Director Eric Steel’s Minyan evokes the Brighton Beach neighborhood of late 1980s Brooklyn. Drawing from both David Bezmozgis’ short story and from his own personal experiences, Steel chronicles a gay Jewish teen’s coming of age in this setting that looks back on World War II and to the film’s present-day AIDS epidemic.
Minyan opens with a grim, awkward scene. David (Samuel H. Levine) stands beside his grandfather Josef (Ronald Rifkin), who is saying Kaddish for his late wife. The black-clad Russian immigrant family stands apart from Josef with their heads bowed in respect. But David stays close to his grandfather’s side, fidgeting slightly and looking almost into the camera.
This opening scene imparts the young man’s uneasy sense of his roots, but also–just as strongly–his connection to his grandfather. This is a feeling that lingers in the movie, as David struggles to find his place in the Jewish faith while also discovering his strongest support system in that same community.
When Josef moves after his wife’s death, David gets to know his new neighbors. Herschel (Christopher McCann) and Itzik (Mark Margolis) are a closeted gay couple who reveals to David the surprising intersection of the Jewish and queer communities in New York. In tandem with this developing relationship, David becomes sexually entangled with an older bartender (Alex Hurt) and immerses himself in the work of James Baldwin.
Living during a time in which many Jews remember the horrors of the Holocaust and many gay men are deeply affected by the AIDS crisis, David is so naive to the suffering surrounding him and yet so in tune with his own. As he grows ever more aware of his socioreligious surroundings, he notices more and more the ways in which his two worlds collide.
In Judaism, a minyan is a quorum of ten adults (or, in the case of this Orthodox Jewish community, ten men) required for traditional worship. Because of this stipulation, David finds himself needed by the Jewish men in his life. Unaware of David’s sexual orientation, his rabbi says to him, “Thieves, adulterers, homosexuals. I take them all. Without them, we would never have a minyan.”
Even as the Jewish people in Steel’s film have strict rules to abide by, they know they need people like Herschel, Itzik, and David to survive. The religious community’s collective blind eye, then, is portrayed simultaneously as a gross disservice and as the greatest kindness.
Steel makes many clever and compelling connections in this complicated story of doubt, sexual awakening, personal truth, and acceptance. Although overwhelmed by multiple themes and storylines, Minyan deftly depicts the convergence of two communities–Jewish and queer–and the bittersweet experience of living between them. Highly recommended for drama, LGBTQ+, and Jewish library shelves.