Trembling Before G-D

This thought-provoking documentary about gay Orthodox Jews opens with two rather brutal quotations. The first is the infamous line from Leviticus that prescribes death for any "man who lies with a man." The second is a lesser-known passage from the Shulchan Aruch, a compendium of Jewish religious law, forbidding "women to rub against each other." Lashings, it goes on to say, are the only appropriate punishment for such behavior. One hopes that few people today really advocate either penalty, but filmmaker Sandi Simcha DuBowski uses these quotes to underscore persistent attitudes that bring serious anguish to those gay Orthodox men and women who are unable to deny the...