Banned in Mexico!
In May, The MIX Festival screened "Trembling Before G-d/ Tremblando Ante Dios" at El Cinoteca. But a special screening we had also set up at the Mexico City Jewish Community Center – the nerve center of this tight-knit 40,000 strong mainly Orthodox community - was stopped due to pressure from the five Jewish communities (Ashkenazi, Sephardic Balkan, Syrian and Conservative) that make up the Mexico Jewish Federation. It was a shock but we turned the El Armario bookstore into a cinema, wired it with closed circuit TV’s, and held a fantastic series of screenings, dialogues, Torah teaching, media conferences, and meetings with Rabbi Steve Greenberg and myself. Luis, head of the gay Jewish group Shalom Amigos, who said he was waiting for this film for 25 years, was our fearless comrade and made one of the most dynamic experiences with the film possible. Troops of Jews and others piqued by the enormous publicity continue to go to the bookstore for special screenings and we are pursuing Mexican TV. Luis is now Director of Latin American Education for Trembling Before G-d and we are developing education in Brazil, Argentina, Panama, Cuba,etc. See press coverage in La Reforma, one of Mexico DF’s main newspapers at here and here


Eastern Europe
I met the one gay Jew in Krakow, Poland at the Krakow Film Festival. He was struggling with coming out and like many Jews in Poland, only discovered he was Jewish later in life. He had a nervous breakdown a year ago. With two Israeli filmmakers, we had him laughing and smiling by the end. He later wrote that the film and this experience was one of the most life-changing events for him. At the Karlovy Vary Festival in the famous resort in Czech Republic, we got Pick of the Day by Premiere Magazine. It was the Spa before the Storm of Jerusalem. It is very hard however to show the film in Eastern Europe – I see the audiences and then the ghosts. Much as the Israeli and Palestinian peoples are going through terrible violence, it was somehow a relief to come to Israel from Eastern Europe, from this feeling of loss and emptiness.

Orthodox Community Education With Orthodox psychotherapist Naomi Mark, who is featured in Trembling, we did a training at an Orthodox yeshiva for the next generation’s Orthodox rabbis on how to counsel issues of homosexuality.
We were awarded a major $30K grant from The Threshold Foundation for their New Visions of Culture and Community – for risk-taking inactivism – as well as the Karma Foundation, Rosenthal Foundation, Creative Capital Foundation and other funders.