Michael Golden
The award-winning documentary SABBATH QUEEN will be screened on April 24th at the Doc 10 Film Festival in Chicago. Above is Michael’s full interview with the film’s director, Sandi DuBowski.
Imagine that you’ve grown up in an Orthodox Israeli family with a lineage of 38 rabbis stretching back 10 centuries. For real.
Now imagine that you are gay, and though you want to follow in your family’s footsteps, you’re not allowed to. Far from it.
Imagine further that you choose to go down the rabbinic path anyway by trying to modify various customs that have existed since the very birth of Judaism — and in the process you risk offending people you really love. Finally, try to imagine doing all of this in the public eye.
Meet Amichai Lau-Lavie (he/him), the protagonist of director Sandi DuBowski’s award-winning new documentary, Sabbath Queen. The film tackles several big themes at once while exploring the gray areas of Jewish identity as they relate to the goals of sustaining and growing Judaism in the modern age. Moviegoers may see Amichai as a heroic iconoclast or heretical troublemaker — or both. But after screening the film last week, there is one thing I am certain of: No one will go away doubting the man’s heart or guts.
Amichai says the story begins where his life began:
“My father was a Holocaust survivor who came to Israel in 1945. My mother was born in England and moved to Israel as an idealist in the ‘50s. I was born on the day of Israeli independence. So my parents decided to call me Amichai, which means ‘my nation lives.’”
Amichai’s name and family history might sound like a privileged birthright at first. His father Naphtali was a diplomat who served as Israel’s Consul General in New York. His uncle, Yisrael Meir Lau, served as Israel’s Chief Rabbi (Ashkenazic). But early on in his life, Amichai could see that a millennium-long pedigree could easily become an albatross. He knew that his sexuality was different, and Scripture told him how to feel about it:
“When I had my bar mitzvah, I chanted the words, ‘God spoke to Moses and said if a man lies with another man as with a woman, they need to be killed.’ I was taught to memorize by heart these words. I remember cold sweat, my father and brothers and uncles, they’re all sitting over there. I knew that who I am is not what my parents wanted me to be.”
In 1993 when he was 24 years old, an Israeli journalist wrote about Amichai within the context of a larger story — but outed him without his consent. With his family’s Orthodox background, expectations about joining the family business, and Amichai’s own desire to become a rabbi — the article ruptured his entire life. In the film, we hear from his mother Joan:
“It’s not easy to swallow the pill. It’s just not easy. This wonderful person with so much to offer should come into a cul-de-sac of life. As a mother I found it very, very difficult. He’ll never fit. I mean, he doesn’t fit.”
Amichai’s family, including his rabbi brother Benny, were compassionate. But in terms of Amichai ever becoming an Orthodox rabbi, those dreams were completely dashed. For everyone.
Amichai felt like his world had fallen apart. He felt like “jumping off a cliff.” But at the same time, he could hear another voice speaking to him. A voice that told him that this crisis was actually a gift:
“It said ‘Lech lecha.’ Leave everything behind, leave your family, leave your father’s house, leave the familiar. Go on the road.”
In a way, that’s where Amichai Lau-Lavie’s second life began. He moved to New York, met new friends who became like family, and became fully engaged in the LGBTQ+ community. He could finally express himself as himself. But that doesn’t mean Judaism wasn’t still pulling at his soul.
In a spontaneous act over a Purim holiday, Amichai created an alter-ego, drag queen character: “Rebbetzin Hadassah Gross.” A thick-accented, Hungarian ‘widow of six rabbis’ who is irreverent and melodramatic — but who also has a deep knowledge of Judaism and teaches it in a new way. This led to Amichai’s creation of Storahtelling, a performance-based theatre company promoting Jewish literacy by making Jewish texts easier to absorb and understand.
In 2013, Amichai used the success of Storahtelling to establish something called Lab/Shul, which bills itself as an “artist-driven, everybody-friendly, God-optional, pop-up, experimental community for sacred Jewish gatherings based in New York City, reaching the world.”
You read that right. “God-optional.”
