Loving Leah is a television movie that aired on CBS as a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie on January 25, 2009. The film is directed by Jeff Bleckner and stars Adam Kaufman as an unobservant Jewish bachelor who feels compelled to marry his observant rabbi brother's widow, Leah (Lauren Ambrose) to honor him via the ancient Jewish custom of yibbum (levirate marriage).
Loving Leah began as a play by Pnenah Goldstein and was brought to Hallmark by Ricki Lake, who also appears in a minor role in the film. Goldstein also wrote the screenplay and "saw it in a way like Moonstruck or Crossing Delancey. To prepare for her role of widow in the Hasidic community, lead actress Lauren Ambrose spent time with women of the close-knit community.
Famous quotes containing the words loving and/or leah:
““Popeye, forced as you know to flee the country
One musty gusty evening, by the schemes of his wizened, duplicate father, jealous of the apartment
And all that it contains, myself and spinach
In particular, heaves bolts of loving thunder
At his own astonished becoming....””
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“Thou torturest me, Tubal. It was my turquoise; I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor. I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)