly.  It’s the same for any fundamentalist religion, as we see in Latter Days.

There’s a sad story of a man who for 40 years struggled against his desire- marriage, 12 children, work as a teacher in a religious school- then he felt forced to give up his vocation when he fell in love with a boy.  He knows he can never act on it, and his wife accepts her husband’s love for her will never equal his love of the boys.  To struggle with desire like this and know you can beat it is held up as a shining example to all gay men.  Sorry, I don’t buy that.  For a start what about his wife?  Why should she have to accept being second best? 

Openness however is on the increase even in the Orthodox community.  As religious leaders meet more gay people who come to them for help and guidance it’s harder to take refuge in strict teaching.  These are human beings they deal with; to get it wrong can lead to suicide. 

There are no easy answers.  But the film shows one way that helps many gay Jewish people is to come together for their own observances and rituals in place of the families who reject them.  Yet still they worry their sexuality will deny them their reward for leading a good and faithful life in every other way but one. 

I felt so sorry for David, a man who struggled for 12 years to change before finally accepting it was impossible.  His plea to the rabbi who 20 years earlier sent him to therapy that surely he isn’t expected to live celibate and alone, unloved, met with the response, that, sadly, yes, that is the only way.  To give the rabbi his due, he genuinely looked uncomfortable that he could offer no comfort to a desperately unhappy man.  And Israel, a man of 58 who desperately wanted his elderly father to give some of the love he’s been denied since coming out and being cut off from his family.  It wasn’t enough that he had a loving partner of many years.

That many of the interviews and filmed activities couldn’t show faces is telling.  A sad film.