Directed by Irena Fayngold

62 minutes

Hineini: Coming Out in a Jewish High School is a video documentary that attempts to tackle not just one student’s struggle to find acceptance but an entire community forced to rethink an ancient tradition that frowns upon homosexuality. After all, how does a religious institution accept someone that the Bible views as an abomination against the Lord?

Shulamit Izen had no one in her life to help her understand and come to terms with her budding sexuality. At the library, while her mother sat downstairs reading magazines, Shula was up in the stacks rifling through A Gay Teen’s Resource Guide.

At the New Jewish High School of Greater Boston, or New Jew as the inmates call it, Shula noticed one of her teachers carrying a rainbow keychain. Suddenly, her equally hidden activism sprang from the closet. Before long, she hooked up with an organization called Keshet (Hebrew for rainbow) and organized a “Discussion on Sexual Orientation” assembly on campus. Shula’s goal was to form a Gay-Straight Alliance in the otherwise pluralistic high school.

Her biggest roadblock was the school’s headmaster, Rabbi Lehmann. How could he possibly condone something that was prohibited by the Torah? Can one be both holy and gay? Shula never forgot his initial reaction: “It’s sick to look at the world in terms of sexuality.”

It takes a wise man to know the path but it takes a brave man to walk it, and the Rabbi proved to be both. It forced him to consider his “own relationship to Judaism’s understanding of homosexuality. How we as modern Jews should confront this was something I was really grappling with.”

Shula’s crusade not only affected the lives of the student body but also of four closeted teachers. Students were shocked when their history teacher and softball coach, Miss Keimowitz, spoke openly about how “hiding takes energy.”

While Shula claims to have her family’s love and support, there is one awkward moment where she matches her mother tear for tear. Seated between them, the kuni-leml husband/father doesn’t offer up as much as a comforting hand. Perhaps it was an inability to react while the cameras were rolling, for all he can do is look on as his daughter weeps.

Irena Fayngold sensed that something might be lost in the translation. For those not familiar with all the huching and chuching jargon, Hebrew terminology is explained through subtitles. Sort of like a Pop-Up Yideo.

J*Pride is hosting communitywide screenings of this Southern California premiere Oct. 22-24 in several San Diego locations. To find out where, visit http://jpride.lfjcc.org.