A new Hollywood film is taking Orthodox Judaism to task for its stance on homosexuality, making it the rare piece of entertainment directly critiquing the Jewish religion.
“Disobedience” chronicles the journeys of Ronit Krushka (Rachel Weisz) and Esti Kuperman (Rachel McAdams). In the film, Ronit left her British Orthodox community for a more secular lifestyle in New York City, while Esti married her childhood friend Dovid (Alessandro Nivola) and has been playing the part of the religious, subservient wife for years.
Ronit was forced to leave her home years ago after being caught in a sexually compromising situation with Esti. She returns to London for her father’s funeral and reignites her relationship with Esti, forcing both women and Dovid to challenge their views on homosexuality, Judaism, and choice in general.
The film, expectedly, is an emotional ride that questions the roles faith and love play in our lives, zeroing in on this specific community. Most crucially, it’s also not afraid to reprimand modern Orthodox Judaism for its archaic views on homosexuality.
American discourse regarding religious laws on homosexuality usually revolve around Christianity and those who use the Bible to justify anti-LGBT discrimination, like when Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis refused to issue marriage licenses to LGBT couples following the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling on marriage equality.
The Jewish view on these pressing social issues is rarely examined. Now that “Disobedience” has highlighted Orthodox Judaism’s antiquated stance on LGBT lifestyles, it’s worth taking stock of where all three subsets of Judaism — Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox — fall in terms of LGBT inclusion.
Reform Jews are generally characterized by observing Jewish traditions less strictly than the other two levels of Jewish faith. As the least overtly religious of the three groups, it shouldn’t be surprising that they were the fastest to officially accept LGBT Jews.
The Reform Movement took a huge stride in their progressive attitude toward the LGBT community in 1972 with the establishment of the Beth Chayim Chadashim synagogue in Los Angeles, “the world’s first synagogue founded by, and with an outreach to, lesbians and gay men,” according to its website.
In 1977, the Union for Reform Judaism passed a resolution declaring that “homosexual persons are entitled to equal protection under the law.” The Central Conference of American Rabbis took a similar action toward LGBT inclusion in 1990, though its website states their resolution “deals exclusively with the civil rights and civil liberties of homosexuals” and does not “understand it to be an alternative lifestyle which is religiously condoned.”
The Conservative Movement, the middle ground for Jewish religious intensity, didn’t follow suit until 2006, when the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, which sets policy “for the Conservative movement as a whole,” voted to allow “the ordination of gay rabbis and the celebration of same-sex commitment ceremonies.”
Orthodox Judaism, however, has stood pat in its view of homosexuality, best summed up by Haaretz’s Elon Gilad as the belief that “homosexuality, or at least anal sex, among men [is] a grave sin, since the Bible explicitly says so.”
Gilad also explained that “Jewish law has ignored homosexuality among women, with the exception of a passage in the Talmud banning it because it could lead to having illicit sex with men.” “Disobedience” depicts Orthodox Judaism as perceiving lesbianism to be a sin, an assumption justified by the Orthodox condemnation of men fornicating.
This is the kind of nuanced analysis of modern American Judaism in which some have lately seemed reluctant to engage. It appears that most criticism of modern Jewish culture (no matter how valid) will lead to swift Internet backlash, a lesson I learned the hard way a few weeks ago when I attempted to defend the grains of truth I found in a Washington Post column about a non-Jewish woman’s experience dating Jewish men.
Americans Jews are probably a bit suspicious of negative portrayals of Judaism these days, and understandably so given the recent countrywide increase in anti-Semitic incidents (See: White, Trayon).
The U.S. has also seen a growing and inherently problematic perception that being Jewish automatically makes someone anti-Palestinian, as exemplified last June when three people trying to display Jewish pride at a Chicago LGBT rally were kicked out for allegedly supporting Palestinian oppression.
Those concerns are legitimate and need to be addressed. I just hope American Jews will also be willing to scrutinize the internal issues afflicting their religious compatriots, like the struggles of LGBT Jews trying to fit into a community that may not necessarily be hospitable to them.
That’s what makes a film like “Disobedience” so important: Not only was it thoughtful and objectively well-made, but it has the potential to spark a conversation among modern Jews, no matter their denomination, that desperately needs to be had.
Joshua Axelrod (@jaxel222) is a graduate student in Media and Strategic Communications at George Washington University. Previously he was a web producer and pop politics writer for the Washington Examiner.
