Loving Leah

Loving Leah is a television film that aired on CBS as a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie on January 25, 2009. The film is directed by Jeff Bleckner and stars Adam Kaufman as an unobservant Jewish bachelor who feels compelled to marry his observant rabbi brother's widow, Leah (Lauren Ambrose) to honor him via the ancient Jewish law of yibbum (levirate marriage).

Loving Leah began as a play by P'nenah Goldstein and was brought to Hallmark by Ricki Lake, who also appears in a minor role in the film. Goldstein also wrote the screenplay and "saw it in a way like Moonstruck or Crossing Delancey." To prepare for her role, lead actress Lauren Ambrose spent time with women of the close-knit Hasidic community.

Plot

Jake Lever (Adam Kaufman) is a successful cardiologist living in the upscale Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. When he dozes off at the hospital where he works, he dreams that his brother, Benjamin, tells him that they are okay. Jake is confused and is baffled after receiving a phone call later that day from his mother informing him that his brother has died suddenly. He feels guilty for not having kept in touch with his brother for several years. After Ben's funeral held in Brooklyn, Jake finds out that because his brother's wife Leah (Lauren Ambrose) has been left without children, they must perform a ceremony called halizah in order not to conduct a levirate marriage.