Film on gay Jewish student shown at State House event

State legislators viewed “Hineini,” a documentary on a gay student’s “coming out” at a Boston area Jewish day school, and discussed the film with the student, Shulamit Izen, and the filmmakers at a special screening at the State House last week.

Filmmaker Irena Fayngold explores the tension between religious belief and sexual identity through the eyes of a teenager coming of age in the modern world in her film Hineini: Coming Out in a Jewish High School

Irena Fayngold’s Hineini: Coming Out in a Jewish High School tells the story of Shula’s determination to establish a Gay- Straight Alliance at the New Jewish High School (now the Gann Academy), a private pluralistic religious school in Waltham, Massachusetts. But it also tells the bigger story of what it means to be gay and Jewish in modern times and how to reconcile one’s sexual identity with a religion that calls homosexuality an abomination.

No More Closets: Coming Out in a Jewish High School