About the Film

Synopsis

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.

Turning a Movie Into a Movement

"Rarely, if ever, have I experienced a documentary that excited an audience to such a level of engagement -- and makes possible the reality of change."

- Jim Fouratt, Indiewire

Trembling Before G-d had a World Premiere at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival, and had a wide theatrical release in the United States, Canada, Israel, South Africa, Germany, UK, and Czech Republic In New York, it launched at New York's Film Forum to incredible audience, critical, and box office response and then opened 80 other North American cities. Trembling aired and was broadcast worldwide in over 30 countries - on Israel's Keshet Broadcasting/Channel 2, BBC, The Sundance Channel, HBO Latin America, France/Germany's ZDF/ARTE, Denmark's Channel 2, Australia's ABC, HBO Latin America, Netherlands' NIK, Poland's Canal Plus, Canada's Documentary Channel and other TV stations worldwide from Ukraine to Portugal to Slovakia. We estimate that over 8 million people have seen Trembling Before G-d worldwide. Its notable cinematic and broadcast success, however, is only one part of the film's ongoing impact.

The Sundance Film Festival World Premiere

At Trembling's World Premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, director Sandi Simcha DuBowski and Rabbi Steve Greenberg, the first openly gay Orthodox rabbi, held the first-ever Shabbat at Sundance, koshering a kitchen of a local restaurant in Park City, Utah. Over 60 film executives, programmers, filmmakers, local community members and actress Tilda Swinton attended a Friday night Shabbat dinner filled with candle-lighting, blessings over wine and bread, words of Torah and a delicious meal. With partner Working Films, they held a Mormon-Jewish Dialogue on Homosexuality. Gays and lesbians excommunicated from the Mormon church drove from all over Utah to participate. A family with two babies came — only midway through the conversation did the husband reveal he was gay and struggling. On Saturday night, Rabbi Greenberg and DuBowski turned a Park City yoga studio into a Havdalah ceremony, the ritual to end Shabbat. With fire, wine and spices, they and 75 guests invoked the traditional 2,000 year-old Jewish blessing of human creativity.

Sundance marked the beginning of how to move Trembling in the world with meaning. While working to secure international distribution and press for the film, DuBowski had already begun forging a model of how to creatively and powerfully connect the film with community.

Turning Cinemas Into Town Halls

Since the World Premiere, DuBowski, often accompanied by Rabbi Steve Greenberg, and David, Michelle, Leah, Malka, Shlomo, Naomi, and Israel and Carl in the film turned cinemas into town halls and conducted over 800 Trembling Before G-d screenings and face-to-face discussions around the world. Over 200,000 people participated in these live programs.

Unprecedented discussions took place around issues of religion and sexuality involving a diverse array of faiths, races, Jewish denominations, ages, and sexual orientations. Roman Catholic theologians, Orthodox Jewish psychotherapists, African American Protestants, Hasidic rabbis, Evangelicals involved in reparative therapy, Buddhists, and many others dialogued together. Everyone explored, sometimes for the first time, how gay and lesbian people within very traditional communities might begin to find resources within these traditions to help steer a course through questions of sexual identity, ethics, and religious authority.

The Tipping Point in the Jewish Community

DuBowski engaged rabbis, communal leaders, and tens of thousands of Jews: Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, unaffiliated; queer and straight, teenagers to grandparents in dialogues in movie theaters nationwide. He organized screenings in hundreds of synagogues across the country, at Hillels, JCCs, Jewish film festivals, and otherJewish organizations. DuBowski's own Conservative rabbi from Brooklyn, who he had known since birth and who had no contact with the issue of homosexuality, changed through this process and embraced GLBT inclusion. There were many like him across the country. Families who had disowned their GLBT children opened up lines of communication again. People came out for the first time. Persons who had been alienated from their Jewish communities reconnected.

DuBowski raised funding from a wide range of foundations to launch an Orthodox Outreach and Education Project. Supporters included The Steven Spielberg Righteous Persons Foundation, The Threshold Foundation, The Walter and Elise Haas Foundation, The Shefa Fund, The Paul Robeson Fund for Independent Media, The Creative Capital Foundation, The Nathan Cummings Foundation, and The Rita and Stanley Kaplan Foundation.

Over seventeen Orthodox synagogues in the U.S., Canada, and UK invited Trembling Before G-d to screen in the synagogues. Yeshiva Chovevei Torah, the open Orthodox seminary, an alternative to Yeshiva University, included Trembling Before G-d in their pastoral training.

