Dr. Nam­dar comes from a very tight­ly-knit Sephardic com­mu­ni­ty, one in which there have nev­er been any out gay peo­ple. Dr. Namdar’s dis­crete civ­il mar­riage to his part­ner was dis­cov­ered by a fel­low con­gre­gant and he was out­ed to his entire ances­tral com­mu­ni­ty. While some peo­ple com­pared Dr. Namdar’s mar­riage to bes­tial­i­ty, oth­ers saw in him a Rosa Parks by being true to him­self in an oth­er­wise restric­tive envi­ron­ment. Mean­while, the Rab­bi of the con­gre­ga­tion used the podi­um of the fol­low­ing Shab­bath ser­mon to ex-com­mu­ni­cate Dr. Nam­dar in order to make an exam­ple of his case for any oth­ers still strug­gling with their sex­u­al iden­ti­ty.

Dr. Nam­dar real­ized the pow­er of his expe­ri­ences and wrote the sto­ry of the tumul­tuous times sur­round­ing his ex-com­mu­ni­ca­tion in his book. Along with excerpts from an online anony­mous dis­cus­sion board, Dr. Nam­dar also includ­ed per­son­al com­mu­ni­ca­tions as well as back­ground infor­ma­tion and often very painful and reveal­ing emo­tions that are sure to take the read­er through a spir­i­tu­al jour­ney of their own.