Blessing the Hidden

Was there something that ignited this idea of researching being gay and Orthodox? When was that moment when you said, “I need to know a whole lot more about this?”

I didn’t necessarily know what I was getting into—it was very intuitive. It started as a personal video diary, exploring whether there was homosexuality in the Orthodox world, but I hadn’t even met anyone by then. Then I went to Israel, and I actually did meet someone who was a right-wing settler and coming out as bi. I helped him come out. Then I met Mark at an international conference of lesbian and gay Jews. He was a big queen at the time—he had completely abandoned Orthodoxy.

So what was the story with him? How did you two connect?

Mark and I became instant brothers in a yeshiva without walls. We pilgrimaged back to the yeshivas that had kicked him out for homosexual activity, which were seven in England and Israel. We went to the neighborhoods he grew up in and the shuls he davened in. It was all about return. And at this point, Mark has again returned—he’s become a total Hasid with payis past his shoulders and a beard to his chest. He just went to the Ukraine for Rosh Hashanah with 8000 Hasidim, and I’m sure his voice got hoarse from singing and dancing for four days in a row. Yet, he lives with AIDS and is still gay. Mark always had, more than anyone else in the film, an exuberant Judaism.

The people in silhouette obviously have an uncomfortable relationship with being out publicly.

Virtually no one could be out. It took me six years crisscrossing the globe just to find anyone. David was the only gay person who grew up Orthodox, who was still Orthodox, who was willing to go on camera and share his story.

We’ve heard a little bit about making the film. What about your screenings, what has the feedback been like?

We had one test screening early on where an ultra-Orthodox woman wearing a wig yelled, “You’re a liar! You people can change! You can fight this! You can overcome this!” She then said that her daughter was a lesbian who refused to go to therapy, so they don’t speak anymore. That was my first glimpse of what it would be to take this film into the Orthodox world. But I had another woman come to the theater the other night. She leaned into me and said, “My brother died of AIDS.” She was an Orthodox woman, and her eyes were like doe eyes, so wide and full of pain. A rabbi asked me once, “What is your goal with this film?” And I said that if I had to crunch it into one thing, my goal is to alleviate pain and suffering. That’s the simplest way to describe it. The next step after that is, how do you create livable lives for people so they don’t have cut to off their spirituality to save their sexuality? That’s a bigger and more difficult question.