The Lab/Shul concept took progressive Judaism to a whole new level. Many were delighted by its radical openness. But many were not — including Amichai’s family. And they were offended by the Hadassah routine. His brother Benny, a rising religious leader in his own right, speaks honestly about it in the film:
“Hadassah Gross was one of the most difficult things for us. You say to him be a decent man, live your life, be yourself. He did things that were intolerable. It was like, ‘This is the Lau family.’ He was aggressively radical about his identity. It was like he was screaming it out. And when someone screams at you, you shut down.”
The rest of Sabbath Queen explores the complicated tentacles that stretch out from Amichai’s goals to expand access to Judaism. This includes his decision to attend the Conservative Jewish Theological Seminary and become an ordained rabbi. He gets caught between the liberal stream of Jewish life and congregation that he’s created — and the rules that he’s bending or breaking. He officiates the weddings of folks who have not converted to Judaism, violating the standards of the Conservative Seminary that ordained him. Again, his brother Benny:
“The weddings I perform aren’t like the weddings he performs. What does it mean to be a Jew? Where’s the boundary? Playing a game with Judaism seems very dangerous to me. So there’s a big difference between us. Our disagreements run very deep.”
‘What Does It Mean To Be A Jew?’
As you watch DuBowski’s Sabbath Queen, which he shot over 21 years, it’s hard not to arrive at opinions about Amichai’s mission and how he’s going about it. In rejecting certain ancient Jewish traditions and customs, his approach is undeniably controversial. And it can make the audience feel pretty uncomfortable — no matter how socially liberal one might be.
But as I was pondering these competing themes in Sabbath Queen, I also found myself asking the same question that Benny had asked: ‘What does it mean to be a Jew?’ This is far from a new query. In fact, in my inaugural article for Jewdicious, I quoted the book I Am Jewish, which included dozens of historical figures’ definitions of what being Jewish means. It is wide-ranging.
In my case, I’m a Reform Jew, bordering on the secular. I follow few formal customs and lead a completely different life than my Orthodox friends. My pride in being Jewish has more to do with the survival, ingenuity and love that our people have shared across a storied history. My expression of Judaism has less to do with worship and more to do with active roles I’ve taken to defend and protect the Jewish people. It is a loyalty to ancestry.
But Sandi and Amichai’s film made me think. It’s easy for me to at least consider Amichai’s desire to change the system from within and make Judaism more accessible than it has traditionally been. This is because I do not hew closely to our most rigorous rules and traditions. And therein lies the rub. I don’t feel like I even have the moral authority to judge.
Still, there is a sensibility that exists in being Jewish that does not require adherence to the traditional tenets of our faith. To a great degree, being Jewish is also about respect, understanding, and love of family. And you can feel this in Sabbath Queen.
Not only did Rabbi Benny attend the premier of Sabbath Queen at the Tribeca Film Festival, he actively participated. As much as he disagrees with his brother, they are still brothers. When I interviewed DuBowski last week (full video above), the following observation was the one that stood out most:
“Benny didn’t just show up in the audience. He came on stage and did the Q&A with us. And he came with love and respect, and he came with discomfort and disagreement. But that’s what’s amazing to me. These brothers are role models for our time. They’re coming from different places, but they have committed to that lifelong conversation, that dialogue. Even with the sacred disagreement that they have around so many things. That to me is the dream of a Jewish family and the Jewish world.”
‘Role models for our time.’ Mutual respect. A family of leaders who are negotiating the deepest kind of disagreements — yet they listen to each other. Display grace. Support one another. No matter what.
Amichai’s path in DuBowski’s documentary plumbs the depths of what it feels like to be an outcast, to find your true self, to build something out of nothing, to defend that something — then to risk it all by taking bold action to make an even bigger impact.
Sabbath Queen is just as much about how we choose to live our lives as it is about how to preserve and sustain Jewish traditions. The film is still winning awards on the festival circuit, but will be widely available soon. When you see it, I recommend building at least an hour of post-film conversation time into your calendar. You’ll need it.
**Groups can book a screening of Sabbath Queen by contacting the film’s producers on the S.Q. website.
SANDI DUBOWSKI is an award-winning director/producer of documentary films. SABBATH QUEEN will be the main feature on opening night of the Doc 10 Film Festival in Chicago, April 24.
