Massachusetts Gay Marriage to Remain Legal

BOSTON, June 14 -- Same-sex marriage will continue to be legal in Massachusetts, after proponents in both houses won a pitched months long battle on Thursday to defeat a proposed constitutional amendment to define marriage as between a man and a woman.

Hineini: Coming Out in a Jewish High School

Despite the Torah’s provision about homosexuality being “an abomination before the Law,” self-assured lesbian teen Shulamit Izen bravely discloses the truth about her sexuality to the disapproving student body of The New Jewish High School of Boston in a bold attempt to form a Gay-Straight Alliance at the school.

Screening Stimulates Discussion on Gay Issues

Officials at Gratz College hoped that screening a film about a teen girl’s struggle to reconcile her homosexuality with Judaism, while also challenging her high school to become a more welcoming place, might prompt some discussion and send a message that the Melrose Park campus is an open environment for Jews of diverse backgrounds.

Gay Jews Connect Their Experience To Story of Purim

As a child, Idit Klein celebrated Purim by wearing homemade gowns and tiaras to play the beautiful Queen Esther. She fantasized about how she, like the heroine who bravely confessed her faith to save her fellow Jews in ancient Persia, could have somehow rescued her relatives from the Holocaust.

Support for gay rights at State House rally

Review of Hineini: Coming Out in Jewish High School and Trembling Before G-d

The beginning of reconciliation for these two seemingly separate worlds is highlighted in the independent documentaries Trembling Before G-d and Hineini: Coming Out in Jewish High School. Both films tackle the inner conflict of Jews who desperately want to be openly LGBT and religious, without being shunned.

Jewish by Osmosis: Highlights from the 26th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival

How does an atheist goy come to say thank God for the 26th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival?

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

Coming out in high school: Film aims to help give voice to religious gay students

When Shula Izen plaintively wondered if it’s possible to be Jewish and gay and remain holy in the film Hineini: Coming Out in a Jewish High School, the moment rang true for many attending the sold-out Sunday afternoon screening at the Washington Jewish Film Festival at the Washington DC Jewish Community Center.

Hineini: Coming Out In A Jewish High School

An engaging portrait of a pioneering teen activist at The New Jewish High School of Boston -- dubbed “New Jew” by students and faculty -- “Hineini: Coming Out in a Jewish High School” examines the implications of affirming one’s gay orientation despite the Torah’s provision that “Homosexuality is an abomination before the Law.”

Arts & Culture Student, Jewish School Star in Documentary on Jewish Lesbian

In the poignant opening frames of the new film “Hineini,” Shulamit Izen thumbs through stacks of books at her local library, searching for an answer to the following question: “Is it possible to be Jewish and a lesbian?”

Gann documentary sparks Jewish-gay debate

Do openly gay students have a place at Jewish schools?

New Film Peers Into the Teenage Jewish Closet

To proclaim “Hineini” — the Hebrew word for “Here I am” — is perhaps also to posit a question: If this is who I am and I stand here, who are you and where do you stand? Then, maybe, who are we and where do we stand?

To be young, Jewish and gay

Even a documentary sometimes needs a star, and Shulamit Izen is just that in HINEINI: Coming Out in a Jewish School.

One girl’s push to form a gay group forced a school to search its soul

Tucked somewhere between the Scrabble Club and the Yiddish Club on the roster of 40 student organizations on the website of Gann Academy, the New Jewish High School of Greater Boston, is this listing for the group Open House: ‘’The gay-straight alliance at Gann Academy advocates for understanding and tolerance and provides a supportive space for discussion and learning.”

Identidades: El camino del arco iris

Cómo conciliar el judaísmo con el lesbianismo era la pregunta que desvelaba a la norteamericana Idit Klein cuando se acercó a lo que terminó convirtiéndose en Keshet, una ONG de Boston que ahora la tiene como presidenta.

Keshet’s ‘quick dates’

Event serves Boston's gay Jewish singles.

Q+A Irena Fayngold

Director Irena Fayngold’s documentary Hineini (boston-keshet.org) is about a teen’s struggle to form a gay-straight alliance in her Jewish high school in Boston and how the process changed everyone, including four closeted gay teachers who came out. Fayngold tells curve about the experience.