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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 a non-observant Jewish bachelor who feels compelled to marry his rabbi brother's widow, Leah (Lauren Ambrose), to honor him via the ancient Jewish law of yibbum (levirate marriage).

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, who was an ultra-Orthodox Jewish Rabbi, 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 to release them both from the religious obligation to conduct a levirate marriage.