Trembling Before G-d

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Trembling Before G-d is a 2001 documentary film about gay and lesbian Orthodox Jews. It was directed by Sandi Simcha DuBowski. It won several awards, including Best Documentary Film at the 2001 Berlin Film Festival, the 2001 Chicago International Film Festival, and the 2003 GLAAD Media Awards, and it was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival and for the Truer Than Fiction award at the 2002 Independent Spirit Awards.

The film is predominantly in English, with passages in Yiddish and Hebrew that are subtitled. Also subtitled are passages with significant amounts of "Yeshivish", Yiddish-influenced technical terms of Judaism used when speaking English.

The last word of the title is a common Jewish way of writing the word "God". By omitting the middle letter, the word is not written in full, thus eliminating the possibility of accidentally destroying the written name of God, which would violate one of the 613 mitzvot of Judaism (number 8 on Maimonides' list).

[edit] Reception

The film has had a wide impact especially within the Orthodox Jewish world, where the reception has been both negative and positive.

The Chief Rabbi of South Africa, Warren Goldstein claimed that “ (the)film is intellectually shallow and its one-sided caricature of Orthodox Judaism does not stimulate meaningful intellectual debate.” [1]