Blurring boundaries
Sabbath Queen, radical faerie, earnest rabbi — meet Amichai Lau-Lavie
Given that it was filmed over 21 years, it’s not surprising that “Sabbath Queen” is complex.
It’s the story of Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie, the founder and leader of Lab/Shuls and of Storahtelling before that, and of Rebbetzin Hadassah Gross even before that.
It’s the beautifully photographed work of Sandi DuBowski, the director whose memorable 2001 documentary “Trembling Before G-d,” about the tensions gay Orthodox Jews and their communities confront, made a difference in many lives.
It will be shown at both the Rutgers Jewish Film Festival and the Teaneck International Film Festival this week; it will open in theaters at the end of the month. (See below.)
Mr. DuBowski tried to include Mr. Lau-Lavie, as he was then, in his film, but he was rejected; Rabbi Lau-Lavie thought that his own story didn’t dovetail neatly with the others, but if filmed at all should be at the heart of another film. The two men became friends, and Mr. DuBowski began filming Rabbi Lau-Lavie. So that means that we, the audience, are able to watch a real person as he grows and changes, as he becomes visibly older, as he assumes more and more responsibility and as those responsibilities etch themselves into his face.
There are ways in which the film is a study of brothers. Amichai Lau-Lavie’s brother, Binyamin Lau, is a well-known, highly respected Orthodox rabbi in Jerusalem; interviews with him are at the heart of “Sabbath Queen.”
The brothers’ father, Naphtali Lau-Lavie, was an Israeli diplomat who became his country’s consul-general in New York, where Amichai spent part of his childhood. Naphtali’s brother, Yisrael Meir Lau, has been, among other things, the Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel and the chairman of Yad Vashem.
The younger generation of Lau-Lavie brothers is the 36th in an unbroken line of rabbis.
“Sabbath Queen” tells many stories. It includes the extraordinary way that Naphtali ensured that Yisrael survived Auschwitz, the way Amichai rejected his background, came to New York, came to terms with its inescapability, became a figure of wild spirituality and great depth, was an inescapably Jewish drag queen, founded Lab/Shul, became, of all things, a Conservative rabbi, because pragmatic realism and the belief that change must come from the middle fueled him, and then became an advocate of interfaith marriage and openness, and of the need to leave tribalism without leaving Judaism, because “this is a moment that requires change,” as he says in the film.
It’s the story of a man who constantly questions his place in the world, but always assumes leadership in whichever part of the world he’s in, and who has such charisma that he can do that.
It’s the story of the son of a Holocaust survivor who became a “radical faerie” before he became the fabulous if overdressed stage widow of six rabbis and then became a rabbi for real himself, and now fights passionately in this post-October 7 world for realistic peace.
Yes, there’s a lot there.
So how did Mr. DuBowski make this epic film?
“I had enormous patience,” he said. “But I didn’t know that I was running an ultramarathon. If I’d had a baby when I started, that baby would have graduated from college by now.
“I seem to specialize in rabbis,” he added. “Amichai thinks that rabbis are the new artists, and I am artist to the new rabbis.”
Mr. DuBowski had grown up a Conservative Jew, he said; “‘Trembling’ made me more Orthodox, but I was a part-time Orthodox Jew. I studied Torah every week for two years with a chasidic gay man. I did a lot with the Orthodykes,” as its name implies a group for Orthodox lesbians. “I definitely felt that ‘Trembling’ was my portal into the Orthodox world. But it wasn’t a place where I could live and be fully myself.
“Trembling Before G-d” was “a movie that became a movement,” he said. “It was a tipping point. It was amazing. I did 850 live events all over the world with it. We had changed the lives of families and communities and synagogues, but I needed to take a break.
“Amichai became my way to take a break.
“I now feel immersed in the God-optional, post-denominational, super-creative Lab/Shul,” he continued. “It feels like my home. But I connect to many kinds of Jews. And Amichai is my friend and also my rabbi. He buried my father and comforted my mom and me through the year of mourning. He officiated at my interfaith queer wedding.”