In the U.S., DuBowski, Rabbi Greenberg, Orthodox therapist Naomi Mark, Dr. Jack Drescher, and Shlomo Ashkinazy, conducted the first-ever Orthodox Mental Health Conference on Homosexuality. Fifty Orthodox and Hasidic/ultra-Orthodox mental health professionals were flown from sixteen North American cities for the conference in NYC to be trained in how to work with gays and lesbians. Many of the participants held significant positions of leader ship in their fields — professors, directors of community-based mental health centers, psychologists and guidance counselors in yeshiva day-schools and university based counseling centers. For many of the participants, this was the first time that they had an opportunity to discuss therapeutic issues directly with an Orthodox gay person. They went back to their communities and created gay-affirmative therapy practices, schools and communities. As many took a great risk to attend, the conference and those who attended was kept secret.

In Israel, Rabbi Greenberg, Tanya Zion, and DuBowski launched the Israel Outreach Project. To prepare for the Israeli television broadcast of Trembling on Keshet/Channel Two, they trained 11 facilitators in Jerusalem who conducted private screenings and post-screening dialogues with over 2,000 principals, teachers, superintendents, rabbis, school counselors and youth workers throughout the nation and in the secular and Orthodox school system. The response dramatically exceeded their expectations and was truly a groundbreaking accomplishment in a system where silence has been the rule.

It was not only the Orthodox community that was powerfully affected through this work. At the 2002 Conservative Rabbinic Conference at the movement's 100th Anniversary, DuBowski began organizing efforts with a special screening of the film to target the movement's top leaders. In a 2002 Washington Post article titled "Rabbis in the Middle On Homosexual Issues Debate Ordination of Gays," Alan Cooperman wrote:

Three hundred and fifty rabbis from the Conservative branch of Judaism are in Washington for a convention this week, and a bunch of them have slipped off to the movie. Not the movies. The movie: Trembling Before G-d, a documentary about gay male and lesbian Orthodox Jews that has caused a furor in the Orthodox community in the United States but ultimately may have more impact on the much larger Conservative movement. The rabbinical praise for Trembling Before G-d is also noteworthy. "Poignant," says Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. "Very touching," says Rabbi Kassel Abelson, chairman of the Conservative movement's Committee on Jewish Law and Standards. "Very powerful," says Rabbi Elliot N. Dorff, rector of the University of Judaism in Bel Air, Calif. They should know, because all three are major players in the long-running debate within the Conservative movement over whether to ordain gay men and lesbians as rabbis and perform commitment ceremonies for gay couples.

Last winter, after years of intense discussion and debate, the Conservative Movement made a bold and historic policy change: legalizing the ordination of gay and lesbian rabbis and the ability to perform same-sex unions.

Public Screenings International

While the project focused enormous effort on U.S. and Israel, it was critical to seed the conversation about homosexuality in the world's largest Jewish communities. DuBowski launched Public Screenings International and organized a week-long or month-long series of screenings and programs in the the UK, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Canada, Australia, South Africa, Ukraine, Czech Republic, and Hungary.

South Africa is an example of the impact Public Screenings International had. With The Labia and Nu Metro, South Africa's largest film exhibitor, DuBowski, South Africa organizers David Bilchitz and Sheryl Ozinksky and Rabbi Greenberg launched a Trembling Before G-d theatrical release in cinemas in Cape Town and Johannesburg in February 2005. The Beth Din or The Rabbinical Court of South Africa and the Board of Jewish Education tried to shut it down in every way possible. They prevented Trembling from advertising in any Jewish establishment. They stopped Rabbi Greenberg and DuBowski from speaking at the Jewish high schools. They threatened to remove the kosher license of a social hall that hosted the two. They cancelled a screening at the Chief Rabbi's Community Center. When they tried to stop Rabbi Greenberg's book launch at Johannesburg's Jewish community center, the team threatened to sue under South Africa's Constitution, which protects against discrimination based on sexual orientation. The rabbis' censorship backfired, catalyzing a month of national press attention — two features in The Sunday Times, The Cape Times, The Mail & Guardian, and the Afrikaans press, front-page stories in South Africa's Jewish weekly and a stream of letters to the editors and Op-Eds, and repeated appearances on TV and call-in shows on South Africa's most popular radio stations.

