The 2025 JIFF (Jewish & Israeli Film Festival) has come and gone. Featuring a variety of indie films and documentaries, each year presents a mosaic of Jewish life. These films can be humorous, forlorn, horrifying, and hopeful, sometimes all at once. Three films drew my attention: Unspoken, Sabbath Queen, and Ain’t No Back to a Merry Go Round. In them, I found a common thread of “loving the stranger” as we are commanded to do in the Torah.
“You shall also love the stranger for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Deut. 10:19)
The “strangers” usually refers to non-Jews, but I think it can also refer to Jews who don’t quite fit the mould.
Unspoken, written and directed by Jeremy Borison
Noam is a yeshiva bocher (student at an orthodox high school) like his best friend, Miriam, who is “so over this place.” They are so close that everyone, including Miriam, assumes they are bashert (meant to be together). Only it’s not Miriam who gives Noam butterflies. That honor goes to his classmate, Jonah.
It is not uncommon for grandchildren of Holocaust survivors to avoid coming out to their grandparents because “they’ve been through enough already.” But what if their grandparent was also in the closet?
After his opa’s funeral, Noam and his mother come across an ornate wooden box, one of the few things Opa was able to carry out of Nazi Germany. Inside is an engagement ring and a note in German, “Ich habe nie aufgehört dich zu lieben, Heinrich. ~M” (I never stopped loving you, Heinrich. ~M) M…? Oma’s name didn’t start with M, and this was not her ring.
Noam’s mother seems to know something but insists that some secrets are better kept secret. This puts Noam and his friend Jonah on a mission looking for this
mysterious M who, they surmise, was a man with whom Opa may have had a love affair back when such things were scandalous.
Charlie Korman plays Noam with great subtlety and empathy. His eyes express the depth of his pain and anxiety. Jonah (Michael Zapesotsky) knows just how to dangle the carrot before the horse. Will he satisfy Noam’s desire for love or leave him wanting?
After the screening, we heard from writer and director Jeremy Borison, who knows what it’s like to grow up orthodox and gay. One of the challenges in making this film was finding Orthodox settings that were willing to be used. They heard more No’s than yes’s. Still religious, Borison and his husband attend a shul in L.A. with an official policy on LGBTQ+ inclusion. So, there is hope yet.
Sabbath Queen, a documentary by Sandi Dubowski
Sandi Dubowski wanted Amichai Lau-Lavie for his 2001 documentary Trembling Before G-d, which is about gay and lesbian Jews trying to reconcile their sexuality with their faith. But Amichai was such a diva that he wanted his film, saying:
“I don’t do collages.” Well, after 23 years, he finally got it. Sabbath Queen is not about lighting candles on Friday nights. This fabulous queen comes in wigs, heels, and the wisdom of Kabbalah.
Growing up in Israel, Amichai Lau had really big shoes to fill. His grandfather was an orthodox rabbi who perished in the Holocaust. When given the chance to escape, he got his wife and children to safety, yet chose to remain because “a rabbi does not leave his congregation.” Amichai’s father became a high-ranking Israeli diplomat; his uncle was Yisrael Meir Lau, the Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi of Israel.
When Amichai was outed as gay in a news article, his mother wept. She felt he was in a cul-de-sac, unable to continue the family line. With such publicity, he thought it best to exit and hit the Big Apple. That’s where he found his tribe and mystical spirit among The Radical Faeries, a group of artsy, subversive, queer drag artists. In this company, his own drag persona, Hadassah, appeared. Hadassah is a Jewish mystic who doles out words of wit and wisdom in a thick Hungarian accent like a fortune teller.
Rejecting the idea that patriarchal rabbis have sole custody of the Torah, Amichai founded Lab/Shul, which is kind of like the Carlebach Shul, but even groovier. Amichai chants Torah while beating a djembe and engages in Storahtelling, telling Bible stories with improvisational guerilla theatre. He also officiates same-sex and interfaith weddings. One featured ceremony was between two men who both practice Zen Buddhism, blending these traditions in their ceremony.
As to Hadassah, Amichai Lau-Lavie now describes himself as a retired drag queen. Hadassah is buried in the bottom of the Dead Sea. But she will let Amichai know when she needs to resurface. Is Amichai betraying the Judaism of his ancestors or adapting it to survive in the 21st century?
After the film, we heard from Sandi Dubowski and Rabbi Aaron Portman, Director of the OSU Hillel, whose own story could be a movie. In a youthful rumspringa, Portman rebelled and encountered Footsteps, which helps former orthodox Jews rejected by their communities. Now a rabbi, Portman balances tradition and modernity like a circus plate spinner, wearing a kippah and tzitzit even as he officiates same-sex weddings.
Ain’t No Back To A Merry-Go-Round, documentary by Ilana Trachtman Closing night brought Jews and African-Americans together at the Underground Railroad Freedom Center for a profound story about our allyship during the Civil Rights Movement to end Segregation once and for all.
Glen Echo Amusement Park was a popular spot near Washington D.C. with carnival rides and a huge swimming pool. Visitors recalled fond memories from a halcyon childhood… its white visitors, that is. Colored folk were denied entry.
In 1960, students at Howard University decided they’d had enough. Forming NAG (Nonviolent Action Group), they staged sit-ins at lunch counters and picketed in front of Glen Echo. Divinity student Laurence Henry was their spiritual leader. A passionate speaker, and every speech he gave sounded like a sermon.
The students of Howard were driven, but they couldn’t have succeeded without their allies from Bannockburn. Excluded from other neighborhoods, Bannockburn served as a kind of American kibbutz populated by union organizers, government workers, Catholics, and Jews. The Howard students were leery of them initially, suspicious of their motivations. When asked why they were there, Helene Wilson explained that when the Nuremberg Laws were passed in Germany, no one stood up for them. Therefore, they could not stand idly by and watch the same injustices exacted on others. When NAG learned that Glen Echo’s owners, Abram and Sam Baker, were also Jewish, they took that personally.
NAG’s protests were met with White Power counter-protestors bearing signs with hateful screeds like “Race mixing is financed by Jews” and “Do you want n***ers in the Tunnel of Love?” Not only that, they openly wore Nazi armbands. But what the NAG protestors remember the most vividly was the sheer rage on the faces of
their adversaries as they shouted and spat at them.
And still, the Baker Brothers held their peace, declining to make a statement.
The segregation ban was lifted when it became clear that the protestors weren’t going away. On March 14, 1961, Glen Echo Amusement Park opened its gates to everyone… then closed in 1968, citing declining attendance. The neighborhood is now a popular center for arts and culture.
***
The cord that binds all three films is Love. The Civil Rights marchers from Howard and Bannockburn began as strangers, uneasy allies, and neighbors they loved as themselves. Amichai Lau-Lavie had to learn to love himself while still loving his G-d with all his soul, but in his way, not his grandfather’s. And young Noam is slowly learning the same lesson as he learns to reconcile who he is with how he was raised. May we all learn these lessons as we chart our own paths.
And that’s a wrap.