That’s why it was hard for Mr. DuBowski to figure out how to make the film he knew that he had to make in 2016, when he decided that it was time to turn his trove into a movie. He had so much footage. He covered so many changes. How could he possibly structure it?
“At first, my editors said that they needed me in the movie. It needed a narrator, because the story is so sprawling.” So he worked for “months and months, developing, and developing more, and finally we had a rough cut, and we screened it, and they were like, ‘Sandi, we love you, but get out of the movie.’ So that was nine months of work that we just threw out
“And then it was Amichai’s brother who became a spine of the film.”
That works particularly well, Mr. DuBowski said, because “There’s so much in the polarized time that is so toxic. People have lost the ability to talk to each other. And these two brothers disagree. They’re not on the same page politically or ideologically, but they disagree with love and respect.
“For me, that is a role model for this time.”
The relationship between the brothers is visually striking, because they resemble each other so strongly, both physically and, it seems intellectually. They are both very, very smart.
The film also tells the story of the brothers’ father and uncle. Napthtali, their father, who was a teenager, took massive risks to keep himself imprisoned alongside his much younger brother, and managed to keep them both alive.
There is much, much more in the film.
So why does Rabbi Lau-Lavie do what he does?
“I chose to be in the public eye as a public servant, the son and grandson of public servants,” he said. “The understanding was that Sandi was creating a story that was not about me, except as it was in service of a bigger story.
“But since I am a storyteller, all I do is recycle and reimagine stories. The biggest story we are telling now is about a paradigm shift.”
After making the difficult decision to be ordained in the Conservative movement, the film includes many discussions with Rabbi Daniel Nevins, who now is the head of school at the Golda Och Academy in West Orange but then was the dean of the rabbinical school at the Jewish Theological Seminary, the flagship of the Conservative movement, where Rabbi Lau-Lavie studied and earned smicha.
Rabbi Lau-Lavie, who had chosen the movement because of its centrality in the Jewish world, despite the wariness of some of the Lab/Shul community, broke with it to perform interfaith marriages; the first one he did is shown in “Sabbath Queen.”
It is not accidental that much of the film focuses on weddings. That’s where joy is most obvious; that’s where the impulse to be inclusive is most instinctive and generous. It’s where it’s easiest to move to “yes and.”
It is necessary to move from the old paradigm of either/or to “yes and,” Rabbi Lau-Lavie said. “When you welcome someone fully, that person becomes part of the community.
“We must blur the old boundaries because it is practical and realistic.
Although the film was 21 years in the making and had been in active production since 2016, the events of the last year, beginning with October 7, demanded that changes be made to it.
“I am with Israel, and I am with my family and friends and our right to exist. And I am with the Palestinian fight for survival. We will only have a future together. If we insist on either/or, we will all go down.
“That’s why I’m focusing on weddings.
I’ve been saying ‘all you need is vav.’
“‘That’s the vav in v’ahavta, which means ‘and love.’
“You have to love also those who it’s not so easy to love. You love who you are now, in community with, or in a neighborhood with, or in relationship with, beyond the tribal boundaries that we grew up with. It’s not instead of who and where we are. It’s in addition to that.
“Either you stay behind your walls, or you meet people where they’re at, welcome them in, and keep Judaism thriving and expansive and inclusive. Keep it love-driven, not fear-based.
“It’s not everyone’s cup of tea. But there is no other recipe for survival.
Who: Director Sandi DuBowski and Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie
What: Will speak after the screening of Mr. DuBowski’s new film about Rabbi Lau-Lavie, “Sabbath Queen”
Where: At the Regal Cinema Commerce Center in North Brunswick
When: On Sunday, November 10, at 12:30
Why: As part of the Rutgers Jewish Film Festival
AND
Who: Director Sandi DuBowski
What: Will be at the talkback after the screening of his new film, “Sabbath Queen”
Where: At Temple Emeth in Teaneck
When: On Sunday, November 10, at 2:30
Why: As part of the Teaneck International Film Festival
AND
The film will open on November 22 at the IFC Center in Greenwich Village
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