Prior to Eve, Adam searched for meaningful companionship among Eden's animals with his creator's blessing. This episode of bestiality is not, shall we say, a popular interpretation of the Genesis tale, nor is it one that you'd expect an Orthodox rabbi to propound before an assembly of high school students. But Steven Greenberg is not your average rabbi.

This spin on the "In the beginning" saga has a notable pedigree, having been proposed by the great 11th century Rabbi Rashi of Troyes. "Think of it this way," Rabbi Greenberg instructs his young audience. "It was like God was waiting at home every night like dad for Adam to return from his date with the hippo or the giraffe to say, 'Well, so?'"

Rabbi Greenberg firmly believes that his God is not the ogreish taskmaster that many strict co-religionists and Christians make him out to be. On the subject of sex, Greenberg says, the God of Israel is surprisingly rather liberal. He trusts humans to know what's best for them to curb loneliness. And though he might have some problems with certain sexual practices, he is not against homosexuality, nor has he created homosexuality as a Job-like test.

Greenberg, who is considered the first openly gay Orthodox rabbi, has been traveling the world with filmmaker Sandi DuBowski to promote DuBowski's documentary, Trembling Before G-d, which is showing intermittently at Světozor. Trembling is a film that looks at the lives of a number of Orthodox and Hasidic Jews who are grappling with their culture's disdain for their homosexuality. "I say this," Rabbi Greenberg told students in a presentation at Prague's Lauder Foundation School. "A God that creates a world must love it. It's impossible to believe in a creator who hates his creation." And for Greenberg, homosexuality is part of that creation.

Trembling Before G-d is often a heartbreaking work. The film's subjects have tried every conceivable way to reconcile their desires with their religion. Some have had to abandon the faith of their fathers, and in turn their fathers have abandoned them. Others have fought from the inside to challenge the cancerous self-doubt and attendant self-loathing that the words of Leviticus have caused over millennia. Still others conceal the Levitical poison to live a lie of "normalcy." Rabbi Greenberg knows the latter well.

"I was a New York rabbi that was in the closet for 12 years," he reveals. "On Yom Kippur, when that passage from Leviticus would be read, I would turn my back to the congregation and weep." Rabbi Greenberg has written about his own struggles in a book titled Wrestling with God and Men.

Many of the Lauder students had seen DuBowski's film, and had sophisticated questions for their guests. In fact, the hour-long presentation often resembled a rabbinical gathering, with students, teachers and guests translating words and concepts back and forth in Czech, English and Hebrew.

"How do you explain the prohibition in Leviticus?" a young girl asks the rabbi. "The prohibition is against sexual penetration," Rabbi Greenberg responds. "The Torah focuses only on one aspect of homosexuality. But it's really a prohibition against violence, using sex to degrade or humiliate."

"Things are changing," DuBowski says. "My film has already been on television throughout the world. But much more important, it is being privately screened in Orthodox synagogues. A discussion is taking place." DuBowski then reveals something of his own spiritual journey as a Jewish gay man. "I'm from a liberal Jewish background, and we were far from kosher," the filmmaker says, laughing. "However, I've rediscovered my faith through having spent time with people who are wrestling with these issues."

Perhaps the most powerful story in DuBowski's film is that of a man named David, who tried to rid himself of his homosexuality after receiving advice from his rabbi, Rabbi Langer, to seek conversion therapy. Through years of pain and self-punishment, David finally came to accept his gayness, and returned to Rabbi Langer to discuss the situation with him. The meeting was difficult.

Because of that encounter, however, Rabbi Langer's views have shifted somewhat. At the premiere of Trembling at the Castro Theater in San Francisco, Rabbi Langer invited everyone to a Shabbat (Sabbath celebration) at the Castro the following evening. "It was fantastic," DuBowski recalls. "Gay men on one side of the aisle, and lesbians on the other. And the transgendered got to choose their own side."