Thousands of people came to diverse programs they held in cinemas, universities, and cultural institutions over the course of 2 1/2 weeks. They held numerous programs at the cinemas with a wide range of panelists of diverse faiths, sexualities, and races - from the Imam of Pretoria Mosque to the Secretary-General of the Dutch Reform Church to openly gay judges to an African lesbian healer to a Methodist Bishop to an openly gay Imam - that were met with high audience attendance and engagement. They held special screenings for black township gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youth at Cape Town's Triangle Project. Rabbi Steve Greenberg led evenings of teaching at the Cape Town Jewish Museum and Gitlin Library, Johannesburg's WITS Institute for Social and Economic Research, and at the University of Cape Town. They held a Friday night Shabbat celebration for GLBT Jews in Johannesburg. DuBowski conducted a screening and workshop over two days at University of Witwatersand in Johannesburg, and screenings at University of the Western Cape (predominantly black and mixed-race) and Stellenbosch University (predominantly Afrikaans).

A new Jewish GLBT organization in South Africa — Jewish OutLook - was birthed through the process and a group of people planned to bring Limmud — a pluralistic Jewish learning conference to South Africa to open a space in the community for discussions around issues such as this one — which occurred in August 2007. And the community held a debate after DuBowski's and Rabbi Greenberg's departure where the Beth Din had to defend themselves for the choices they had made. At a debate addressing the Orthodox rabbinate's refusal to engage with Rabbi Greenberg, Rabbi Rappaport of the Beth Din said, "What we are opposed to is people espousing things that are contrary to Judaism and mankind coming to talk to our children. I have the right to defend myself before a robber kills me — it is my duty to protect my child from spiritual murder." Justice Dennis Davis replied, "Have we become a theocracy with the Orthodox community running the show where there is only one view and one truth? That is the concern."

In Mexico City too, the issue was so taboo that Trembling's screening was stopped at El Deportivo — the Jewish Community Center. Luis Perelman of bookstore El Amario Abierto stepped in and hosted DuBowski's and Rabbi Greenberg's screenings and teach-in's despite the formal communal pressure. One year later, Trembling was invited to Mexico's First Jewish Film Festival — the screening was attended by over 800 people. In Baltimore too, Trembling went from being protested by a number of Orthodox Jews (and Evangelical Christians) when it opened at The Charles Theater, but a year later was invited to screen for Baltimore's first Orthodox synagogue screening at Beth Tfiloh Congregation. What was once beyond the pale became discussed and even embraced in the mainstream of the community. Trembling created a tipping point across the Jewish world.

The Creation of the DVD: Landmarking the History

A major accomplishment was completing a Deluxe 2-Disc Trembling Before G-d DVD edition with three hours of special features.

DuBowski directed Trembling on the Road, a 40-minute featurette - a dramatic document of dialogues, protests, reactions, and events — by turns poignant, funny, angry, interesting — from the worldwide tour of Trembling Before G-d. While for many, Trembling Before G-d was "dare to despair," Trembling on the Road documents how the film profoundly touched and transformed the lives of individuals, their families, communities, rabbis and teachers.

DuBowski also created:

Petach Lev - The Trembling Israeli Education Project — interviews with a group of the facilitators telling the stories of their groundbreaking work.

More With the Rabbis - Excerpts from interviews with a number of prestigious Orthodox rabbis about the issue of homosexuality —. Rabbi Aharon Feldman, Rabbi Aron Tendler, Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, Rabbi Meir Fund and Rabbi Dr. Nathan Lopes Cardozo.

More with Rabbi Steve Greenberg - The story of a religious leader's twenty years of struggle to come out.

Interview with the Director — The story behind the story, how a film became a movement, and the challenges met in creating this landmark work.

Mark: The Musical - What if MTV did a spiritual music video? Mark sings his way through Jerusalem's Hasidic neighborhoods. Includes rare footage of the Hasidic world from Israel, Madison Square Garden, and Brooklyn.

Behind The Silhouettes - The making of the silhouettes — only at the end of the film is it revealed that the Orthodox gay and lesbian community came together to form their image behind the screen. The story of turning a soundstage into a virtual shtetl and how invisibility was illuminated.

Shlomo on Donahue - The first mass media gay Orthodox moment when Shlomo from Trembling Before G-d is on Donahue in 1985.

What is The Atonement Ceremony for Sexual Sins? - Rabbi Steve Greenberg guides us through the atonement ceremony for sexual sins depicted in the film. Why the ice cubes? Why the blowing of the shofar, the ram's horn?

