Production
Sandi Simcha DuBowski was making videos about the Christian religious right when he began to examine his own upbringing as a gay Conservative Jew, and began making a personal video diary of his search for homosexuality among the Orthodox Jewish community. On the making of the film, DuBowski said, "I don't think it was until I met people who were kicked out of their families and their Yeshivas, in marriages betraying their spouses, that it became clear why I was doing this film. But then, for me it assumed an enormous level of responsibility to the people I met, to the issue, to the community." He met thousands of people, but only a few agreed to appear in the film, as most were too frightened of being expelled from their community. Even when interviewing those who did agree to appear, DuBowski had to hide his film equipment so their neighbors would not know that they had agreed to take part. As a result, the documentary took six years to complete.
There is no narration, and the film may be considered to be an example of cinéma vérité. The film is also interspersed with silhouetted tableaus of Jewish religious practices, for example Shabbat. The language is predominantly English, with passages in Yiddish and Hebrew that are subtitled. Also subtitled are passages with significant amounts of "Yeshivish", Yiddish-influenced technical terms in Judaism; for example, posek is translated as "judge on Jewish law", and daven is translated as "pray".
The title is an allusion to the word Haredi (Hebrew: חֲרֵדִי), which can be interpreted as "one who trembles" in awe of God. The spelling of the word G-d in the film's title reflects the Jewish practice of avoiding writing a name of 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).
Read more about this topic: Trembling Before G-d
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“To expect to increase prices and then to maintain them at a higher level by means of a plan which must of necessity increase production while decreasing consumption is to fly in the face of an economic law as well established as any law of nature.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“The growing of food and the growing of children are both vital to the family’s survival.... Who would dare make the judgment that holding your youngest baby on your lap is less important than weeding a few more yards in the maize field? Yet this is the judgment our society makes constantly. Production of autos, canned soup, advertising copy is important. Housework—cleaning, feeding, and caring—is unimportant.”
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“The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.”
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