Above is an interview I conducted for the Faith Complex series with Mr. Chaim Levin. Entitled “Davven the Gay Away?” (A Jewish play on the phrase “pray the gay away” heard in some Christian circles) the episode calls attention to Mr. Levin’s struggles to maintain a gay and Orthodox Jewish identity.

He had chronicled the intense psychic duress this created for him in an It Gets Better Video for frum Jews. Subsequently, he was criticized in an Op-Ed piece in the Jewish Press by Elliot Resnick, a doctoral student at Yeshiva University.

Resnick, who was acquainted with Levin personally (though did not mention him by name in the original article), accused him of self-indulgence. Resnick wondered:

By and large, though, unmarried heterosexual Orthodox Jews suffer in solitude. But do those Jews complain? Do Catholic priests, the overwhelming majority of whom remain celibate their…

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