Tomboychik - Director's short film - DuBowski's first film. A series of intimate video vignettes depicting the fierce love between Malverna and Sandi, 88 and 22, grandmother and grandson. The two playmates dress up drag-esque for this moving portrait of a woman's struggle with gender and sexuality. Since Malverna's death, Tomboychik has become a living memorial to the intensity of her spirit. Winner Golden Gate Award for Best Short Documentary, San Francisco Film Festival.

An International Resource Guide for Orthodox GLBT Jews - An international resource guide to Jewish GLBT websites, organizations, resources and groups.

Subtitles in Spanish, Hebrew, and Yiddish to allow the film to have greater reach and impact.

Interfaith Work and A New Film - A Jihad for Love

At an interfaith panel in Washington D.C., a Muslim gay man approached DuBowski and asked for advice on a film he wanted to create about homosexuality in Muslim communities. DuBowski became the Producer of a film called A Jihad for Love, directed by Parvez Sharma, which is the first-ever feature-length documentary to explore the complex intersections between Islam and homosexuality. With unprecedented access and depth, Sharma brought to light the hidden lives of gay and lesbian Muslims in Iran, Pakistan, Egypt, Turkey, France, India, and South Africa. DuBowski and the sales team brought on board five international TV broadcasters - France/ Germany's ZDF-Arte, MTV's LOGO Channel, UK's Channel 4, and Australia's SBS. The film has a World Premiere at The Toronto International Film Festival in September 2007 and with Imam Muhsin Hendricks, the first openly gay imam who is featured in the film, and other allies, they will be launching an International Muslim Dialogue Project.

The 5th Anniversary Celebration of Trembling on the Road

DuBowski launched a 5th Anniversary Celebration of Trembling on the Road which historicizes, landmarks, archives, spotlights and shares how millions of people around the world have been impacted by this work.

This campaign unfolds in three phases. The kick-off coincides with the 10 days between Rosh Hashanah (The Jewish New Year) and Yom Kippur (The Day of Atonemen), where he is launching a creative and innovative international Web 2.0 and face-to-face campaign to organize 250 Trembling on the Road screening and discussion events in homes, workplaces, and houses of worship. The aim of the campaign is to catalyze people to reflect on the questions: Have you created a more open and welcoming home, synagogue, family, and community? - and to take an action step: Where can you make a transformative change?

The goal is to reach over 100,000 Jews and non-Jews.

Now years after the Sundance World Premiere, and over a decade into the project, Trembling Before G-d has gone way beyond what anyone ever dreamed or imagined and the work with the film to impact social change continues.

CREDITS

Simcha Leib Productions and Turbulent Arts present in Association with Keshet Broadcasting Ltd. (Israel) in co-production with Pretty Pictures (Paris) and Cinephil Ltd (Tel Aviv)

Trembling Before G-d

a film by Sandi Simcha DuBowski

Produced by Sandi Simcha DuBowski and Marc Smolowitz

In Creative Collaboration with and Edited by Susan Korda

Director/Producer: Sandi Simcha DuBowski

Producer: Marc Smolowitz

Editor: Susan Korda

Commissioning Editor: Johanna Prenner for Keshet Broadcasting, Ltd., Israel

Co-Producer and International Sales Agent: Philippa Kowarsky, (Cinephil, Ltd. Tel Aviv)

Co-Producer James Velaise, (Pretty Pictures, Paris)

Composer: John Zorn

Music Supervisor: Carole Sue Baker and Jon L. Fine, Ocean Park Music Group

Post Production Supervisor: Lizzie Donahue

PRIZES

Teddy Award for Best Documentary, Berlin Film Festival

Mayor's Prize for the Jewish Experience, Jerusalem Film Festival

GLAAD Media Award for Best Documentary Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary, OUTFEST Los Angeles

Henry Hampton Award for Excellence in Film and Digital Media, Council on Foundations

Independent Spirit Awards for the IFC/Directv Truer Than Fiction Award, Nomination

Chicago Film Festival — Gold Plaque — Best Documentary

International Federation of Film Societies, Special Mention, Berlin Film Festival

Audience Choice Award for Best Documentary - Seattle Lesbian and Gay Film Festival

Best Documentary, Turin Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Italy

Audience Award, Pink Apple Film Festival, Switzerland

Vito Russo Award, The New Festival, New York

American Library Association, Winner, Notable Films for Adults